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Category: Environment

Once again, environmentalists are sabotaging climate progress

Once again, environmentalists are sabotaging climate progress

Eric Levitz writes: New York City is among the most progressive and climate-conscious municipalities in the United States. It is legally obligated to bring its greenhouse emissions to 40 percent below their 2005 peak by the end of the decade. And yet over the past year, NYC has dramatically expanded its reliance on fossil fuels – thanks, in no small part, to the efforts of Empire State environmentalists. In 2019, when the city put its ambitious climate goals into law,…

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Falling oxygen levels are putting ocean ecosystems on life support

Falling oxygen levels are putting ocean ecosystems on life support

Jessica Camille Aguirre writes: People who make their living catching fish on the open ocean first noticed the strange phenomenon a few decades ago. It occurred in the shadow zones, the spots between the great ocean currents where sea water doesn’t circulate, off the coasts of Peru, West Africa, and California. The fisher people shared the knowledge among them like a common secret, a bounty that had an even stranger explanation: Sometimes, when the conditions were right, fish would swim…

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Indigenous land rights are critical to realizing goals of the Paris climate accord, a new study finds

Indigenous land rights are critical to realizing goals of the Paris climate accord, a new study finds

Inside Climate News reports: The land rights of Indigenous peoples across millions of acres of forests in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru must be protected and strengthened if the world has any hope of achieving the goals set forth in the 2015 Paris Agreement, a study released on Thursday found. The study, by the World Resources Institute and Climate Focus, two non-profit global research organizations focused on alleviating climate change, supports a growing body of research emphasizing the important role…

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Joe Manchin’s dirty money and the Biden administration’s painful turn from climate action

Joe Manchin’s dirty money and the Biden administration’s painful turn from climate action

The New York Times reports: On a hilltop overlooking Paw Paw Creek, 15 miles south of the Pennsylvania border, looms a fortresslike structure with a single smokestack, the only viable business in a dying Appalachian town. The Grant Town power plant is also the link between the coal industry and the personal finances of Joe Manchin III, the Democrat who rose through state politics to reach the United States Senate, where, through the vagaries of electoral politics, he is now…

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Ice shelf collapses in East Antarctica, an area previously viewed as stable

Ice shelf collapses in East Antarctica, an area previously viewed as stable

The Associated Press reports: An ice shelf the size of New York City has collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long thought to be stable and not hit much by climate change, concerned scientists said Friday. The collapse, captured by satellite images, marked the first time in human history that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse. It happened at the beginning of a freakish warm spell last week when temperatures soared more than 70 degrees (40 Celsius) warmer…

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Recent megafire smoke columns have reached the stratosphere, threatening Earth’s ozone shield

Recent megafire smoke columns have reached the stratosphere, threatening Earth’s ozone shield

Inside Climate News reports: Scientists researching how the recent spike in extreme wildfires affects the climate say that just a few weeks of smoke surging high into the stratosphere from one intense fire can wipe out years of progress restoring Earth’s life-protecting ozone layer. Close study of Australia’s intense Black Summer fires in late 2019 and early 2020 suggests the smoke they emitted was a “tremendous kick” to the atmosphere, depleting the ozone layer by 1 percent, said MIT scientist…

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Investors push 10,000 companies to disclose environmental data to CDP

Investors push 10,000 companies to disclose environmental data to CDP

Reuters reports: Investors managing over $130 trillion in assets have written to more than 10,000 companies calling on them to supply environmental data to non-profit disclosure platform CDP. The call comes as money managers demand better information on climate change, biodiversity and water security to help them analyse the performance of company boards as the world looks to come good on a plan to limit human-driven global warming. While more companies are committing to net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century and…

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Animals that sense impending catastrophes

Animals that sense impending catastrophes

Norman Miller writes: In 2004, a tsunami triggered by a 9.1 magnitude undersea quake off Indonesia decimated coastal communities around the Indian Ocean, killing at least 225,000 people across a dozen countries. The huge death toll was in part caused by the fact that many communities received no warning. Local manmade early warning systems, such as tidal and earthquake sensors, failed to raise any clear alert. Many sensors were out of action due to maintenance issues, while many coastal areas…

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Is the Amazon approaching a tipping point? A new study shows the rainforest growing less resilient

