Tag: environment

‘We’re moving to higher ground’: America’s era of climate mass migration is here

rjzimmerman:

Excerpt:

“I was sloshing through the water [in Charleston SC] with my puppy dog, debris was everywhere,” she said. “I feel completely sunken. It would cost me around $500,000 to raise the house, demolish the first floor. I’m going to rent a place instead, on higher ground.”

Millions of Americans will confront similarly hard choices as climate change conjures up brutal storms, flooding rains, receding coastlines and punishing heat. Many are already opting to shift to less perilous areas of the same city, or to havens in other states. Whole towns from Alaska to Louisiana are looking to relocate, in their entirety, to safer ground.

The era of climate migration is, virtually unheralded, already upon America.

The population shift gathering pace is so sprawling that it may rival anything in US history. “Including all climate impacts it isn’t too far-fetched to imagine something twice as large as the Dustbowl,” said Jesse Keenan, a climate adaptation expert at Harvard University, referencing the 1930s upheaval in which 2.5 million people moved from the dusty, drought-ridden plains to California.

This enormous migration will probably take place over a longer period than the Dustbowl but its implications are both profound and opaque. It will plunge the US into an utterly alien reality. “It is very difficult to model human behaviour under such extreme and historically unprecedented circumstances,” Keenan admits.

By the end of this century, sea level rise alone could displace 13 million people, according to one study, including 6 million in Florida. States including Louisiana, California, New York and New Jersey will also have to grapple with hordes of residents seeking dry ground.

“There’s not a state unaffected by this,” said demographer Mat Hauer, lead author of the research, which is predicated on a severe 6ft sea level increase. There are established migration preferences for some places – south Florida to Georgia, New York to Colorado – but in many cases people would uproot to the closest inland city, if they have the means.

‘We’re moving to higher ground’: America’s era of climate mass migration is here

afloweroutofstone:

humansofnewyork:

“I’m from Basra.  In the seventies we were the economic capital of Iraq.  It was beautiful once.  The only city with two rivers.  We had one million people but ten million palm trees.  In those days everyone was optimistic.  Our oil reserves were better than the Saudis.  We assumed the oil would be invested, and that our lives would keep getting better.  But our leaders failed us.  It was war after war.  Without all the fighting, things could have really been great.  But the palm trees are gone now.  There’s no potable water.  We have a shortage of electricity.  Healthcare is very poor, and cancer is everywhere because the Americans used radioactive bombs.  Our whole land is contaminated.  The food that comes from the soil is poison.  But please visit, you’ll be welcome.  The people are friendly.  You’ll be met with hospitality.  We understand that governments are the warmongers.  You’re victims just like us.”
(Cairo, Egypt)

The Guardian, 2014:

“US forces fired depleted uranium (DU) weapons at civilian areas and troops in Iraq in breach of official advice meant to prevent unnecessary suffering in conflicts, a report has found.

Coordinates revealing where US jets and tanks fired nearly 10,000 DU rounds in Iraq during the war in 2003 have been obtained by the Dutch peace group Pax. This is the first time that any US DU firing coordinates have been released, despite previous requests by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Iraqi government.

According to PAX’s report, which is due to be published this week, the data shows that many of the DU rounds were fired in or near populated areas of Iraq, including As Samawah, Nasiriyah and Basrah. At least 1,500 rounds were also aimed at troops, the group says.

This conflicts with legal advice from the US Air Force in 1975 suggesting that DU weapons should only be used against hard targets like tanks and armoured vehicles, the report says. This advice, designed to comply with international law by minimising deaths and injuries to urban populations and troops, was largely ignored by US forces, it argues.”

The Guardian, 2013:

[Hans] Von Sponeck [’former UN assistant secretary general and UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq’] said that US political pressure on WHO had scuppered previous investigations into the impact of DU on Iraq:

“I served in Baghdad and was confronted with the reality of the environmental impact of DU. In 2001, I saw in Geneva how a WHO mission to conduct on-spot assessments in Basra and southern Iraq, where depleted uranium had led to devastating environmental health problems, was aborted under US political pressure.”

Trump opens up popular Minnesota wilderness area to mining

zooophagous:

rjzimmerman:

Minnesota people, time to make ever louder noises. This is terrible. (Notice the conflict of interest, or duality of interest, or bullshit politician-rich person backscratching, described in the last paragraph of the excerpt.)

