rjzimmerman

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this essay from Sierra Club:

I’ve spent years encouraging people to ditch single-use plastic. Probably the most egregious example of single-use plastic is bottled water: The bottles are made from fossil fuels, the water filling them is often taken from communities and ecosystems that need it, and the pollution created when they’re disposed of will outlast all of us.

So when I heard that people were getting excited about the Stanley cup—a durable, reusable alternative to bottled water—at first it seemed like a victory. Stanley drinkware has been around for decades, mostly marketed as a rugged brand for workmen and outdoorsmen. But recently the company repackaged its signature products in a rainbow of colors and began marketing to women, positioning itself as a lifestyle brand for people headed to the carpool line or yoga class. Stanley’s collaborations with influencers sparked a storm of social media buzz, with people rushing to snatch up the latest limited edition and amassing collections of the colorful tumblers. The excitement over the Stanley cup grew into a fad—and that fad has become costly for the planet.

Unfortunately, Stanley cups are far from the only eco-conscious product to get corrupted by consumerism. Earth Day is just around the corner, and my inbox is currently filling up with Earth Day promotions from nearly every company that’s gotten ahold of my email address.

A few months ago, I bought a new pair of organic cotton pants from a company that uses minimal packaging and donates to conservation. I loved the fit and felt good about my purchase. But now that it’s almost Earth Day, this eco-conscious company is trying to make me believe that the only way to help the planet is to buy another pair of pants. By commercializing Earth Day, we’ve missed the point.

It's like this every year. Earth Day has become another “Hallmark holiday” marked by special sales and promotions, just another excuse to get people to spend money on things they don’t really need. Somehow, it’s even become an opportunity to shower kids with gifts. An HGTV article published last year promotes “20 Buys to Help Kids Celebrate Earth Day Every Day.” The gift suggestions range from wooden toys and organic cotton tees to kid-sized gardening tools and animal-adorned dinnerware made from bamboo.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a junior gardening kit or bamboo dinnerware. In fact, many of the ideas on these lists are better-than-average products in terms of environmental impact. Anything that gets kids interacting with the environment is better than cheap, plastic indoor toys; if you’re in the market for durable plates your kids can’t break, looking for sustainable materials is a good call. The problem is that we’re being sold a myth that shopping is the solution to our environmental crises.

The first Earth Day was a call to action against rampant air and water pollution. Twenty million people took part in demonstrations across the United States, and the movement led to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency and some of our country’s strongest environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. There were rallies and teach-ins around the country. People talked about the connections between environmental health and poverty, population pressure and pesticides. There were gardening workshops and automobile burials. It was a political, radical, and joyous event. No one went home with a swag bag full of face creams in recyclable jars and bamboo plates for the kids.

Earth Day has been watered down from a revolutionary moment that recognized shared values and the common threat of environmental harm to a day that’s little more than a social media hashtag like National Siblings Day or National Ice Cream Day. No amount of sustainable Earth Day purchases can buy our way out of the climate crisis or protect endangered species from extinction.

When environmental action is defined by the types of products we buy, we’ve really lost the plot.

#Earth Day #consumerism

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from DeSmog Blog:

With its unparalleled purchasing power and exacting demands, fast food has long shaped agricultural systems in the United States, Europe, and China. But as major American fast food brands, like KFC, expand into so-called “frontier markets,” taxpayer-funded development banks have made their global expansion possible by underwriting the factory farms that supply them with chicken, a DeSmog investigation has found. 

In all, the investigation identified five factory-scale poultry companies in as many countries that have received financial support from the International Finance Corporation (IFC, the private-sector lending arm of the World Bank Group), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), or both since 2003, and that supply chicken to KFC. A sixth company has benefited from IFC advisory services but has not received financing. 

A review of press accounts, financial disclosures, and the companies’ websites shows this support aided these firms’ KFC-linked operations in up to 13 countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe. 

In Kazakhstan, both banks helped a Soviet-era poultry factory become a KFC supplier. In 2011, the IFC lent poultry company Ust-Kamenogorsk Poultry (UKPF) invested $2 million in refurbishing housing for chickens, among other projects. In 2016, the EBRD made a $20 million equity investment in the company’s parent, Aitas, to finance the construction of a new facility to raise and process poultry. In 2018, two years after announcing the financing deal, UKPF revealed it had become a supplier to KFC in Kazakhstan. The EBRD sold its stake in the company in 2019. 

