The Xingu River flows near the area where the Belo Monte dam complex is under construction in the Amazon basin on June 15, 2012 near Altamira, Brazil. The controversial project is opposed by many environmentalists and indigenous groups. (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Amazon
The Xingu River flows near the area where the Belo Monte dam complex is under construction in the Amazon basin on June 15, 2012 near Altamira, Brazil. The controversial project is opposed by many environmentalists and indigenous groups. (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Alarmed by rampant destruction in the Amazon rainforest and the long-term impacts on biodiversity, an alliance of indigenous communities pitched the creation of the world's largest protected area, which would reach from the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean, at a United Nations conference in Egypt on Wednesday.
The fossil fool industry has spent 31 million in Washington State to defeat carbon tax as opposed to 15 million others spent in support of carbon tax to fight climate change *
This is not a big deal in itself because even this lowly environmentalist thinks that tax is not effective but that carbon caps are effective if applied at the point that carbon comes out of the ground.
We need to bypass the carbon tax and calculate how much each country needs to cap their extraction of fossil fuels to save the planet and our descendants.
We share a vision of a world in which thriving natural forests play a significant role in tackling climate change and contribute to a clean, healthy, just and sustainable future for all life on earth. Burning forest wood for large-scale energy production cannot be part of that future for all of the reasons outlined below. Instead we must protect and restore natural forests, thereby reducing emissions and removing atmospheric carbon dioxide while supporting biodiversity, resilience and well-being.
Large-scale burning of forest biomass for energy:
Harms the climate
It is encouraged by flawed accounting – Current carbon accounting rules incentivise forest bioenergy by considering biomass combustion as a zero-emission technology, expressed as zero emissions in the energy sector. The assumption is that all emissions are instead to be accounted for when the biomass is logged, placing the burden on the forest producer rather than the biomass consumer. Yet emissions accounting of forests in the land sector is fatally flawed and generally understates emissions. The true carbon cost of biomass burning rarely appears accurately on any country’s balance sheet.
Despite public outcry, Norway has decided to stick with plans to dump mine tailings into the majestic fjords, “Førdefjorden” in Sogn and Fjordane and “Repparfjorden” in Finnmark. Mine tailings, known as "gruveavfall" in Norwegian, are what remain after mining for minerals and metals. Gruveavfall actually quite literally means mine (gruve) garbage (avfall) and can contain chemicals and hazardous materials. The plan is to dump an immense amount into these fjords, with 250 million tons of tailings in Førdefjorden alone!
The fight against mine tailing dumpings in Norway has been long and ongoing. In 2016, 80 activists even chained themselves to the Nordic Minings machinery alongside Førdefjorden. All together they were fined over 1 million kroner. Many people are understandably concerned and angry. These activities threaten the beautiful fjords and, most importantly, the life that resides in and around them. These fjords are homes to many animals including orcas, cod, spiny dogfish, eels and multiple species of birds, mammals and fish.
In the 2014 IPCC Report, the urgency of addressing climate change was reaffirmed;
The world is not ready for the impacts of climate change, including more extreme weather and the likelihood that populated parts of the planet could be rendered uninhabitable. The report argues that world leaders have only a few years left to reduce carbon emissions enough to avoid catastrophic warming, which would produce significant sea level rise and large-scale shifts in temperatures that would dramatically disrupt human life and natural ecosystems.
At COP21 Ban Ki-Moon urged that ‘the States to negotiate with a global vision not from specific national interests”.
A global vision is not just ‘recalling” (Paris Agreement) but abiding by articles 2, 3. 4 in the legally binding 1992 United |Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This Convention which has been ratified by all member states of the United has addressed many of the contentious issues at COP21.
In article 2 under the legally binding UNFCCC is the obligation:
….to stabilize of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system
A global vision to address article 2 would be to immediately end all subsidies for fossil fuel, to calculate the carbon budget for each state, to divest in fossil fuels and to reinvest in renewable energy, to conserve sinks, and to avoid all false solutions such as nuclear, geo-engineering and biofuels which would all violate principles within the UNFCCC.
