Can #UN summits save the planet. “The world’s nations keep faltering in their efforts to join together to save the planet from several #environmentalcrises. In the past few months #UnitedNations-sponsored negotiations to tackle #climatechange, #plasticpollution, loss of global #species and a growing number of #deserts have either outright failed or come out with limited outcomes that didn’t address the scale of the problems.” | AP https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-climate-biodiversity-plastics-drought-summits-failure-64b40bc06287a92d33bcdbfea4f3bf5f

Interesting #1A show on @NPR today about younger patients being stricken by cancers. The panelists were well aware that changes in our environment were the cause. When will be more generally aware of this? We have to acknowledge that we have sowed this disaster as well as supporting the economic and social systems that enabled it. We are allowing wealth hoarders to destroy us. We need to stand up. https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510316/1a
(I don't think the episode I heard on the radio today is up yet on the podcast website)

#EnvironmentalCrises
#ClimateCrisis
#cancer
#microplastics
#pollution
#ClimateChange

A Quarter of Freshwater Fish Are at Risk of Extinction, a New Assessment Finds

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/climate/climate-change-threatened-species-red-list.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FU0.EQkB.le8rdbgGvYWX&hpgrp=k-abar&smid=url-share

This year, the 2023 #OpenEarthMonitor (OEMC) Global Workshop will host a variety of formats, from keynote lectures to oral talks, workshops and poster presentations!

9 experts will host keynote lectures on #open #EO #greentransition #OpenClimate #DestinE #landuse #landcover #modeling #Openscience #environmentalcrises . In addition, 18 workshops will be hosted where you can get training in using open EO tools and data.

To know more about the program visit: https://earthmonitor.org/gw2023/

Revolting

Sewerage dumping harming the environment and people.
#UK #UKpolitics #environment #environmentalcrises #health #oceans #sea
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/05/investigation-after-57-world-triathlon-championship-swimmers-fall-sick-and-get-diarrhoea-in-sunderland-race?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Oppenheimer will blow you away

"Christopher Nolan doesn’t want to 'make a didactic film - ever'. But with Oppenheimer he has made the most impactful anti-nuclear film for a generation."

https://theecologist.org/2023/jul/20/oppenheimer-will-blow-you-away
#nonukes #ClimateChange #Oppenheimer #environmentalcrises #environmentalism #environmentaljustice

As much as we like to blame politicians and corporations, we are, and will continue to be, resistant to any "meaningful" changes.

Here are some perverse comparisons that show all this howling and catastrophizing about wildfires, heatwaves, floods, loss of habitat in Canada, US, and Europe amount to nothing more than equivocations:

*"The average Malian consumes less electricity each year than the average Londoner uses to power their tea kettle." writes the Financial Times via a Mckinsey report from 2021. The last I heard, in 2023, the Malian couldn't upgrade to an electric oven.

*The average Nigerian, or Tanzanian, or Zambian, or for that matter, most of sub-Saharan Africa (roughly 1.3billion people) consumes less electricity than the refrigerators that Americans and Canadians use, according to the World Bank.

*Or that the average American consumes as much energy as 191 Ethiopians (it was roughly 150 Ethiopians less than a decade ago, i.e., Americans are consuming more energy now).

*And if one looks at the same World Bank electric power consumption chart, the average South Asian (pop: 2 billion) consumes as much as the British kettle and the American/Canadian refrigerator.

Meanwhile, the so called "climate envoy" from the US is on his world tour to convince (read: maul) countries to do a better job on climate change. In his tour, this convincing amounted to him categorically announcing, "No, under no circumstances," will the US pay for any climate reparations.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66197366

This "climate envoy" who foists himself as the beacon for the rest of the world represents a nation which has contributed to nearly 40% of the historic emissions causing global warming, goes to Beijing and tells the Chinese that the climate issue is to be separated from the current geopolitical tensions between them. He then goes on to lecture them on their energy consumption (China for all its increased consumption will not even come anywhere close to matching the historic levels of emissions from the US or Canada, and has in fact done more to reduce emissions than US or Canada).

What's the end effect of all this
"diplomacy"? Hopelessness in any meaningful climate policy in the Global South:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2023/07/18/the-global-south-is-growing-more-despondent-since-the-climate-envoy-rejected-reparations-what-now/?sh=4020c42c527a

If we could ask the roughly 3.3 billion people who make up South Asia (a majority of whom believe in reincarnation) and sub Saharan Africa, what they would desire to be in their next birth, they might quite astutely reply: "to be born as a high end American household appliance".

