Environment
Environment
The World on Fire
Robert Hunziker: Massive uncontrolled unprecedented wild fires are consuming portions of the Amazon rainforest and several regions of the Arctic. Somebody somewhere must be asking why all of a sudden in unison, all over creation, two of the planets largest ecosystems are going up in smoke. It’s eerily spine chilling. ... Where’s the world’s largest fire alarm when so desperately needed? ... These are not regular ole run of the mill fires. Rather, these are firestorms so powerful that they create their own wind systems and self-perpetuate...
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Aug 8, 2020, 3:09pm
Environment
Deadly diseases from wildlife thrive when nature is destroyed, study finds
Damian Carrington, The Guardian: Rats and bats that host pandemic pathogens like Covid-19 increase in damaged ecosystems, analysis shows ... The research assessed nearly 7,000 animal communities on six continents and found that the conversion of wild places into farmland or settlements often wipes out larger species. It found that the damage benefits smaller, more adaptable creatures that also carry the most pathogens that can pass to humans. ... The new analysis is the first to show how the demolition of wild places, as the world’s population and consumption grows, leads to changes in animal populations that increase the risk of disease outbreaks...
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Aug 5, 2020, 11:59am
Environment
Fossil Fuel Industry Pollutes Black & Brown Communities While Propping Up Racist Policing
Gin Armstrong and Derek Seidman: The same companies that drive environmental racism in Black and Brown communities through toxic and climate-changing pollution also fund police power in cities that stretch from Houston and Detroit to New Orleans and Salt Lake City. ... Oil and gas companies, private utilities, and financial institutions that bankroll fossil fuels are all big backers of police foundations, which privately raise money to buy weapons, equipment, and surveillance technology for police departments, bypassing already outsized public police budgets. ... These corporate actors – from Chevron and Shell to Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase – can be found serving as directors and funders of police foundations nationwide...
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Jul 28, 2020, 2:57pm
Environment
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Oil Money to Fund Public Lands
Christopher Ketcham – Jimmy Tobias: Behold the Great American Outdoors Act. ... a devil’s bargain ... a deal that will further entrench the fossil fuel industry and promote the interests of corporate recreation concerns – both of which are helping ruin the “great American outdoors.” ... it establishes a new pot of cash, the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund, that directly ties rehabilitation of our dilapidated national parks and other federal parcels to industrial energy development. ... maintenance funding for the Park Service, the Forest Service and other federal land management agencies will be increasingly dependent on drilling for oil and gas and mining of coal...
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Jul 25, 2020, 3:06pm
Environment
It’s Always the Ranchers
Erik Molvar: The most fundamental, inescapable, and damning reality is that the livestock industry has an extinction agenda when it comes to native fish and wildlife. ... Trap the wolves. Shoot the grizzly bears. Poison the prairie dogs. Siphon away the trout streams into irrigation ditches. Burn off the sagebrush. ... Poison inedible native wildflowers. Replace the native grasses with forage species for cows but which wildlife avoid. Put private profits above the public trust, even on public lands...
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Jul 21, 2020, 2:03pm
Environment
Think Covid-19 Disrupted the Food Chain? Wait and See What Climate Change Will Do
Georgina Gustin: In the months since Covid-19 convulsed the globe, the world's food system has undergone a stress test—and largely failed it. ... Though researchers have known for decades that climate change will roil farming and food systems, there exists no clear global strategy for building resilience and managing risks in the world's food supply ... Already, there are 820 million people in the world without adequate food, and Covid-19 is likely to push 130 million more to the brink of starvation, more than doubling that number to 265 million by the end of the year...
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Jul 13, 2020, 1:47pm
Environment
Arctic Heat Overwhelms Green Infighting Issues
Robert Hunziker: Arctic temperatures are soaring to new records... and staying there, ever since May of this year. Truth be known, the Arctic’s been heating up for years. Siberia recently hit 105°F. That’s not normal. It’s 30°F hotter than normal. ... But still, what has 33 years of green advocacy wrought? Answer: Record high CO2 in the atmosphere and nearly 80% dependency upon fossil fuels, same as 50 years ago. Which advocacy group celebrates that? ... some ecosystems are ultra-sensitive to changes in the climate system and thus serve as proxies or early warning signals prior to recognition of a looming threat by civilization at large...
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Jul 2, 2020, 2:19pm
Environment
Goodbye, Diesel Exhaust. California Adopts Nation's First Zero-Emission Truck Rule
LA Times: The California Air Resources Board adopted a rule Thursday requiring that by 2045, all trucks sold in the state be zero-emission models. ... The Advanced Clean Truck regulation will require manufacturers to begin selling zero-emission models in 2024 and to make those vehicles an increasing share of their sales each year until 2045, when all trucks sold in the state must be clean. The rule covers a range of trucks, including heavy-duty pickups, delivery vans, box trucks and big rigs. ... California has to cure the entire transportation sector — which is responsible for 80% of the state’s smog-forming emissions, 95% of its toxic diesel soot and 50% of the greenhouse gas emissions...
