Smog

• 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.

• Like PepeSol, Smog is a SOL meme coin, which looks to be the blockchain the smart money is gravitating to in this red-hot market.
• The place where buyers are doing most of the fishing to catch top ROI is among the alpha-rich meme coins.
• Still, there are at least two other factors in play that new coins like Smog have going for them that older meme coins don't.
• Solana meme coin dragon token $SMOG has the airdrop to beat them all, including Dogwifhat
  First, there is the Solana factor.

• Today, Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada announced the draft regulations to further reduce emissions from the petroleum sector of harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are airborne pollutants that contribute to smog.
• These changes would improve air quality in neighbourhoods and communities across the country that are close to oil and gas facilities.
• The draft regulations reflect an on-going commitment to environmental justice and the need to address disproportionate environmental harms on communities near industrial sites.
• Exposure levels are higher in communities near large emission sources, including Indigenous and low-income communities already facing increased health burdens.

• By leveraging existing sensors and extracting information from a phone’s immediate surroundings, MobilePhysics transforms any smartphone into a “personal envirometer” utilizing computational physics and AI.
• MobilePhysics solution is equipped with the capabilities to measure air quality, smoke levels, temperature, UV exposure, and other environmental parameters and alert users in real-time.
• Co-founders Dr. Erez Weinroth and Matan Guter are experts in environmental modeling and atmospheric science, and big data and algorithms, respectively.
• The MobilePhysics software collects localized environmental metrics using multiple sensors on a user’s smartphone and then analyzes them to accurately report hyper-local conditions.