Silicon Valley’s ‘Audacity Crisis’

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Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Two years ago, OpenAI released the public beta of DALL-E 2, an image-generation tool that immediately signified that we’d entered a new technological era. Trained off a huge body of data, DALL-E 2 produced unsettlingly good, delightful, and frequently unexpected outputs; my Twitter feed filled up with images derived from prompts such as close-up photo of brushing teeth with toothbrush covered with nacho cheese. Suddenly, it seemed as though machines could create just about anything in response to simple prompts.You likely know the story from there: A few months later, ChatGPT arrived, millions of people started using it, the student essay was pronounced dead, Web3 entrepreneurs nearly broke their ankles scrambling to pivot their companies to AI, and the technology industry was consumed by hype. The generative-AI revolution began in earnest.Where has it gotten us? Although enthusiasts eagerly use the technology to boost productivity and automate busywork, the drawbacks are also impossible to ignore. Social networks such as Facebook have been flooded with bizarre AI-generated slop images; search engines are floundering, trying to index an internet awash in hastily assembled, chatbot-written articles. Generative AI, we know for sure now, has been trained without permission on copyrighted media, which makes it all the more galling that the technology is competing against creative people for jobs and online attention; a backlash against AI companies scraping the internet for training data is in full swing.Yet these companies, emboldened by the success of their products and war chests of investor capital, have brushed these problems aside and unapologetically embraced a manifest-destiny attitude toward their technologies. Some of these firms are, in no uncertain terms, trying to rewrite the rules of society by doing whatever they can to create a godlike superintelligence (also known as artificial general intelligence, or AGI). Others seem more interested in using generative AI to build tools that repurpose others’ creative work with little to no citation. In recent months, leaders within the AI industry are more brazenly expressing a paternalistic attitude about how the future will look—including who will win (those who embrace their technology) and who will be left behind (those who do not). They’re not asking us; they’re telling us. As the journalist Joss Fong commented recently, “There’s an audacity crisis happening in California.”There are material concerns to contend with here. It is audacious to massively jeopardize your net-zero climate commitment in favor of advancing a technology that has told people to eat rocks, yet Google appears to have done just that, according to its latest environmental report. (In an emailed statement, a Google spokesperson, Corina Standiford, said that the company remains “dedicated to the sustainability goals we’ve set,” including reaching net-zero emissions by 2030. According to the report, its emissions grew 13 percent in 2023, in large part because of the energy demands of generative AI.) And it is certainly audacious for companies such as Perplexity to use third-party tools to harvest information while ignoring long-standing online protocols that prevent websites from being scraped and having their content stolen.But I’ve found the rhetoric from AI leaders to be especially exasperating. This month, I spoke with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Thrive Global CEO Arianna Huffington after they announced their intention to build an AI health coach. The pair explicitly compared their nonexistent product to the New Deal. (They suggested that their product—so theoretical, they could not tell me whether it would be an app or not—could quickly become part of the health-care system’s critical infrastructure.) But this audacity is about more than just grandiose press releases. In an interview at Dartmouth College last month, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, discussed AI’s effects on labor, saying that, as a result of generative AI, “some creative jobs maybe will go away, but maybe they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” She added later that “strictly repetitive” jobs are also likely on the chopping block. Her candor appears emblematic of OpenAI’s very mission, which straightforwardly seeks to develop an intelligence capable of “turbocharging the global economy.” Jobs that can be replaced, her words suggested, aren’t just unworthy: They should never have existed. In the long arc of technological change, this may be true—human operators of elevators, traffic signals, and telephones eventually gave way to automation—but that doesn’t mean that catastrophic job loss across several industries simultaneously is economically or morally acceptable.[Read: AI has become a technology of faith]Along these lines, Altman has said that generative AI will “create entirely new jobs.” Other tech boosters have said the same. But if you listen closely, their language is cold and unsettling, offering insight into the kinds of labor that these people value—and, by extension, the kinds that they don’t. Altman has spoken of AGI possibly replacing the “the median human” worker’s labor—giving the impression that the least exceptional among us might be sacrificed in the name of progress.Even some inside the industry have expressed alarm at those in charge of this technology’s future. Last month, Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI employee, wrote a 165-page essay series warning readers about what’s being built in San Francisco. “Few have the faintest glimmer of what is about to hit them,” Aschenbrenner, who was reportedly fired this year for leaking company information, wrote. In Aschenbrenner’s reckoning, he and “perhaps a few hundred people, most of them in San Francisco and the AI labs,” have the “situational awareness” to anticipate the future, which will be marked by the arrival of AGI, geopolitical struggle, and radical cultural and economic change.Aschenbrenner’s manifesto is a useful document in that it articulates how the architects of this technology see themselves: a small group of people bound together by their intellect, skill sets, and fate to help decide the shape of the future. Yet to read his treatise is to feel not FOMO, but alienation. The civilizational struggle he depicts bears little resemblance to the AI that the rest of us can see. “The fate of the world rests on these people,” he writes of the Silicon Valley cohort building AI systems. This is not a call to action or a proposal for input; it’s a statement of who is in charge.Unlike me, Aschenbrenner believes that a superintelligence is coming, and coming soon. His treatise contains quite a bit of grand speculation about the potential for AI models to drastically improve from here. (Skeptics have strongly pushed back on this assessment.) But his primary concern is that too few people wield too much power. “I don’t think it can just be a small clique building this technology,” he told me recently when I asked why he wrote the treatise.“I felt a sense of responsibility, by having ended up a part of this group, to tell people what they’re thinking,” he said, referring to the leaders at AI companies who believe they’re on the cusp of achieving AGI. “And again, they might be right or they might be wrong, but people deserve to hear it.” In our conversation, I found an unexpected overlap between us: Whether you believe that AI executives are delusional or genuinely on the verge of constructing a superintelligence, you should be concerned about how much power they’ve amassed.Having a class of builders with deep ambitions is part of a healthy, progressive society. Great technologists are, by nature, imbued with an audacious spirit to push the bounds of what is possible—and that can be a very good thing for humanity indeed. None of this is to say that the technology is useless: AI undoubtedly has transformative potential (predicting how proteins fold is a genuine revelation, for example). But audacity can quickly turn into a liability when builders become untethered from reality, or when their hubris leads them to believe that it is their right to impose their values on the rest of us, in return for building God.[Read: This is what it looks like when AI eats the world]An industry is what it produces, and in 2024, these executive pronouncements and brazen actions, taken together, are the actual state of the artificial-intelligence industry two years into its latest revolution. The apocalyptic visions, the looming nature of superintelligence, and the struggle for the future of humanity—all of these narratives are not facts but hypotheticals, however exciting, scary, or plausible.When you strip all of that away and focus on what’s really there and what’s really being said, the message is clear: These companies wish to be left alone to “scale in peace,” a phrase that SSI, a new AI company co-founded by Ilya Sutskever, formerly OpenAI’s chief scientist, used with no trace of self-awareness in announcing his company’s mission. (“SSI” stands for “safe superintelligence,” of course.) To do that, they’ll need to commandeer all creative resources—to eminent-domain the entire internet. The stakes demand it. We’re to trust that they will build these tools safely, implement them responsibly, and share the wealth of their creations. We’re to trust their values—about the labor that’s valuable and the creative pursuits that ought to exist—as they remake the world in their image. We’re to trust them because they are smart. We’re to trust them as they achieve global scale with a technology that they say will be among the most disruptive in all of human history. Because they have seen the future, and because history has delivered them to this societal hinge point, marrying ambition and talent with just enough raw computing power to create God. To deny them this right is reckless, but also futile.It’s possible, then, that generative AI’s chief export is not image slop, voice clones, or lorem ipsum chatbot bullshit but instead unearned, entitled audacity. Yet another example of AI producing hallucinations—not in the machines, but in the people who build them.

