Category: Environment

Here is an interesting read in the Korea Times about how solar energy farms in South Korea are destroying the environment and impacting the livelihood of farmers:

Thousands of solar energy facilities have been built in rural mountainous regions in recent years, in line with a government policy to increase the ratio of renewable energy sources in the country’s energy mix. 

However, many of them have become danger zones as the removal of trees for their construction has heightened the possibility of landslides, becoming a major headache for local residents during the nation’s annual rainy season. What is of more concern is that the installations are feared to end up destroying the landscape and environment through massive deforestation.

Seokdong Village in Gangjin County, South Jeolla Province, is one such village, where over 25,400 square meters of forest there were cut down to install solar panels in 2016. 

But since then, soil has been washed away from the facilities during each summer’s rainy season, and in July this year two meters of stone embankments and 20 meters of barbed wire fencing collapsed.

“As the rain poured in July, the solar facilities collapsed and the village’s rice paddies were completely flooded. Fortunately, nobody was on site and hurt but if there had been, it would have caused many casualties,” Lim Jun-hyung, the village head, told The Korea Times, Friday. “The company that installed the panels won’t come to fix it for months, no matter how many times we call them. I can’t even stand the sight of those panels now.” 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but what is ironic is that the Korean government is blaming global warming for the flooding and not the fact that huge swaths of forest were cut down to put in these solar farms. I also find it interesting that these farmers are not protesting and blockading these solar farms like the farmers blockading the THAAD site are which has done absolutely nothing to their crops.

By the way I am actually impressed the Korea Times actually published an article like this critical of solar farms. Generally it seems the media doesn’t want to report anything negative about green energy projects.

This appears to be a commercial logging operation being disguised as combating global warming. It seems like every industry tries to claim some kind of environmental benefit in an effort to get approved:

The Korean government’s plans to plant 3 billion new trees over the next 30 years after logging aged trees in an attempt to offset carbon emissions has been raising controversy recently.    
   
Earlier in the year, the Korea Forest Service announced plans to plant 3 billion trees over the next 30 years as a part of the country’s efforts to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. The government, through a forestation plan that will cost around 6 trillion won ($5.3 billion), aims for the absorption of some 34 million tons of carbon through the felling of old trees and planting of young ones as part of its 2050 carbon-neutral forestry sector plan.  
   
The Forest Service claims that trees older than 30 years have poor carbon absorption capacity. Most of the planting of trees in Korea took place in the 1970s and 1980s, the forestry agency points out, saying it is time to replace them.  
   
However, environmental groups and opposition lawmakers have called the 34-million-ton carbon absorption an inflated figure and also question the research on the lifetime carbon absorption of trees cited by the government. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Greenpeace is doing Greenpeace things:

Greenpeace is under police investigation for defacing an advertisement for Hyundai Motor in their war against pollution from cars.

A member of the environmental group climbed a 40-meter (131-foot) billboard for Hyundai Motor’s new Sonata sedan close to the automaker’s head office in Seoul on Monday morning and posted a message in large black hangul characters reading, “No more internal combustion engines.”

“Getting rid of internal combustion engines is a must to-do task in today’s environment,” said Lee In-sung, a climate campaigner for the local branch of the non-governmental environmental organization, which is headquartered in Amsterdam.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

There is more than just plastic straws that cause problems for bird and marine life, but this is a small way to start mitigating plastic pollution:

The debate on banning on single-use plastic straws to cut plastic waste is clashing with the pursuit of convenience.

As over 10 billion plastic straws are used every year in Korea, environmental groups are calling for a ban on disposable plastic products to reduce litter and other environmental consequences of plastic waste.

However, some claim such a move is premature given that an abrupt ban without proper alternatives can inconvenience consumers.

The Korean Federation for Environmental Movement held a press conference Tuesday, urging the government to ban use of plastic straws by law. It is gathering signatures both on and offline to support the plan.

“The current law does not recognize plastic straws as a disposable product thus they are not subjected to government rules on their free use at restaurants or coffee shops,” the environmental group said in its statement. “Plastic straws cause not only air pollution, but also soil contamination and harm to marine life.” 

Korea Times

Here is another legacy of the prior Lee Myung-bak administration that the South Korean left has been hoping to tear down:

Experts and environmental groups argued that the weirs of the four-rivers restoration project just had to be opened and the water quality and ecosystems would return to normal.

That, according to a report last month from a special committee of 43 experts, didn’t happen.

Based on government monitoring between June 2017 and Feb. 20, 2019, the chlorophyll a (Chl-a) levels at the Seungchon weir on the Yeongsan River rose from 46 milligrams per cubic meters to 52 milligrams. A high concentration of chlorophyll results in algae bloom.

The chemical oxygen demand (COD), also another water-quality metric, increased from 8.5 parts per million to 10.7 parts per million. The fish assessment index (FAI) at the Seungchon weir fell from 28.8 to 28.2. This means that the ecosystem has worsened.

Readings from the Juksan weir, also on the Yeongsan River, also suggested a deterioration. The Chl-a level there was up from 59 milligram per cubic meters to 84, while the COD level rose from 9.1 parts per million to 9.3 parts per million. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read much more at the link, but one of the reasons the Four Rivers Project was initiated was to improve water quality and this study tends to confirm that it has done that. However, the environmentalists say they are going to go back and find a way to get better data.

It makes me wonder if these scientists would look for more data if the initial data gave them the results they wanted?