ELY, MN – OCTOBER 7: A CANOE RESTS IN SHALLOW WATER AT THE MUDRO LAKE ACCESS POINT IN THE BOUNDARY WATERS CANOE AREA OCTOBER 7, 2005 NEAR ELY, MINNESOTA. (PHOTO BY JEFFREY PHELPS/GETTY IMAGES)

Excerpt:

Trump administration officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced in a quietly released statement on Thursday that 234,000 acres of land near a popular Minnesota wilderness area will officially open to mining.

“Interested companies now may soon be able to lease minerals in the watershed in the Superior National Forest,” the USDA said in its announcement, noting that it had removed a “major obstacle” to mining in Minnesota’s Rainy River Watershed. The watershed sits next to the popular Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in the northeastern part of the state.

Critics, however, say this decision ignores “science and facts” because the department did not conduct an adequate study into the environmental, social, and economic impacts that may occur as a result of lifting a temporary suspension on mining in the area.

The Boundary Waters area is a hugely popular wilderness area with over 1,000 lakes, providing more than 1,000 miles of canoe routes and numerous hiking trails. According to a group of environmental organizations that are currently suing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke over the issue, pollution from sulfide-ore copper mining could harm water quality and the region’s ecology. Impacts on tourism, a key economic driver for the area, would also be a risk, they argue.

The news comes after President Donald Trump said during a June rally in Duluth, Minnesota that he wanted to keep large portions of land within the state’s Superior National Forest — where the Boundary Waters recreation area is located — open to mining. These areas were set to be banned to industry activities under the Obama administration.Trump’s statement followed a decision issued by the Interior Department in May to reinstate two expired federal mineral leases held by Twin Metals Minnesota for sulfide-ore copper mining.

The foreign-owned company is pursuing a copper-nickel project in the area and stands to benefit from the administration’s promise to reverse an Obama-era decision restricting industrial access from hundreds of thousands of acres in the national forest. The company’s owner also happens to be leasing a house to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in Washington, D.C.’s Kalorama neighborhood.

Friendly reminder that lots of people in charge will let you die in a toxic hole as long as they get paid. They don’t give a shit about anyone but their own interests. They don’t “get you” or even care if you and yours live or die.

Trump opens up popular Minnesota wilderness area to mining

Brett Kavanaugh’s Record Sets A Dangerous Precedent On Endangered Species

rjzimmerman:

Excerpt:

An analysis of Kavanaugh’s 12-year record on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit finds that he has consistently ruled against measures to protect species. In the 18 significant, species-related suits that have come before Kavanaugh, he’s decided against protections in 17― or about 95 percent of the time.  

This analysis comes from William Snape, an assistant dean at American University’s Washington College of Law and senior counsel with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). The group is supporting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in an Endangered Species Act case set to go before the Supreme Court this October, one that advocates say could have a lasting impact on species protections.

In Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the world’s largest timber company is challenging a federal decision to designate 1,544 acres of land in Louisiana as critical habitat for the dusky gopher frog, of which only 100 or so are left in the wild. Recently-retired Justice Anthony Kennedy was a centrist whose swing vote sometimes landed environmental cases like Weyerhaeuser in favor of protection. But Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the court would give it an even stronger 5-4 pro-business majority, dramatically stacking the odds against species in future decisions.

In writing the Endangered Species Act as it did in 1973, Congress largely deferred to the expertise of the Interior Department in protecting endangered species, said Snape. But Kavanaugh’s past decisions have tended to ignore that, particularly in cases that affect how private land can be developed.

Snape argues that such judgements are in line with Kavanaugh’s arch-conservative political beliefs, which prioritize property rights above all else.

“I would say that it’s a hostility towards public interest science and the notion that there actually are any limits to economic growth,” said Snape. “He just never ― almost never ― disagrees with those corporate legal arguments.”

Kavanaugh’s past votes display a “striking pattern of deciding against the interest of the species,” said Sarah Krakoff, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. “There is no pattern of either deferring or not deferring to the government,” added Krakoff. “The pattern really is that whoever is asking for more protection for the species loses.”

Brett Kavanaugh’s Record Sets A Dangerous Precedent On Endangered Species

Seriously though, the elementary school I went to was built on top of the “reclaimed” old town dump. Closed in IIRC the late ‘40s, so it’s not like there were any restrictions on what got put in there either.