AI executives are acting like they own the world.

Two years ago, OpenAI released the public beta of DALL-E 2, an image-generation tool that immediately signified that we’d entered a new technological era. Trained off a huge body of data, DALL-E 2 produced unsettlingly good, delightful, and frequently unexpected outputs; my Twitter feed filled up with images derived from prompts such as close-up photo of brushing teeth with toothbrush covered with nacho cheese. Suddenly, it seemed as though machines could create just about anything in response to simple prompts.

You likely know the story from there: A few months later, ChatGPT arrived, millions of people started using it, the student essay was pronounced dead, Web3 entrepreneurs nearly broke their ankles scrambling to pivot their companies to AI, and the technology industry was consumed by hype. The generative-AI revolution began in earnest.

Where has it gotten us? Although enthusiasts eagerly use the technology to boost productivity and automate busywork, the drawbacks are also impossible to ignore. Social networks such as Facebook have been flooded with bizarre AI-generated slop images; search engines are floundering, trying to index an internet awash in hastily assembled, chatbot-written articles. Generative AI, we know for sure now, has been trained without permission on copyrighted media, which makes it all the more galling that the technology is competing against creative people for jobs and online attention; a backlash against AI companies scraping the internet for training data is in full swing.

Yet these companies, emboldened by the success of their products and war chests of investor capital, have brushed these problems aside and unapologetically embraced a manifest-destiny attitude toward their technologies. Some of these firms are, in no uncertain terms, trying to rewrite the rules of society by doing whatever they can to create a godlike superintelligence (also known as artificial general intelligence, or AGI). Others seem more interested in using generative AI to build tools that repurpose others’ creative work with little to no citation. In recent months, leaders within the AI industry are more brazenly expressing a paternalistic attitude about how the future will look—including who will win (those who embrace their technology) and who will be left behind (those who do not). They’re not asking us; they’re telling us. As the journalist Joss Fong commented recently, “There’s an audacity crisis happening in California.”

There are material concerns to contend with here. It is audacious to massively jeopardize your net-zero climate commitment in favor of advancing a technology that has told people to eat rocks, yet Google appears to have done just that, according to its latest environmental report. (In an emailed statement, a Google spokesperson, Corina Standiford, said that the company remains “dedicated to the sustainability goals we’ve set,” including reaching net-zero emissions by 2030. According to the report, its emissions grew 13 percent in 2023, in large part because of the energy demands of generative AI.) And it is certainly audacious for companies such as Perplexity to use third-party tools to harvest information while ignoring long-standing online protocols that prevent websites from being scraped and having their content stolen.

