Environment

Ecuador’s Coastal Ecosystems Have Rights, Constitutional Court Rules

January 20, 2025 Paige Bennett, EcoWatch. Create! Ecosystems, Ecuador, Environment, Rights of Nature, Victory, Water

The Constitutional Court of Ecuador has determined that coastal marine ecosystems have rights of nature, including the right to “integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes,” per Chapter 7, Articles 71 to 74 in the country’s constitution. This is not the first time that Ecuador has established legal rights for nature. In fact, Ecuador was the first country in the world to establish that nature held legal rights, Earth.org reported. In 2008, Ecuador added rights for Pacha Mama, an ancient goddess similar to the Mother Earth entity, in its constitution.

Indigenous Activists Honor Endangered Orcas At Governor’s Inauguration

January 19, 2025 Aife Pasquale, Fight Back! News. Resist! Endangered species, Environment, Indigenous Activism, Washington, whales

Olympia, WA – Indigenous leaders and environmentalists held a ceremony on January 15, outside Governor Bob Ferguson’s inauguration, to honor the Southern Resident Orca population, which is suffering from environmental collapse. Nearly 100 people from around the state gathered to share in grief the tremendous loss that occurred at the turn of the new year. On December 21, an orca was born to Tahlequah, who made international headlines in 2018 when her baby passed away and she continued to carry it with her for 17 days and over 1000 miles.

Fire Weather

January 14, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! climate crisis, Environment, Extreme weather, Wildfires

The apocalyptic wildfires that have erupted in the boreal forest in Siberia, the Russian Far East and Canada, climate scientists repeatedly warned, would inevitably move southwards as rising global temperatures created hotter, more fire-prone landscapes. Now they have. The failures in California, where Los Angeles has had no significant rainfall in eight months, are not only failures of preparedness — the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, decreased funds for the fire department by $17 million — but a failure globally to halt the extraction of fossil fuel.

Conservation Advocates Sue Forest Service To Stop Massive Clearcutting

January 12, 2025 Mike Garrity, Counter Punch. Resist! Clearcutting, Conservation, Environment, Forests, Montana

If anyone wonders why we’re taking the Forest Service to court over the Round Star logging project, there is one primary reason: lynx critical habitat is the worst place for clearcuts. The surest way to drive lynx to extinction is allowing the Forest Service to continue their massive deforestation of the West. This ill-conceived project authorizes logging on 9,151 acres (more than 14 square miles), with 6,324 acres of commercial logging and clearcutting, and bulldozing almost 30 miles of new roads and trails. The logging project is not only in lynx critical habitat, but also in grizzly bear secure core habitat and elk winter range.

Guide To Preserving Sacred Land Near You

January 9, 2025 Jimmy Videle, Resilience. Organize! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Environment, Land Conservation, Sacred sites

Anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity loss are the most pressing issues for our planet. Carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere continue to rise due to the burning of fossil fuels and land use change, with the latter occurring primarily in the form of animal agriculture and growing crops to feed livestock. Biodiversity loss is greatly enhanced by these climate changes, causing catastrophic threats to nature. Because these unprecedented climate changes make modeling future scenarios relatively impossible, region-by-region data is the only reliable tool, so conservation efforts must begin regionally.

The Common Ground Between Labor And Climate Justice

January 7, 2025 Pradnya Garud, Portside. Strategize! Climate Justice, Environment, History, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

A fault line runs between labor and environmental movements, or so we’re told. Labor unions have been criticized for focusing on jobs without considering environmental consequences, with some unions supporting controversial projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline, and others opposing bans on fracking. Meanwhile, environmental groups are accused of being divorced from working-class realities, sometimes neglecting lost employment and wages related to the energy transition. The urgency of cutting emissions and phasing out fossil industries to mitigate climate change has brought the seemingly contentious relationship between labor and environment into sharp focus.

A History Of Success Drives The Ongoing Struggle To Clean Up Cancer Alley

December 17, 2024 Sue Inches, Waging Nonviolence. Organize! Cancer Alley, Environment, Fossil Fuels, health, Louisiana

Two days after the election, I left on a research trip to Mississippi and Louisiana. I joined four others from my church in Yarmouth, Maine. Our purpose was to witness and learn about the struggle for civil and environmental rights in a region known as “Cancer Alley.” This 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi — between Baton Rouge and New Orleans — is home to 150 petrochemical plants, all along the river. It is also home to many working-class people, a majority of them Black. The first thing you notice are the huge refineries. Tall smokestacks spew toxic chemicals and methane flares light up the sky. The scale of industrialization is hard to imagine — there are miles and miles of factories and chemical plants.

