Poor African fishermen are destroying their habitat using free nets from do-gooders.
Category: Environment
Venice, Italy is considered the most beautiful city in the world. It is fast becoming a victim of the climate debacle.
Southeastern Australia is ablaze with “catastrophic” wildfires after years of parching. The national government denies that global climate change has anything to do with the fires, calling those who think otherwise “raving lunatics.”
Climate scientists have consistently underestimated climate change and continue to do so.
Common folklore has houseplants able to freshen and oxygenate the air. Alas, not so much.
Carbon emissions continue to rise despite the cry of a “climate emergency.” Consumers are doing their part to drive self-extinction in their SUVs.
There is no federal oversight of tap water in Canada, nor do most provinces monitor drinking water quality. So Canadians drink poisoned water.
For the umpteenth time, a group of scientists feeling a “moral obligation” have issued a warning to the world’s political establishment of “a climate emergency.”
Plastic refuse fouling the oceans is a major contributor to sea life decline. The primary source of sizable marine plastic is fishermen who are negligently destroying their own livelihoods.
India was among the earliest human civilizations. India may now be one of the earliest civilizations to collapse from its own wastes and mismanagement.
President Donald Trump (Damnable Don) is committed to environmental desecration. That he can act out his malevolence demonstrates the indifference of America’s political establishment to environmental protection.
Following the environmental debacle of DDT, chemists thought themselves clever by synthesizing variants of molecules that plants themselves produce to ward off their pests. An obvious candidate was nicotine. Neonicotinoids illustrate how clever can kill.
A fresh projection of sea level rise based upon satellite readings triples the number of people affected by 2050 than previously estimated. This new forecast is still an underestimate, as will be discovered next year.
The demise of humanity from accelerating climate change seems certain before the next century dawns and may come within the next 50 years. Those who dispute this prediction are riding a legacy of dither and denial championed by the political establishment for the past 6 decades.
Carbon is one of several chemical cycles which define Earth’s biosphere. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and oxygen are others. Carbon holds the distinction of principally acting, in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), as the radiative “control knob” that sets global temperature for the air and oceans. While attention has focused on the atmospheric carbon level, that is a small component of a much larger cycle.
From 1970 to 2019, North American bird populations declined by 29%: nearly 3 billion fewer birds. Loss of habitat by human invasion, pesticides and other pollutants were the causes.
India currently has 1.33 billion people. The nation is rapidly running out of drinkable water. 600 million already face acute water shortages in major cities across the country. Another 21 major Indian cities will run out of groundwater in 2020, parching a further 100 million people unto death.
That the current climate change is accelerating in its ferocity seems to have escaped notice. Inattention to this certain fact means that humanity is most likely to be extinct by the turn of the 22nd century.
The operational definition of intelligence is a consistent display of appropriate behavior. Behind the behavior is a mental construal of how the world works. Failing to comprehend the environment invariably has negative consequences. In the instance of humans on planet Earth, the diagnosis is clear and the outcome apparent. These creatures face impending extinction and are taking much other life out with them.
The tipping point of our own extinction was reached in 1940.
The Trump administration and Republicans across America are doing their best to hide the devastation that capitalism has wrought.
The United States space agency NASA has taken a peek at the Earth below, and found: “the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity” as well as “the economic stratification of society into elites and masses (or ‘commoners’).” In that regard, “accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels.”
Pollination is essential to two-thirds of the world’s food crops. Commercial bee hives are often relied upon, but unkempt insects, including bees, beetles, flies and butterflies, are important, as the wild things are more productive pollinators. Pesticides and herbicides, blithely applied worldwide, are indiscriminate killers. Ironically, considering their intended benefit, crop yields are declining because of their use.
Marshes form a transition zone between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Marshes are found worldwide.
Economists refer to pollution as an externality of production. Its cost is not captured in the price of the good produced. Instead, those who suffer the pollution pay with diminished quality of life. Capitalism has been an exuberant exercise in externalities, long tolerated by governments which could have put them in check. Now, the U.S. administration is about to show long overdue notice.