But I’ve found the rhetoric from AI leaders to be especially exasperating. This month, I spoke with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Thrive Global CEO Arianna Huffington after they announced their intention to build an AI health coach. The pair explicitly compared their nonexistent product to the New Deal. (They suggested that their product—so theoretical, they could not tell me whether it would be an app or not—could quickly become part of the health-care system’s critical infrastructure.) But this audacity is about more than just grandiose press releases. In an interview at Dartmouth College last month, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, discussed AI’s effects on labor, saying that, as a result of generative AI, “some creative jobs maybe will go away, but maybe they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” She added later that “strictly repetitive” jobs are also likely on the chopping block. Her candor appears emblematic of OpenAI’s very mission, which straightforwardly seeks to develop an intelligence capable of “turbocharging the global economy.” Jobs that can be replaced, her words suggested, aren’t just unworthy: They should never have existed. In the long arc of technological change, this may be true—human operators of elevators, traffic signals, and telephones eventually gave way to automation—but that doesn’t mean that catastrophic job loss across several industries simultaneously is economically or morally acceptable.

[Read: AI has become a technology of faith]

Along these lines, Altman has said that generative AI will “create entirely new jobs.” Other tech boosters have said the same. But if you listen closely, their language is cold and unsettling, offering insight into the kinds of labor that these people value—and, by extension, the kinds that they don’t. Altman has spoken of AGI possibly replacing the “the median human” worker’s labor—giving the impression that the least exceptional among us might be sacrificed in the name of progress.

Even some inside the industry have expressed alarm at those in charge of this technology’s future. Last month, Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI employee, wrote a 165-page essay series warning readers about what’s being built in San Francisco. “Few have the faintest glimmer of what is about to hit them,” Aschenbrenner, who was reportedly fired this year for leaking company information, wrote. In Aschenbrenner’s reckoning, he and “perhaps a few hundred people, most of them in San Francisco and the AI labs,” have the “situational awareness” to anticipate the future, which will be marked by the arrival of AGI, geopolitical struggle, and radical cultural and economic change.

Aschenbrenner’s manifesto is a useful document in that it articulates how the architects of this technology see themselves: a small group of people bound together by their intellect, skill sets, and fate to help decide the shape of the future. Yet to read his treatise is to feel not FOMO, but alienation. The civilizational struggle he depicts bears little resemblance to the AI that the rest of us can see. “The fate of the world rests on these people,” he writes of the Silicon Valley cohort building AI systems. This is not a call to action or a proposal for input; it’s a statement of who is in charge.

Unlike me, Aschenbrenner believes that a superintelligence is coming, and coming soon. His treatise contains quite a bit of grand speculation about the potential for AI models to drastically improve from here. (Skeptics have strongly pushed back on this assessment.) But his primary concern is that too few people wield too much power. “I don’t think it can just be a small clique building this technology,” he told me recently when I asked why he wrote the treatise.

“I felt a sense of responsibility, by having ended up a part of this group, to tell people what they’re thinking,” he said, referring to the leaders at AI companies who believe they’re on the cusp of achieving AGI. “And again, they might be right or they might be wrong, but people deserve to hear it.” In our conversation, I found an unexpected overlap between us: Whether you believe that AI executives are delusional or genuinely on the verge of constructing a superintelligence, you should be concerned about how much power they’ve amassed.

Having a class of builders with deep ambitions is part of a healthy, progressive society. Great technologists are, by nature, imbued with an audacious spirit to push the bounds of what is possible—and that can be a very good thing for humanity indeed. None of this is to say that the technology is useless: AI undoubtedly has transformative potential (predicting how proteins fold is a genuine revelation, for example). But audacity can quickly turn into a liability when builders become untethered from reality, or when their hubris leads them to believe that it is their right to impose their values on the rest of us, in return for building God.

[Read: This is what it looks like when AI eats the world]

An industry is what it produces, and in 2024, these executive pronouncements and brazen actions, taken together, are the actual state of the artificial-intelligence industry two years into its latest revolution. The apocalyptic visions, the looming nature of superintelligence, and the struggle for the future of humanity—all of these narratives are not facts but hypotheticals, however exciting, scary, or plausible.

When you strip all of that away and focus on what’s really there and what’s really being said, the message is clear: These companies wish to be left alone to “scale in peace,” a phrase that SSI, a new AI company co-founded by Ilya Sutskever, formerly OpenAI’s chief scientist, used with no trace of self-awareness in announcing his company’s mission. (“SSI” stands for “safe superintelligence,” of course.) To do that, they’ll need to commandeer all creative resources—to eminent-domain the entire internet. The stakes demand it. We’re to trust that they will build these tools safely, implement them responsibly, and share the wealth of their creations. We’re to trust their values—about the labor that’s valuable and the creative pursuits that ought to exist—as they remake the world in their image. We’re to trust them because they are smart. We’re to trust them as they achieve global scale with a technology that they say will be among the most disruptive in all of human history. Because they have seen the future, and because history has delivered them to this societal hinge point, marrying ambition and talent with just enough raw computing power to create God. To deny them this right is reckless, but also futile.

It’s possible, then, that generative AI’s chief export is not image slop, voice clones, or lorem ipsum chatbot bullshit but instead unearned, entitled audacity. Yet another example of AI producing hallucinations—not in the machines, but in the people who build them.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Coming to The Revelator: Exclusive Tom Toro Cartoons

The cartoonist will shine a satirical light on some of the biggest environmental problems of the day, including the extinction crisis. The post Coming to <i>The Revelator&lt;/i>: Exclusive Tom Toro Cartoons appeared first on The Revelator.