Come back a few years later, and what a conveniently located big flattish piece of ground to put a new school on! 😵

That particular decision at least seemed to have less to do with any specific inequality factors locally, and more that it was the ’50s when dumb shit like that was pretty much normal. Still hard to believe that anyone ever thought that was a reasonable plan.

But, my mom was part of the first group to go there. They opened it when she was in like 3rd grade. At that point, teachers regularly had to chase kids off from messing with the weird pools of seepage around the playground and the remaining rats hanging around the place.

There was/still is also some nasty industrial pollution in the area, but several of the kids she was in elementary school with died from assorted cancers before they even got out of high school. Never mind later on. Even with the baby boom that prompted them to build a couple of new schools in the first place, it wasn’t a large school population. We’re talking about a relatively small town.

Thankfully the obvious ooze and the rats were long gone around 30 years later, when I ended up there too. Though grass still wasn’t growing right around the playground/field area. It’s probably not going to be a particularly healthy environment for a very long time still, of course.

And this shit still isn’t nearly as uncommon as it should be, without even having ignorance to fall back on as an excuse for decades.

Florida Manatee: 10% of Population Could Be Wiped Out This Year

rjzimmerman:

Mom and baby West Indian manatees in Three Sisters Springs, Florida. James R.D. Scott / Getty Images

Excerpt:

2018 has not been a good year for Florida’s iconic manatees. A total of 540 sea cows have died in the last eight months, surpassing last year’s total of 538 deaths, according to figures posted Monday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

The figure will likely climb higher before the year’s end amid the state’s ongoing toxic algae crisis. The red tide in the state’s southwest is the known or suspected cause of death for 97 manatees as of Aug. 12, the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission recently reported.

Combined with the winter cold spell, which claimed 69 manatees, more than 10 percent of the state’s estimated manatee population of around 6,300 individuals could be wiped out this year, PEER noted.

The 540 reported deaths is also the second highest total in a decade. The deadliest year on record was 2013, when 830 Florida manatees perished. A third of those deaths were also linked to red tide.

Other threats to the gentle giants include blue-green algal blooms along Florida’s east coast as well as boat strikes, which resulted in 75 manatee deaths, according to Save the Manatee Club.

“Florida’s manatees have no defense against this ecological disaster,” said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch in a statement, noting that red tides and algal blooms poison both manatees and their food supplies. “Florida’s steadily declining water quality is a death warrant for the manatee.”

Last year, the West Indian manatee was downlisted from “endangered” to “threatened” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Conservationists felt that the downgrade came too soon.

“We believe this is a devastating blow to manatees,” Patrick Rose, executive director of Save the Manatee Club, said in a statement then. “A federal reclassification at this time will seriously undermine the chances of securing the manatee’s long-term survival. With the new federal administration threatening to cut 75 percent of regulations, including those that protect our wildlife and air and water quality, the move to downlist manatees can only be seen as a political one.”

Florida Manatee: 10% of Population Could Be Wiped Out This Year

myceliorum:

dustbeams:

thelady-gofuckyourself:

fleur-de-maladie:

dreaming-moreorless:

bustysaintclair:

exeggcute:

california anti-drought measures are always like “take shorter showers! consider brushing your teeth with the sink turned off” and never mention the fact that nestle is bottling all of our fucking water and selling it to people who live in areas with plenty of water

It’s like the Irish potato “famine” I stg

In California, residential use only accounts for 4% of total water use. Industrial use is 80%.

Source:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/california-fast-running-out-water-blame-it-big-ag

This is true of any resource. Yes turning your lights off will save you a but of money. But industry wastes far more electricity than you. Yes recycling your garbage is good. But companies, like the retail chain i work at produce far more garbage than you ever could and do not recycle it at all.

Turning natural resource and environmental crises into individual responsibility is form of class warfare so fucking insidious

Honestly just burn every company to the ground or cut them off from electricity and water systems

Tax them heavily for their usage
Make recycling mandatory or theyre fined
Oh im sorry am i stepping all over your precious free market
I hope to choke it out

Word

“Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet?

Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans….People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.” – Derrick Jensen (author & environmentalist)

California has been mishandling water since it’s been California and too many of the people there with the most power to stop it are too fucking busy living in a dream world where you can solve shit like this by throwing enough money, braininess, or weird spiritual shit at it. Meanwhile Okies like my family have been warning about this pretty much since we fucking arrived in the state (we were fleeing a huge man-made natural disaster after all and could see the signs) and heard crickets. Not that I have any personal stake in this with family from all over Kern and Tulare counties or anything…

dustbeams:

thelady-gofuckyourself:

fleur-de-maladie:

dreaming-moreorless:

bustysaintclair:

exeggcute:

california anti-drought measures are always like “take shorter showers! consider brushing your teeth with the sink turned off” and never mention the fact that nestle is bottling all of our fucking water and selling it to people who live in areas with plenty of water

It’s like the Irish potato “famine” I stg

In California, residential use only accounts for 4% of total water use. Industrial use is 80%.

Source:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/california-fast-running-out-water-blame-it-big-ag

This is true of any resource. Yes turning your lights off will save you a but of money. But industry wastes far more electricity than you. Yes recycling your garbage is good. But companies, like the retail chain i work at produce far more garbage than you ever could and do not recycle it at all.

Turning natural resource and environmental crises into individual responsibility is form of class warfare so fucking insidious

Honestly just burn every company to the ground or cut them off from electricity and water systems

Tax them heavily for their usage
Make recycling mandatory or theyre fined
Oh im sorry am i stepping all over your precious free market
I hope to choke it out

Word

“Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet?

Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans….People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.” – Derrick Jensen (author & environmentalist)

Can We Grow One of the World’s Largest Food Crops Without Fertilizer?

plantyhamchuk:

HOLY SH*T. THEY FOUND NITROGEN-FIXING CORN BRED BY INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN MEXICO. @botanyshitposts​

“The study found the Sierra Mixe corn obtains 28 to 82 percent of its nitrogen from the atmosphere. To do this, the corn grows a series of aerial roots. Unlike conventional corn, which has one or two groups of aerial roots near its base, the nitrogen-fixing corn develops eight to ten thick aerial roots that never touch the ground.

During certain times of the year, these roots secrete a gel-like substance, or mucilage. The mucilage provides the low-oxygen and sugar-rich environment required to attract bacteria that can transform nitrogen from the air into a form the corn can use.

image

“Our research has demonstrated that the mucilage found in this Sierra Mixe corn forms a key component of its nitrogen fixation,“ said co-author Jean-Michel Ané, professor of agronomy and bacteriology in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at UW–Madison. “We have shown this through growth of the plant both in Mexico and Wisconsin.”

…

“

Researchers are a long way from developing a similar nitrogen-fixing trait for commercial corn, but this is a first step to guide further research on that application. The discovery could lead to a reduction of fertilizer use for corn, one of the world’s major cereal crops. It takes 1 to 2 percent of the total global energy supply to produce fertilizer. The energy-intensive process is also responsible for 1 to 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“

I’ve written about this before, this is one of those ‘saving the planet’ levels of discovery. No joke.

Corn’s heavy need for nitrogen is also why it’s traditionally been grown together with nitrogen-fixing beans. Often as part of something like a Three Sisters plan, which further helps prevent erosion among other benefits.

That gets trickier with modern commercial monocropping (with its number of other environmental drawbacks). But, it’s possible to get some of the same benefits just from using a nitrogen-fixing cover crop between corn seasons. That can apparently provide about half the nitrogen the corn requires, along with other nutrients.

(For that matter, how much might fertilizer requirements be reduced by combining strategies, and growing a variety like this along with other nitrogen-fixing crops?)

Don’t get me wrong; this corn variety sounds really interesting, and that could be useful in developing other varieties which need less added nitrogen fertilizers for monocropping. And of course biodiversity is super important. (Related: Once Mexico Had a Wealth of Corn; Now It’s Left With a Genetically Boring Monocrop)

But, there are already other ways to approach this problem. Many of those also starting with paying attention to the folks who really know corn, with a history of growing it extensively in more sustainable ways.

And have not tended to grow it as a monocrop, I have to say again. I’m really not that optimistic about the overall results from using the same large-scale commercial growing techniques, but with nifty “new” varieties in hopes of environmental harm reduction.

Can We Grow One of the World’s Largest Food Crops Without Fertilizer?