Great Blue Heron wading in the pollen covered backwaters of Grenada Lake, Mississippi. See CaptBLI's post below.
The spotlight is a weekly, categorized compilation of links and excerpts from environmentally related posts at Daily Kos. Any posts included in the collection do not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of them. Because of the interconnectedness of the subject matter, some of these posts can be placed in more than one category.
CRITTERS & THE GREAT OUTDOORS
"We Need an Answer" and "Going, Going" by Paul Frea. Two poems. Here’s one: “We Need an Answer”
I wish I was a turtle and could eat whole
a helium balloon,
I would fly high
in the sky
like a miniature
Japanese monster!
How childish I was once, before realities
of the world pressed themselves
into my brain...
DEFLATED BALLOONS
look like JELLY FISH
in ocean waters to the eyes
of sea turtles –
A FAVORITE FOOD to munch,
nutritious, too,
when living protoplasm,
but DEATH
when downed balloons.
Why must a delightful toy
that brightens children's eyes
be the demise of ancient species
that can live a hundred years?
Wild biology — I did not see this coming by JMcDonald. A ubiquitous feature of cells is an internal cytoskeleton that gives them shape and the ability to move themselves around or to transport molecules within them. In nature, these cytoskeletons are networks of interlocking proteins in which actin (a muscle protein) plays a major role. But the following paper describes experiments that keep actin but replace some of the other proteins with DNA structures. (Whaaaat???) This is really outside-the-box thinking. Kudos to those who even imagined this as a possibility: Nature: Designer peptide-DNA cytoskeletons regulate the function of synthetic cells. To me, this seems to be a macro-evolutionary step on a par with DNA and proteins replacing RNA in early cell evolution -- not just tinkering with the way some things are encoded but exploring an entirely new class of chemical foundations for living cells. I can't even guess what the medical applications could be -- it's a whole new ballgame.
Bullock's Oriole
Dawn Chorus: I'll get there eventually by lineatus. Spring haz sprung and the grass is riz; let’s go see where the birdies iz! The first weekend in April was wide open, and Mines Road beckoned. But my friends’ schedules were complicated and we’d heard about another place that was worth checking out. We sorted things out — half a day at Vargas Plateau Saturday, and then on Sunday two of us would go to Mines while the other fished. Another friend had gone to Vargas a few days earlier and had some really nice raptor sightings, and mentioned that wildflowers were really starting to come out. That’s all the convincing we took. The park is in the hills above Fremont, CA, with sweeping vistas of the whole south bay. (One clue that you’re in Fremont is that more than half the cars in the lot were Teslas.) We decided on a nice loop trail that looked like it would take 3-4 hours at a birding pace.
Daily Bucket: A Look at the Bald Eagle's Nest Environment by Cal Birdbrain. On my second visit to the Lake Natoma Eagle’s nest, I documented the surrounding landscape so that you could better understand where the eagles are nesting. It included a finding different vantage point to view the nest. I found a trailhead directly across the river from the bluff. From this angle you can clearly see how huge this nest really is and get a better idea of the size of the tree holding the nest. You can also see how well the eagles located their nest to be safe from predators especially humans.
Closeup of the nest. White spots below the eagle are duck feathers. The eagles had caught and fed the duck the day before.
Dawn Chorus: Who's Minding the Chicks? by Chloris Creator. Who’s taking care of the chicks? This diary looks at some of the ways birds manage the challenging work of parenting. As there are so many species, there are many solutions to this problem — and certainly more than shown here. Note: I love birds, but I am no photographer. So images are either those already here at Daily Kos or taken from public sites, mosly Wikipedia. Like everything, birds manage to have all sorts of approaches. A few species go it alone: some hummingbirds in insect- and flower-rich environments will mate but then the mothers do everything on their own. As foraging is so easy, they don’t need the help.
Common Snapping Turtle — Chelydra serpentina
Daily Bucket - A visit to the lake by CaptBLI. After I got back from Grenada Lake (Mississippi) (to check on the Bald Eagles nest), I enjoyed funningforrest’s April 1st. diary. He put together a great little montage of sights from his American Valley. Thanks for prompting me to put this diary together, dude. While I was at the sewer lagoons, I saw these few creatures. The manager of the treatment plant wanted to show me this monster. It was trapped in one of “release boxes” (that allow treated water into the sediment lagoons) that measures 6 foot square. I have outlined the turtle to show how large this behemoth is.