Tom Toro is among the rare cartoonists whose work has become an internet meme. His most famous cartoon, which you’ve probably seen more than once, shows some raggedy survivors huddled around a post-apocalyptic fire:   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Tom Toro (@tbtoro) Toro has tackled other environmental issues in his cartoons for The New Yorker, Yale Climate Connections, and other publications, his own syndicated comic strip, “Home Free,” as well as his children’s picture books. Some of his cartoons will be collected later this year in his new book And to Think We Started as a Book Club… Now he’s focusing his satiric lens on the extinction crisis — and The Revelator. Exclusive Tom Toro cartoons will soon appear in our newsletter every 2-3 weeks. “I’m enjoying this too much,” Toro says. “I finally have an outlet for my lifelong love of animals and nature.” Don’t miss a single new Tom Toro cartoon — or anything else from The Revelator: Sign up for our weekly newsletter today. Previously in The Revelator: Global Warming Funnies   The post Coming to <i>The Revelator&lt;/i>: Exclusive Tom Toro Cartoons appeared first on The Revelator.

When sadness strikes I remember I’m not alone in loving the wild boundless beauty of the living world | Georgina Woods

Nature will reclaim its place as a terrifying quasi-divine force that cannot be mastered. I find this strangely comfortingExplore the series – Last chance: the extinction crisis being ignored this electionGet Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an emailAt times my work takes me to the big city and the tall buildings where people with power make decisions that affect the rest of us. While I am there, crossing busy roads, wearing tidy clothes and carrying out my duty, I think of faraway places where life is getting on without me.Logrunners are turning leaf litter on the rainforest floor, albatross are cruising the wind beyond sight of the coast. Why does thinking about these creatures, who have no idea that I exist, bring me such comfort?Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email Continue reading...

At times my work takes me to the big city and the tall buildings where people with power make decisions that affect the rest of us. While I am there, crossing busy roads, wearing tidy clothes and carrying out my duty, I think of faraway places where life is getting on without me.Logrunners are turning leaf litter on the rainforest floor, albatross are cruising the wind beyond sight of the coast. Why does thinking about these creatures, who have no idea that I exist, bring me such comfort?Because they are free, because they are beautiful, and because of their utter indifference to me.Last chance: the extinction crisis this election is ignoring (series trailer) – videoI was in a pub in Newcastle a few weeks ago chatting to a stranger with a lot going on. He runs a business selling household appliances, employs dozens of people, is negotiating a divorce and paying a mortgage. He seemed sceptical about what people tell him about climate change. Given how much else he has to think about, that didn’t surprise me. I asked him, if he was free next week to do anything he wanted, what would he do? He said he would bundle his kids into a van and drive to Seal Rocks to go camping.If you’re not familiar with it, Seal Rocks is among the most beautiful places anywhere on the New South Wales coast. I’d love to be there next week myself.People seek and find freedom in wild places. There is toil in the rest of the natural world and there are dependants to care for, as there are in civilisation, but there is also a sense of boundlessness.This feeling catches me up and I get carried away. I want to cruise in the great ocean currents like a tuna. I want to gather grass and spider silk and nest in the shrubs with the wrens. I suspect the tug of freedom is what takes some people out on hunting trips, and some to earn their living as jackaroos or prawners.Then there is the beauty. Survival is necessary but being gorgeous, creative and excessive has played as important a role in evolution as survival skills. This has filled the world with the resplendent detail of iridescent insects, curly liverworts, currawong song and the synchronised courtship flight-dance of terns.And it is not just living creatures making this beauty. Rays of sunlight bend through a running creek and make bright moving patterns of line and form on its bedrock. All beings have the urge to expression, even including non-living beings: rivers have it, waves have it, the wind. The wind heaps sand in rhythmic curls in the desert.The freedom and beauty of nature guide my sense of right and wrong. If I am to be free, I must care for the freedom of other earthlings. Beauty is the signal to me that this is true.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Clear Air AustraliaAdam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisisPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionWhen self-consciousness traps me in its hall of mirrors, the outside world brings the relief of being unimportant. A friend and I once sat by a creek in a rainforest. A rose robin flew down to drink beside us, unaware we were there. The marvellous world is turning without me and my own life is as dear, marvellous, fleeting and irrelevant as a rose robin’s. What lightness!People talk about cosmic vertigo but how about the giddiness of knowing that the ancestors of the lyrebird you’re listening to have been living in the forests of this continent for 15m years, since there were still trees in Antarctica?We’re living in a thin film of biosphere that is creating its own atmosphere, recycling its own wastes, cleaning its own water, producing and metabolising in complex self-organising systems that we are too small and silly to understand.When we talk about “protecting nature” it makes sense at a certain scale but it is quaintly hubristic. Nature is not all lovely creatures and majestic landscapes. It is mutating viruses, poleward-creeping cyclones and vengeful orcas. Just who needs looking after from whom?Now that greenhouse pollution and the global environmental cataclysms of the last hundred years have broken long-familiar patterns of living within the biosphere, nature will reclaim its place as a terrifying quasi-divine force that cannot be mastered. This, too, is strangely comforting.I often feel overwhelmed with sadness to be living in a culture that doesn’t seem to value all of this but I know that I am not alone in loving the living world.The Biodiversity Council of Australia takes the trouble to ask people how they feel about nature, why and how it is important to them. The overwhelming majority of people feel as I do: that they are part of nature (69%); that being in nature helps them deal with everyday stress (79%); that it is important to them to know that nature is being looked after (88%). The vast majority want more to be done to protect it (96%). The way Australian politics treats “the environment” – either as a decorative irrelevance or as an insidious threat to our prosperity – doesn’t reflect the way the people feel about it.Love and affinity for nature cuts across political, social and economic divisions. Of course, if you ask someone to choose between their own livelihood and the livelihood of a greater glider or a Maugean skate, they’re likely to choose their own – even more so for the non-specific thing they call “net zero”. But why should anyone be asked to make that kind of awful choice?Nature shows me that we don’t have to choose between beauty and freedom on the one hand, and good living on the other. Australians’ desire to be part of and safeguard the living world is a good start but we’re going to lose so much of it unless we take some responsibility for what we’re doing.