In South Africa, the IFC helped one KFC supplier bolster its operations across the region. In 2013, the bank loaned Country Bird Holdings $25 million to expand existing operations in South Africa, Botswana, and Zambia. Country Bird supplies KFC in all three countries, as well as Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Three years later, in 2016, Country Bird also became KFC’s sole franchisee in Zambia.

In Jordan, the EBRD’s technical support and a 2015 loan worth up to $21 million helped poultry company Al Jazeera Agricultural Company upgrade its facilities and expand its retail presence. Al Jazeera claims to produce half the country’s restaurant-sold chicken. It includes the local franchisees of KFC and Texas Chicken (known by its original name, Church’s Chicken, in the U.S.) as clients. 

With this Global North-financed fast-food expansion comes a host of environmental, social, and health concerns in regions often unprepared to field them.

“It’s so clear that these investments are not consistent with any coherent notion of sustainable development,” Kari Hamerschlag, deputy director for the food and agriculture program at Friends of the Earth US, told DeSmog. 

Providing Financial Security for Fast Food Suppliers 

Both the IFC and the EBRD are financed primarily by the governments of developed countries for the benefit of developing countries. The IFC was founded in 1956 under the umbrella of the World Bank Group to stimulate developing economies by lending directly to businesses. Founded in 1991, the EBRD was formed to support Eastern Europe’s transition to a market economy. Since then, it has extended its geographic reach to include other regions. 

Development banks often finance companies and projects in regions that more risk-averse commercial banks tend to avoid. The idea is to help grow a company’s operations and lower the risk for private sector investors. 

Both of these development banks’ investments cover a range of sectors, including manufacturing, education, agribusiness, energy, and tourism. Because large agro-processors, such as poultry companies, can transform bushel upon bushel of local crops into more valuable products, like meat, they make especially attractive clients. 

The world’s largest restaurant company, U.S.-based Yum! Brands, owns KFC, and calls the fried chicken powerhouse, which oversees more than 30,000 locations across the globe, a “major growth engine.” 

#development banks #fast food #food production #agriculture #farming

[rjzimmerman]

#California condor chicks #Youtube

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the Associated Press (AP):

More than 80 years ago, a beautiful butterfly called Xerces Blue that once fluttered among San Francisco’s coastal dunes went extinct as stately homes, museums and parks ate up its habitat, marking the first butterfly species in the United States to disappear due to human development.

But thanks to years of research and modern technology a close relative of the shimmery iridescent butterfly species has been reintroduced to the dunes in Presidio National Park in San Francisco. Dozens of Silvery Blue butterflies — the closest living relatives of the Xerces Blue — were released in the restored habitat last week, officials said Monday.

Scientists with San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences utilized the Academy’s genetic sequencing capabilities and analyzed Xerces Blue specimens in their vast collection to confirm a group of Silvery Blues in Monterey County, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of San Francisco, could successfully fill the ecological gap left by the Xerces Blue.

“This isn’t a Jurassic Park-style de-extinction project, but it will have a major impact,” said Durrell Kapan, a senior research fellow and the lead Academy researcher on the project. “The Silvery Blue will act as an ecological ‘stand-in’ for the Xerces Blue, performing the same ecosystem functions as both a pollinator and a critical member of the food web.”

#Presidio National Park #Xerces Blue butterfly #Silvery Blue butterflies

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from EcoWatch:

If you’ve ever listened to “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors, you know that before any music from instruments begins, there is the sound of heavy rain and thunder, giving the song an ambience created by the “music” of nature. Likewise, about halfway through “Blackbird” by The Beatles, the sound of a male blackbird singing adds the inimitable chorus of the natural world to the melody.

As much as nature’s music has been sampled and added to songs over the history of modern music, its symphony of sounds have never been credited or given royalties.

Sounds Right is a new Museum for the United Nations – UN Live initiative that will allow artists who use sounds from the natural environment in their recordings to credit “NATURE” as a featured artist on streaming platforms like Spotify and give a portion of the royalties to conservation, a press release from the UN said.

