Green Social Thought

Produce less. Distribute it fairly. Create a greener world for all.

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Topic: Biodiversity / Biodevastation

  • Arctic Permafrost No Longer Freezes… Even in Winter

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    by

    henryr874
    in

    Global warming is starting to hit hard like there’s no tomorrow, and at current rates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, there may not be a tomorrow, as emissions continue setting new records year-by-year, expected to hit a 62-year record in 2019.  So much for the Paris 2015 climate agreement! The most sensitive areas to global…

  • Biomass is Not “Green”: an Interview With Josh Schlossberg

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    by

    fitzdon

    Josh Schlossberg is an investigative journalist, horror author and former environmental organizer who lives in Denver, Colorado. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Biomass Monitor, a subscription-supported publication that bills itself as “the nation’s leading publication investigating the whole story on bioenergy, biomass, and biofuels.” In early September 2018, I was visiting Colorado and…

  • Waste of Energy

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    by

    fitzdon

    Drive down Interstate 95 through Baltimore and you can’t miss the Wheelabrator trash incinerator, its smokestack emblazoned with the city’s name. The Charm City’s single largest source of industrial air pollution churns out well over 600,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. In 2017, those emissions were equivalent to what’s given off by more than…

  • Don’t Fence Me In

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    by

    fitzdon

    Years ago, I recalled standing on the Arctic Coast in Alaska’s Arctic Wildlife Refuge looking south across the coastal plain towards the Brooks Range. One of my impressions was that I saw what the Great Plains might have looked like in the days before livestock. To me, it was the lack of fences which was…

  • Green New Deal Flunks the Limits Lesson

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    by

    henryr874
    in

    The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman claims to have invented the idea of the Green New Deal in 2007.[1] He’s back to enlighten us about what it should mean now. Friedman deserves credit as one of the few mainstream pundits who takes climate breakdown seriously. But mainstream methods created the problem, they won’t solve…

  • In Praise of Dead Trees

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    by

    fitzdon

    Like most people I once viewed dead trees as an indicator of some presumed problem in the forest—that a ‘healthy” forest was one with a minimum of dead trees and largely free of wildfire, insects, and disease. Oh yes, I knew that a few snags were good for woodpeckers, and as a fly fisherman I…

  • Warning: A ‘Shrinking Window’ of Usable Groundwater

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    by

    henryr874

    The researchers used information from the U.S. Geological Survey on the quality of groundwater across the country and looked specifically at salinity — how salty the water is. “We looked basin by basin at how that depth of fresh and brackish water changes across the United States,” says McIntosh. The results were about half as…

  • The Elem Tribe’s Last Stand

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    by

    squirrel

    In the early 1970s, when a young Elem girl started to have convulsions a local doctor said were caused by mercury poisoning, the Elem realized there might be a connection between the high rate of health problems in their small community and the mine next door.

  • Biological Annihilation: A Planet in Loss Mode

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    by

    fitzdon

    If you’ve been paying attention to what’s happening to the nonhuman life forms with which we share this planet, you’ve likely heard the term “the Sixth Extinction.” If not, look it up.  After all, a superb environmental reporter, Elizabeth Kolbert, has already gotten a Pulitzer Prize for writing a book with that title.

  • Fukushima evacuees forced back into unacceptably high radiation zones

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    by

    squirrel

    A UN Special Rapporteur who last August joined two colleagues in sounding an urgent alarm about the plight of Fukushima workers, has now roundly criticized the Japanese government for returning citizens to the Fukushima region under exposure levels 20 times higher than considered “acceptable” under international standards.