Agricultural and food collapse! This is apocalyptic!

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38906-7

"Simultaneous harvest failures across major crop-producing regions are a threat to global food security... Here we find an increased likelihood of concurrent low yields during summers featuring meandering jets in observations and models... Given the identified model biases, future assessments of regional and concurrent crop losses from meandering jet states remain highly uncertain."

"Concurrent crop failures in major crop-producing regions constitute a systemic risk as associated spikes in food prices can lead to conflict and undernutrition in countries that rely on imports... We find that simultaneous extremes linked to a meandering jet stream from amplified Rossby waves19 lead to regional yield losses... and to concurrent low harvests across the mid-latitudes... This increased likelihood of concurrent low yields in major breadbaskets, is mostly reproduced by historical model experiments, whether driven by reanalysis data or climate models in particular."

If people are not aware, the jetstreams meandering (Rossby waves) over western continental US have stay put (i.e., have not migrated, or diminished, or collapsed) over the last month.They now engulf almost the entirety of continental US, and predictions say that it will continue to stay put over the entire summer.

Let's also not forget, as of now, even without concurrent crop failures as detailed in the paper, as the World Food Programme, FAO and IFPRI have reported, currently 350 million people worldwide are acutely food insecure, with a further 2 billion within the category of being precarious when it comes to food security.

For a news version of this paper including identifying the primary suspects, the politics, why there is hardly any media coverage, and why this is possibly the only thing we should be talking about, here is George Monbiot writing in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/15/food-systems-collapse-plutocrats-life-on-earth-climate-breakdown

"It could scarcely be more screwed up. The effort to protect Earth systems and the human systems that depend on them is led by people working at the margins with tiny resources, while the richest and most powerful use every means at their disposal to stop them. Can you imagine, in decades to come, trying to explain this to your children?"

Long read on the wildfires, and the state of the environmental crises. Truly damning. Read the whole article!
(HT @DrYohanJohn )

https://www.ft.com/content/540fa28d-9590-4ea2-99d7-453e3e2c3086

"In fact, the smoke may be so bad the planes can’t even fly. And the water drops may evaporate before they even touch the flames. “It’s like spitting on a campfire. We waste so much money on these large fires that would be much better spent on prevention, mitigation and preparedness,” says Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at Canada’s Thompson Rivers University."

"Indigenous peoples burnt land to promote certain species or to clear land for livestock. According to a 2007 study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, Native Americans burnt an average of 1.8mn hectares a year in California alone. “Skies were likely smoky much of the summer and fall in California during the prehistoric period,” the scientists wrote."

"When European settlers arrived in California and elsewhere, they prohibited deliberate fires. The historian Stephen Pyne dates this preference to the Enlightenment, which had made open fire unfashionable: “Open burning reeked of superstition and magic; it was deemed dangerous and unnecessary.” Moreover, temperate Europe, including Britain and Germany, is one of the few regions that hasn’t had fire at its heart. Northern Europeans viewed open fire as an aberration and a risk. "

"Our control of fire was a Pyrrhic — or pyric — victory. The forests got thicker. The climate got warmer. The fires got bigger. In the US, this has been linked to the rise in people living near the forest, people leaving cities like San Francisco for cheaper, more spacious housing. But in Europe, a contrasting trend is at play. In Portugal, Spain and Italy, people have been leaving the countryside for cities. Those that remain tend to be older. Small-scale farming, which helped limit the spread of wildfires, is no longer profitable. Plots of lands that produced olives or food for livestock have been taken over by trees. This forest regeneration has been seen as an environmental success story. But given the warming climate, it created a tinderbox."

"This is where prescribed burning comes in. Castellnou, the Catalan forest fire chief, likens it to a vaccine: “Just as in medicine, a vaccine contains the same disease to create resistance. We need to vaccinate our forests.” Prescribed fires are generally carried out in the cooler months, when the vegetation is packed with water, so that the fire can be brought under control. "

"In North America, wildfires have damaged areas that were meant to serve as carbon offsets. In Europe too. “Nowadays, there’s this movement to plant trees to store carbon, which I think is another mistake because they will burn, at least in southern Europe and also progressively in northern Europe,” says Portugal’s Paulo Fernandes. “We cannot really trust forest plantations to store carbon.”"

We are facing #environmentalcrises, but pro-#environmentalaction is seriously lagging behind. Contrary to popular beliefs, we argue that this is not caused by people undervaluing the environment but rather by people structurally underestimating how much others care. Only through showing that many do value the environment will we inspire society-wide pro-#environmental action.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2019.08.002