earthv02

[edwordsmyth]

Michael Hudson

[ghw-archive]

[rjzimmerman]

Corals are disappearing, pushing Earth to its first major ‘tipping point’

A new report says Earth has reached a dire milestone with the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs. It's not too late to save what rem

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

Global temperature rise may feel like it’s gradual, but the changes it brings can turn out to be sudden, massive, and self-reinforcing. These changes are what scientists call tipping points. When a tipping point is reached, an Earth system abruptly and dramatically changes, often irreversibly, like the Amazon rainforest turning into a savanna — a point of no return that is already perilously close.

But today, a group of 160 scientists from 23 countries is announcing that the planet has already reached its first major tipping point: the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs. That’s due primarily to rapidly rising marine temperatures — the seas have absorbed 90 percent of the excess heat we’ve created — but also the acidification that comes from more atmospheric CO2 interacting with water. (This interferes with corals’ ability to build the protective skeletons that form the complex structure of a reef.) Since the late 1980s, ocean surface warming has quadrupled. Accordingly, in the last half century, half of the world’s live coral cover has disappeared.

“We’re no longer talking about future tipping points — there’s one happening right now,” Steve Smith, a research impact fellow at the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute and a coauthor of the report, told Grist. “Although our governments are used to planning for incremental, slow change, things do seem to be speeding up.”

The more individual corals perish, the harder it gets for a reef to bounce back, destabilizing it and pushing it into a spiral of die-off. A quarter of all marine species rely on these bustling warm-water ecosystems — which cover some 350,000 square miles — but corals are bleaching as they release the symbiotic algae they need to harvest energy. Since 2023, more than 80 percent of the world’s reefs have suffered through the most widespread and intense bleaching event on record. Ever-higher acidification makes it even harder for corals to reproduce and then grow back from this kind of disturbance.

Coral reefs, then, are both ecologically and economically essential, yet civilization is woefully unprepared for them reaching this tipping point — to say nothing of the other looming tipping points, like the retreat of glaciers. “We are now in a new reality, and we can no longer rely on the institutions and policies designed for the old one,” Manjana Milkoreit, who researches global governance at University of Oslo and coauthored the report, said during a press conference announcing the findings.  

[theprofessional-amateur]

Well played Merriam-Webster.

“There is artificial intelligence, and there is actual intelligence” 🎤🫳

[rjzimmerman]

‘Listen to the cry of the Earth’: Pope Leo takes aim at climate change sceptics

Pontiff laments that some ‘ridicule those who speak of global warming’, days after Trump’s claims of ‘con job’

Excerpt from this story from The Guardian:

Pope Leo XIV has taken aim at people who “ridicule those who speak of global warming” as he embraced Pope Francis’s environmental legacy and made it his own in some of his strongest and most extensive comments on the subject to date.

Leo presided over the 10th-anniversary celebration of Francis’s landmark ecological encyclical, Laudato Si (Praised Be), at a global gathering south of Rome. The encyclical cast care for the planet as an urgent and existential moral concern and launched a global grassroots movement to advocate for caring for God’s creation and the peoples most harmed by its exploitation.

Leo told the estimated 1,000 representatives from environmental and Indigenous groups that they needed to put pressure on national governments to develop tougher standards to mitigate the damage already done. He said he hoped the upcoming UN climate conference “will listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor”.

He did not name names but history’s first American pope spoke just days after Donald Trump complained, with false statements, to the UN general assembly about the “con job” of global warming. Trump has long been a critic of climate science and polices aimed at helping to transition to green energies such as wind and solar power.

Leo quoted Francis’s follow-up encyclical, published in 2023, in which the Argentinian pope challenged world leaders before a UN conference to commit to binding targets to slow climate change before it was too late.

Citing Francis’s text, Leo recalled that some leaders had chosen to “deride the evident signs of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming and even to blame the poor for the very thing that affects them most”.

He called for a change of heart to truly embrace the environmental cause and said any Christian should be onboard.

“We cannot love God, whom we cannot see, while despising his creatures. Nor can we call ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ without participating in his outlook on creation and his care for all that is fragile and wounded,” he said, presiding on a stage that featured a large chunk of a melting glacier from Greenland and tropical ferns.

[maimonideznuts]

I think Australia actually had the best answer to the question "what do we do with phone booths?"

In Australia anybody can make free calls from any phone booth, also most phone booths also provide wi-fi.

So many people benefit, in so many situations.

The free phone booths have been so popular and important that new(fancy) phone booths are being installed.