“Sounds Right is a groundbreaking music movement. It unites people around the world in a shared commitment, recognizing the intrinsic value of nature. Together, we must act now to protect our planet for our common future,” said Melissa Fleming, UN under-secretary-general for global communications, in the press release.

With the goal of starting a global conversation about nature’s value, the platform will give millions of music listeners the chance to take action to help our planet.

An international mix of artists have already joined Sounds Right and released or mixed tracks that include Earth sounds to Spotify’s “Feat. NATURE” playlist, including Brian Eno, Ellie Goulding, AURORA, MØ, Anuv Jain and Bomba Estéreo.

#nature sounds #Sounds Right

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

The four western states that have traditionally exported large amounts of electricity generated with fossil fuels to neighboring states are poised to draw tens of billions of dollars by exporting clean energy across state lines, but only if the region can successfully expand the vast network of interstate transmission lines needed to distribute the electricity, according to a new study released Wednesday by RMI, the clean energy research and advocacy group.

At stake is a market for electricity from Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Montana that could grow to nearly $50 billion by 2050 or dwindle to just $3 billion if more transmission lines aren’t built. The economic impacts could be far-reaching, not just for those four states, but the entire Western U.S. If the entire region was able to coordinate interstate transmission lines, for example, it could reduce the cost of shifting to a carbon-free grid by 30 percent, according to the report, saving billions of dollars for ratepayers across the West and enabling states to better meet their clean energy goals. 

“The larger area you plan over, the larger the savings,” said Tyler Farrell, a senior associate at RMI’s carbon-free electricity program and co-author of the study. 

Renewable energy projects are booming in the West, with vast solar fields, wind farms and other clean energy technologies coming online or being proposed across the region. The Biden administration has said the 245 million acres of public lands overseen by the Bureau of Land Management are key to the nation’s energy transition away from fossil fuels, with rules in place to streamline development. 

But getting more clean energy to where it’s needed isn’t just a matter of building more facilities to generate it—it also requires new transmission lines to distribute the electricity, and as the RMI study found, potentially sell the excess to the highest bidder.

Transmission lines are the backbone of the grid, acting as highways that connect the source of electricity to where it is used. With remote solar and wind farms developing over vast expanses far from existing transmission infrastructure, building new lines is critical to the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels, and one of the biggest obstacles to the adoption of more clean energy in the U.S., especially in the West, where interstate lines need to cross vast stretches of federal, state, municipal, tribal and private lands, and can often run into the challenging permitting processes and pushback from those living along a project’s route.

As fossil fuel plants go offline, space opens up on transmission lines for renewables. But that won’t satisfy growing electricity demand, such as from AI data centers and charging stations for electric vehicles, or connect renewable energy projects that are being built in places where transmission lines don’t yet exist.

#renewable energy #electricity transmission lines

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

The mass timber industry’s promise of low carbon emissions through state-of-the-art laminated wood products has resulted in steady adoption across a construction industry long bogged down by high emissions and habitat destruction. 

But its growth prospects in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where hardwood trees predominate, have been less certain because cross-laminated timber (CLT), a type of mass timber used in place of concrete and steel, has traditionally been sourced almost entirely from softwood lumber. Over the next few years, that could change through research being done at Michigan Technological University into new resins that will allow hardwoods to be used in making cross-laminated timber. 

“I couldn’t put a number on when it is going to be on the market,” Mark Rudnicki, the director of the Hardwood Mass Timber Institute at Michigan Tech, said of hardwood cross-laminated timber. “But I don’t think it is good to characterize it as competing with softwood. I see this just as a diversification of wood as a building material. The point is that we want to use all of the biobased material that we can to replace carbon-intensive materials like concrete and steel.”

CLT is a form of mass timber, an artificially produced construction component made from layers of wood and resin that sticks them together. Making CLT is a relatively straight-forward process. Timber sheets are set out in one direction on a press, resin is added, then another sheet of wood is turned 90 degrees on top of it and set down. Repeat this process multiple times until you have a lasagna of wood held together with resin; the pressing machine squeezes it all together, producing a brick or panel. 