A high-flying visitor – the wondrous far eastern curlew – faces fresh threat in NT wetlands haven

Guardian Australia is highlighting the plight of our endangered native species during an election campaign that is ignoring broken environment laws and rapidly declining ecosystemsExplore the series – Last chance: the extinction crisis being ignored this electionGet Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an emailHundreds of far eastern curlews fly non-stop more than 10,000km every year to Darwin Harbour from Russia and China. But their southern habitat is under threat from a large industrial development backed by more than $1bn in federal government funding.Known for its long curved bill and soft brown feathers, the far eastern curlew is the world’s largest migratory shorebird and one of 22 priority bird species the Albanese government has promised to support. The birds fly south each year to forage, rest and fatten up during summer before returning to the northern hemisphere.Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email Continue reading...

Hundreds of far eastern curlews fly non-stop more than 10,000km every year to Darwin Harbour from Russia and China. But their southern habitat is under threat from a large industrial development backed by more than $1bn in federal government funding.Known for its long curved bill and soft brown feathers, the far eastern curlew is the world’s largest migratory shorebird and one of 22 priority bird species the Albanese government has promised to support. The birds fly south each year to forage, rest and fatten up during summer before returning to the northern hemisphere.Register: it’s quick and easyIt’s still free to read – this is not a paywallWe’re committed to keeping our quality reporting open. By registering and providing us with insight into your preferences, you’re helping us to engage with you more deeply, and that allows us to keep our journalism free for all.Have a subscription? Made a contribution? Already registered?Sign InFar eastern curlews are a marvel in the natural world and affectionately described as the ultimate endurance athletes. Unable to glide, soar or land on the ocean, they flap their wings for the entirety of their journeys until they reach safe and familiar coastal habitat thousands of kilometres away.Will the curlew be able to hang on despite habitat loss? Illustration: Meeri AnneliThe curlew’s global population has fallen by 80% over the past 40 years, largely due to destruction and development-related changes to its intertidal habitat.Government documents show the proposed industrial precinct at Middle Arm, on a peninsula 13km south of Darwin, will need about 1,500 hectares (3,705 acres) of native mangroves and savanna woodland to be cleared, affecting “threatened species, and sensitive and significant vegetation”.The precinct is a proposed Northern Territory government development involving the construction of wharves and jetties to be used by industries including liquified natural gas, carbon capture and storage and critical minerals.The former NT Labor government was criticised for promoting it as a “sustainable” development despite documents revealing officials considered it a “key enabler” for a large gas industry expansion.Much of the public scrutiny of the project has focused on its potential contribution to the climate crisis and whether $1.5bn in federal support backed by Labor and the Coalition is effectively a fossil fuel subsidy.But a preliminary assessment by the NT government shows the project would cause significant damage to local wildlife.It would include the “loss of key high tide roosting habitats” for the far eastern curlew and the endangered bar-tailed godwit – another migratory species – as saltpans and mangroves were cleared and reclaimed. Far eastern curlews rely on these areas for foraging and roosting.Dr Amanda Lilleyman, a shorebird expert and BirdLife Top End volunteer based in Darwin, said the Middle Arm development’s potential impact on the species was concerning and consistent with the loss of its coastal habitat around the world. “This has been the direct cause of the population declines over the last 40 years,” she said.Far eastern curlews have ‘been hammered by habitat destruction up and down the entire flyway for the past 40 years’, one expert says. Photograph: Manoj Kutty Padeettathil ManilalThe far eastern curlew is also likely to be harmed by land clearing under way for a defence housing project at Lee Point, north of Darwin, where the birds feed and rest.The federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, last year rejected a proposed apartment and marina development at Toondah Harbour in Queensland’s Moreton Bay because of its impact on an internationally significant wetland used by far eastern curlews and other endangered migratory species.Toondah Harbour was designated worthy of protection under the Ramsar convention, a global treaty covering wetlands. The salt pans and intertidal zones of Darwin Harbour are not subject to the treaty. But Lilleyman said they still needed protection.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Clear Air AustraliaAdam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisisPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionShe said the curlew’s survival required all governments of countries within its east Asian-Australasian flyway to act.“The survival of threatened migratory species is dependent on the sum of all of those habitat parts,” she said. “If all of the important habitat is protected then you’re starting to get on track for reversing the decline of the species.”Sean Dooley, a senior adviser at BirdLife Australia, said far eastern curlews had “been hammered by habitat destruction up and down the entire flyway for the past 40 years”.He said Australia’s national environmental law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, was “failing the species badly” because it did not factor in cumulative impacts of habitat loss in different places.Dooley said damage from numerous developments added up to a “serious blow to the viability of the population”. “The idea that they can always just go somewhere else just doesn’t stack up any more and every remaining suitable habitat becomes even more precious,” he said.The NT minister for logistics and infrastructure, Bill Yan, said an environment assessment was being done but the Country Liberal party government was “committed to rebuilding the economy through the development of the Middle Arm precinct”.He said the assessment was identifying “the potential cumulative impacts of the precinct on environmental values and developing ways to protect them”, and it was inappropriate to draw conclusions before it was complete.Dooley said protecting remaining far eastern curlew habitat would be “an act of hope for the future” that the species can be not just saved but could “return and recover”.“The wonder of the curlew’s migration unites cultures across the flyway, their annual return a potent symbol of hope and renewal,” he said. “To consent to further habitat destruction obliterates that hope of a rich and balanced future.”