Making phone booths a free public utility 👍

Ripping them out in the assumption that everyone has access to a phone or internet 👎

How free public payphones are proving to be a lifeline for thousands of Australians

There has been a sharp increase in calls to helplines and emergency services using the free calls service provided through public payphones

[earthv02]

Artwork by Ricardo Levins Morales

[earthv02]

Microplastics hinder plant photosynthesis, study finds, threatening millions with starvation

Researchers say problem could increase number of people at risk of starvation by 400m in next two decades

There are a lot of terrible things happening throughout the world at the moment, but this seems significant even amongst this news:

Extract from The Guardian:

The pollution of the planet by microplastics is significantly cutting food supplies by damaging the ability of plants to photosynthesise, according to a new assessment.

The analysis estimates that between 4% and 14% of the world’s staple crops of wheat, rice and maize is being lost due to the pervasive particles. It could get even worse, the scientists said, as more microplastics pour into the environment.

About 700 million people were affected by hunger in 2022. The researchers estimated that microplastic pollution could increase the number at risk of starvation by another 400 million in the next two decades, calling that an “alarming scenario” for global food security.

[grahamkennedy-deactivated202411]

“Australia Day” is almost over and I haven’t even seen the photo of Burnum Burnum planting the Aboriginal flag on the cliffs of Dover and claiming Britain for the Indigenous people of Australia on my dash yet

[ur-daily-inspiration]

[soberscientistlife]

[1000rh]

The concept [“the common”] is so overloaded you might think that it’s empty, but you’d be wrong. The common usually refers to an orientation toward life and value unbound by concepts of property as constituted by division and ownership. It reframes public as something generally accessible for use. It also points to the world both as a finite resource that is easily depleted and spoiled and, in addition, as an inexhaustible fund of human consciousness or creativity. At the same time, at the moment of this writing, the proclamation of “the common,” what it works to manifest, is always political and invested in being inconvenient to the reproduction of power, with aspirations to decolonize actual social and economic spaces that have been weaponized by empire, capitalism, and power over land rights. This means that the commons is incoherent, like all powerful concepts.

– Lauren Berlant, On the Inconvenience of Other People (2022)

[xanaxfarts]

‘Polluted Water Popsicles’ (2017) by: Hung I-chen, Guo Yi-hui & Chen Yu-ti

Addressing the issue of water pollution, the artists collected samples from 100 locations across Taiwan, first freezing the liquids and then preserving their creations in resin.

[rjzimmerman]

Over 100 countries want an ambitious plastics treaty. Oil-producing nations are getting in the way.

“If it wasn’t for Saudi and Russia we would have reached an agreement here.”

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

What was supposed to be the final round of United Nations negotiations for a global plastics treaty ended without an agreement on Sunday, as delegates failed to reconcile opposing views on whether to impose a cap on plastic production.

Another negotiating session — dubbed INC-5.2 after this week’s INC-5 — will be held in 2025, but it’s unclear how countries will make further progress without a change in the treaty’s consensus-based decision-making process. As it stands, any delegation can essentially veto a proposal they don’t like, even if they’re opposed by most of the rest of the world. 

“If it wasn’t for Saudi and Russia we would have reached an agreement here,” one European negotiator told the Financial Times. Those two countries, along with other oil producers like Iran and Kuwait, want the plastics treaty to leave production untouched and focus only on downstream measures: boosting the plastics recycling rate, for example, and cleaning up existing plastic pollution.

Kuwait’s delegation said on Sunday that “we are not here to end plastic itself … but plastic pollution.” That’s the position the plastic industry is taking, as well: Chris Jahn, council secretary for a petrochemical industry consortium called the International Council of Chemical Associations, said it’s “crucial” for the treaty to focus on plastic pollution alone. “With 2.7 billion people globally lacking access to waste collection systems, solutions must prioritize addressing this gap,” he said in a statement.

Dozens of countries — supported by scientists and environmental groups — say that approach is futile while the plastics industry plans to dramatically increase plastic production. “You can talk about waste management all you want, but this is not the silver bullet,” one of the European Union’s delegates said last week. “Mopping the floor when the tap is open is useless.”

Christina Dixon, oceans campaign leader for the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency, attended INC-5 and told Grist the conference made it clear that “consensus isn’t working.” She said countries seem to be recognizing this too, in light of INC-5’s shortcomings and the low probability of finding unanimity on the treaty’s most critical issues.

Technically, the treaty could move forward without Saudi Arabia, Russia, and their allies, either continuing under the U.N. framework or — a more radical scenario — in a new forum led by a breakaway alliance of countries. The latter is unlikely given the time and energy countries have invested in the U.N. system, and because they still value the baseline mandate they agreed to two years ago: to “end plastic pollution” by addressing the “full life cycle of plastics.” But a smaller group of signatories could still make a global impact by using import tariffs and other trade policies to indirectly influence plastic production in non-signatory nations.