It is amazing how the fine dust particles from China has now become a year around problem for South Korea:

Anti-pollution masks are strongly advised as fine dust levels across the country are expected to hit “bad” levels Monday, induced by industrial particles blown from China’s east coast.

The National Institute of Environmental Research said the capital area of the peninsula, northeastern province of Gangwon, central province of Chungcheong, southwestern province of Jeolla, southeastern province of Gyeongsang will all suffer “bad” levels of PM 2.5 dust, which range at around 35 micrograms of fine dust particles per cubic meter.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link.

The yellow dust this year in South Korea is as bad as I can remember it ever being and it seems Korean citizens are beginning to take action to do something about it:

Many believe that while South Korea has had its own air problem, the recent sharp deterioration is mainly due to China, the world’s biggest polluter.

This belief has led to the first civil lawsuit filed by South Korean citizens against the governments of both Korea and China.

Choi Yul, an environmental activist and president of the Korea Green Foundation, and attorney Ahn Kyung-jae filed the suit Wednesday with the Seoul Central District Court, seeking 3 million won ($2,650) each in compensation.

The data on how much of the airborne pollutants in Korea are from China is not seen as reliable.

The Comprehensive Plan on Fine Particulate Matter compiled by several government bodies put the figure at 30-50 percent.

Such figures are estimated using data from Baengnyeongdo, a remote western island.

However, a report from the Munhwa Ilbo uncovered that the decimal point on the published data data collected at Baengnyeongdo over the past two years had been put in the wrong place giving much lower readings than was the case. Officials say they used the correct data in their calculations, and had therefore not underestimated China’s influence,  but are coy about releasing the data.

A study leaked from the Ministry of Environment estimated that 86 percent of ultrafine dust particles in Seoul and its surrounding cities on March 21, when the entire country was choked with high dust concentrations, was of Chinese origin.

The ministry confirmed that figure, but has been reluctant to reveal more data on the China factor, claiming a significant portion of the pollutants originate here.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link, but the Seoul city government did recently release statistics that showed 55% of the air pollution in Seoul was coming from China.  The ROK can take measures to reduce pollution domestically, but ultimately it will not matter until they get the Chinese government to do something on their end.  Good luck with that.

The yellow dust is getting so bad in Korea that in the future everyone may need these air purifiers in their homes as a must have appliance:

The ever-dirtier air in Korea has sparked consumer interest in air purifiers for the home and local electronics companies are cranking out new models, including ones that use the Internet of Things technology.

The number of air purifiers sold last year was one million units compared to 900,000 in 2015 and 500,000 in 2014. In money terms, sales of air purifiers amounted to 1 trillion won ($894.2 million) last year – which may grow to 1.5 trillion won this year, according to industry insiders.

Discount chain E-Mart reported a 60.8 percent increase year on year in air purifier sales between March 1 and 23. Electronics retailers Lotte Hi-Mart said its air purifier sales rose 30 percent year on year from March 1 through 22.

“With the influx of Chinese smog and lack of rain, the number of days with excessive fine dust was particularly high this year,” said Cho Yong-wook, E-Mart’s buyer for electronics. “As a consequence, we’re seeing a sharp increase in customers shopping for air purifiers.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

The yellow dust this year has been absolutely horrible in Korea and it seems to get worse every year:

Image from the Korea Herald.

Korean consumers’ concern about fine dust, which is believed to come from China, seems to be legitimate as confirmed by a report published Thursday in the peer-reviewed international journal Nature.

About 30,900 people in Korea and Japan die prematurely every year due to fine dust from China, according to the study jointly conducted by researchers in China’s Tsinghua and Peking universities, the University of British Columbia and the University of California, Irvine.

Analyzing the number of early deaths from heart, lung and blood vessel-related diseases and the density and movement of fine dust, the researchers found out that 411,100 people worldwide died prematurely due to fine dust from outside their countries.

The researchers especially pointed out that China, as the largest producer of fine dust particles, causes the greatest number of deaths because of the high population density of itself and its neighbors.

“It costs less to manufacture goods in places like China and Southeast Asia, mostly because those places have cheaper labor than the West,” Steven Davis, co-author of the paper, said. “But they also tend to have less stringent environmental protections.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

First of all notice how they call this the Climate Change Performance Index instead of the Global Warming Performance Index.  This just shows how they have actual little confidence in global warming and instead hedge their bets by calling it climate change.  Regardless South Korea is supposed not doing a whole lot to meet global warming goals:

South Korea is getting a failing grade in its response to climate change, ranking among the worst countries in the world according to an international environmental organization and a nongovernmental research institute.
In the 2016 Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), South Korea ranked fifth from the bottom, among 58 countries being assessed. The index was released on Dec. 8 – amid a conference of countries that are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – by Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, an international alliance of environmental groups, and by Germanwatch, an independent German research institute.

While South Korea is 57th on the list, its actual rank is 54th; researchers left the first three spots empty to reflect the fact that no countries are adequately responding to climate change. This was two spots lower than last year and 23 lower than 2010.

These two organizations draw up the index every year by ranking the 58 countries whose greenhouse gas emissions collectively account for at least 90% of total global emissions. In assigning ranks, 30% of points are given for emissions levels, 30% for recent development of emissions, 20% for climate change policies, 10% for recent development of renewable energy and its share of the primary energy supply, and 10% for efficiency levels and recent developments in efficiency.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read the rest of the link.