Australia is in an extinction crisis –&nbsp;why isn’t it an issue at this election?

Some of the country’s most loved native species, including the koala and the hairy-nosed wombat, are on the brink. Is this their last chance at survival?Explore the series – Last chance: the extinction crisis being ignored this electionGet Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an emailMost parliamentarians might be surprised to learn it, but Australians care about nature. Late last year the not-for-profit Biodiversity Council commissioned a survey of 3,500 Australians – three times the size of the oft-cited Newspoll and representative of the entire population – to gauge what they thought about the environment. The results tell a striking story at odds with the prevailing political and media debate.A vast majority of people – 96% – said more action was needed to look after Australia’s natural environment. Nearly two-thirds were between moderately and extremely concerned about the loss of plants and animals around where they live.Get Guardian Australia environment editor Adam Morton’s Clear Air column as an email Continue reading...

Most parliamentarians might be surprised to learn it, but Australians care about nature. Late last year, the not-for-profit Biodiversity Council commissioned a survey of 3,500 Australians – three times the size of the oft-cited Newspoll and representative of the entire population – to gauge what they thought about the environment. The results tell a striking story at odds with the prevailing political and media debate.A vast majority of people – 96% – said more action was needed to look after Australia’s natural environment. Nearly two-thirds were between moderately and extremely concerned about the loss of plants and animals around where they live.Unsurprisingly, the cost of living was way ahead when people were asked to nominate the issues they would like leaders to prioritise. But the environment was in a peloton of four issues vying for second place, alongside housing, healthcare and the economy.On what they would like to see done, three-quarters of respondents said they would back stronger national nature laws, including the introduction of clear environment standards against which development proposals could be measured and potentially rejected.Any survey should be treated cautiously, but the Biodiversity Council’s director, James Trezise, says it is not a one-off – the results are consistent with the findings of similar surveys in 2022 and 2023.They are also clearly at odds with where Anthony Albanese ended this term of parliament, with Peter Dutton’s support. After bowing to an aggressive industry-led backlash in Western Australia to shelve a commitment to create a national Environment Protection Agency, the prime minister rushed through a law to protect Tasmanian salmon farming from an environmental review.Longtime campaigners say it meant the term began with a government promising the environment would be “back on the priority list”, including a once-in-a-generation revamp of nature laws, but finished with existing legislation being weakened in a way that could yet have broader ramifications.The message from peer-reviewed science is blunt: Australia is in an extinction crisis.Over the past decade, more than 550 Australian species have been either newly recognised as at risk of extinction or moved a step closer to being erased from the planet.The full list of threatened Australian animals, plants and ecological communities now has more than 2,200 entries. It includes some of the country’s most loved native species, including the koala, the Tasmanian devil, the northern hairy-nosed wombat and a range of the type of animals that Australians take for granted: parrots, cockatoos, finches, quolls, gliders, wallabies, frogs, snakes and fish. Scientists say that, unless something is done to improve their plight, many could become extinct this century.Analysis shows 1,964,200 hectares of koala habitat was cleared between 2012 and 2021 – 81% of that in Queensland. Illustration: Meeri AnneliPartly, this is linked to a global threat – what is described as the world’s sixth mass extinction, and the first driven by humans. But part of it is specifically Australian and avoidable.A 2021 government state-of-the-environment report found the country’s environment was in poor and deteriorating health due to a list of pressures – habitat loss, invasive species, pollution and mining, and the climate crisis. Australia tops global rankings for mammal extinction – at least 33 species have died out since European invasion and colonisation – and is number two behind Indonesia for loss of biodiversity.In recent weeks, the overriding question from scientists and conservationists who dedicate their lives to protecting the country’s unique wildlife has been: what will it take for national leaders to take the issue seriously? And will this campaign – and the next parliament – be a last chance to hope for something better?“A lot of people in the scientific and conservation community have found the last three years exceptionally frustrating. A lot was promised, but in the end we went backwards,” Trezise says. “The survey shows there is a clear mismatch between what Australians expect the government to be doing and what it is actually doing. And it found there has been a decline in trust in politicians on the issue, particularly the major parties.”Over the next week, Guardian Australia’s environment team will tell the stories of passionate people trying to circumvent this in their own quiet way by working to save threatened animals.Last chance: the extinction crisis this election is ignoring (series trailer) – videoThis work is most often done with little, if any, government support. One of the findings from the Biodiversity Council is the extent to which Australians overestimate the federal government’s commitment to biodiversity. Most guess that about 1% of the budget is dedicated to nature programs, a proportion that the Greens have said they would argue for from the crossbench, and that would translate to about $7.8bn a year.Trezise says that, while funding for nature has increased since Labor was elected in 2022, the reality is that in last month’s budget, on-ground biodiversity programs received just 0.06% of spending – or just six cents for every $100 committed.Lesley Hughes, professor emerita at Macquarie University and a senior figure in environmental science as a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and the Biodiversity Council, says it is a “deeply depressing” figure given most people would think even 1% was a “pathetically small amount” to save species from extinction and preserve places they care about. “I do think it shows politicians totally underestimate how much people care about nature,” she says.She says it is tied to a broader lack of understanding that a healthy biosphere is “our life support system”. “We should treat it as a precious heritage item that is irreplaceable, and we need to see ourselves as part of nature. We are just another species,” she says. “OK, we’re a clever, resilient and adaptable species, but we’ve destroyed so much because we haven’t seen ourselves as being dependent and a part of it.”skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Clear Air AustraliaAdam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisisPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionThe failure to directly address entrenched issues in environmental protection is not new. The singer and activist Peter Garrett had first-hand experience of how nature is considered in government decision-making, having served as Labor environment minister between 2007 and 2010. Garrett blocked development proposals more than other environment ministers, but says nature protection was rarely seen as a first-order issue by leaders in government and bureaucracy. He has seen no substantial improvement since leaving parliament.