Biden’s plan would boost conservation of US lands, waters

“One of the biggest ways climate change is affecting us is by loading the weather dice against us. Extreme weather events occur naturally; but on a warmer planet many of these events are getting bigger, stronger, and more damaging,” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University and the Nature Conservancy, said in an emailed statement. “They’re affecting our health, the safety of our homes, the economy, and more.”

Estremera said the district is investing heavily in water recycling and conservation, as well as planning new reservoirs — such as the potential $2.5-billion Pacheco Reservoir, which would hold 140,000 acre-feet of water, surpassing by half the volume of Anderson Reservoir. While San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo announced his opposition to the reservoir, saying it was too expensive, Estremera said the region needs every option. “You can’t create more water,” he said. “You need to conserve, preserve and recycle.”

The chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, liver disease, thyroid disease, decreased immunity, hormone disruption, and a range of other serious health problems.

Sharon Lavigne, 68, organised marches, petitions, town hall meetings and media campaigns after elected officials gave the green light to the construction of another polluting factory in St James parish – a majority-Black community already blighted by heavy industry and exorbitant cancer rates.

The Louisiana state police – which oversees pipeline safety – issued 34 fines and five warning letters in the past five years. A quarter of those penalties were reduced: three were lowered, five were replaced with warning letters and two were dismissed. The fines that did stick were low, between $2,250 and $8,000.

To eat an oyster raw is to eat it alive. What does it hear as you prepare to slip its body down your throat? If you don’t bite into it, does it start to hear your heartbeat as it moves past your breastbone?

With a worsening drought gripping the West and wildfire season looming, California is bracing for the most severe heat wave of the year — one that promises to tax the state’s power supplies while also offering a grim preview of challenging months to come. The heat wave will bring triple-digit temperatures to the valleys and inland regions of Southern California as well as many parts of the rest of the state, heightening fire risks. It comes as parts of Northern and Central California are turning to water restrictions as the drought rapidly alters the landscape.

Action is needed now to prevent the climate catastrophe we are hurtling towards, and with the G7 in town this was the perfect time to make our voices heard.

"This also poses a great opportunity to educate the public about the challenges that wild animals face for survival and the need for better protection from a government, industry and society level," Sun wrote. "These animals belong in the wild. We need to keep a safe distance from them, which is good for us and the wild animals."

While ice loss is part of climate change, there was no unusual extra warming in the region that triggered this acceleration, Joughin said.“These science results continue to highlight the vulnerability of Antarctica, a major reservoir for potential sea level rise,” said Twila Moon, a National Snow and Ice Data scientist who wasn’t part of the research. “Again and again, other research has confirmed how Antarctica evolves in the future will depend on human greenhouse gas emissions.”

The streams near the trail pass through wetlands, which play a vital role in filtering out pollution from the water. Despite the sanitary start, the creek collects pollutants as it leaves the wetlands and flows further into the city. Runoff carrying chemicals, animal waste, and even trash seep into the creek as it travels, and these pollutants eventually end up in the aquifer, which Gainesville relies on for its drinking water.

When a female gorilla named Johari kept fighting off the male she was placed with, the zoo dosed her with Prozac until she allowed him to mate with her. A 2000 survey of U.S. and Canadian zoos found that nearly half of respondents were giving their gorillas Haldol, Valium or another psychopharmaceutical drug.

So far, though, there is no clear sign of an intermediate host. Of the 80,000 animal samples tested in China, none have contained the virus’ genetic material or antibodies to it.

“If you look at just one single angle, you miss a lot of things,” said Yunne-Jai Shin, a marine biologist with the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development and a co-author of the report. “Every action counts.”

Experts believe that one reason for the deaths is that the Indian River Lagoon, a 156-mile estuary along Florida’s Atlantic coast in whose warm waters manatees forage every year, has lost tens of thousands of acres of sea grass. Water quality has worsened for years because of runoff from fertilizers, sewage and septic leaks, increasing algae blooms that kill the sea grass, said Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Canadian pipeline company that had long sought to build the Keystone XL pipeline announced Wednesday that it had terminated the embattled project, which would have carried petroleum from Canadian tar sands to Nebraska.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) was even blunter in a tweet: "No climate, no deal," he wrote.

“From the day it’s landed to when it ends up on someone’s plate, blockchain gives toothfish traceability right from the start,” says Steve Paku, captain of the Cape Arkona. “People can just scan the barcode and the whole story is right there in front of them.”

The measure will require the replacement of about 6 square miles (16 square kilometers) of grass in the metro Las Vegas area. By ripping it out, water officials estimate the region can conserve 10% of its total available Colorado River water supply and save about 11 gallons (41 liters) per person per day in a region with a population of about 2.3 million.

