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Environment

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

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.

When Golf Courses Go Wild

In the fields beside a suburban lake on Vancouver Island, relics from a past life are hidden in plain sight. The land, formerly the home of a nine-hole golf course for more than 50 years, is no longer doused with water every day or mowed at 4 a.m. — yet remnants of its former state still exist. A sand trap now serves as a children’s play pit, littered with Tonka trucks and toys. The fairway, once cut to under an inch, has grass up to shin height and rows of flowers. Old golf greens have been turned into campgrounds. The transformation is par for the course, says Jason Cole, co-CEO of Power to Be, a registered charity that took over the property in Saanich, B.C., seven years ago from a couple who wanted to lease their roughly 80 acres of land.

Industrial Fishing Undermines World’s Greatest Carbon Sink

Fish is often sold as the perfect climate-friendly dinner: highly nutritious and lower carbon than other forms of protein. But new research is increasingly bringing some of these eco marketing claims into question. In part, because industrial fishing – scientists and campaigners say – is weakening the ocean’s ability to act as a carbon sink. Over the last 60 years, the ocean, forests and other natural carbon sinks have absorbed over half of all man-made emissions, slowing down global warming. Yet, as temperatures rise, scientists warn such processes could be on the brink of collapse.

Coming Soon To A Country Near You: The Not-So-Subtle Shift To Adaptation?

he shift to adaptation is coming. And when it comes it will be Earth-shaking—where collectively, those with resources start to give up the struggle to stop climate change, and instead focus primarily on protecting their own proverbial asses. Fortunately, we’re not quite there yet. In fact, returning to the report The Wall Street Journal mischaracterized, mitigation finance is growing far faster than adaptation finance, reaching $1.3 trillion annually in 2021-2022, double the $653 billion averaged in 2019-2020. Adaptation finance, on the other hand, grew to $63 billion, a 28% increase year-on-year, but because mitigation finance grew much more, adaptation finance dropped from 7% to 5% of the total.

Major Chemical Accidents Are Alarmingly Common In The US

Investigators have been busy at the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, the independent federal agency tasked with determining the root causes of major chemical accidents at industrial facilities. In Georgia, fallout is continuing more than two weeks after a massive chemical fire erupted at the BioLab pool and spa supply facility in Conyers, just outside of Atlanta. The fire created a toxic plume of chlorine gas that forced 17,000 people from their homes just days after Hurricane Helene hit the state. In the suburban petrochemical corridor east of Houston, Texas, the Chemical Safety Board is investigating the toxic release of hydrogen sulfide at an oil refinery that left two contract workers dead and 35 others injured on October 10.

Ecuador Voted To Stop Drilling In The Amazon

Environmental activists rarely get to celebrate a major win for the planet, but that’s what happened in Ecuador last year. After a decade-long struggle between activists and the government, a referendum was held in August 2023 on whether to continue drilling for oil in a protected part of the Amazon. The people voted to kick the oil industry out. The government and the state oil company, Petroecuador, had tried every trick in the book to get a different result. There was a disinformation campaign, threats of austerity, even an attempt to void hundreds of thousands of signatures that were collected for the referendum to happen.

Degrowth: Beyond Education For Sustainable Development

Large-scale development projects, innovative green technologies, artificial intelligence, and trips to Mars are often seen as central solutions to the climate crisis leading to diverse socio-ecological and economic implications. Despide their inconsistencies and conflicted outcomes, their influence is so strong that our present approaches and vision for the future seem constrained by them. This short essay aims to explore opportunities and entry points that could mobilise personal and collective transformations in how we think and act, with the goal of fostering a more ecological and socially just response to the climate crisis.

25 Of 35 Vital Signs For Earth Have Reached Record Extremes

A new report from a team of international scientists has revealed harsh realities on Earth, with 25 of 35 planetary vital signs reaching record extremes. Without immediate action, scientists warn that these extremes could threaten life on Earth. In the new study, published in the journal BioScience, scientists presented a stark look at the state of the climate crisis. “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis,” the scientists wrote.