“That’s a tragedy, particularly given the policy commitments that the current government had when it came into power,” the former Midnight Oil singer says.“The problem that we have is that, whether it’s at a federal or at a state level – and notwithstanding the best intentions and efforts of environment ministers and [non-government organisations] and scientists who advocate on behalf of nature – when it comes to the final decisions that are taken in the cabinet room by political leaders through the prism of economics, nature always comes last. There are exceptions to that, but very few.”Dean Arthurell of Carnaby Crusaders at his property in Lower Chittering, Western Australia with a Carnaby’s black cockatoo. Photograph: Lisa Favazzo/The GuardianGarrett says addressing that requires a shift in thinking at the top of government, but also across the community. He agrees Australians love nature, but says it often becomes a lower-order issue at the ballot box. It means that while conservation gains are possible – for example, an expansion in protected areas and support for First Nations ranger programs under Labor in this term – they mostly happen in places that no one wants to exploit.“It’s very difficult in this country to break the cognitive dissonance between us loving our wildlife and enjoying an incredible environment and actually putting resolute steps in place to make sure that it’s protected, even if that comes at a cost,” Garrett says.Trezise says that is backed up by another finding from the survey – that while people care about nature and want more done to protect it, they have little real insight into how steep the decline has become, or what a biodiversity crisis actually means.Part of what it means goes beyond what is captured by a threatened species list. It also refers to the loss of diversity within species and ecosystems, including local extinctions of once abundant creatures.This has become a common story for many Australians who have watched the disappearance of wildlife from particular areas during their lifetimes. To give one example: Brendan Sydes, the national biodiversity policy adviser with the Australian Conservation Foundation, lives in central Victoria. Grey-crowned babblers, birds with a curved beak and distinctive cry that are found across tropical and subtropical areas, were common in nearby bush earlier this century, but in more recent years have vanished.When it comes to the final decisions that are taken in the cabinet room … nature always comes last. There are exceptions to that, but very few.“For us there’s a sort of a continuing discussion of: have you heard these birds recently? And the answer is: maybe they’ve gone, maybe we’re not going to see them any more. And that’s the legacy of fragmentation of habitat and the vulnerability that results from that,” he says. “The same thing is happening with other once common species. And once something’s gone from the area, it’s likely gone forever.”Sydes says it is easy to become immune to this sort of decline. “It’s become a sort of feature of Australian nature. We really need strong, dedicated action for it to start to turn around,” he says.How to respond to this is a deeply challenging question. It could start with an end to the government greenlighting the clearing of forest and woodlands relied on by threatened species. The Australian Conservation Foundation found nearly 26,000 hectares – an area more than 90 times the size of the Sydney CBD – was approved for destruction last year. Under the existing laws, far more clearing than this happens without federal oversight.The challenge is not only to stop the loss of habitat but to restore the environment in places it has been lost in 250 years of European-driven clearing. Experts say that becomes particularly important in an age of climate crisis, when species adapted to living at particular temperatures and with particular levels of rain are being driven from their longtime habitats as the local conditions change. Connecting fragmented forests and other parcels of nature will become increasingly important.Bogong moths once swarmed in such large numbers that meteorologists mistook them for rain clouds – but populations have collapsed since the turn of the century. Photograph: Lisa Favazzo/The GuardianLaying over the top of this is the impact of invasive species that kill and diminish native species, but are now so pervasive that they have changed the landscape for ever. It means there is no going back to the environment of 1750. A question that the political debate over the environment has yet to fully grapple with is what success from here actually looks like.The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, raised the idea this term by promising a “nature positive” future, adopting a term that overseas has been defined as halting and reversing nature loss by 2030 measured against a 2020 baseline and achieving “full recovery” by 2050. It would require retaining existing natural ecosystems – both areas that are highly intact and remnant fragments – and starting immediate restoration work on damaged and lost nature areas.But achieving that will demand significant funding – whether from public or private sources – in addition to tightening laws to prevent further destruction. Labor passed legislation to encourage private investment, but hasn’t explained how, or when, it will arrive in significant sums.It is unclear if the “nature positive” tag will survive into the next term given it has been rejected by WA industry, among others. Albanese has again promised to fix the laws and introduce a different model of EPA to that promised this term, but given no details. Dutton says no one can say the existing environment protection system is inadequate and promises faster decisions to allow developments to go ahead.In her darker moments, Hughes wonders if anything can change, but she says she remains an optimist. She sees signs of a resurgence in the idea that people need to connect with and value nature as important to the human race, and says it could make nature and species conversation become a higher priority. “Let’s hope that’s the case,” she says.Garrett says the path ahead for people who want change needs to be “building community and organisational strengths”, and supporting activists prepared to put themselves on the frontline using nonviolent direct action against fossil fuel exploitation and environment destruction.“It’s about a transformative ethic that lifts what we have and recognises what we have been able to secure jointly,” he says. “It gave us a great conservation estate – look at the world heritage areas, look at Kakadu – but those great gains are in danger.“Are we going to see unfettered housing developments and oil and gas exploration basically take over every square metre of the continent that’s left for them to do it? Or are we going to draw a line in the sand? It’s time to draw that line.”

