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Category: Environment

Who controls Trump’s environmental policy?

Who controls Trump’s environmental policy?

The New York Times reports: A small number of people at a few federal agencies have vast power over the protection of American air and water. Under the Trump administration, the people appointed to those positions overwhelmingly used to work in the fossil fuel, chemical and agriculture industries. During their time in government they have been responsible for loosening or undoing nearly 100 environmental protections from pollution and pesticides, as well as weakening preservations of natural resources and efforts to…

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The ocean plastic we can’t see

The ocean plastic we can’t see

The Guardian reports: Every year, 8m tons of plastic enters the ocean. Images of common household waste swirling in vast garbage patches in the open sea, or tangled up with whales and seabirds, have turned plastic pollution into one of the most popular environmental issues in the world. But for at least a decade, the biggest question among scientists who study marine plastic hasn’t been why plastic in the ocean is so abundant, but why it isn’t. What scientists can…

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History’s largest mining operation is about to begin

History’s largest mining operation is about to begin

Wil S. Hylton writes: Unless you are given to chronic anxiety or suffer from nihilistic despair, you probably haven’t spent much time contemplating the bottom of the ocean. Many people imagine the seabed to be a vast expanse of sand, but it’s a jagged and dynamic landscape with as much variation as any place onshore. Mountains surge from underwater plains, canyons slice miles deep, hot springs billow through fissures in rock, and streams of heavy brine ooze down hillsides, pooling…

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Those financing climate disaster need to learn from indigenous wisdom

Those financing climate disaster need to learn from indigenous wisdom

Tara Houska writes: “This way of life is not primitive, it is not uncivilised,” I gestured to the image on the screen just above my head. It showed my longtime teacher, Dennis Jones, knocking manoomin (wild rice), the grain sacred to Anishinaabe people, into a canoe. I snapped that photo of us harvesting wild rice years back, before a new pipeline called Line 3 threatened to carry a million barrels of tar sands per day from Alberta through some of…

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Statistic of the decade: The massive deforestation of the Amazon

Statistic of the decade: The massive deforestation of the Amazon

Aerial view of deforested area of the Amazon rainforest. PARALAXIS/Shutterstock.com By Liberty Vittert, Washington University in St Louis This year, I was on the judging panel for the Royal Statistical Society’s International Statistic of the Decade. Much like Oxford English Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” competition, the international statistic is meant to capture the zeitgeist of this decade. The judging panel accepted nominations from the statistical community and the public at large for a statistic that shines a light on…

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Trump rule would exclude climate change in infrastructure planning

Trump rule would exclude climate change in infrastructure planning

The New York Times reports: Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects, according to a Trump administration plan that would weaken one of the benchmark environmental laws of the modern era. The proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and other fossil fuel projects that have been stymied when…

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EPA’s scientific advisers warn its regulatory rollbacks clash with established science

EPA’s scientific advisers warn its regulatory rollbacks clash with established science

The Washington Post reports: The Environmental Protection Agency is pushing ahead with sweeping changes to roll back environmental regulations despite sharp criticism from a panel of scientific advisers, most of whom were appointed by President Trump. The changes would weaken standards that govern waterways and wetlands across the country, as well as those that dictate gas mileage for U.S. automobiles. Another change would restrict the kinds of scientific studies that can be used when writing new environmental regulations, while a…

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Microplastic pollution has contaminated the whole planet

Microplastic pollution has contaminated the whole planet

The Guardian reports: Microplastic pollution is raining down on city dwellers, with research revealing that London has the highest levels yet recorded. The health impacts of breathing or consuming the tiny plastic particles are unknown, and experts say urgent research is needed to assess the risks. Only four cities have been assessed to date but all had microplastic pollution in the air. Scientists believe every city will be contaminated, as sources of microplastic such as clothing and packaging are found…

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Personality is not only about who but also where you are

Personality is not only about who but also where you are

By Dorsa Amir In the field of psychology, the image is canon: a child sitting in front of a marshmallow, resisting the temptation to eat it. If she musters up the willpower to resist long enough, she’ll be rewarded when the experimenter returns with a second marshmallow. Using this ‘marshmallow test’, the Austrian-born psychologist Walter Mischel demonstrated that children who could resist immediate gratification and wait for a second marshmallow went on to greater achievements in life. They did better…

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Soil is our best ally in the fight against climate change – but we’re fast running out of it

Soil is our best ally in the fight against climate change – but we’re fast running out of it

What lies beneath? Not a lot. Dan Evans, Author provided By Dan Evans, Lancaster University Take a handful of soil and hold it up to your nose. That fresh, earthy aroma is organic matter, part of which is carbon. What you can smell is the whiff of a solution for dealing with climate change. Global soil resources contain more organic carbon than the world’s atmosphere and all of its plants combined. When plants photosynthesise, they take carbon out of the…

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Top scientists warn of an Amazon ‘tipping point’

Top scientists warn of an Amazon ‘tipping point’

The Washington Post reports: Deforestation and other fast-moving changes in the Amazon threaten to turn parts of the rainforest into savanna, devastate wildlife and release billions of tons carbon into the atmosphere, two renowned experts warned Friday. “The precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we,” Thomas Lovejoy of George Mason University and Carlos Nobre of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, both of whom have studied the world’s largest rainforest…

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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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