This process is ideal for creating large scale, prefabricated buildings at a fraction of the carbon emissions compared with traditional techniques. A 2022 review in the journal Sustainability cited studies which showed that replacing concrete or steel with CLT in mid-rise buildings can reduce manufacturing, transportation, and installation emissions by 13 to 26.5 percent, depending on how the project is designed. 

“The issue on hardwood versus softwood CLT is getting the manufacturing process right so that we develop a panel that can be certified as being a structurally sound panel,” said George H. Berghorn, a professor of construction management and sustainable wood construction at Michigan State University. 

#building materials #cross-laminated timber #trees #wood #Michigan

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

Reduced snow cover and vegetation shifts in the Alps, driven, to some degree, by climate change, are leading some mountain ecosystems to struggle to hold onto nutrients that feed vegetation, a new study shows.

The study, published in the journal Global Change Biology last month, shows that alpine ecosystems may have trouble retaining vital elements like nitrogen that are necessary for maintaining plant growth and biodiversity.

“It’s really added to the literature, arguing that it’s really important to understand the interaction among the different elements of an ecosystem and what the effects of climate change will be,” Olivier Dangles, author of the 2023 book Climate Change on Mountains, said of the study.

he warming of alpine grasslands, which is occurring at double the global average rate, is causing significant disruptions in the ecosystem functions of plants and soils. This accelerated warming is leading to significant decreases in snow cover and promoting the swift upward migration of small shrubs like heather.

The cycle of nitrogen between plants and soil microbes across seasons is vital for retention of the element in alpine ecosystems.

“The seasonal aspect is really important in these mountains, and climate change can really disrupt those seasonal processes,” said Arthur Broadbent, a researcher at the University of Manchester and the lead author of the study. “That can throw the ecosystem a little bit out of whack, and potentially lead to not being able to retain crucial nutrients like nitrogen as well as it could before.”

#alpine ecosystems #climate change

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

For the past two years, world leaders, economists and activists have called for sweeping overhauls to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that would make the two lending institutions more adept at combating climate change.

Discussions about how to reform lumbering multilateral bureaucracies can get tedious quickly. But ultimately the debates are all about money. How to make more money available for developing nations that are being battered by extreme weather? And how to make sure poor countries don’t spend too much money servicing their debt?

Experts estimate that at least $1 trillion a year is needed to help developing countries adapt to hotter temperatures and rising seas, build out clean energy projects and cope with climate disasters.

“For many countries, they will only be able to implement strong new climate plans if we see a quantum leap in climate finance this year,” Simon Stiell, the United Nations climate chief, said in a speech last week.

Starting in 2022, a burst of activity had made the prospect of such a quantum leap seem within reach.

Policymakers and economists gathered in Barbados and hashed out an ambitious reform agenda. The president of the World Bank stepped down after coming under fire for not doing enough to address climate change, and was replaced by an executive who promised to embrace climate work. Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, hosted a summit aimed at building momentum for the work.

But at the annual spring meetings of the World Bank and the I.M.F., which are taking place in Washington this week, reality is setting in.

While more money has become available to address climate issues over the last year or so, the sweeping reforms many had envisioned are proving to be out of reach.

Some of that is a process problem. Overhauling 80-year-old international institutions with complicated governance structures and tens of thousands of employees is no small task.

But much of the challenge comes back to money. So far, the countries that control the World Bank — including the United States, Germany, China and Japan — have not allocated huge new sums for climate issues in the developing world, and the private sector has not stepped in to fill the gap.

“The numbers do not show the kind of progress that we really need,” said Rachel Kyte, a visiting professor at Oxford and former World Bank executive. “We’ve got to get a little bit more radical.”

#climate change #climate mitigation finance #climate adaptation finance #climate finance

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

Carbon dioxide acts like Earth’s thermostat: The more of it in the air, the more the planet warms.

In 2023, global levels of the greenhouse gas rose to 419 parts per million, around 50 percent more than before the Industrial Revolution. That means there are roughly 50 percent more carbon dioxide molecules in the air than there were in 1750.

As carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, it traps heat and warms the planet.