The Daily Bucket: Spring comes slowly but surely in the PNW by RonK. Bellingham WA. Pacific Northwest. After an unseasonably warm spell in early January many plants “thought” spring was just around the corner and decided to start budding. Boy were they surprised in mid January (as were we) when the temperatures plummeted to single digits and a stiff northly gale blew for several days. Many local small creeks and streams totally froze over and others almost did like the one below. The frigidity showed itself as well on Bellingham Bay with a nice spray of Sea Smoke. And in the background, the Canadian Cascade Range jutting up crystal clear, all coated in white.
Sea Smoke on the bay. Sea smoke occurs when very cold air blows over a body of water that is relatively warmer. As the light wind of cold air sweeps in, it cools the layer of warm air immediately above the water, which makes the air dip below the dew point and condenses. It is essentially fog. (This is a little blurry as it was too cold to get out or to roll down the car window.)
Point Wilson Light on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Washington.
The Strait of Juan de Fuca by Desert Scientist. The outlet of the Salish Sea in Washington-British Columbia is the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Supposedly discovered by a man who called himself Juan de Fuca. His real name was apparently Apóstolos Valerianos and he probably never entered the Strait which is named for him! It is even possible that Sir Francis Drake actually discovered it, but he left no record so we can’t be sure. See: www.washington.edu/… Whatever the case may be, the strait is actually a fjord that connects the Pacific with Puget Sound and is a prime birding area, among other things. I have spent some time at Port Townsend on the eastern part of the Strait and less time at Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, near the middle of the strait and in the water near Victoria and the San Juan Islands. Therefore my observations are minimal to say the least. The Cascadia Subduction Zone lies just to the west of the Strait and it continues to be of concern. Some estimates give us 50 years until a quake of magnitude 8, but nothing is certain. Early estimates gave a periodicity of over 500 years, the last great quake was in 1700. en.wikipedia.org/... [...] The Strait can be fairly turbulent, but not usually so much as the actual Pacific Coast of Washington and Vancouver Island. My trips to Port Townsend gave me an appreciation of birding on the Strait and it’s quite varied population of birds. I also photographed the first River Otter I have seen in Washington just offshore.
EARTH DAY
A mountain of fossil fuel.
The real Earth Day this year might be Election Day by citisven. Earth Day 2024: Planet vs Plastic. Bringing together over 1 billion people in more than 193 countries to celebrate, inform, or otherwise participate in organized events, the official theme for 2024 is something that has been close to my heart for a long time: “Planet vs. Plastics.” A lot of folks still think of the plastic pollution issue in terms of our personal practices to reduce, reuse and recycle. However, the actual scale of the problem has grown beyond our individual capacity to deal with. This is because the fossil fuel industry has shifted towards petrochemicals (aka plastics) as their next major growth market in light of grids and automobiles rapidly transitioning to renewable energy. While it will continue to be important for consumers to find/demand alternatives to single use plastic and for activists to educate about the harm of microplastics across its life cycle, the intentional proliferation of plastics by Big Oil has now entered areas of broad global impact, such as climate change, ocean health, and food safety. So the only recourse we have to protect the commons from such large scale legalized greed and destruction is through regulatory bodies. In other words, a functioning government working in the interest of people and planet.
4/23 Renewable Earth Day by Mokurai. DemCast @DemCastUSA. This Earth Day, we're celebrating the 523 NEW CLEAN ENERGY projects funded by the Biden-Harris Administration—creating 271,713 new jobs. These investments will continue to generate clean energy jobs for generations to come! BREAKING: Democratic star Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivers a show-stopping Earth Day speech for President Biden, touting his historic climate change announcement.Share this with EVERY Trump cultist you encounter."Today is a historic day and a landmark…
On Earth Day 2024, Biden Continues to Implement Historic Climate Action, Conservation Programs by NewsPhotosFeatures. It’s not just rhetorical flourish or pandering promises. President Biden has taken historic actions in devising and implementing real, innovative programs and achieved unprecedented progress in tackling the climate crisis and protecting the environment in a way that benefits all Americans, cuts costs for households, and creates good-paying jobs and careers. The programs are detailed, but taken together, they achieve the necessary transition from a carbon-based economy and society, to one that is based on clean, renewable and sustainable infrastructure. A full week of important environmental announcements, began on Earth Day, April 22, with President Biden announcing that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has selected 60 entities receiving $7 billion through the Solar for All grant competition to deliver residential solar projects to over 900,000 households nationwide, and a guarantee of at least 20 percent energy cost savings per household. The grant competition is part of EPA’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, funded through the Inflation Reduction Act.