The amount of carbon dioxide piling up in Earth’s atmosphere set a record last month, once again reaching the highest levels in human history despite a temporary dip in the burning of fossil fuels worldwide caused by the coronavirus pandemic, scientists said Monday.

“Factory farming of pigs in the Netherlands is a dead end,” he says. “We now know that a pig is not a thing: it is a sentient being with a high level of intelligence, comparable with the intelligence of a child. What I see worldwide is that many pig farmers don’t know any more what pigs are about. They just don’t have the skills to know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

Benzene, a known carcinogen, was found in 78 of nearly 300 sprays and lotions tested —about 27%— including products sold by Banana Boat and CVS, according to Valisure. In a petition, the company has asked the FDA to recall these contaminated batches.

Elephants continue to be slaughtered for their magnificent tusks, which are highly modified incisor teeth and of much greater utility to elephants than as carved-ivory status symbols displayed on a chess board. But the more serious threat is loss of habitat, and run-ins with people over access to land and water. Elephant biologists argue that the more we understand the elephant mind-set, the greater the odds of keeping elephants alive.

The West is no stranger to drought, but climate change is making it worse. Severe dryness covered California and Nevada just five years ago, from 2012 to 2016, and the Southwest has been in drought for much of the past two decades, punctuated by rare wet years. Experts say this year is unusual because extreme drought conditions are so widespread and have intensified quickly. They are likely to grow even worse this summer. Jeanine Jones, the interstate resources manager for the California Department of Water Resources, said the current crisis exposes the need for drought forecasting and planning to consider the effects of climate change.“We’ve now had two dry years,” she said, but “this is all occurring in the context of a longer period, a couple of decades, of generally dry and much warmer conditions.”

Brazil and Greece (and other places?) have an abundance of cats who need care. Australia is being overrun with mice. Could a connection be made, please? We've allowed our planet to spin out of balance; now we must try to bring her back, or at least help where we can. - tr*

Some of this gear can weigh thousands of pounds and have buoys that prevent entangled whales from diving deep enough to find food. Whales who don’t drown or starve right away will often drag gear for several years. Doing this can create deep lacerations in the whales’ soft flesh and sap energy from essential processes such as reproduction and, the researchers suspect, growth.

After February's deadly power outages, new legislation would mandate winterizing parts of the state's energy system. But lawmakers took a pass on major market reforms to make the grid more resilient.

Oil and gas giants are selling off their most-polluting operations to small private companies. Most manage to escape public scrutiny.

“It is my sense that most Floridians would live with the risk of water to preserve their lifestyle,” said Cynthia Barnett, a Gainesville-based environmental journalist who has published books about rain and the fate of the oceans. “This idea of working with water rather than always fighting against it is really the lesson of Florida history. If Florida history has taught us one thing, it’s that hardscaping this water that defines us will bring hardships to future generations.”

The California Condor has gone from nearly extinct to flocks of more than 100 free-flying again in the wild. 2020’s Dolan Fire in Big Sur killed 12 condors of the Central Coast flock. Ventana Wildlife Society’s biologists and staff have stepped up their efforts to restore the burned-out research facility and support the flock.

The only way to resolve those questions was by compiling a full environmental impact statement (EIS), said Riddle – and the board voted unanimously to require one. After the board ordered the statement, Riverview retracted its proposal, and Baker dairy was never built. The citizens’ board was abolishedin June 2015. “So that told me that Riverview has tremendous political influence over both parties,” says Riddle.

The groups have embarked on an effort to add 30,000 milkweed plants across the state to provide the butterflies with places to breed and acquire the sustenance for migration.

“The pellets can soak and absorb the chemicals from the environment,” he said. “This is an issue because when we eat whole fish, we will also be eating these chemicals.”

The island, a tiny dot in the vast South Pacific that lies at the southern tip of Solomon Islands, is home to a few thousand people. And it’s starkly divided. On one side is pristine East Rennell, a Unesco world heritage site, which offers a glimpse of Rennell unspoiled. But in the last decade, West Rennell has suffered the triple assault of logging, bauxite mining, and a devastating oil spill from when a bulk carrier, hired by a mining company, ran aground on a reef.

There are few things Americans can agree on these days. Wildlife crossings, it seems, are one of them.

Those concerns recently turned to outrage and anger after environmental regulators were forced to acknowledge that under their oversight the AltEn LLC ethanol plant has been contaminating the area with an array of pesticides at levels much higher than what is considered safe.

Paula Todd, the owner of the Green Ginger salon in Newcastle, said: “The feedback has been so positive, it makes clients value what we do and know that we care a bit more, not just for them but for the whole environment.”

