Environment
Environment
Agroecology and Post-COVID Plunder
Colin Todhunter: Agroecology is based on traditional knowledge and modern agricultural research, utilising elements of contemporary ecology, soil biology and the biological control of pests. This system employs sound ecological management by using on-farm solutions to manage pests and disease without the use of agrochemicals and corporate seeds. ... Agroecology is based on the principle of food sovereignty, which encompasses the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food and the right of people to define their own food and agriculture systems. ... People have a deep microbiological connection to soils, food processing practices and fermentation processes which affect the gut microbiome...
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Jan 14, 2021, 2:52pm
Environment
An Exhausted Planet Limps Into 2021
Robert Hunziker: Scientists now find that catastrophic climate change could render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable consequent to continued high emissions, self-reinforcing climate feedback loops and looming tipping points ... The Alliance of World Scientists offers solutions to the dilemma: ... Get off fossil fuels ... Stop industrial emissions ... Restore natural ecosystems, especially farming ... Reduce beef and meat products ... Transition to a carbon-free economy ... Today’s human population growth rate of 200,000 per day newborns needs to stabilize and decline...
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Jan 12, 2021, 11:50am
Environment
A Brief History Of US Military Poisoning Of Hawai’i
Ann Wright, Kyle Kajihiro and Jim Albertini: U.S. military contamination in Hawai’i comes from the many major military bases on four of the islands of Hawai’i. ... While there were no experiments with anthrax in Hawai’i that we know of, there were other chemical and biological experiments with potentially lethal consequences conducted in the islands. ... in an experiment named “Red Oak Phase 1,” the U.S. Army detonated 155-mm artillery shells and 115-mm rocket warheads filled with deadly sarin gas in the dense rain forest of the Upper Waiakea Forest Reserve ... From 1964-1978, 2189 steel drums of radioactive waste ... were dumped 55 miles off Oahu ... In a nearby Pacific area, from 1958-1963, the U.S. exploded 12 US nuclear weapons in the atmosphere...
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Dec 7, 2020, 3:10pm
Environment
30 by 30 and the Wildlands of the Northern Rockies
George Wuerthner: To address these twin threats to the planet’s stability and integrity, the president-elect supports the goal of using science-based decision-making to protect 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by the year 2030. ... At best only 12% of the United States land area is currently protected (much of this in Alaska). This figure includes many lands not completely protected from destructive activities like national forests (logging), national monuments with livestock grazing, and so forth) or wildlife refuges (that permit row crop farming). ... The 30 by 30 goal is not radical. Scientists have been advocating the protection of 30 percent of the Earth to sustain biodiversity for years....
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Nov 19, 2020, 2:04pm
Environment
Why an Atomic Veteran Says the U.S. Must Never Resume Nuclear Weapons Testing
Jim Dangerfield: I was an Army specialist fourth class in 1957 when I was bused to the Nevada Test Site ... We soon witnessed a series of nuclear bomb blasts that created such intense flashes of light that I could see the blood vessels and bones in my hands as I covered my closed eyes. ... We had unknowingly participated in Operation Plumbbob—a series of 29 experiments involving 16,000 servicemen to determine how soldiers would handle fighting on a nuclear battlefield. ... It seems important for those of us who have experienced these tests to speak out, especially now that the federal government is considering resuming full-scale explosive nuclear weapons testing...
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Nov 12, 2020, 11:58am
Environment
5 Reasons to Rethink the Future of Dams
Tara Lohan: The United States must grapple with a legacy of 90,000 dams, many unsafe or unwanted. ... The tide has shifted on dams. Once a monument to our engineering prowess, there’s now widespread acknowledgment that dam-building comes with a long list of harms. Some of those can be reversed, as shown by the 1,200 dam removals in the past 20 years ... Dams have altered river flows, changed aquatic habitat, decimated fish populations, and curtailed cultural and treaty resources for tribes. But does the low-carbon power dams produce have a role in our energy transition?
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Oct 30, 2020, 4:26pm
Environment
Ocean Seismic Blasting Halted
Abigail Mercer: Florida – After years of advocacy and legal back-and-forth, environmental conservation groups are celebrating a victory: The government will prohibit the use of sonic blasts in the ocean this year, which could help save the lives of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. ... officials from the seismic blasting industry announced they won’t pursue efforts to employ seismic blasting to search for offshore oil ... seismic blasting uses airguns, which release loud, pressurized blasts into the seafloor ... It creates one of the loudest man-made sounds in the ocean and can harm or kill marine animals, from zooplankton to large whales — including the critically endangered right whale....
