‘Canaries in the coalmine’: loss of birds signals changing planet

A Roseate Spoonbill flew over our heads as our group of about 20 assembled in the parking lot of the High Island Bird Sanctuary in Texas. We caught our breath. Welcome to SEJ 2022, the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference.

Ocean plastics that don’t end up asphyxiating an albatross or entangling an elephant seal eventually break down into microplastics, which penetrate every branch of the food web and are nearly impossible to remove from the environment.One thing everyone agrees on is that we need to stop the flow of plastic into the ocean.

“Proven solutions that will reduce US plastic waste and pollution already exist and can be swiftly enacted. The success of single-use plastic bans, water refilling stations, and reusable food and dish ware can be extended nationwide.”

Rather than addressing the root cause of America's litter problem – the fact that there was much more disposable packaging after World War Two – their advertising campaigns focused on the bad behaviour of some consumers, he says. "Images and feelings were being manipulated by corporations to put the onus on the individual."

The research focused on microbial meat as it had been produced at industrial scale for 20 years and was already available, said Dr Isabelle Weindl, also at PIK. “Even accounting for the sugar as feedstock, microbial protein requires much less agricultural land compared [with] ruminant meat.” Previous studies have shown the protein quality of microbial meat is equivalent to beef but it requires 90% less land and water and produces 80% less greenhouse gas emissions.

We stopped commercially hunting whales, and the mass slaughter of bison. We no longer clearcut old-growth redwoods, or use explosives on prairie dog towns, or build massive dams on wild salmon rivers. We no longer kill egrets and herons to adorn women’s hats with their feathers. So why shoot and trap wolves, God’s dog, the forebear of all our beloved domestic dogs?

Outlawing grass is perhaps the most dramatic effort yet to conserve water in the Southwest, where decades of growth and 20 years of drought made worse by a warming climate have led to dwindling supplies from the Colorado River, which serves Nevada and six other states, Native American tribes and Mexico.

This is a worldwide public health threat. It’s very frustrating when you step back and you look at the science that has gotten even clearer over the years about how dangerous these chemicals are and how widespread their use is. The companies knew that if they put these chemicals out into the world they were going to get into our water, into our soil, into the wildlife, into us, yet they did it anyway. And now, after making billions of dollars for decades, those same companies are fighting any responsibility and trying to shift the cost of cleaning this mess up on to all of us.

“Unfortunately, our results show clearly that even the lowest reported annual dolphin capture rates are not sustainable.”

“This destructive new industry wants to rip up an ecosystem we are only just starting to understand,” she said. “[They are] aiming to make a quick profit while our oceans and the billions of people relying on them bear the costs.”