Environment
Environment
Logging is Not the Cure: More Misguided Wildfire Legislation in Congress
George Wuerthner: The continued emphasis on “fuels reduction” as the cure for large blazes reminds me of Medieval doctors who practiced bloodletting to cure illness. ... Bloodletting typically failed because it did not address the real medical issues causing illness. Similarly, thinning does not address the real cause of large fires. ... “extreme fire weather conditions,” including drought, high temps, low humidity, and most importantly, high winds. Under extreme conditions, none of the logging “solutions” work. ... Thinning/logging can exacerbate fire spread because it opens the forest to greater drying of the soils and ultimately vegetation and allows penetration by winds which drive all large blazes...
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May 26, 2021, 12:01pm
Environment
Lithium, Cobalt, and Rare Earths
Michael Klare: It’s tempting to conclude that the days when competition over finite supplies of energy was a recurring source of conflict will soon draw to a close. ... think again: while the sun and wind are indeed infinitely renewable, the materials needed to convert those resources into electricity — ... — are anything but. ... wind turbines, for instance, require manganese, molybdenum, nickel, zinc, and rare-earth elements for their electrical generators, while electric vehicles (EVs) need cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, and rare earths for their engines and batteries. ... there is no way the United States or other countries can undertake a massive transition from fossil fuels to a renewables-based economy without engaging economically with China...
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May 21, 2021, 3:58pm
Environment
Reconciliation Means Rethinking Parks Governance
David Suzuki: Protection and restoration are two sides of the conservation coin — protection for spaces that haven’t yet been damaged or destroyed by large-scale human impacts and restoration for ecologically critical places that have. ... Indigenous Peoples are already leading on many fronts, including championing land repatriation and Indigenous land governance, and by asserting rights and responsibilities that provincial and federal governments have long denied. ... “For Native Americans, there can be no better remedy for the theft of land than land. And for us, no lands are as spiritually significant as the national parks. They should be returned to us. Indians should tend — and protect and preserve — these favored gardens again.” ...
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May 19, 2021, 3:51pm
Environment
Climate emissions shrinking the stratosphere, scientists reveal
Damian Carrington: The thickness of the atmospheric layer has contracted by 400 metres since the 1980s, the researchers found, and will thin by about another kilometre by 2080 without major cuts in emissions. The changes have the potential to affect satellite operations, the GPS navigation system and radio communications. ... The discovery is the latest to show the profound impact of humans on the planet. In April, scientists showed that the climate crisis had shifted the Earth’s axis as the massive melting of glaciers redistributes weight around the globe...
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May 17, 2021, 2:21pm
Environment
Should customers be able to repair their devices? This federal agency says yes. (FTC)
Maddie Stone: Last week, the federal consumer protection agency released a long-anticipated report to Congress examining the repair restrictions facing consumers, along with a summary of arguments for and against those restrictions. Its conclusion was stark: There’s “scant evidence” to support manufacturers’ justifications for restricting repair ... while the solutions repair advocates have proposed are “well supported” by their testimonials .... Those findings amount to nothing less than a wholesale rejection of the anti-repair arguments advanced by lobbyists not just for cell phone and car companies, but home appliance industries, medical device makers, and more... increasing access to repair will have environmental benefits ...
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May 16, 2021, 3:25pm
Environment
To End Fossil Fuels, End Settler Colonialism
The Red Nation: Much environmental framing misses the point about capitalism and Indigenous sovereignty. ... The geopolitical relationship countries like the United States have with the rest of the world is deeply intertwined with settler colonialism. ... Indigenous peoples pose a radical threat—and pay a disproportionate price—to the fossil fuel industry at the site of extraction and transportation, yet their demands are marginalized within mainstream environmentalism ... It makes sense to expect an Indigenous plan for movement-building like the Red Deal that explicitly names climate change as its impetus to advocate for an environmental justice framework...
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May 14, 2021, 3:09pm
Environment
Poisoning the Planet’s Web of Life
Robert Hunziker: The Web of Life is under attack but almost nobody is aware because it’s happening mostly below surface. ... The victim is soil ... “Study after study indicates the unchecked use of pesticides across hundreds of millions of acres each year is poisoning the organisms critical to maintaining healthy soils,” ... Soils contain an abundance of biologically diverse organisms that perform many important functions such as nutrient cycling, soil structure maintenance, carbon transformation, and the regulation of pests and diseases...
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May 13, 2021, 12:14pm
Environment
Streams and lakes have rights, a US county decided. Now they’re suing Florida
Isabella Kaminski: A network of streams, lakes and marshes in Florida is suing a developer and the state to try to stop a housing development from destroying them. ... The novel lawsuit was filed on Monday in Orange county on behalf of the waterways under a “rights of nature” law passed in November. It is the largest US municipality to adopt such a law to date. ... Laws protecting the rights of nature are growing throughout the world, from Ecuador to Uganda, and have been upheld in courts in India, Colombia and Bangladesh. But this is the first time anyone has tried to enforce them in the US...