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Oct 26, 2020, 2:28pm
Environment
The great hypocrisy of California using Indigenous practices to curb wildfires
Rory Taylor: The state has yet to reckon with its colonial past and the environmental injustices it wrought. ... The causes of today’s wildfires are complex. There is no doubt that global climate change is changing the intensity, size, and duration of wildfires in California. But the fires have ties to the historical and social injustices done to Indigenous peoples — genocide, slavery, the destroying of cultural rites — which have led to the mismanagement and overdevelopment of California lands... How do Indigenous peoples in California feel about being asked to use their cultural practices to help a state that has largely sought to erase them?...
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Oct 19, 2020, 2:24pm
Environment
Boundless Dying Trees
Robert Hunziker: “New studies show drought and heat waves will cause massive die-offs, killing most trees alive today.” ... Giant Sequoias, the Grand Daddy of the world’s trees are “dying from the top down.” This has never been documented before. ... The causes are mostly anthropogenic, meaning logging and land-clearing, plus the biggest impact or fossil fuel emissions that bring forth rising global temperatures significantly magnifying the rate of dying, as droughts extend longer and harsher, resulting in extremely brittle tinder, leading to massive wildfires...
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Sep 29, 2020, 3:03pm
Environment
Climate Change is Responsible for Devastating Wildfires
George Wuerthner: Higher daily temperatures, extreme drought, low humidity, and high winds resulting from climate change exacerbate flammability of the vegetation. Extreme fire weather is driving large blazes, not fuels. ... Fire suppression has not altered fire regimes in most plant communities. ... Forests are not destroyed by high severity fires. They rejuvenate them. ... Winds are the driving force in all large fires. ... Indeed, active forest management can contribute to larger and more severe fires because it opens up the forest to greater drying and more wind penetration....
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Sep 26, 2020, 12:26pm
Environment
The Dying Planet Report 2020
Robert Hunziker: The World Wildlife Foundation, in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London, recently issued an eye-popping description of the forces of humanity versus life in nature ... The report, released September 10th, describes how the over-exploitation of ecological resources by humanity from 1970 to 2016 has contributed to a 68% plunge in wild vertebrate populations, inclusive of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish. ... unequivocal and alarming evidence that nature is unraveling and that our planet is flashing red warning signs of vital natural systems failure...
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Sep 23, 2020, 3:21pm
Environment
Climate Change Will Force a New American Migration
Abrahm Lustgarten, Wildfires rage in the West. Hurricanes batter the East. Droughts and floods wreak damage throughout the nation. Life has become increasingly untenable in the hardest-hit areas, but if the people there move, where will everyone go? ... For years, Americans have avoided confronting these changes in their own backyards. The decisions we make about where to live are distorted not just by politics that play down climate risks, but also by expensive subsidies and incentives aimed at defying nature...
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Sep 17, 2020, 3:44pm
Environment
It is Time to Create a New Equitable, Ecologically-Aware Forest Service
Mike Garrity: the Forest Service is still stuck in this archaic frontier mentality — spending billions of your taxpayer dollars every year subsidizing timber corporations to clearcut forests, bulldoze logging roads into watersheds, and push endangered species to the brink of extinction. ... The only way to change things is to create a new land management agency with a different mission – a mission grounded in ecological integrity and equity. ... National Forests are the main source of clean drinking water for 180 million Americans. Our national forests filter out sediment and pollutants for free...
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Aug 27, 2020, 2:41pm
Environment
Public Lands Are Key to Fighting Climate Change
Tim Whitehouse: Managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service and the National Park Service, public lands account for a quarter of the nation’s land area and nearly a quarter of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions through extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. ... Conversely, the amount of CO2 sequestered by soils, forests, shrublands, grasslands and agricultural areas on public lands only offsets 15 percent of those emissions. ... If we are to have any hope of addressing climate change, public lands must be transformed from carbon sources into sinks with the phasing out of fossil fuel operations and better ranching, agricultural and timber management practices...
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Aug 18, 2020, 11:15am
Environment
Can Cities Go Zero-waste? One Japanese Town Tried
Olivia Sullivan: Kamikatsu (Japan) famously declared its goal was to go waste-free by 2020, but it didn’t quite get there (80%). Their experience shows we can’t move further without systemic changes. ... One of the many unfortunate outcomes of the coronavirus pandemic has been the quick and obvious increase in single-use plastic products. ... We must also shift the paradigm by holding producers responsible for the waste they create. ... By requiring new plastic products to contain recycled plastic and making producers fund the collection and recycling of plastic products, producers would be incentivized to design longer lasting products that can actually be reused and recycled....
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Aug 10, 2020, 3:32pm
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