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Earth Matters: Melting glaciers risk freeing viruses; a land defender is murdered every two days [1]
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Date: 2022-10-20
WEEKLY ENVIRONMENTAL VIDEO
GREEN TAKES
Last month, a study in California found 65% of tested produce contained pesticide residues. In the past three decades, the use of pesticides around the planet has risen by 80%. According to Pesticide Atlas, pesticides poison 385 million people a year and kill 11,000 of them. Humans aren’t the only unintended victims. The populations of field birds and grassland butterflies have fallen by 30% since 1990.
That’s just a sprinkling of pesticides’ negative effects, which are prevalent everywhere, 60 years since Rachel Carson drew attention to the dangers in her book Silent Spring. At Civil Eats, Anna Lappé writes:
With pesticides still so rampant, what is the legacy of Silent Spring? How far have we come and how much farther do we have to go to realize the human right to healthy food, and to protect the rights of the farmers and farmworkers growing that food? To explore these questions, Civil Eats hosted a roundtable with some of the field’s leading voices. They include Mas Masumoto, a California organic peach farmer and author; his forthcoming memoir Secret Harvests is a tale of family farms and a history of secrets. Marcia Ishii is Senior Scientist at Pesticide Action Network of North America, where she has worked for 26 years as a senior scientist. Anne Frederick is a community organizer in Hawaii, working with communities impacted by agrochemical companies’ expansion. Sharon Lerner is an investigative journalist who has reported on pesticides, chemical regulation, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Sandra Steingraber is a biologist and author, who blends her gifts as a writer, storyteller, and scientist with advocacy.
In a report late last month, Global Witness concluded that between 2011 and 2021, at least 342 land defenders were murdered in Brazil alone. In 2021, worldwide, 200 more defenders were killed, the report states. These are almost certainly an undercount, given constraints on a free press and the lack of independent monitors in many regions of the world. The report states, “We know that beyond killings, many defenders and communities also experience attempts to silence them, with tactics like death threats, surveillance, sexual violence, or criminalization—and that these kinds of attacks are even less well reported.”
Indigenous people and environmental activists are in the front lines of the fight against the climate crisis and loss of biodiversity. That makes them targets of violence by loggers, ranchers, miners, factory farmers, and repressive governments.
Six months ago, another report, this one from the Business and Human Rights Resource Center, tracked 3,800 attacks since January 2015. These included murders, beatings, and death threats. But, as Grist reports, even those numbers don’t describe the full measure of the violence. “We know the problem is much more severe than these figures indicate,” said Christen Dobson, senior program manager for the BHRRC and an author of the report, when it was released.
Global Witness includes a list of the names of all 200 land defenders who were murdered in 2021.
ECO-TWEET
x What's "American" energy?
Is "American" energy generated ONLY by burning oil and coal?
Can "American" energy ONLY be generated by destroying the environment and dooming future generations?
Why can't American energy be renewable? Non-destructive? Clean?
https://t.co/VGw9hpKOvr — Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) October 18, 2022
ECOPINION
Keeping Climate Change Under Control Requires Six Times More Ambition. By Laura Millan Lombrana at Bloomberg Green. New promises by countries to reduce their carbon footprint will cut emissions by 7% from 2019 levels, falling short of the 43% reduction needed, according to a new study by World Resources Institute. In total, 81% of country climate plans, also known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs, set targets for renewable energy, but only 51 include measures related to consumption of fossil fuels, and just eight contemplate phasing out or phasing down fossil fuels. In similar fashion, national targets include measures to promote electric mobility, but shy away from critical measures to reduce transport emissions, which accounted for about 37% of human emissions globally in 2021, according to the International Energy Agency.
Kate Aronoff
The Climate Crisis Is Driving Poorer Nations to Desperate Measures. By Kate Aronoff at The New Republic. As the United States and the world lurch toward a recession, the poorest and most vulnerable countries face a seemingly impossible set of circumstances. The group of 58 climate-vulnerable countries, known as the V20, have lost 20% of their combined gross domestic product this century due to climate damages, according to a recent report. Meanwhile, these poorer countries also face rising food and commodity costs, the devastating effects of Covid-19, and ongoing vaccine apartheid. As the Federal Reserve moves to raise interest rates in the name of combating inflation, V20 nations appear to be reaching a breaking point. “The climate crisis is the debt crisis,” said Sara Jane Ahmed, finance advisor to the V20.
ECO-QUOTE
“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.” —Rachel Carson in The Sea Around Us (1961)
HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)
Most, least energy-efficient states named in WalletHub analysis. By Robert Walton at Utility Dive. The personal finance website calculated that Massachusetts is the most energy-efficient state and South Carolina is the least, according to new data analysis. Wallethub examined home and vehicle energy consumption data from government sources for its analysis. Rounding out the five most-efficient states in WalletHub’s analysis were New York, Rhode Island, Utah, and Vermont. California ranked 6th. On the other end, Alabama, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Mississippi were among the least efficient.
