Magnificent News: Climate Coach: A longer life for your iPhone

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Down-to-earth advice for life on our changing planet.

By Michael J. Coren

Welcome. This week, tiny forests and bidets are back. But first, DIY iPhones?

An eight-year-old iPhone is stuck on my wall. It's an aging yet perfectly functional device. Its fate, like almost all old phones, was the scrap heap. But this hand-me-down entered a second life a few years after emerging from a Taiwanese factory. It's now the home screen for my living room speakers and baby monitor.

Now, I may keep it going indefinitely.

On Aug. 22, Apple announced it would support California's "right-to-repair" bill, reports Grist. The proposal would force electronics and appliance manufacturers to offer the public parts, repair tools and documentation for up to seven years after a product has been discontinued.

It's quite a reversal. For years, Apple fought to block owners' rights to repair their own devices, maintaining a lucrative monopoly. But the tide was turning. In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission mentioned Apple 56 times in its report to Congress on "anti-competitive repair restrictions." Similar bills passed legislatures in New York, Colorado and Minnesota.

What does it mean? If it passes, people can keep devices running longer, and cheaper. It also builds momentum for right-to-repair legislation introduced in 30 other states this year.

But more importantly, says Sandra Goldmark of Columbia University's Climate School and the author of the book "Fixation: How to Have Stuff without Breaking the Planet," it sends a signal that companies can no longer claim meaningful climate commitments without accounting for the entire life cycle of a product.

"With steps like this legislation, good design may finally be evolving … to objects that are made from responsibly sourced and largely reclaimed materials, durable, and fixable," she wrote in an email.

Of course, this is merely the "right to repair 1.0," Kyle Wiens, the founder of iFixit, an online compendium of repair guides, told the Atlantic. Since the new law doesn't say anything about software compatibility, companies can still stop supporting operating systems for older hardware, essentially rendering it useless.

But this does appear to presage a new era, maybe even one led by Silicon Valley, transforming disposable devices into ones that can last for years, even decades, before turning them back into the raw materials for new ones.

Any interesting stories or photos from your repairs? Send them to climatecoach@washpost.com.

Snapshot

For this week's column, I wrote about my visit to a Maine cabin that my father-in-law assembled in the 1970s.

A tiny island in a sea of wilderness, the North Maine Woods is one of the largest temperate forests on the continent and perhaps on the planet.

Looking down from space in this NASA image, you can see it as the biggest dark spot on the Eastern Seaboard at night: 11 million acres of forests full of bear, moose and, on occasion, wolves.

Satellite image of the Eastern Seaboard. (NASA)

It's not "pristine," as I wrote, but it remains one of the largest expanses of forest in the United States where both humans and most wildlife thrive.

The Second Degree

Diana wrote about her cross-country electric vehicle trip from Maryland to Las Vegas to San Francisco and back home across the Canadian Rockies. "We covered 9,000 miles," she wrote, "and it cost us $40 to get to Vancouver and $100 to return." Like many new EV owners, she received three years of free fast-charging through Electrify America.

Many of you asked about the costs of buying a hybrid, scrapping old cars, recycling electric ones or just keeping a clunker going. All worthy questions I'll do my best to explore. In the meantime, for a head-to-head accounting of EVs vs. gasoline vehicles, you can check out my column on the topic: Is it cheaper to refuel your EV battery or gas tank? We did the math in all 50 states.

And one reader suggested we rethink the term "death cleaning," which I covered earlier this summer: "I would prefer the term 'life cleaning.' I see myself cleaning or clearing out items, no longer needed, from a life well-lived."

On the Climate Front

From The Washington Post:

You're doing it wrong: Recycling and other myths about tackling climate change.

How the Inflation Reduction Act might affect you — and change the U.S.

EPA's new rule could strip protections from more than half of U.S. wetlands after a Supreme Court decision earlier this year.

On the legal front: Montana climate kids' landmark lawsuit victory paves the way for more, while countries around the world are giving wild animals legal rights.

From elsewhere:

Gasoline demand is expected to peak in China this year, reports Bloomberg, while Exxon predicts global emissions will fall — but not enough to meet U.N. targets by 2050.

Children can sue nations over climate damage, a U.N. panel says.

Climate activists are spray painting superyachts and grounding private jets, the AP reports, and an American woman faces trial for blocking an oil pipeline on Indigenous lands, the Guardian reports.

Tiny native plants on postage-stamp-size plots are delivering outsize environmental benefits, reports the New York Times.

One thing

Ansel Adams, the renowned photographer, found the time to do one thing for the environment every day. "A letter, a phone call, an interview — something to promote the environmental cause," he told an interviewer. Many said you'd like to do the same. So as opportunities arise, we'll include "one thing" in the newsletter.

On Aug. 9, I mentioned a deadline for school districts to apply for federal funds to electrify school buses. Many of you contacted school officials, according to Climate Changemakers, which facilitated the responses.

This week, many of you read about Maine's forests being logged for relatively low-value commodities like toilet paper. As The Post has written, there's a better way to wipe your bum.

The easiest thing? Recycled or alternative fibers. They do the job just as well, and subscription services including Cloud Paper, Reel and Who Gives a Crap deliver to your door. The swishest alternative? Get a bidet as well. As I wrote in April, it uses less paper and works better.

Dan Perlman, a professor of environmental studies at Brandeis University, said my last column on how important personal experiences are to restoring nature struck a chord. For the past decade, he has taught his students to identify dozens of tree species on campus and then spend an hour every few weeks in their own spot in the woods.

"Many of the students find these experiences to be life-changing," he writes, "much as you describe in your article."

And he shared his own experience — caught in this stellar photo in Walpole, Maine — of fireflies burning bright.