Until now, in the decades-long war of flamingos versus frequent flyers, the flamingos have lost every round. But the European commission has weighed in, accusing the Spanish and Catalan governments of failing to protect the wetlands and warning against a proposed expansion of the airport.

For half a year, the rodents have been chewing their way around the country’s eastern grain belt, leaving economic and psychological scars.

Deforestation at the overwintering sites is the most immediate threat but is hardly the only one. In the U.S. corn belt, the widespread use of pesticide-tolerant, genetically modified crops has drastically reduced the supply of milkweed available to summering monarchs. That’s a huge problem because monarchs won’t lay their eggs on anything else.

What we need to do, which this pandemic has emphasized, is develop a new relationship with the natural world and animals. If we don’t somehow get together and create a more sustainable greener economy and forget this nonsense that there can be unlimited economic development on a planet with finite resources, and that the GDP isn’t God’s answer to the future, then it’s going to be a very sad world that we leave to our great-great-grandchildren. Their children may have no planet left.

These pieces explore racism in outdoor adventure culture, chronicle the next generation’s fight for a livable planet, and lay out the story of how evangelicals came to politically oppose environmentalism. Some were deeply moving, others left something to be desired — read on for our take on which films are worth your time.

The sense of emergency has intensified in recent weeks after deadly clashes between miners and Yanomami and a gun battle between federal police agents and heavily armed gunmen apparently linked to the mines.

Heat is the deadliest of all the maladies spurred by the climate crisis, with more than 700 people on average now dying each year from its effects, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An independent study last year estimated this death toll is actually much higher, at about 5,600 fatalities a year.

Rodney Stotts is one of the few Black falconers in the US. He works with raptors such as red-tailed hawks and Harris hawks, as well as with an owl named Mr Hoots. He is now the subject of a new documentary directed by Annie Kaempfer, The Falconer, that screened at the Atlanta film festival ahead of the second annual Black Birders Week (an event created after a white woman called the police on a Black birdwatcher in Central Park in New York last year, prompting a national outcry).

Biodiversity in the ecosystem is critical for the planet to survive. You want to see different plants and flowers in the fields, not rows and rows of corn or soya. We’re also losing diversity of seeds and plants because of climate change. We need to go back to our indigenous roots where diversity of mother nature has always been critical.

Tuesday's announcement outlines a compromise for a 399-square-mile area off Morro Bay, a site that's appealing to renewable energy companies because of existing transmission lines nearby that once serviced a retired power plant. It also identifies a location off Humboldt County in Northern California.

Although there has been no shortage of interest from wind farm developers in sites along California’s coast — particularly off the Central Coast and Humboldt Bay — efforts have been stymied by regulatory obstacles, engineering challenges created by the Pacific Ocean floor’s steep drop-off, and concerns about the impact the infrastructure could have on migratory birds, marine life and fisheries.

In California’s San Joaquin Valley, the farming town of Corcoran has a multimillion-dollar problem. It is almost impossible to see, yet so vast it takes NASA scientists using satellite technology to fully grasp.Corcoran is sinking.Over the past 14 years, the town has sunk as much as 11.5 feet in some places — enough to swallow the entire first floor of a two-story house and to at times make Corcoran one of the fastest-sinking areas in the country, according to experts with the United States Geological Survey.

Greenpeace’s new campaign opens with a single bottle bouncing off Boris Johnson’s head mid-press conference before a waterfall of plastic overwhelms the prime minister and carries him out to the street. The satirical and pressing animation pours the equivalent of the 1.8 million kilograms of waste the U.K. sends to other countries each day into Downing Street, which topples Johnson and Michael Gove as it literally engulfs the British political landscape.

President Joe Biden and his team have said little, if anything, about old-growth forests — typically defined as those at least 150 years old and largely undisturbed by human activity. These forests sequester massive amounts of carbon in trees and soil, and scientists say protecting the few that remain intact will prove key to meeting climate and biodiversity targets.

The enormous plastic waste footprint of the top 20 global companies amounts to more than half of the 130m metric tonnes of single-use plastic thrown away in 2019, the analysis says.

"Peatland is so important for carbon sequestration and for wildlife. And, currently, we're wrapping it in plastic and selling it in garden centres," said Elliot Chapman-Jones.

For now, the world remains off course. Last month, the agency warned that global carbon dioxide emissions were expected to rise at their second-fastest pace ever in 2021 as countries recovered from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic and global coal burning neared a high, led by a surge of industrial activity in Asia.