Nalleli Cobo
The Deadly Consequences of Urban Oil Drilling. By Mara Cavallaro at The Nation. Since she was 9 years old, Nalleli Cobo has been fighting to end environmental racism in Los Angeles, where 3.2 million people live near an oil or gas well. The story of University Park, the South Los Angeles neighborhood where Cobo grew up, echoes that of districts across the United States: St. John the Baptist Parish, La.; Laredo, Tex.; Laurel, Miss. All are predominantly Black or Latino communities, all are low-income, and all are sites of environmental racism, where corporations profit from industrial air pollution that kills. St. John Parish, the majority Black county in an 85-mile stretch of land unaffectionately nicknamed “Cancer Alley” for its unnaturally high levels of cancer diagnoses, is home to a manufacturing plant that emits neoprene, a carcinogen that causes nosebleeds, headaches, and tachycardia along with cancer. Industrial plants in Laredo and Laurel increase the risk of cancer to 18 times and 39 times the EPA’s acceptable levels, respectively. And Los Angeles is the single largest urban oil field in the nation.
E.V. Bonanza Flows to Red States That Denounce Biden Climate Policies. By Jack Ewing at The New York Times. States that voted for former Donald Trump will receive most of the grants announced by the White House on Wednesday to promote battery and raw material production in the United States, part of a broad effort to end dependence on China. Companies in 12 states will receive grants totaling $2.8 billion; all but four of those states voted for Trump in 2020. The grants were authorized by a bipartisan infrastructure law that President Biden signed in November. Likewise, five of the 10 states that will receive the most private investment related to electric vehicles voted for Trump, according to data compiled by the Zero Emission Transportation Association, an industry group. They include Tennessee, which is expected to receive $18 billion, more than any other state. Ideology has not prevented red-state politicians from trumpeting green investments in their districts.
Oceans are warming faster than ever. Here’s what could come next. By Brady Dennis at The Washington Post. The world’s oceans have been warming for generations, a trend that is accelerating and threatens to fuel more supercharged storms, devastate marine ecosystems, and upend the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, according to a new scientific analysis. Published this week in the journal Nature Reviews, it finds that the upper reaches of the oceans—roughly the top 2,000 meters, or just over a mile—have been heating up around the planet since at least the 1950s, with the starkest changes observed in the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. The authors of the review, who include scientists from China, France, the United States, and Australia, write that data shows the heating has both accelerated over time and increasingly has reached deeper and deeper depths.
A few of the thousands of wild horses the Bureau of Land Management rounds up each year for adoption and the slaughterhouse.
A herd of wild horses just moved into this iconic California destination. No one knows what comes next. By Kurtis Alexander at the San Francisco Chronicle. Only over the past few years have the horses become a familiar sight in the eastern Sierra. They’ve pushed west from their historical stomping grounds in and around the White Mountains on the state’s remote border with Nevada toward a handful of California communities. Scientists and land managers aren’t sure why they made the move. Finding food and water in a time of drought is believed to be one of the reasons. Whatever the case, their arrival has begun to stir both wonder and worry among those living in the Highway 395 corridor on the Sierra Nevada’s eastern edge. “It’s kind of cool because we’ve never seen the horses so close to town before,” said Margie Beaver, a longtime resident of Lee Vining (Mono County) who has witnessed dozens of horses congregating in front of the famous tufa towers at Mono Lake. “But you really got to think about the impact they have.”
Drought bill would tax Arizona water used by Saudi cows. By Jennifer Yachnin at E&E News PM. Saudi Arabian dairy cows reliant on green alfalfa grown in Arizona might spit out their cud when they see the new tax bill proposed by Democratic Reps. Ruben Gallego and Raúl Grijalva. In a bid to curb groundwater pumping in the drought-stricken state, the Democrats on Tuesday introduced legislation that would impose a 300 percent excise tax on water-intensive crops grown in areas experiencing at least 6-months of drought and shipped overseas. The "Domestic Water Protection Act of 2022," H.R. 9194, is aimed at Saudi Arabia's largest dairy company and its subsidiary Fondomonte, which grows alfalfa in western Arizona for export. The Arizona Republic first reported in June that the company pumps at least 18,000 acre-feet of water from an aquifer on state lands that is designated as a future water source for Phoenix and its suburbs.
ECO-LINKS
• Climate Role Model Sweden’s New Leader Axes 35-year-old Environment Ministry • New Jersey Sues 5 Oil Giants, Industry Lobby for Climate Fraud • Bees face many challenges—and climate change is ratcheting up the pressure • Airlines Are Misleading Flyers With Carbon-Neutral Claims, Study Says • The Field Report: Morality at the Center of Supreme Court Arguments Over Raising Farmed Pigs in Crates • US Renewable Power Set to Get More Than 20% Boost From New Climate Law • There Is No “Doomsday Glacier” • Gas Utility Proposes Costly Hydrogen Project, Raising Environmental Justice Concerns • Shell Closes UK Hydrogen Filling Stations as EVs Dominate
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