Growth

• Carriers in the U.S. shipped 64 packages for every American in 2022, so it’s quite possible.
• That commerce reflects the expansion of large-scale retail in recent decades, especially big-box chains like Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Home Depot that sell goods both in stores and online.
• While mail-order commerce is convenient, these centers also have harmful impacts, including traffic congestion and air and water pollution.

Indirect pollution sources

• The company played a prominent role in the 1970s as Congress expanded federal power to regulate air pollution nationwide under the Clean Air Act of 1970.
• To meet those standards, in the mid-1970s lawmakers and regulators considered adopting transportation controls that could address indirect pollution sources – entities that did not generate air pollution themselves but attracted large numbers of sources, such as cars and trucks, that did.
• One of its executives, George Hite, was a leading spokesperson against regulating indirect pollution sources.
• Hite asserted that because shopping centers were one-stop destinations for consumers, they actually reduced air pollution from consumers’ trips.

Big-box boom

• These companies relied on a new type of warehouse: the distribution center, which used computer technology to make supply chains more efficient.
• Compared with earlier warehouses, distribution centers were larger and focused on efficient movement of goods rather than storage.
• In the 1990s, communities across the country began organizing to slow the expansion of big-box stores.
• State and local officials refused to reconsider the deal they had reached with Target, which included grants and other tax subsidies.

Probing retail’s environmental costs

• Target and other retailers are meeting new opposition, including pushback from environmental justice groups, which argue that these companies’ operations increase traffic and degrade air quality.
• In Southern California, the powerful South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates regional air quality, has taken this step with Rule 2305.
• This regulation is the first in the U.S. to address emissions generated by trucks traveling to and from large warehouse facilities.
• Point targets are based on each facility’s size, number of truck trips and other factors.

Shopping carts vs. smokestacks

• For example, Target touts investments to make its facilities more energy efficient and place solar panels on its stores and distribution centers.
• Including emissions generated when suppliers shipped these goods to Target’s distribution network more than doubled this figure.
• In my view, the retail sector’s impacts on air, water, waste generation and Earth’s climate call for national-level responses.
• Big-box stores may not look like smoke-belching factories, but their companies’ operations affect the environment in ways that have become too big to ignore.

Johnathan Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Less than a year after my retirement, it shed a couple of major limbs and was removed.
• I had been its custodian for over 20 years and took my responsibility seriously, extending its useful life.
• It’s a shame, because there is much to appreciate and admire about the sugar gum.

Read more:
Hard to kill: here's why eucalypts are survival experts

A hardy and impressive tree

• In its natural habitat in the Flinders Ranges, sugar gum can be an impressive single-trunked tree.
• Like many eucalypts, sugar gum is a hardy tree with plenty of dormant buds (epicormic buds) under its smooth yellow, grey bark.
• When the tree is damaged by fire or stressed, these buds may become active and produce lots of new shoots.

A tree that leaves a lasting impression

• Coming from the western suburbs of Melbourne, I remember lots of them in rows at the intriguing Albion Explosive Factory.
• These trees left a lasting impression.
• More broadly, though, many in the wider Australian community still see sugar gums only as risky trees that drop dangerous branches.

Lopping and topping

• These trees are capable of growth in heavy clay soils, drought tolerant and efficient water users.
• They were a tree that more or less looked after themselves in tough conditions.
• Some were regularly pruned at a lower height to encourage growth for the rapid production of firewood or fence posts.
• But when you stopped lopping and topping, the shoots grew quickly.

A haven for native animals

• Many sugar gums feature hollows and cavities, which become a haven for native fauna.
• These provide a home for a possum or two, but it is perhaps parrots that benefit most.
• At certain times of year, there is a deafening din around sugar gums as sulphur-crested cockatoos, corellas and lorikeets jostle for nesting sites.

Gregory Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Her comment attracted shock, horror and disgust from many social media users, but it’s not the first time Kardashian Barker has used her milk as medicine.
• In 2013, she applied her breast milk to her sister Kim Kardashian’s leg in an effort to heal a patch of psoriasis.
• But by drinking her own breast milk, the eldest Kardashian sister helped promote a health trend already steeped in centuries of medical history.
• One thing that is not recommended by any health organisation is adult consumption of human milk.

History of human milk as medicine

• Many healers of the day also recommended treating eye infections with human milk, which was known as “whitened blood”.
• We know that human milk contains many components which can be effective as antimicrobials – lactoferrin and antimicrobial peptides, for example.

Bodybuilders think breast is best

• Human milk is also used by some bodybuilders to lose fat and bulk up.
• This has created an online marketplace allowing easy access to breast milk.
• The 2020 Netflix series (Un)Well featured an episode focused on the safety and ethics of breast milk for bodybuilding.

Lack of research into potential benefits

• Considering human milk feeds most of the world’s population for the first six months of their life, it is a surprisingly understudied area.
• Researchers have shown preliminary evidence that specific components of human milk could have antimicrobial activity against pathogens that infect adults.
• If she does, there are many human milk banks in her native California that would welcome her donation.

Simon Cameron receives funding from UK Research and Innovation for work related to human milk microbiology and composition.

• Each day, its trains deliver 800,000 passengers to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington and points in between.
• My new book, “The Northeast Corridor,” shows how America’s most important rail line has shaped the Northeast’s cultural identity and national reputation for almost 200 years.
• In my view, this bond between transit and territory will only strengthen as new federal investments in passenger service draw more Northeasterners aboard trains.

Forming a great chain

• It was not until 1830 that the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad opened the nation’s first public passenger line.
• The Philadelphia & Trenton cast another in Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia, Wilmington, & Baltimore hammered out a third through Delaware and Maryland.
• Named for the cities they linked, these carriers helped turn a collection of rival ports into a cohesive economic unit.

Connecting a megalopolis

• Railroading became a way of life for Northeasterners.
• Physicist Albert Einstein liked watching trains click-clack through Princeton Junction during his time at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey in the 1930s and 1940s.
• One of Gottman’s adherents, Rhode Island Sen. Claiborne Pell, imagined the Northeast in 1962 as “one long metropolitan industrial unit.” A frequent rider, Pell believed that trains played an essential role in the region’s interlocking economy.

Amtrak takes over

• He called the tracks between Boston and Washington a “passageway for gargantuan surges of movement along our Northeast seaboard” – or, a “corridor” for short.
• When Amtrak took over U.S. intercity passenger rail travel in 1971, the Northeast corridor hosted its most popular trains – including the stylish, if breakdown-prone Metroliners, which whisked business-class passengers between New York and Washington at velocities topping 100 mph.
• In 2000, Amtrak debuted the Acela Express, a sleek and pricey train that was billed as the first U.S. high-speed passenger rail service.
• High-speed rail projects in California, Nevada and Texas, meanwhile, promise to bring world-class service to the West and South.
• This article has been updated to reflect that the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey is not affiliated with Princeton University.

David Alff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.