[earthv02]

Australia struggling with oversupply of solar power

As Australia surges past a solar-powered milestone, questions turn to how much is too much, and can we hope to store it all?

Extract from article:

A sunrise industry

Rooftop solar installations have soared from negligible levels in Australia.

What South Australia could not use itself, it exported to other states.

And everywhere, it seems, demand for power from the grid — that is, demand for power not being met by rooftop solar — has fallen to record lows.

But all of this solar is prompting some hard questions, and gnashing of teeth, for one, simple reason — there is, at times, too much solar power in Australia's electricity systems to handle.

To deal with this abundance, experts say Australia needs to come to terms what appears a counter-intuitive argument.

It needs to accept that much of this solar will have to be wasted — or spilled — sometimes.

[tloaak]

much better footage of the haka that shut down parliament today

[tloaak]

@endless-demon thank you so much for asking! it's a little complicated but I think simplification does a disservice to the issue and is exactly what people like David Seymour rely on to spread lies about historical context and current consequences. I'm putting this in a reblog because it's long, and I'm putting it on this post because I'd rather this video be the one to get seen. as always I'm pakeha and also not an expert, so I'm very open to corrections on details but im confident of the broad strokes.

so when the English first arrived to build settlements in aotearoa, they formed a treaty with Māori (te Tiriti o Waitangi), the people already living there, that the English can govern their own settlements, as long as they allowed for continued māori sovereignty (tino rangatiratanga). there exist two versions of the text, English and te reo Māori, which do not perfectly match. after this, the English settlers began acquiring massive swathes of land by legally questionable means, and asserting absolute sovereignty over these areas. these culminated in the land wars, which then lead to massive land confiscation as a form of both political punishment and colonization. the end result is that now the crown own nearly all land in aotearoa and claim absolute sovereignty over it.

now, the Māori text does not claim sovereignty over the property that the crown recognizes Māori own. the text promises, among other things, self determination for Māori, which is essentially impossible under a westminster system of government because they are currently a demographic minority. it's only very recent in our history that the crown has acknowledged the legitimacy of the te reo Māori text, and even more recently that we began to actually implement any of its principles. one of the biggest ways the treaty is used in modern day is to guarantee Māori have an opportunity at the table for major national decisions (particular those of environmental significance), and to defer organizational power for Māori issues to Māori communities.

the treaty principles bill seeks to water down these promises by allowing these rights to all new zealanders, "democratising" the treaty and removing those guarantees that have been so hard fought for by Māori. but, more importantly, it seeks to seed division and racism within this country to gather more support for the ACT party who are sponsoring this bill.

this bill was part of the coalition agreement by our current 3 party right wing government. the national party agreed to sponsor this bill to first reading (allowing public submission on the bill) but no further. I personally believe, along with many others, that when the time comes to vote for the second reading the act party will threaten to pull out of the coalition if the bill is not passed again, and our prime minister will not have the strength of character to stand up to his deputy. regardless, the relationship between the crown and Māori has already been damaged, both by the simple introduction of the bill as well as all the changes our current government has implemented.

as Paul Goldsmith, Minister for Treaty Negotiations outlined in his speech during the bill, the National party believe that te Tiriti must be killed, not in a single action, but by a thousand cuts, like the removal of references to the treaty from our legislation and curriculums, and the disestablishment of agencies like the Māori Health Authority, cuts to Māori advisors to govt departments, removing māori seats from local government, etc.

there's so much more to this issue, like the centuries of abuse and mistreatment of Māori by the crown authorities, how this abuse is ongoing to Māori children and adults today in state care, how iwi voices are our last line of defence against environmental and ecological damage by industry, the unilateral natural of the treaty reparation settlement process... but this is why this protest was staged in parliament today.

(in fact, there is a much larger protest taking place nationwide, scheduled to arrive the day the bill was supposed to be introduced. the bill was in fact introduced a week earlier, in a move many suspect was done to prevent exactly this kind of protest.)

as far as I'm concerned though? I think te pāti Māori achieved exactly what they wanted by this protest. they forced the government to drop the mask of civility, and force the protestors out of the building. and they showed their supporters that their protests are working - they felt threatened enough by this that they lashed out, felt a need to retaliate by suspending hana-rawhiti maipi-clarke from the house for 24 hours. the coalition are getting nervous

[earthv02]

These farmers are saving tens of thousands of dollars for helping the planet

More than 40 per cent of Garry Kadwell's property is dedicated to revegetation after he planted tens of thousands of trees across his proper

Making agriculture environmentally sustainable is key for the future health of us and our planet. This article gives me hope that the many issues tge industry is facing are being properly addressed, albeit slowly.