Green Social Thought

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

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Topic: Biodiversity / Biodevastation

  • Three Climatic Monsters with Asteroid Impact

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    by

    fitzdon

    Continuing from Part 1: Monster #2 Greenhouse Gases (“GHG”) alter ecosystems. The biggest impact of anthropogenic GHG hits the oceans. There is no doubt about the importance of the oceans as a great sink, 2/3rds of the planet. After all, the oceans have saved humanity’s butt ever since industrialization started emitting CO2 over 200 years…

  • GM Crops in India: Approval by Contamination?

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    by

    fitzdon

    The regulatory system for GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in India is in tatters. So said the Coalition for a GMFree India (CGMFI) in 2017 after media reports about the illegal cultivation of GM soybean in the country. In India, five high-level reports have already advised against the adoption of GM crops: The ‘Jairam Ramesh Report’, imposing an indefinite moratorium on Bt…

  • The Limits of Green Energy Under Capitalism

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    by

    henryr874

      Renewable energy is expanding rapidly all around the world. The energy capacity of newly installed solar projects in 2017, for instance, exceeded the combined increases from coal, gas and nuclear plants. During the past eight years alone, global investment in renewables was $2.2 trillion, and optimism has soared along with investments. “Rapidly spreading solar technology could change everything,” announced a…

  • Warming in the north continues as predicted

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    by

    squirrel

    Thawing permafrost is a slow-motion disaster happening now in most of northern Alaska. Unlike a hurricane or a flood, the loss of permafrost is silent, rarely dramatic, and never fatal.

  • At the edge of the Arctic Circle, oil drilling threatens the indigenous Gwich’in

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    by

    fitzdon

    The low boreal forest that spans the border between Alaska and Canada is the home of the Gwich’in people. There are some 6,000 Gwich’in, hunting and raising their children in villages at the edge of the Arctic Circle. They’ve been there for thousands of years, following the caribou, which provide a majority of their diet,…

  • Sea level rise due to Antarctic ice melt has ‘tripled over past five years’

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    fitzdon

    The rate of sea level rise resulting from the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet has tripled over the past five years, according to new research from a global team of scientists. The study, published in Nature, finds that ice loss from Antarctica has caused sea levels to rise by 7.6mm from 1992-2017, with two…

  • Tesla says its factory is safer. But it left injuries off the books.

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    fitzdon

    Inside Tesla’s electric car factory, giant red robots – some named for X-Men characters – heave car parts in the air, while workers wearing black toil on aluminum car bodies. Forklifts and tuggers zip by on gray-painted floors, differentiated from pedestrian walkways by another shade of gray. There’s one color, though, that some of Tesla’s…

  • Happy Talk About Weeds

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    fitzdon

    I recently attended a presentation on invasive weeds by a representative of the Deschutes National Forest. The problem with the presentation was that it promoted and legitimized an industrial paradigm to weed threats. The Forest Service (FS) promotes an Industrial Forestry Paradigm that treats the symptoms, not the causes of ecological degradation. The biggest factors…

  • Kinder Morgan Pipeline is Never Going to be Built, Vow Activists

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    squirrel

    Whether for environmental reasons or Indigenous rights, there is enormous opposition to seeing the Trans Mountain project completed, and that opposition is only going to grow. A recent poll suggested that 12 percent of British Columbia residents would engage in civil disobedience against the project. Despite the change in ownership, it seems the protests against…

  • Canary in the Coal Pond

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    fitzdon

    In tests conducted in late 2017, one in three coal-fired power plants nationwide detected “statistically significant” amounts of contaminants, including harmful chemicals like arsenic, in the groundwater around their facilities. This information, which utility companies had to post on their websites in March, became public for the first time under an Obama-era environmental rule regulating…