*A global vision would be to abide by legally binding principles under article 3 in the UNFCCC-
Greening practices are being adopted in Rwanda which include the terracing on hillsides to control erosion like here in Rulindo district, Northern Rwanda. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
KIGALI, Oct 12 2018 (IPS) - In a move to achieve its green growth aspirations by 2050, Rwanda has placed a major focus on promoting project proposals that shift away from “business as usual” and have a significant impact on curbing climate change while attracting private investment.
The latest report published by the Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA) in 2015 states that the country needs to adapt – and keep adapting – so that Rwandans can become climate resilient and be assured that they can thrive under changing climate conditions.
Rwanda is one of a few nations in the world to develop its own climate-related domestic budget to finance mitigation and adaptation projects and leverage international climate finance. Since it was established in 2012, the National Fund for Climate and Environment, commonly known as “FONERWA”, has played a major role in this country’s climate resilient development by financing various green economy projects.
A new study finds that bacteria develop antibiotic resistance up to 100,000 times faster when exposed to the world’s most widely used herbicides, Roundup (glyphosate) and Kamba (dicamba) and antibiotics compared to without the herbicide.
BY Jack Heinemann
A new study finds that bacteria develop antibiotic resistance up to 100,000 times faster when exposed to the world’s most widely used herbicides, Roundup (glyphosate) and Kamba (dicamba) and antibiotics compared to without the herbicide.
This study adds to a growing body of evidence that herbicides used on a mass industrial scale, but not intended to be antibiotics, can have profound effects on bacteria, with potentially negative implications for medicine’s ability to treat infectious diseases caused by bacteria, says University of Canterbury scientist Professor Jack Heinemann, one of the study’s authors.
“The combination of chemicals to which bacteria are exposed in the modern environment should be addressed alongside antibiotic use if we are to preserve antibiotics in the long-term,” he says.
An important finding of the new study was that even in cases where the herbicides increase the toxicity of antibiotics they also significantly increased the rate of antibiotic resistance, which the study’s authors say could be contributing to the greater use of antibiotics in both agriculture and medicine.
Previously these researchers found that exposure to the herbicide products Roundup, Kamba and 2,4-D or the active ingredients alone most often increased resistance, but sometimes increased susceptibility of potential human pathogens such as Salmonella enterica and Escherichia coli depending on the antibiotic.[1]
“We are inclined to think that when a drug or other chemical makes antibiotics more potent, that should be a good thing. But it also makes the antibiotic more effective at promoting resistance when the antibiotic is at lower concentrations, as we more often find in the environment” Professor Heinemann says.
The B.C. government, which opposes the expansion of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline because of the potential threat to the Salish Sea’s marine environment and its endangered killer whales, is putting those same waters at risk by approving logging in a sensitive watershed, a coalition of U.S. conservation organizations says.
The Skagit River system flows south from B.C. through Washington State and into Puget Sound, including waters that are critical to chinook salmon – the primary source of food for the southern resident killer whales.
"The climate crisis is here and already impacting the most vulnerable," notes 350.org's program director. "Staying under 1.5ºC is now a matter of political will."
byJessica Corbett, staff writer Common Dreams
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change held a press conference on its new report in South Korea on Monday.
IPCC presser
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change held a press conference on its new report in South Korea on Monday. (Photo: @IPCC_CH/Twitter)
Underscoring the need for "rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented" changes to life as we know it to combat the global climate crisis, a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the United Nations' leading body for climate science—details what the world could look like if the global temperature rises to 1.5°C versus 2°C (2.7°F versus 3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels, and outlines pathways to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.
MEXICO CITY—In early June, evolutionary developmental biologist Elena Álvarez-Buylla received an out-of-the-blue phone call from the campaign of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, then the front-runner in Mexico's presidential election, with a question. If López Obrador won, would she consider becoming the next director of the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt), the country's science ministry and primary granting agency? "My first reaction was to say, ‘I can't,’" recalls Álvarez-Buylla, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) here. "I have a great passion for scientific research," and she couldn't imagine leaving the laboratory.