As Colorado River declines, states are failing to tap an alternate resource

Five out of seven Colorado River basin states are failing to maximize a critical resource that could help alleviate the region’s longstanding water crisis, a new report found. Across all the states, just 26 percent of treated municipal wastewater is being reused, according to the research, released by the University of California Los Angeles, along...

Five out of seven Colorado River basin states are failing to maximize a critical resource that could help alleviate the region’s longstanding water crisis, a new report found. Across all the states, just 26 percent of treated municipal wastewater is being reused, according to the research, released by the University of California Los Angeles, along with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Arizona and Nevada, which both recycle more than half of their wastewater, stand out among the other five — California, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming — all of which reuse less than a quarter of their wastewater, the report determined. "We're facing a hotter, drier future and we need to pursue water recycling aggressively if we're going to ensure a sustainable, resilient water supply for the Colorado Basin,” co-author Noah Garrison, a water researcher at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, said in a statement. “Even recycling 40% of our wastewater could make a dramatic difference, and we have two states already above 50% showing this is an entirely feasible solution,” Garrison added. The 1,450-mile Colorado River provides drinking water and agricultural irrigation to about 40 million people across seven U.S. states, 30 tribal nations and two states in Mexico. As the West becomes increasingly dry and a growing population consumes more water, this key transboundary artery is dwindling. On the domestic level, the seven U.S. basin states are currently negotiating an update to the Colorado River’s operational guidelines, which are set to expire at the end of 2026. The UCLA-led research team drew their conclusions by analyzing 2022 data from publicly owned treatment works, which process more than 1 million gallons of wastewater daily across the states. They found that Nevada reused 85 percent of its treated wastewater, followed by Arizona at 52 percent. California, which is the region’s biggest wastewater producer, recycled only 22 percent, despite setting ambitious water recycling goals in 2009 and boasting stringent regulations on the subject. Nonetheless, California fared much better than the remaining states, with New Mexico reusing just 18 percent, Colorado 3.6 percent, Wyoming 3.3 percent and Utah less than 1 percent, according to the study. “This is a striking divide,” co-author author Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “The river is over-allocated by up to 4-million-acre feet a year, and state reductions can be less difficult,” Gold added. For reference, the basin states have the collective right to 15 million acre-feet per year, while Mexico receives a 1.5-million-acre-foot allocation. The average U.S. household consumes about half an acre-foot of water annually. In addition to identifying this dearth in water reuse, the researchers also flagged an apparent absence of basic monitoring as to how much recycling is actually occurring — creating a situation that they described as a “data desert.” To quantify the amount of reuse that was occurring, the scientists said they had to in some cases call specific treatment plants to get answers. This absence of consistent reporting systems, they explained, speaks to other systemic issues: a situation in which prolonged drought, climate change, overuse and obsolete infrastructure have come together to create a regional crisis. The authors also criticized the lack of federal standards for wastewater recycling, while noting that just a handful of states track where their treated water goes and how much of it is reused. “There is tremendous opportunity to expand recycled water use, but the lack of adequate data is a significant barrier for increasing wastewater reuse,” Garrison said. Going forward, the researchers suggested concrete policy recommendations for both state and federal governments. They advised the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop model ordinances for states and work with them to create standardized reporting protocols and reuse targets. Also crucial, they added, would be the expansion of funding mechanisms, including grants from the Bureau of Reclamation. At the state level, the authors recommended assessing the effectiveness of individual state programs while also conducting comparisons between neighbors. Each state, they concluded, should establish its own numeric targets, timelines and interim goals, while working with local reclamation agencies. If the Colorado River basin states raised their water recycling rates to just 40 percent, they could gain nearly 900,000 acre-feet of new water each year, or enough to quench the thirst of almost 2 million households, according to the report. Although opportunities exist to ramp up the region’s water recycling efforts substantially, the researchers stressed that doing so “will require a strong commitment from all participants.” “Water reuse won’t solve the Colorado River crisis alone,” Garrison said. “But it’s one of the few solutions available today that can be rapidly scaled and sustained over the long term,” he added.

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