According to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Monitoring Laboratory earlier this month, last year had the fourth-highest annual rise in global carbon dioxide levels.

How much carbon dioxide levels rise in a given year depends on two factors: the amount of fossil fuels burned globally, and the share of these emissions that are absorbed by the land and the ocean.

Consider the first factor: While it’s true that clean energy production is rising globally, so is the demand for energy.

Fossil fuels have made up the difference. This is why global fossil fuel emissions are still at record-high values (with a brief dip during the pandemic). And they stayed high in 2023, according to a projection by the Global Carbon Budget.

Not all of these emissions end up in the air. The ocean and land absorb roughly half of the carbon dioxide that humans emit, while the rest stays in the air, said Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research.

#carbon dioxide emissions #carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration #climate change

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the LA Times:

The California Fish and Game Commission has formally recognized the Mojave desert tortoise as endangered.

The designation, granted Thursday, is the latest in a long series of steps to try to protect the dwindling population of the desert creature, which biologists say is heading toward extinction.

The tortoise was designated as threatened under the California Endangered Species Act in 1989 and as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990. In 2020, Defenders of Wildlife, Desert Tortoise Council and Desert Tortoise Preserve petitioned to change the tortoise’s status to endangered, which would give it higher priority and funding for conservation measures such as habitat protection and recovery efforts.

The commission then granted temporary endangered species to the desert tortoise while it considered adding it permanently to the list.

A recovery plan was created in 1994, and then revised in 2011 after there were issues implementing the recovery strategies.

Between 2001 and 2020, population densities in tortoise conservation areas went down by an average of 1% per year in the Colorado Desert and Eastern Mojave Recovery units, according to a February 2024 California Department of Fish and Wildlife report.

The minimum density for the tortoises to remain viable is 3.9 adults per square kilometer, according to the report. Only 2 out of the 10 designated tortoise conservation areas currently meet that threshold.

Sadly, California’s state reptile — formally Gopherus agassizii — is hurtling toward extinction. Vehicle strikes, urban encroachment, hungry ravens, military maneuvers, disease, drought, extreme heat, wildfires, illegal marijuana grows and development of massive solar farms are all pushing the species to the brink.

The tortoises live in the rocky foothills north and west of the Colorado River in California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada. They feed on grasses, cacti, herbs and wildflowers.

They hibernate for up to nine months each year and are most active from March to June and September to October. The sleep pays a longevity dividend — the tortoises can live for 50 to 80 years.

#Mojave desert tortoise #California Endangered Species Act

[rjzimmerman]

Earth’s record hot streak might be a sign of a new climate era. (Washington Post)

The historic heat wave that besieged Mali and other parts of West Africa this month — which scientists say would have been “virtually impossible” in a world without human-caused climate change — is just the latest manifestation of a sudden and worrying surge in global temperatures. Fueled by decades of uncontrolled fossil fuel burning and an El Niño climate pattern that emerged last June, the planet this year breached a feared warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Nearly 19,000 weather stations have notched record high temperatures since January 1. Each of the last ten months has been the hottest of its kind.

The scale and intensity of this hot streak is extraordinary even considering the unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, researchers say. Scientists are still struggling to explain how the planet could have exceeded previous temperature records by as much as half a degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) last fall.

What happens in the next few months, said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, could indicate whether Earth’s climate has undergone a fundamental shift — a quantum leap in warming that is confounding climate models and stoking ever more dangerous weather extremes.

But even if the world returns to a more predictable warming trajectory, it will only be a temporary reprieve from the conditions that humanity must soon confront, Schmidt said. “Global warming continues apace.”

As soon as the planet entered an El Niño climate pattern — a naturally occurring phenomenon associated with warming in the Pacific Ocean — scientists knew it would start breaking records. El Niños are associated with spikes in Earth’s overall temperature, and this one was unfolding on a planet that has already warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels.

Yet this El Niño didn’t just break records; it obliterated them. Four consecutive days in July became the hottest days in history. The Northern Hemisphere saw its warmest summer — and then its warmest winter — known to science.

By the end of 2023, Earth’s average temperature was nearly 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the preindustrial average — and about 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than climate modelers predicted it would be, even taking El Niño into account.