The demonstration is part of a 400-mile march led by the youth climate group Sunrise Movement, which began last week and traces the path of environmental disasters in the Gulf coast from New Orleans to Houston. Roughly 20 participants are on the trek as part of the group’s “Generation on Fire” campaign.

You cannot watch rats playing hide and seek and doubt that they have feelings – that they are sentient creatures. But as animals become more distant from us in evolutionary terms, some doubt begins to creep in.

Questions such as whether a meaningful amount of carbon can be captured, how long it stays in the ground and how to measure sequestration remain unanswered.

As lumber prices across the continent soar – prompting a flurry of memes and conspiracy theories – ecosystems full of valuable old growth trees have increasingly become a target for poachers.

They are linked to cancer, birth defects, liver disease, thyroid disease, plummeting sperm counts and a range of other serious health problems.

Kansas has about as much solar potential as Florida but lags far behind the state, powering only about 12,000 homes – or less than 2% of what is covered in Florida, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. That could be related to an ongoing debate in the states that is pitting utilities companies against solar energy.

The new city-owned entity would pay rent to landlords and homeowners in exchange for rooftop space and take on all the installation costs, making it an easy sell.

Violence in Brazil's Amazon is increasing, with tens of thousands of illegal miners in protected areas.

The shrinking stratosphere is a stark signal of the climate emergency and the planetary-scale influence that humanity now exerts, according to Juan Añel, at the University of Vigo, Ourense in Spain.

A sequence of inadequate chemical safety analyses, hidden studies and lax oversight created a scenario in which Americans continue to be exposed to the dangerous compound in food packaging.

Three-quarters of cities surveyed by CDP were already working with businesses on sustainability issues, or had plans to do so within the next two years.

There’s no 9-to-5 for female northern elephant seals. After the winter breeding season, the animals spend more than 19 hours—and up to 24 hours—per day hunting in the northern Pacific Ocean, killing up to 2000 small fish daily to survive, according to a new study of these elusive animals. The work, made possible by cameras and devices attached to the seals’ heads, could also help scientists monitor other deep-ocean life.

Vineyard Wind is the first of several massive offshore wind-farm proposals that could put more than 3,000 wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean from Maine to North Carolina. The goal is part of the Biden administration’s effort to fight climate change by shifting away from fossil fuels.

Wind power capacity doubled over the last year, while solar power grew by almost 50%.

The years of steady and predictable water flow are over, and there is no sign of them coming back in our lifetimes. This is it. We have to build, and grow, and legislate, and consume for the world as it is, not as we may remember it.

The impacts of the climate emergency are now so obvious, only the truly deluded still deny them. Instead, we are at the point where everyone agrees something must be done, but many are making only vague, distant promises of ineffective action. As a result, we are currently on track for a 0.5% cut in global emissions from 2010 levels by 2030, when a 45% drop is needed to avoid climate catastrophe.

A UN report published in December found that the future looked “bleak” for soils without urgent action to halt degradation, given that it takes thousands of years for new soils to form. Soils are thought to contain nearly a quarter of all the planet’s biodiversity.

The genetically engineered males carry a gene that passes to their offspring and kills female progeny in early larval stages. Male offspring won’t die but instead will become carriers of the gene and pass it to future generations.

That we cannot see all the way to the transformed society we need does not mean it is impossible. We will reach it by not one great leap but a long journey, step by step.

But we never had a rethink of our system of water rights, and how much of our limited water we should be spending on agriculture versus leaving in the natural ecosystem.

"Glaciers are melting faster, losing 31% more snow and ice per year than they did 15 years earlier. Scientists blame human-caused climate change. "

Over the years, a mountain of evidence has brought to light a stark injustice: Compared with white Americans, people of color in the United States suffer disproportionately from exposure to pollution.

“... this invention could pave the way for sustainably lowering plastic pollution levels in the long run by simply using something found in nature.”

But the largest threat is sea level rise. The world’s oceans are already rising because warm water expands and because of melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, but glaciers are responsible for 21% of sea level rise, more than the ice sheets, the study said. The ice sheets are larger longer term threats for sea level rise.

The U.S. Senate has taken a step toward more vigorously regulating climate-warming methane leaks from the oil and gas industry, a move supporters say is key to achieving President Biden's ambitious climate goals.

California water officials have moved to stop Nestlé from siphoning millions of gallons of water out of California’s San Bernardino forest, which it bottles and sells as Arrowhead brand water, as drought conditions worsen across the state.

Elephant seals are arriving by the hundreds to rest on the beach during the busiest time of the year. More seals are on the beach in May, even more than during breeding season. Look for unusual scars, colored identification tags and dyed identification markings.

