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Category: Environment

The eastern Mediterranean is dying

The eastern Mediterranean is dying

Peter Schwartzstein writes: Most of the world’s seas are in some kind of environmental trouble, but few have declined as quickly or from such precipitous heights as the Mediterranean’s eastern edge. Although it midwifed some of history’s greatest civilizations, the eastern Med has become a grubby embodiment of the current littoral states’ failures. Where the ancients sailed, many of their successors now junk industrial waste. The accomplishments of the Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, and pharaonic Egyptians, among others, have only accentuated…

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The knowledge of trees

The knowledge of trees

Sue Burke writes: The U.N. Climate Change Conference in Madrid opened on Dec. 2 by calling the climate crisis a “war against nature.” But trees have always been at war, fighting for their survival. While plants may seem passive in the environment, they can sense their environments, make decisions, and respond to threats—up to a point. Every autumn holds terrible perils for plants. While many trees drop their leaves every year, the decision of precisely when to do so is…

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Greenland’s ice sheet melting seven times faster than in 1990s

Greenland’s ice sheet melting seven times faster than in 1990s

The Guardian reports: Greenland’s ice sheet is melting much faster than previously thought, threatening hundreds of millions of people with inundation and bringing some of the irreversible impacts of the climate emergency much closer. Ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, and the scale and speed of ice loss is much higher than was predicted in the comprehensive studies of global climate science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to…

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Our oceans brim with climate solutions. We need a Blue New Deal

Our oceans brim with climate solutions. We need a Blue New Deal

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson writes: Our nation has more than 95,000 miles of shoreline, home to 40 percent of Americans who live in coastal counties. Our blue economy, including fishing, ocean farming, shipping, tourism and recreation, supports more than 3.25 million American jobs and a $300-billion annual contribution to our gross domestic product. And, for many, our cultural heritage is tied to the sea. These communities are threatened by rising sea levels, eroding coasts and climate change-fueled storms. Yet the Green…

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Australia burns again, and now its largest city is choking

Australia burns again, and now its largest city is choking

Damien Cave reports: Flying into Sydney usually brings stunning views of rocky cliffs and crystal waters, but when Anna Funder looked out the window before landing this week, she saw only tragedy. Thick gray smoke blanketed the skyline and the coast, stretching for miles from the fire front at the southwestern edge of the city, where dried-out forests have been burning for weeks. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Ms. Funder, an award-winning Australian novelist known for stories of…

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Bushfires in Australia’s Gondwana rainforests destroy areas that have historically been too wet to burn

Bushfires in Australia’s Gondwana rainforests destroy areas that have historically been too wet to burn

The Guardian reports: The Unesco world heritage centre has expressed concern about bushfire damage to the Gondwana rainforests of northern New South Wales and southern Queensland, and asked the Australian government whether it is affecting their world heritage values. In a statement on its website, the centre said members of the media and civil society had asked about the bushfires affecting the areas inscribed on the world heritage list as the “Gondwana rainforests of Australia”. The forests are considered a…

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Light pollution is key ‘bringer of insect apocalypse’

Light pollution is key ‘bringer of insect apocalypse’

The Guardian reports: Light pollution is a significant but overlooked driver of the rapid decline of insect populations, according to the most comprehensive review of the scientific evidence to date. Artificial light at night can affect every aspect of insects’ lives, the researchers said, from luring moths to their deaths around bulbs, to spotlighting insect prey for rats and toads, to obscuring the mating signals of fireflies. “We strongly believe artificial light at night – in combination with habitat loss,…

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Koalas ‘functionally extinct’ after Australia bushfires destroy 80% of their habitat

Koalas ‘functionally extinct’ after Australia bushfires destroy 80% of their habitat

