Environment
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
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
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