Will new fire-fighting system take the heat off Camden scrap yard?

By Eva Andersen, Scott Jacobson, CBS News

A Camden scrap metal recycling facility at the center of repeated fires and environmental concerns has unveiled a new multimillion-dollar fire suppression system designed to stop fires before they spread.

EMR, a metal recycling company with facilities in Camden, demonstrated the new system on Wednesday at its Camden property. The system includes infrared heat-detecting cameras, automated water cannons, and a 250,000-gallon water tank intended to quickly suppress fires linked to lithium-ion batteries hidden in scrap piles.

Company officials say the system is part of a broader effort to address fires that have plagued the facility in recent years and sparked backlash from nearby residents.

“What you’re looking at is a brand-new fire suppression system,” EMR CEO Joe Balzano said during a tour of the property.

Balzano said the company spent more than $4.5 million on the system, which took about seven months to install.

“We had a fire engineer sign off on everything to make sure it was something that would work,” Balzano said.

According to EMR, seven infrared cameras monitor piles around the clock. If temperatures rise above 225 degrees, automated water cannons activate and target the affected area.

Read the full story here

Editor’s Note: Dozens of stories like this are enjoyed every day by subscribers to our newsletter, EnviroPolitics. Try it for free for 30 days

Will new fire-fighting system take the heat off Camden scrap yard? Read More »

Lithuania’s Plan to Combat Global Warming (and Russian Tanks)

Peatlands in Canada

By Avril Silva, The New York Times, May 13, 2026

In a scrubby forest an hour outside the Lithuanian capital on a recent day this spring, excavators were digging ditches and tree harvesters were whirring in an effort to restore a waterlogged, mosquito-infested ecosystem that was drained in the Soviet era.

The reason is twofold: to help the climate and to defend the country from invasion.

The area was once a vast peat bog, and peat bogs are highly efficient at storing planet-warming carbon dioxide. They also happen to be very good at stopping tanks, because the spongy soil can’t support the weight of armored vehicles. The tanks get stuck and sink, often permanently.

Tomas Godliauskas, the Lithuanian vice minister of defense, said the bogs would form “an integral defensive line” when combined with other military tactics. The project also has the advantage of being relatively inexpensive compared with other measures such as tank ditches and minefields, he added.

Lithuania isn’t the only European Union country using bogs to deter a Russian invasion. Latvia and Finland, for example, are also seeking to restore bogs for both environmental and defense purposes. And Ukrainian bogs helped to delay Russian troops in a failed push toward Kyiv in 2022.

Read the full story here

Editor’s Note: Dozens of stories like this are enjoyed daily by subscribers to our newsletter, EnviroPolitics. Try it for free for 30 days

Lithuania’s Plan to Combat Global Warming (and Russian Tanks) Read More »

U.S.-China Summit: The waning power of US fossil fuel leverage

First Word graphic.

This week’s summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping illustrates the waning power of US leverage over fossil fuels.

One of the key potential outcomes of the summit is a deal to extend a moratorium on Chinese export restrictions, which are now set to kick back in around the time of the midterm elections in November. Even with the exemption, Chinese export volumes for unpronounceable but irreplaceable things like yttrium and dysprosium are still way down, and prices are way up.

The Trump administration is keenly aware of its rare earths Achilles heel, and has rolled out price floors, equity investments, federal stockpiling, and more — what Gracelin Baskaran of the Center for Strategic and International Studies recently called “the boldest domestic industrial policy in modern history” — to prop up new US mining companies and form new foreign trade deals that sidestep China. But given the lead times required to dig new mines, build new processing factories, and train a new generation of rare earths engineers, none of that will have a meaningful impact on the market until well after Trump leaves office. In the meantime, there’s nothing the US can do but continue to shop in Beijing.

Compare that to Trump’s side of the negotiating ledger. Of course there are some things, such as the most advanced Nvidia AI chips, that China wants and only the US can proffer. But oil and gas, which are usually Trump’s trade cudgel of choice, won’t have much heft with Xi; China is well-supplied with reserves of both and has other options, including US adversaries like Russia, for getting more.

The upshot is that this week, Trump needs a deal on rare earths more than Xi needs a deal on fossil fuels. And that dynamic won’t be changing anytime soon.

The Trump administration “has recognized there’s a national security problem that has to be solved, and our normal processes aren’t solving it,” Barbara Humpton, CEO of USA Rare Earth, told me last month at Semafor World Economy. “But we’re not playing a game of competition against China — we’re simply playing the game of resilience.”

Editor’s Note: There are dozens of stories like this enjoyed daily by subscribers to our newsletter, EnviroPolitics. Try it for free for 30 days

U.S.-China Summit: The waning power of US fossil fuel leverage Read More »

The Hole in the Ice at the End of the Earth

Won Sang Lee, right, and a colleague after setting up a tent on the Thwaites glacier

By Raymond Zhong, The New York Times

The glacier’s rippling mass sprawled from the hills and volcanoes of the Antarctic interior out into the Southern Ocean, covering an area the size of Britain. Won Sang Lee stood on its ice, his tall frame wrapped in a red polar suit, and watched his team at work. Nine scientists, engineers, and guides, some of whom had been planning this mission with him for more than half a decade. Now, they were at its final stage: drilling through the melting glacier to reach the vast ocean cavity beneath it.

They were tired and hungry. They kept themselves going with tea, crackers, and protein bars. They’d crossed the world’s wildest ocean, flown in helicopters over the wasteland of the glacier’s wounded ice, then toiled for days through lashing winds, all for a shot, a single shot, at piercing the ice at the bottom of the Earth. Periodically, they heard booms as the glacier shifted and crevassed under their feet.

The team’s scientists knew that warm currents were eating away at this glacier, the Thwaites, from below. They also knew that, sometime in the coming decades, Thwaites could give out entirely, causing so much ice to heave into the ocean over several centuries that it might raise global sea levels by more than 15 feet

Read the full story here

Raymond Zhong spent two months aboard the research ship Araon

The Hole in the Ice at the End of the Earth Read More »

Opinion: PJM Data Conflicts With The Perception Of A Power Crisis 

By Bill Wolf in Wolfenotes

Why are NJ ratepayers paying billions of dollars and outrageous PJM “capacity charges”, when PJM is exporting power and maintaining HUGE and EXPENSIVE reserve margins?

Who will ask Gov. Sherrill those questions?

Virtually every news article and statement by public officials about rising electric energy costs – especially including NJ “energy emergency” Gov. Sherrill – emphasizes an alleged growing crisis due to increasing power demand (mostly from data centers) outstripping available supply (due to coal plant retirements).

They claim that this mismatch between growing demand and shrinking supply explains skyrocketing electricity prices and threatens “grid reliability”.

The regional grid operator, PJM, even threatens that rolling blackouts and brownouts are likely.

But PJM’s own data belie these claims.

It’s mostly exaggerations, spin, and falsehoods used to justify skyrocketing energy prices, PJM’s rigged market, and outrageous corporate profits, and to pressure governments to enact fossil and nuclear power-dominated “reliable” “base load” generation capacity and reduce the role of renewable energy options.

The so-called “growing data center demand” is an unreliable projection and an exaggeration.

Read the full essay here

Related: New Jersey’s soaring electricity rates may be rigged

Bill Wolfe is a former NJDEP official and a long-time environmental blogger

Opinion: PJM Data Conflicts With The Perception Of A Power Crisis  Read More »