Trevor Nace reports: As Australia experiences record-breaking drought and bushfires, koala populations have dwindled along with their habitat, leaving them “functionally extinct.” The chairman of the Australian Koala Foundation, Deborah Tabart, estimates that over 1,000 koalas have been killed from the fires and that 80 percent of their habitat has been destroyed. Recent bushfires, along with prolonged drought and deforestation has led to koalas becoming “functionally extinct” according to experts. Functional extinction is when a population becomes so limited that…

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San Francisco’s quest to make landfills obsolete

San Francisco’s quest to make landfills obsolete

Politico reports: The U.S. produces more than 250 million tons of waste per year—30 percent of the world’s waste, though it makes up only 4 percent of the Earth’s population. Sixty-five percent of that waste ends up in landfills or incinerators. Appalled by floating trash zones like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch off California, the public says it wants to stop plastics from polluting the oceans. People say they don’t want to burn garbage if it creates toxic air pollutants,…

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The planet is burning

The planet is burning

Stephen J Pyne writes: From the Arctic to the Amazon, from California to Gran Canaria, from Borneo to India to Angola to Australia – the fires seem everywhere. Their smoke obscures subcontinents by day; their lights dapple continents at night, like a Milky Way of flame-stars. Rather than catalogue what is burning, one might more aptly ask: what isn’t? Where flames are not visible, the lights of cities and of gas flares are: combustion via the transubstantiation of coal and…

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U.S. suspends more oil and gas leases over what could be a widespread legal problem

U.S. suspends more oil and gas leases over what could be a widespread legal problem

Inside Climate News reports: The Trump administration’s relentless push to expand fossil fuel production on federal lands is hitting a new snag: its own refusal to consider the climate impacts of development. The federal Bureau of Land Management’s Utah office in September voluntarily suspended 130 oil and gas leases after advocacy groups sued, arguing that BLM hadn’t adequately assessed the greenhouse gas emissions associated with drilling and extraction on those leases as required by law. The move was unusual because…

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Antarctica’s ice loss is on the rise

Antarctica’s ice loss is on the rise

Inside Climate News reports: The floating ice shelves along the edges of West Antarctica that slow the flow of its vast glaciers are under assault from all directions, and they’re becoming more vulnerable to collapse, scientists warn. Warmer water has started creeping in under them, eating away at the ice from below. Warmer air—and, in places, more rain—is melting the surface, creating ponds that can drain deep down and then splinter ice from within. Now, new research is highlighting another…

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We are running out of unpolluted air

We are running out of unpolluted air

The Atlantic reports: Officials have implored the people of New Delhi to stay inside, indefinitely. Five million children in India’s capital have been handed face masks. Everyone is to keep windows closed. Contrary to the most fundamental medical advice, the city’s chief minister urged residents this week to “avoid outdoor physical activities.” News images seem cut from an apocalyptic outbreak film. One of India’s holiest rivers is covered in toxic foam that looks like white cotton candy. Midday visibility is…

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Indigenous people and illegal miners are engaged in a fight that may help decide the future of the planet

Indigenous people and illegal miners are engaged in a fight that may help decide the future of the planet

Jon Lee Anderson writes: One day in 2014, Belém, a member of Brazil’s Kayapo tribe, went deep into the forest to hunt macaws and parrots. He was helping to prepare for a coming-of-age ceremony, in which young men are given adult names and have their lips pierced. By custom, initiates wear headdresses adorned with tail feathers. Belém, whose Kayapo name is Takaktyx, an honorific form of the word “strong,” was a designated bird hunter. Far from his home village of…

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How Trump’s war on California tries to paint a progressive state as an environmental laggard

How Trump’s war on California tries to paint a progressive state as an environmental laggard

Inside Climate News reports: As fierce Santa Ana winds whipped the wildfires outside of Los Angeles, stirring exactly the kind of infernos that scientists expect in a hotter, drier California, President Donald Trump was gloating over the new allies he has won in his epic battle to block that state’s efforts to fight climate change. California has been a world innovator in crafting environmental policy, and its pioneering approach to the difficult issue of carbon emissions from cars helped put…

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