This Week on Earth: March 3-9
ION members photograph dormant ginkgo trees on Sheridan Road. (Ruby Grisin/ION)
Evanston, Ill.
Last Monday, Evanston council members unanimously passed an ordinance to adopt the Illinois Stretch Energy Codes.
A memorandum published along with the ordinance stated that the new code will allow “municipalities to achieve more energy efficiency in buildings than the Illinois Energy Conservation Code through a consistent pathway across the State.”
Evanston is also the first city in Illinois to adopt this code, according to the Illinois Green Alliance, a nonprofit organization working to promote green building and sustainable community development.
The Illinois Green Alliance says the new policy will make new residential buildings 50% more efficient and commercial facilities 40% more efficient, with policy being revised every three years to “meet even greater energy standards.”
The new codes are set to go into effect on Oct. 1, 2025.
South Georgia Island, Southern Ocean
In our Jan. 28, 2025 newsletter, I wrote about the world’s largest iceberg, A23a. At the time, it was heading toward South Georgia Island, a British Overseas Territory, raising concerns about how it might impact biodiversity on the island.
The latest on A23a? It ran aground in shallow waters just before reaching the island.
As of February 28, the iceberg has come to a standstill in the Southern Ocean at 54° 47' S / 39° 08' W, according to the U.S. National Ice Center, which tracks (and names) Antarctic icebergs. Click here to see where the iceberg is on Google Maps.
It’s hard to tell how the iceberg will impact the surrounding area. There are several ways that it might throw the ecosystem out of balance — the nutrients it holds may cause an algae bloom; chunks of ice calving off of it may impact fishermen’s livelihoods; and it could even hurt creatures living on the shallow seafloor where it now sits.
United Kingdom
The UK government has awarded a grant to the University of East Anglia to track how climate change will alter the marine landscape, and thus the domestic fishing industry.
The project aims to forecast “tipping points” in the marine environment. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tipping points are thresholds that, “if crossed, lead to far-reaching, in some cases abrupt and/or irreversible changes.”
In the case of the study that the UK is funding, warming in the North Atlantic will have considerable impact on the types of species that live there. Regardless of whether we successfully mitigate climate change and reverse warming effects, the theory of the “tipping point” suggests that changes in ecosystems may not be reversible even if we reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. This is part of why this study is so important — climate change will likely change the very structure of the fishing industry in the UK.
Julian Blow, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Research and Innovation at University of East Anglia told AlphaGalileo, a research news site, that the project “aims to contribute significant insights that will hopefully underpin much-needed action on climate adaptation and mitigation.”