Researchers have spent the past several months investigating possible explanations for that 0.2 C discrepancy: a volcanic eruption that spewed heat-trapping water vapor into the atmosphere, changes in shipping fuel that affected the formation of clouds that block the sun. So far, those factors can only account for a small fraction of the anomaly, raising fears that scientists’ models may have failed to capture a longer-lasting change in the climate system.

#climate change #heat waves #hot weather

[rjzimmerman]

Wyoming’s wolf-elimination policy leads to torture and darkness. (Washington Post)

There aren't many additional facts I learn when I read the next article and then next one and then the next one about the torture and slaughter of a wolf in Wyoming. According to media, millions of Americans are now royally pissed off at any official of Wyoming for tolerating this sort of behavior. Toss in the natural hatred that many non-hunters have toward hunters, and the royal piss-offness gets worse. If you're from Wyoming, shame the people who are responsible for this crap.

The species on the right is not human. Or if it's proven it is human, then said thing needs to be severely and conspicuously punished.

The alleged torture and killing of an adolescent female wolf earlier this year in Wyoming has brought international outrage, a demand that the perpetrator be incarcerated and policies reformed to prevent any more cruelty to predators.

When it comes to wolves in Wyoming, where wildlife is plentiful and people are scarce, it’s open season, 24/7/365. No license is required in “predator zones,” which cover 85 percent of the state. In 2021, the Republican-led legislature passed a law calling for the extermination of 90 percent of the state’s gray wolves. The state also protects hunters’ identities, thanks to a 2012 law passed after the harassment of an Idaho wolf hunter whose name had been posted online.

It’s not hard to see how such standards for killing could lead someone like Cody Roberts, 42, to think it would be fun to mow down an adolescent female wolf with a 600-pound snowmobile, then drag her through a bar in Daniel, Wyo., and then pose for photos. This is what Roberts allegedly did on the night of Feb. 29. He taped the agonized wolf’s jaws shut, shocked her repeatedly with a shock collar, according to witnesses, and then dragged her outside where he shot her.

Well, maybe not so easy for decent people to see. I’ve been trying to un-see for several days so I could bring myself to write about this barbarism. Videos and photographs quickly circulated around town and online, showing Roberts kneeling and grinning as he held up the suffering animal and a celebratory beer. Outraged animal-welfare activists worldwide have spread the word about Roberts and the obscene fate of a grievously wounded animal.

Yet Roberts was fined just $250 for illegal possession of “live, warm-blooded wildlife,” which — Hail, Mary — is against the law. I’m glad something is.

Nowhere near satisfied, animal-welfare groups are offering a $20,000 reward for anyone providing additional evidence to police and prosecutors that leads to Roberts spending at least one year in prison. Wayne Pacelle, president of the Center for a Humane Economy, also has given the poor wolf a name — Theia, for the Greek goddess of light, sight and prophecy — so that she will be remembered as a noble creature whose sacrifice will drive a movement toward more humane policies.

#Wyoming #wolves

[rjzimmerman]

Has the U.S. really conserved a third of its waters? Here’s the math. (Washington Post)

Almost everyone loves the ocean. But not everyone agrees on what it means to protect it.

The United States is conserving approximately one-third of the country’s ocean areas, according to an early analysis released Friday by the Biden administration — suggesting the president is meeting a key environmental goal laid out at the beginning of his term.

But others say that’s not the case.

Some of those areas still allow for commercial fishing, advocates say, and fall short of protections needed to save marine ecosystems facing dire threats.

“It’s padding the numbers,” said Brad Sewell, oceans director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The disagreement comes as the White House on Friday outlined how much progress the country has made in achieving President Biden’s ambitious goal of conserving at least 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.

The White House’s Council on Environmental Quality said its preliminary count — outlined in a newly released atlas — shows that approximately “one-third of U.S. marine areas are currently conserved.”

“We are making bold progress to conserve our ocean,” Rick Spinrad, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a statement.

Yet precisely what areas on the map should count as protected has been a subject of considerable debate.

The White House said a majority of that ocean expanse — 26 percent of U.S. waters — is officially designated as “marine protected areas,” where human activity is typically restricted to protect wildlife.

