Stories about Biodiversity and Biodevastation.
Throughout the world, mega droughts are hitting hard with a ferocity not seen in decades and in some cases not seen in centuries. It’s not merely coincidental that as global warming accelerates droughts turn more vicious than ever before. All of which begs the logical question of when will world leaders wake up with a unified plan of action to mitigate carbon emissions, or is it already too late?
The Amazon rainforest is a crucial life-support ecosystem. Without its wondrous strength and power to generate hydrologic systems across the sky (as far north as Iowa), absorb and store carbon (CO2), and its miraculous life-giving endless supply of oxygen, civilization would cease to exist beyond scattered tribes, here and there.
Most low- and middle-income countries will require a substantial increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water use due to their efforts to increase food production as these countries try to fight hunger, finds a new research from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Obesity, undernutrition, and climate change are major global challenges that impact the world’s population. While these problems may appear to be unrelated, they share food production and consumption as key underlying drivers. By recognizing the role of food production in climate change, this study examines the challenges of simultaneously addressing hunger and the climate crisis at both the individual and country levels.
Five years ago: Nations of the world met in Paris to draft a climate agreement that was subsequently accepted by nearly every country in the world, stating that global temperatures must not exceed +2C pre-industrial. Global emissions must be cut! Fossil fuel usage must be cut!
Today: Following Paris ’15, global banks have invested $1.9 trillion in fossil fuel projects.
Not only that, global governments plan to increase fossil fuels by 120% by 2030, including the US, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, Canada, and Australia.
Christmas tree farm in Iowa (public domain photo from USDA)
In early December in Portland I saw my first live Christmas tree of the season strapped to the top of a car. I was saddened. Not because I don’t celebrate Christmas (even though I don’t) but because the Christmas tree industry is so harmful.
Please watch the 23-minute video, linked below, to completion. It shows an interview of Dr. Peter Carter (Director Climate Emergency Institute, IPCC expert reviewer, Co-author in 2018 of Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival). This interview was conducted at COP25 (“this is set up to fail”) currently underway in Madrid, Spain, on 10 December 2019.
The two-week marathon of the annual UN climate conference is underway in Madrid, and the world’s expectations have perhaps never been lower. The Amazon is burning and unprecedented storms are raging worldwide, but the world’s climate diplomats are still mostly talking business-as-usual.
China’s failure to kick a long-standing addiction to coal has thrown a knockout punch to the Paris Agreement of 2015, including its 195 signatories. Suddenly, out of the blue, the world has turned upside down!
Sixteen months ago July 16, 2018: “China and the European Union on Monday reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris climate change pact and called other signatories to do the same, saying action against rising global temperatures had become more important than ever.” (Source: China and EU Reaffirm Paris Climate Commitment, Vow More Cooperation, Reuters, July 16, 2018)
The nuclear industry's violent assault on democracy in Ohio has taken a surreal leap. It could seriously impact whether Donald Trump will carry this swing state—and the nation—in 2020.
“Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.”
– E.O. Wilson
“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.”
–Cree Proverb