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May 10, 2021, 2:14pm
Environment
The Good, Bad and the Ugly of Roughshod Chemistry
Paul Haeder: It’s paramount to talk about all the untested, all the never-experimented-on synergistic affects of all those “compounds/ingredients/chemicals” the chemical industry has forced upon the public and nature through “better living/eating/drinking through chemistry.” ... "How did it ever become normal to use poisons on our food? Poisons that have a direct vector not just to your gut and mine. But to the developing guts and brains of fetuses?" ... The potato is a great example of an industrial system gone crazy. ... Potatoes – had more pesticides by weight than any other food...
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May 7, 2021, 1:47pm
Environment
Mette Frederiksen, Boris Johnson: Reject Industry PR, Ban Glyphosate, Protect Public Health!
Colin Todhunter: It seems that not a month goes by until some new paper or study appears ... The research found that glyphosate and glyphosate-formulated herbicides activate mechanisms involved in cancer development, including DNA damage – and these effects occur at doses assumed by regulators to have no adverse effects. ... The study found that DNA damage was caused by oxidative stress, a destructive imbalance in the body that can cause a long list of diseases. ... Roundup was found to alter the expression of 96 genes in the liver specifically linked to DNA damage and oxidative stress as well as disruption of circadian rhythms or ‘body clocks’...
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May 1, 2021, 12:31pm
Environment
The Future of Water in the American Southwest
Frederick Clayton: No country is immune from water scarcity issues ... The Southwestern states, in particular, have faced frequent and ongoing droughts over the past two decades, and traditional water supplies are failing. ... Simply put, there is only so much water. ... Our existing water supplies must go further, and the technology exists to make this happen—by turning wastewater into drinking water. ... membrane filtration, membrane desalination, ozone and advanced oxidation, to name but a few treatment options that make the purified water entirely safe to drink. ... Now, water reuse is entering the mainstream...
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Apr 27, 2021, 3:02pm
Environment
“Big Words and Little Action”: Why We Must Do More to Tackle the Climate Crisis
Greta Thunberg:On Earth Day 2021, April 22nd, at the Leaders’ Climate Summit led by United States president Joe Biden, countries will present their new climate commitments, including net-zero by 2050. ... these targets could be a great start if it wasn’t for the tiny fact that they are full of gaps and loopholes. ... Such as leaving out emissions from imported goods, international aviation and shipping, as well as the burning of biomass, manipulating baseline data, excluding most feedback loops and tipping points, ignoring the crucial global aspect of equity and historic emissions, and making these targets completely reliant on fantasy or barely existing carbon-capturing technologies. ... But we must not forget that while we can fool others and even ourselves, we cannot fool nature and physics...
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Apr 23, 2021, 3:08pm
Environment
Life Is Abundant, Even as the Climate Is Changing
Laura Paskus: Climate change is dangerous and disorienting. But building new relationships with the landscapes around us will allow us to survive—and give the other species we still share this planet with the chance to thrive. ... Aside from a few exceptional years, the past two decades have been marked by warmer temperatures and a severe drought ... Hand in hand with other human interventions, including fire suppression, drought, and warming, have made forests increasingly vulnerable to die-offs, insect outbreaks, and larger, more severe wildfires. ... “But species themselves, and some ecosystems, they can be resilient if we change our actions, if we change the way we manage our water or other resources.”...
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Apr 22, 2021, 3:13pm
Environment
Leaking Oil and Gas Wells: A Ticking Time Bomb
Seb Peltekian: They could be in your town or the next town over. Or both. Nobody knows. They’re contributing to health problems across the country, to climate change, and to other environmental problems. ... They are wells that oil and gas companies drilled to extract fossil fuels and then simply abandoned. ... During the past century and a half, oil and gas companies drilled with abandon, creating millions of wells throughout the US. ... What would it take to start fixing the problem? First, you’d have to find the wells. ... No one knows where or how many there are...
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Apr 18, 2021, 3:40pm
Environment
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Ecocide in the Pacific
Evaggelos Vallianatos: ... no one will ever know the mountains of wastes that have been buried or dumped into rivers, lakes, seas and oceans in violation of the law or with the consent of local and national authorities. ... One such water dumping of DDT wastes came to light in late 2020 ... 500,000 barrels of DDT littering the ocean floor ... near the Catalina Island. ... It could not have taken place without the tacit agreement of California and national governments. ... the largest violator of national and international environmental laws is the US military ... dumped its toxic stuff, including lead, dioxin, plutonium, and herbicides, into the Pacific ... US military tested 67 nuclear bombs alone on Marshall Islands,,,
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Apr 12, 2021, 4:30pm
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