Is the Amazon approaching a tipping point? A new study shows the rainforest growing less resilient

Georgina Gustin writes: The world’s largest rainforest is losing its ability to bounce back from droughts and fires, pushing it farther toward a threshold where it could transform into arid savannah, releasing dangerous amounts of greenhouse gases in the process. A study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change found that the Amazon has become less resilient as deforestation has continued and rising temperatures have worsened drought. The authors said the rainforest’s ability to recover from such events has…

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Climate change is intensifying Earth’s water cycle at twice the predicted rate, research shows

Climate change is intensifying Earth’s water cycle at twice the predicted rate, research shows

The Guardian reports: Rising global temperatures have shifted at least twice the amount of freshwater from warm regions towards the Earth’s poles than previously thought as the water cycle intensifies, according to new analysis. Climate change has intensified the global water cycle by up to 7.4% – compared with previous modelling estimates of 2% to 4%, research published in the journal Nature suggests. The water cycle describes the movement of water on Earth – it evaporates, rises into the atmosphere,…

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Can rights of nature laws make a difference? In Ecuador, they already are

Can rights of nature laws make a difference? In Ecuador, they already are

Katie Surma writes: Until recently, so-called “rights of nature” provisions that confer legal rights to rivers, forests and other ecosystems have been mostly symbolic. But late last year, Ecuador’s top court changed that. In a series of court decisions, the Constitutional Court translated the country’s 2008 constitutional rights of nature provisions into reality, throwing the future of the country’s booming mining and oil industries into question. The most important of the decisions came in the Los Cedros case, where the…

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World spends $1.8tn a year on subsidies that harm environment, study finds

World spends $1.8tn a year on subsidies that harm environment, study finds

The Guardian reports: The world is spending at least $1.8tn (£1.3tn) every year on subsidies driving the annihilation of wildlife and a rise in global heating, according to a new study, prompting warnings that humanity is financing its own extinction. From tax breaks for beef production in the Amazon to financial support for unsustainable groundwater pumping in the Middle East, billions of pounds of government spending and other subsidies are harming the environment, says the first cross-sector assessment for more…

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The staggering ecological impacts of computation and the Cloud

The staggering ecological impacts of computation and the Cloud

Steven Gonzalez Monserrate writes: Screens brighten with the flow of words. Perhaps they are emails, hastily scrawled on smart devices, or emoji-laden messages exchanged between friends or families. On this same river of the digital, millions flock to binge their favorite television programming, to stream pornography, or enter the sprawling worlds of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, or simply to look up the meaning of an obscure word or the location of the nearest COVID-19 testing center. Whatever your query,…

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U.S. sea levels will rise rapidly in the next 30 years, new report shows

U.S. sea levels will rise rapidly in the next 30 years, new report shows

CNN reports: A new report provides an alarming forecast for the US: Sea level will rise as much in the next 30 years as it did in the past 100 — increasing the frequency of high-tide flooding, pushing storm surge to the extreme and inundating vulnerable coastal infrastructure with saltwater. The interagency report, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows how scientists are increasingly confident that US coasts will see another 10 to 12 inches of sea level…

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Wood burners emit more particle pollution than traffic, UK data shows

Wood burners emit more particle pollution than traffic, UK data shows

The Guardian reports: Wood burning in homes produces more small particle pollution than all road traffic in the UK, according to revised government data. The new data significantly cuts the estimated proportion of small particle pollution that comes from wood burners from 38% to 17%. But wood burning pollution remains a “major contributor” to particle pollution, another government report said. Road transport is responsible for 13% of particle pollution. The data shows tiny particle pollution, called PM2.5, produced by wood…

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Pharmaceutical drugs have dangerously polluted the world’s rivers, scientists warn

Pharmaceutical drugs have dangerously polluted the world’s rivers, scientists warn

The Guardian reports: Humanity’s drugs have polluted rivers across the entire world and pose “a global threat to environmental and human health”, according to the most comprehensive study to date. Pharmaceuticals and other biologically active compounds used by humans are known to harm wildlife and antibiotics in the environment drive up the risk of resistance to the drugs, one of the greatest threats to humanity. The scientists measured the concentration of 61 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) at more than 1,000…

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