But that one-third tally also includes parts of the ocean where only a type of fishing called bottom trawling is banned to protect coral and other bottom-dwelling creatures from nets that scrape the seafloor. Other types of commercial fishing in those areas, which include swaths of ocean off New England and the Mid-Atlantic, are still allowed.

#ocean conservation #marine protected areas

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

As an independent candidate for the White House, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claims he would be the “best environment president in American history,” drawing on his past as a crusading lawyer who went after polluters in New York.

But dozens of Mr. Kennedy’s former colleagues at the Natural Resources Defense Council are calling on him to withdraw from the race, in full-page advertisements sponsored by the group’s political arm that are expected to appear in newspapers in six swing states on Sunday.

Separately, a dozen other national environmental organizations have issued an open letter calling Mr. Kennedy “ a “dangerous conspiracy theorist and a science denier” who promotes “toxic beliefs” on vaccines and on climate change.

People involved in both efforts maintain that Mr. Kennedy cannot win the presidency but could siphon votes away from President Biden and help elect former President Donald J. Trump, who has called climate change a hoax and promised to unravel environmental laws and policies.

“A vote for RFK Jr. is a vote to destroy that progress and put Trump back in the White House,” says the newspaper ad that will run in Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Signatories include John Hamilton Adams, who co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council and hired Mr. Kennedy in the 1980s, as well as past presidents and the group’s current president. They implore Mr. Kennedy to “Honor our planet, drop out.”

Mr. Kennedy was a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council for about 28 years, stepping down in 2014.

Former colleagues in environmental circles were unvarnished in their assessments of Mr. Kennedy.

“The Bobby I knew is gone,” said Dan Reicher, a senior energy researcher at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for Environment. Mr. Reicher worked with Mr. Kennedy at N.R.D.C. and said he had a decades-long personal friendship with Mr. Kennedy, including paddling rivers together in the United States and Chile.

Gina McCarthy was the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack Obama and then became president of N.R.D.C. during the Trump administration, only to return to national service as Mr. Biden’s climate adviser until last year.

“If folks remember him as an environmentalist, he is no more,” she said about Mr. Kennedy. “He’s against science, he’s against vaccines, he talks jibber jabber on climate. I don’t know what he stands for.”

#robert f kennedy jr

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

An estimated 20 million people in southern Africa are facing what the United Nations calls “acute hunger” as one of the worst droughts in more than four decades shrivels crops, decimates livestock and, after years of rising food prices brought on by pandemic and war, spikes the price of corn, the region’s staple crop.

Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe have all declared national emergencies.

It is a bitter foretaste of what a warming climate is projected to bring to a region that’s likely to be acutely affected by climate change, though scientists said on Thursday that the current drought is more driven by the natural weather cycle known as El Niño than by global warming.

Its effects are all the more punishing because in the past few years the region had been hit by cyclones, unusually heavy rains and a widening outbreak of cholera.

The rains this year began late and were lower than average. In February, when crops need it most, parts of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Angola, Mozambique and Botswana received a fifth of the typical rainfall.

#Africa #drought #hunger

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

Climate promises are hard to keep. Scotland is the latest, perhaps most surprising example.

Scotland, an early industrial power and coal-burning behemoth, was also an early adopter of an ambitious and legally binding government target to slow down climate change. It had promised to pare back its emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases by 75 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.

This week, its Net Zero minister, Màiri McAllan, said that goal was now “out of reach.” She said Scotland, which operates semi-autonomously from Britain, would scrap its annual targets for cutting emissions and instead review targets every five years.

That is a sharp contrast to the bullishness of the Scottish government in 2021, when diplomats from around the world gathered in Glasgow for international United Nations climate talks. At that time, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon called Scotland’s climate targets “not just amongst the most ambitious anywhere in the world — they are also amongst the toughest.”

The reversal shows how difficult it can be for governments to follow through on ambitious promises to slash emissions, despite the growing urgency to act as climate change rapidly warms the world and fuels extreme weather.

Emissions have already sharply fallen in Scotland. In 2021 they were 49 percent lower than they were in 1990. The problem is, that’s not fast enough to be on track with the government’s targets.

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