The Future Is Named Helene

The messages of Hurricane Helene lie inscribed in the muddy debris of Asheville, North Carolina, and other wrecked towns of Appalachia. Helene, powered by warming waters in the Gulf of Mexico, dumped 700 millimetres of rain in several states over three days. The surreal deluge drenched the ground and then it swelled creeks. The creeks supercharged rivers, and these muddy waters tore like a torrent through the hills, breaking all previous records of mayhem.

EPA Found No Threat Of Air Pollution During An Oil Spill In Louisiana

The pungent smell of oil woke Gerald and Janet Crappel on the morning of Saturday, July 27. Stepping outside their home on the banks of Bayou Lafourche in Raceland, Louisiana, they spotted the fumes’ source: crude oil from Crescent Midstream’s Raceland pump station was gushing into the picturesque waterway, sparsely lined with homes and fishing boats, via a stormwater canal directly across from their home. The oil’s fumes were thick that morning. “It choked you,” Gerald told DeSmog correspondent Julie Dermansky, who documented the incident as it unfolded. Before cleanup crews contained the spill, reportedly 34,000 gallons of crude oil, a slick stretched for eight miles, just past the area’s drinking water system.

Earth Is Close To Passing Seven Of Nine Planetary Boundaries

Scientists have found that Earth may soon pass another planetary boundary, meaning it could be operating outside of the safe limits for seven of the nine defined planetary boundaries. The Planetary Health Check report, prepared by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), is a new assessment that determines the state of the planetary boundaries. For its first edition, the report found that Earth is near the boundary for ocean acidification. “Our updated diagnosis shows that vital organs of the Earth system are weakening, leading to a loss of resilience and rising risks of crossing tipping points,” said Levke Caesar, scientist at PIK and a lead author of the report.

London Saw A Surprising Benefit To Fining High-Polluting Cars

Restricting the volume of high-emitting vehicles roaming city streets carries many benefits, from clearing the air to quieting the urban din and beyond. Recognition of this simple fact has led to the proliferation of clean air zones, designated regions within a city where vehicles must meet strict pollution standards or pay a fee to operate within it. At last count, over 300 such areas had been established across Europe. In London, which boasts the largest ultra-low emissions zone in the world, a study has found a secondary benefit: Kids started walking and biking to school more. In 2018 — the year before London’s rule took effect in the center of the city, and five years before the zone encompassed its entirety — researchers at the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University saw in the impending policy an opportunity to conduct a natural experiment.

Study: The Economic Case For A Public Rail System

Public Rail Now is excited to announce their second research report in their campaign for public rail ownership. “From Margins to Growth: The Economic Case for a Public Rail System,” lays bare the economic facts for the current state of the US rail system is in a downward spiral, facts working railroaders have been espousing for decades. Public rail ownership has the potential to save up to $140 billion annually for US consumers, provide an estimated 180,000 new rail road jobs, avert $190 Billion in public health, environmental and fiscal cost, while helping to meet climate goals by avoiding 180 metric tonnes of carbon emissions.

Corporations Plunder US West’s Water Amid Worst Drought In 1,200 Years

Rural La Paz County, Arizona, positioned on the Colorado River across from California, is at the center of a growing fight over water in the American Southwest. At the heart of the battle is a question: Should water be treated as a human right, to be allocated by governments with the priority of sustaining life? Or is it a commodity to be bought, sold and invested in for the greatest profits? As the West suffers its worst megadrought in 1,200 years, investors have increasingly eyed water as a valuable asset and a resource to be exploited. For years, investment firms have bought up farmland throughout the Southwest, drilling to new depths for their water-hungry crops and causing nearby wells to run dry.

The Hé Sapa Resolution Could Help ‘Indigenize’ Wilderness Conservation

Internationally recognized conservation leader Vance Martin, recent recipient of the IUCN’s Fred Packard Awards for Outstanding Service to Protected Areas and former long-time Wild Foundation president, speaks with Deceleration about restoring wilderness through deepening relationships and practicing love. Last month, delegates attending the 12th World Wilderness Congress in the Black Hills adopted a string of resolutions expected to help ‘indigenize’ wilderness conservation and the conservation sciences in the months and years ahead. Resolutions ranged from reforming conservation efforts to recognize “Indigenous science, knowledge, thought, and wisdom” (Hé Sapa Resolution)...
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