“We believe that putting Chernobyl on the UNESCO heritage list is a first and important step towards having this great place as a unique destination of interest for the whole of mankind,” said Oleksandr Tkachenko, the Ukrainian culture minister. / “The importance of the Chernobyl zone lays far beyond Ukraine’s borders ... It is not only about commemoration, but also history and people’s rights,” he said.

The Japanese government intends to starting dump the nuclear wastewater in two years from now. We ask them to reflect on our joint nuclear legacy and listen to their Pacific neighbours. We are saying loudly and clearly: our ocean is not your dumping ground.

A survey of more than 6,000 people found that people who garden every day have higher wellbeing scores (6.6% higher) and lower stress levels (4.2% lower) than people who don't garden at all.

As for producing cheap food that Americans can afford, yeah, that’s a trade off. That’s an industrial revolution era trade off. Workers were paid, it was assumed that women’s labor was free. So you didn’t have to pay workers enough to worry about child care or cooking or any other domestic chores. And then if you made food cheap, you could pay them even less.

For decades Rick Desautel had been told by courts and governments that his people no longer exist in Canada. But Desautel and others in his community in Washington state have long argued that they are descendants of the Sinixt, an Indigenous people whose territory once spanned Canada and the United States.‍

“What is the return for us?” said Scott Osteen, a farmer living in the proposed path of M-CORES. “You’re asking us to give up land, you’re asking us to give up our current way of life, but currently I don’t see the upside to it.” / And then there are the environmental costs of the project. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gases in the U.S., making up 28 percent of emissions. Oscar Psychas, founder of the Young Leaders for Wild Florida, says highways invite more cars onto the road, a well documented phenomenon known as “induced demand.” Those cars emit carbon dioxide, driving climate change in a state that’s among the most vulnerable to its effects. Without proper protections for the environment, the roads could also bring more urban sprawl — which leads to yet more driving — and disturb some of the state’s natural barriers against sea level rise, such as wetlands. The southwestern leg of the highway could slice through some of the last remaining habitat of the endangered Florida panther.

The impact on Palau of Typhoon Surigae didn’t make headlines overseas and this might be the first you will have heard of it. Compared to other natural disasters and other cyclones or typhoons in the Pacific, it was a relatively “good” one. But it left me shaken, exhausted and our community rattled.

Caltrans and contractor crews worked seven days a week during daylight hours to bring the $11.5 million project to the point where the road could reopen — two months earlier than previously expected. Noting that politicians love to say “we got something done ahead of schedule and on budget,” Newsom said it twice for emphasis.

In a split from his past attitude toward climate change, Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro vowed to end illegal deforestation in the country by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

"We must try to keep the Earth's temperature to an increase of 1.5C. The world beyond 1.5 degrees means more frequent and intense fires, floods, droughts, heatwaves and hurricanes - tearing through communities, ripping away lives and livelihoods."

“The countries that take decisive actions now” to tackle climate change, Mr. Biden said, “will be the ones that reap the clean energy benefits of the boom that’s coming.”

It’s achievable in theory, researchers say, but it’s an enormous challenge.

Kerry, the president’s special envoy for climate, also criticized Trump for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement “without any facts, without any science, without any rationale that would be considered reasonable".

Soviet soldiers shot many of the abandoned animals in an effort to prevent the spread of contamination. But, undoubtedly, some of the animals hid and survived. Thirty-five years later, hundreds of stray dogs now roam the 2,600km (1,000 sq mile) Exclusion Zone put in place to restrict human traffic in and out of the area.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday declared a drought emergency in two Northern California counties as he stood on the dry shoreline of Lake Mendocino.

From severe drought and fires to rising seas and eroding coastlines, warnings from decades ago have already become a reality. But experts say it's not too late to take action against the most devastating impacts of this phenomenon. What follows is an album of photos that illustrate the state of the planet and our climate over the past decade.

"Shameful,” Italy’s anti-hunting league said. “Enraging,” the animal protection league said. “A delicacy,” said Floriano Massardi, a regional official who, like many in the area, likes to eat songbirds on a skewer. The Italian police were called to investigate a luncheon for a potential violation of coronavirus rules. They found a feast of migrating finches.

Emissions need to be cut by 45% this decade, if the world is to limit global heating to 1.5C (2.7F), scientists have warned. That means the 2020s must be the decade when the world changes course, before the level of carbon in the atmosphere rises too high to avoid dangerous levels of heating. But the scale of the current emissions rebound from the Covid-19 crisis means “our starting point is definitely not a good one”, said Birol.

“American climate pledges go beyond the word of Washington. Yes, Mr. Trump abandoned the Paris Agreement. But, he said, “our states and our cities and our businesses and our workers stayed in.”