2019年12月4日 星期三

Climate Fwd: Be Smart About Holiday Lights

Also this week: air pollution in augmented reality, and new climate talks

Welcome to the Climate Fwd: newsletter. The New York Times climate team emails readers once a week with stories and insights about climate change. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. (And find the website version of this week’s letter here.)

Tyler Varsell

By Kyla Mandel

The nights get longer this time of year, but not necessarily darker. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, American suburbs are up to 50 percent brighter than usual, even after midnight. Our holiday lights are so impressive that they can be observed from space.

The Department of Energy estimates that Americans burn 6.6 billion kilowatt-hours annually using holiday lights. That’s enough electricity to power more than 800,000 homes for a year. But with a few simple adjustments, you can make your lights a bit greener.

The biggest thing you can do is to switch to LED lights. If you do, you’ll use up to 70 percent less energy than you would with traditional incandescent bulbs. Plus, you won’t need to replace lights as often. LEDs last about 10 times longer.

“If you want the lights, try to get the most efficient ones,” said Shahzeen Attari, an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington who studies environmental psychology. “And when you’re not using them, turn them off.”

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Eleanor Stokes, a research scientist at the University of Maryland who has worked with NASA to gather satellite data on our lighting habits, agreed. “I’m all about being festive,” she said, “but you don’t need to be festive at, like, 3 a.m.” Putting your lights on a timer can have a “huge benefit,” she said.

The Energy Department recommends leaving them on for up to eight hours a day, from dusk to around midnight. Not only will this conserve energy, but it’s better for wildlife. Heavy light pollution can be deadly for some animals by disrupting the daily cycle of light and dark.

Another tip: You can use an extension cord in places where you want to connect strings but don’t really need lights.

If you’re lighting candles this season, try to stay away from petroleum-based paraffin ones and instead opt for candles made from soy, beeswax or natural vegetable-based wax.

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And when the holidays are over, don’t forget to promptly take the lights down, pack the candles up and store everything properly so you don’t need to buy new things next year. Don’t throw away light strings just because they’re tangled.

Finally, enjoy those holiday lights. If you aim for maximum efficiency, Dr. Attari said, they’ll account for only a small fraction of your total energy footprint, just a few dollars a month.

“Unless you’re one of those homes that lights up the entire home and the entire home is flooded with lights,” she said, “I don’t think it’s a big-ticket item.”

New York Times

What does it feel like to breathe the world’s most polluted air?

It’s a timely question. Last month, air pollution in New Delhi made headlines when particulate levels rose to near-record levels. Officials declared a public health emergency and distributed millions of protective face masks to residents.

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Around the same time a year ago, pollution was spiking in California. Thick smoke from the Camp Fire blanketed the San Francisco Bay Area for weeks. It prompted officials to close schools and issue health alerts.

Outdoor particulate pollution is a public health hazard worldwide, responsible for millions of deaths each year and many more illnesses. But this kind of pollution — called PM2.5, for particulate matter that is smaller than 2.5 micrometers across, or about 35 times smaller than a grain of fine beach sand — is often difficult to see with the naked eye. At extreme levels, it casts a haze in the sky, but PM2.5 can imperil health even on clear days.

To give a sense of what that’s like, we created a special project that visualizes the damaging, tiny particles that wreak havoc on human health when people breathe them in.

In the project, which published this week, you can see particles fill the page as you scroll between cities — and imagine them filling your lungs. And if you have the New York Times app installed on your phone, you can go a step further to see particles fill your physical space in augmented reality.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Annual United Nations climate negotiations aimed at strengthening the Paris Agreement are underway in Madrid, and even though the United States has moved to formally withdraw from the accord, America is still getting a lot of attention.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived for the opening ceremony on Monday and pledged that America was “still in” the 2015 agreement. And on Tuesday on the sidelines of the talks, William Happer, a longtime climate denialist who once served as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser for energy, denounced what he called the “nonexistent climate emergency.”

A delegation from the State Department is representing the United States at the talks, officially known as the 25th Conference of the Parties and commonly referred to as COP25, but Mr. Trump has not sent senior White House officials.

American participation in the Paris Agreement will ultimately be determined by the outcome of the 2020 election. If Mr. Trump is not re-elected, the next president could void the current plan to leave the accord with a simple letter to the United Nations Secretary General.

Still, climate analysts say they worry that no matter how the elections go in the United States, valuable time is being lost and momentum for reducing emissions is slowing. My colleague Henry Fountain reported Wednesday on a stark warning from the World Meteorological Organization that climate change is accelerating, and Brad Plumer reported on Tuesday the worrisome news that carbon emissions hit a record high in 2019.

Our global climate reporter, Somini Sengupta, will be in Madrid next week when the talks ramp up, so keep an eye out for her articles, tweets and insights!

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The T List: A new Kyoto hotel, complete with its own forest — and more

What to visit, wear and covet this week, from the editors of T Magazine.

Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we’re sharing things we’re eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. We hope you’ll join us for the ride. (Sign up here, if you haven’t already, and you can reach us at tlist@nytimes.com.)