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Jun 26, 2020, 2:57pm
Environment
‘Their greed is gonna kill us’: Indian Country fights against more fracking
Cody Nelson: Expansion of drilling in New Mexico would threaten sacred artefacts and bring public health risks to area still reeling from Covid-19 ... Today, the US Bureau of Land Management is considering a plan, known as the Mancos-Gallup Amendment, which could lease land in the region for some 3,000 new wells – many of which would be for fracking oil and gas. The plan would expand drilling into some of northern New Mexico’s last available public lands, threatening the desecration of sacred Native artefacts near Chaco Canyon... Above the San Juan basin and throughout the Four Corners region is a vast cloud of methane – “the largest concentration of the greenhouse gas methane seen over the United States”, according to a 2016 Nasa study....
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Jun 10, 2020, 11:20am
Environment
Air Pollution, Mental Illness, and Covid-19
Graham Peebles: Lockdowns imposed in response to Covid-19 forced millions of people to stay at home, businesses closed and a widespread hush descended. The major beneficiary of the controls has been the natural environment ... According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 90% of the global population breathe filthy toxic air. ... The bulk of air pollution is the result of burning fossil fuels for heat and power generation (e.g. oil and coal power plants and boilers) and fuel combustion from vehicles ... Worldwide, air pollution is said to kill around nine million people a year ... Contaminated air is also a significant factor in a person’s susceptibility to Covid-19...
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Jun 8, 2020, 1:57pm
Environment
A Federal Court Just Halted Use of a Highly Controversial Herbicide
Tom Philpott: Farmers planning to spray their fields with dicamba got a rude shock this week. ... On Wednesday afternoon, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco made a ruling that sent shockwaves through Midwestern and Southern farm country: It vacated the Environmental Protection Agency’ registrations of an herbicide that has surged in use in recent years—and generated massive controversy for its tendency to drift off-target and damage crops in neighboring fields and other foliage. ... The trouble started immediately. In 2017, 2018, and 2019, farmers in the South and Midwest reported millions of acres of damaged crops from wayward dicamba ... a major ongoing research project on pesticides and concluded that people exposed to dicamba in agricultural settings showed “elevated risk” of liver cancer....
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Jun 6, 2020, 3:30pm
Environment
Flooding in central Michigan exposes decades of Dow Chemical’s environmental crimes
Luke Galvin and Lily Zhao: A major health crisis threatens residents of central Michigan after last week’s flooding that displaced more than 10,000 people and destroyed thousands of homes. There have been widespread concerns about potential chemical leakage from the flooded containment ponds at the Midland Dow Complex and the spread of dioxin by the flood from a Superfund cleanup site downriver to larger areas. ... Dow has been disposing dioxin into its surroundings through airborne emissions and direct release into the Tittabawassee River for decades ...
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Jun 2, 2020, 11:50am
Environment
“No Mow May” Campaign Asks Us to Leave the Lawn Alone Until June to Help Save Bees
Not mowing in May results in more flowers and nectar all summer long for struggling pollinators. Wildlife organization urges us to leave lawnmowers locked up until June. ... Not mowing in May results in a greater diversity and number of flowers throughout the summer, a British wildlife organization called Plantlife claims. .... The organization conducted an experiment in last year in which hundreds of homeowners agreed not to mow their lawns until June. Participants’ lawns produced a much wider variety of flower species and enough nectar to feed 10 times as many bees as normal lawns. ... Our results show these unmown long-grass areas are home to a greater range of wild flower species...
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May 18, 2020, 2:13pm
Environment
The end of plastic? New plant-based bottles will degrade in a year
Jillian Ambrose: A biochemicals company in the Netherlands hopes to kickstart investment in a pioneering project that hopes to make plastics from plant sugars rather than fossil fuels. ... The plans, devised by renewable chemicals company Avantium, have already won the support of beer-maker Carlsberg, which hopes to sell its pilsner in a cardboard bottle lined with an inner layer of plant plastic. ... “This plastic has very attractive sustainability credentials because it uses no fossil fuels, and can be recycled – but would also degrade in nature much faster than normal plastics do,” ... Avantium plans to use plant sugars from sustainable sourced biowaste so that the rise of plant plastic does not affect the global food supply chain...
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May 16, 2020, 12:08pm
Environment
Planet of the Humans Backlash
Yves Engler: The backlash may be more revealing than the film itself, but both inform us where we are at in the fight against climate change and ecological collapse. .... Despite the hullabaloo, the central points in the film aren’t particularly controversial. Corporate-industrial society is driving human civilization/humanity towards the ecological abyss and environmental groups have largely made peace with capitalism. ... It is a statement of fact that environmental groups have deep ties to the corporate set. Almost all the major environmental groups receive significant cash from the mega-rich or their foundations. ... Since 1950 US electricity consumption has grown 13-fold and it continues to increase...
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May 11, 2020, 11:36am
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