World Leaders Fail to Reach Agreement on Global Plastics Treaty

December 3, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! Environment, Plastics, Plastics Treaty, pollution, United Nations

Efforts by nations to come to an agreement on a global plastics treaty failed on Monday. While more than 100 countries sought to put a limit on the world’s plastics production — in addition to tackling recycling and cleanup — oil and gas companies were only prepared to address the problem of plastic waste. The meeting in Busan, South Korea was supposed to be the last, but negotiations will continue into 2025, reported The Associated Press. “It is clear that there is still persisting divergence,” said Inger Andersen, the United Nations Environment Programme’s executive director, as Reuters reported.

Despite Biden’s Promise To Protect Old Forests, His Administration Keeps Approving Plans To Cut Them Down

November 17, 2024 April Ehrlich, McKenzie Funk and Tony Schick, ProPublica. Educate! Biden administration, Earth Day, Environment, Forests, Joe Biden

On Earth Day in 2022, President Joe Biden stood among cherry blossoms and towering Douglas firs in a Seattle park to declare the importance of big, old trees. “There used to be a hell of a lot more forests like this,” he said, calling them “our planet’s lungs” and extolling their power to fight climate change. The amount of carbon trees suck out of the air increases dramatically with age, making older trees especially important. These trees are also rare: Less than 10% of forests in the lower 48 states remain unlogged or undisturbed by development. The president uncapped his pen, preparing to sign an executive order to protect mature and old-growth forests on federal lands. “I just think this is the beginning of a new day,” Biden said.

‘Fossil Fuels Are Still Winning’ As Carbon Emissions Reach Record Highs

November 14, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! Carbon Dioxide, climate crisis, emissions, Environment, Fossil Fuels

The most recent Global Carbon Budget report has found that the world’s carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels reached a record high in 2024, pushing the planet further off track from avoiding the most destructive impacts of global heating. The 2024 Global Carbon Budget — produced by the Global Carbon Project team of 120-plus scientists from around the world — projects that emissions from fossil carbon dioxide will reach 37.4 billion tonnes in 2024, an increase of 0.8 percent over the previous year, according to a press release from the Global Carbon Project.

Business Lobby Reached Record High At UN Biodiversity Talks

November 13, 2024 Rachel Sherrington, Claire Carlile and Hazel Healy, DeSmog. Educate! Biodiversity, climate crisis, COP16, Corporate lobbying, Environment, United Nations (UN)

Representatives of business and industry groups more than doubled at the UN’s latest biodiversity summit, DeSmog has found, sparking fears over the growing influence of powerful private sector bodies. Despite some important breakthroughs, talks at this year’s COP16 summit in Cali, Colombia – which aimed to reverse the drastic global decline in plant and animal life – ended in disarray on 2 November, with Greenpeace’s An Lambrechts complaining that progress to protect the world’s dangerously depleted ecosystems had stalled after “unprecedented corporate lobbying”.

Removing Hydropower Dams Can Restore Ecosystems

November 11, 2024 Katie Schmidt, Resilience. Educate! climate crisis, Dam Removal, Dams, Ecosystems, Energy, Environment, Hydropower, Indigenous Rights, Landback, Water

A free-flowing river supports abundant fish and wildlife, provides drinking water, and other intangible recreational benefits. But humans have sought to block rivers with dams for millennia. While dams have provided benefits like hydroelectricity and water storage, they have also been ecologically disastrous. Besides blocking fish migrations, these human-made structures can destroy seasonal pulses of water that keep ecosystems in balance. Some dams—especially those used for power—can deplete water in streams, leaving entire stretches of river bone dry.

COP29 Must Not Be Another Greenwashing Event

November 8, 2024 The Canary. Resist! Biomass, Climate Change, COP29, Energy, Environment, greenwashing

Countries must find real solutions for climate action and climate finance and reject false solutions such as biomass energy, says the Biomass Action Network as the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) to the UN Climate Convention is set to open in Baku, Azerbaijan, on 11 November. COP29 will focus on finance, as did the Biodiversity COP16 which was suspended last weekend due to the lack of agreement. Developed countries refuse to commit to sufficient financial support for developing countries. Instead, they promote false solutions like centralised (large scale) biomass energy.

Mapped: How Big Industries Hope To Sway The UN Biodiversity Talks

October 30, 2024 Hazel Healy and Rachel Sherrington, DeSmog. Educate! Activism, Big Ag, Big Pharma, Biodiversity, Colombia, COP16, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Food and Agriculture, Pesticides, Social Justice, United Nations (UN)

Under thundery tropical skies, and amid ever more dire warnings on the precarious state of the world’s ecosystems, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference is unfolding in Colombia. This year’s summit, known as COP16, follows on from the last biodiversity conference held in Montréal in 2022, when negotiators struck an historic deal – the equivalent of the Paris Agreement on climate change – to “halt and reverse” nature loss. Now, government representatives from nearly 200 countries, along with scientists, Indigenous groups, and environmental activists, are gathered in the southern city of Cali to negotiate how to put this plan into action: protect earth’s habitats and the people who depend on them.

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