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Visit This

A New Kyoto Hotel, Complete With Its Own Forest

Stone steps leading to one of Aman Kyoto’s guest pavilions.Aman

By Amelia Lester

T Contributor

The Aman hotel group has long upheld the Japanese architectural principle that buildings should be in harmony with their natural environments, but that thinking is especially evident at its latest location — a secluded eight-acre garden-within-a-forest at the base of Kyoto’s Mount Hidari Daimonji. “It’s all about the grounds,” said the designer, Justin Hill, which are accessed via an ancient copper gate and include a large main lawn, naturally occurring streams and moss-covered stone walkways surrounded by dense plots of Japanese maple and cedar trees. They encompass 11 slatted stained-cedar pavilions housing 24 rooms and two two-bedroom suites between them. Inside, the structures allude to a classic ryokan, with tatami mats, orb-shaped lanterns, hinoki tubs and tokonoma, or wall niches, here used to display local pottery. The hotel restaurant serves kaiseki, seasonal multicourse meals, and guests can experience other local customs by soaking in the open-air onsen or venturing past the garden’s edge for meditative hikes known as shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing. aman.com

Wear This

Shoes to Get You Through Holiday-Party Season

Clockwise from top left: Evening slippers from Birdies, Le Monde Beryl, the Row and Drogheria Crivellini.Courtesy of the brands

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In my experience, the key to juggling end-of-year obligations — from office parties to gatherings with friends — is wearing something you’ll be comfortable in as you rush from one thing to the next. And you won’t have to compromise on style if you find a good evening slipper, be it a flat mule or a pair of furlanes. The Row makes a beautiful soft suede version accented with mismatched gems, while the London-based label Le Monde Beryl — a line of Venetian gondolier-inspired slippers founded in 2015 — offers an array of different colors and styles; my favorite is the velvet ankle-strap shoe, which comes in black, blush pink and brick red. For a lower-priced option, check out Drogheria Crivellini, an Italian heritage label that was founded in the 1950s (I’m a fan of the Mary Jane style) or the California-based brand Birdies, whose jewel-toned slip-ons would dress up any black-heavy winter wardrobe.

Eat This

In Berlin, a New (and Tiny) Restaurant of Note

Left: a look inside Vadim Otto Ursus’s new restaurant, Otto. Right: the trout with garum and wild herbs.Robert Rieger

By Gisela Williams

T Contributing Editor

Vadim Otto Ursus, the 27-year-old chef behind the newly opened restaurant Otto in Berlin, has an impressive resume that includes a stint at the Michelin-starred Maaemo in Oslo and Noma Mexico in Tulum. But what I find the most compelling about his background is that he grew up in an artists’ squat, surrounded by creatives and activists (the building still exists on the German capital’s now stylish Auguststrasse). Cooking was an adventure and about community, which explains why eating at Otto, his first restaurant — an intimate space with 16 seats and a tiny bar situated in the buzzy neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg — feels like being at the best kind of Berlin house party. Otto already has a growing crowd of regulars, including Ursus’s mother, the conceptual artist Meggie Schneider, who often brings over jars of pickles and bouquets of wildflowers from the German countryside. The à la carte menu is concise and exceptional, especially the hand-caught barbecued smoky trout, served with a salad of foraged greens and herbs, and the dessert, raw-milk ice cream served with pickled elderberries and an oil made from the pits of plums. otto-berlin.net.

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Covet This

Home Goods That Double as Art

Andrea Spotorno

For me, decorating a space means oscillating between my desired aesthetic and the bitter reality of its cost — something I’m learning over and over again as I attempt to furnish my new Brooklyn apartment with special yet functional pieces that come without the astronomical prices set by most design galleries. Enter Psultan: a new online home-goods store created by the Paris-based architect Jean-Philippe Sanfourche that offers affordably produced, one-of-a-kind objects finished with an artistic edge. Out now, the debut collection consists of psychedelic ceramic stools handmade by craftsmen on the Italian Amalfi Coast; the terra-cotta seats (originally developed for the fall 2015 Celine runway show) were molded on a traditional pottery wheel in five distinct shapes and then painted with an experimental combination of glazes and oxides in colors including acid green, vibrant amber and marbled cerulean. “Our challenge is to create beautiful and soulful objects using serial production,” Sanfourche told me. “We didn’t want to make something too precious.” From about $1,079, psultan.world.

Buy This

Essential Eyeliner From a Japanese Beauty Brand

From left: UZ 7 Shades of Black eyeliner in Metallic Black; UZ 7 Shades of Black eyeliner in Green Black; the makeup look at the 3.1 Phillip Lim spring 2020 show, as created by Diane Kendal.From left: UZ (2); Yvonne Tnt/BFA.com

I recently met Hiroshi Imamura, one of the co-founders of the Japanese beauty brand UZ, at its New York flagship on Howard Street. Imamura (whom some might know as the co-founder of Flowfushi, which created a best-selling mascara in Japan in 2011) likes to break the beauty industry’s rules, making products that didn’t otherwise exist, or not in the way you expect, blending traditional Japanese craftsmanship with the latest technology. Just last month, UZ launched six super-moisturizing lip glosses packed with prebiotics and Endmineral, an ingredient meant to enhance blood flow to your lips. My favorite products, though, are UZ’s eyeliners — sold with brushes handmade in the Kumano and Nara regions (both centers of the traditional Japanese craft of brush-making) — which come in an array of shocking colors, but also in seven different shades of black. They’re all subtly different, with hints of red, blue or green. I love to layer UZ’s Pitch Black under the slightly shimmery Platinum Black to create the perfect wingtip. From $16, uz.team.

From T’s Instagram

How Chanel’s J12 Watch Is Made

Gautier Billotte

#TProcess: It takes two months to make Chanel’s iconic J12 watch. Released in 2000 and conceived by the house’s then artistic director, Jacques Helleu, the design was cast in matte monochromatic ceramic, a material that gave the women’s accessory a fresh, graphic athleticism. “To have a watch like this, where you can be active all day, but then go out in the evening wearing a silk dress and it still looks perfect, that’s very legitimate in the Chanel universe,” says Arnaud Chastaingt, who became the director of the Chanel Watch Creation Studio in 2013. Watch artisans make the classic accessory from start to finish at the Chanel-owned watch manufacturer G&F Châtelain in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland — and follow us on Instagram.

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