Overnight News Digest for Weds April 24 (Earth Week edition) by jeremybloom. Sydney Morning Herald — Biggest climate revolt rocks Woodside as investors turn up heat on emissions Australian oil and gas giant Woodside has been rocked by the biggest investor uprising ever seen against a major emitter’s approach to climate change as 58 per cent of its shareholders rejected the company’s decarbonisation plans as inadequate. The country’s top producer of the fossil fuels and its high-profile chairman, Richard Goyder, faced extensive criticism at Woodside’s annual shareholder meeting in Perth on Wednesday for refusing to do more to align the business with hastening international efforts to restrain rising global temperatures. The Woodside investor revolt is significant because it is the first time a majority of shareholders at a publicly traded company have defied the board in a so-called “Say on Climate” vote over the credibility of its plans to continue operating in a carbon-constrained world. While the vote is not binding, its 58 per cent rejection marks an embarrassing blow for the board after it spent two years engaging with shareholders to improve its strategy.
On Earth Day 2024 “The War Against the Greens” is Expanding! by Blue Notes. The rightwing Heritage Foundation has written “Project 2025,” a plan for what it hopes will be a second Trump administration. The plan calls for rapidly expanding fossil fuel emissions and includes a chapter on opening up the Department of Interior’s lands to mineral mining and oil drilling written by Wise Use veteran, William Perry Pendley. 30 years ago, I wrote a widely-read book, ‘The War Against the Greens – The ‘Wise Use’ movement, the New Right and Anti-Environmental Violence,’ describing how a “populist” backlash against environmental laws and violence against grassroots activists was ginned up by western public lands corporations seeking to defend their federal subsidies in mining, logging and cattle grazing. They aligned with gun rights and off-road vehicle groups and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and in doing so created a template for today’s anti-environmentalism. In its first update in 1997 I wrote a warning that has become a reality. “To envision the next environmental backlash supported not by U.S. public lands industries but by the global energy sector, the most powerful industrial combine in human history, is not a calming thought. In a worst-case scenario, this backlash will be even more violent, sophisticated and stealthy.” Although, not always stealthy.
Be Cool for the Butterflies for Earth Day! by CorpFlunky. Butterflies are free. Monarchs may arrive at their winter home late, be choosy about where to land, and may leave early. At around 10,000 feet, the dormant volcanic peaks are covered in trees and flowers, with the specific temperatures the Monarchs need. Despite the distance and dangers, the fragile butterflies still manage to fly from Canada to Mexico every year in an extraordinary migration, one of the coolest natural events on earth. Everyone loves the monarchs, and between the states of Mexico and Michoacán the reserve is both a UNESCO Biosphere and a World Heritage Site. During the November to March season, crowds of locals take bus day trips to see them fly, cluster, feed, mate and fly again. Since the flighty monarchs are unpredictable, day trips can visit their chosen forest at the best times. Overseas visitors often stay for a few days in lovely spots—like Cerro Pelón B&B run by a family of original butterfly rangers—to enjoy the picturesque villages and relaxing environment while recovering from high altitude hiking, as I did. Humans can impact these glorious butterflies in many ways, both positively and negatively, and we need to be much smarter about making small changes that can help: reduce pesticides, grow butterfly friendly plants and drive slower when butterflies are present. But also, we need to make big, global changes to reduce our carbon emissions, so that this species can survive. Which brings me to an Earth Day question. Is it worth flying and driving here to see the butterflies, knowing that your carbon pollution will contribute to their extinction? Better to drive an electric car.
Climate Brief Trees: Environmental vandalism- (+more) for Earth Day 2024🌲 by Angmar. What is Environmental vandalism: Environmental crime is an illegal act which directly harms the environment. These illegal activities involve the environment, wildlife, biodiversity and natural resources. International bodies such as, G7, Interpol, European Union, United Nations Environment Program, United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, have recognized the following environmental crimes: .wikipedia.org/… 100 Beeches cut by vandals Horrified’: Devon village in shock at felling of 100 ancient beech trees Outrage in Colaton Raleigh after government agency issued licence for the trees to be felled www.theguardian.com/…
Earth Week 2024 April 22-26th by rebel ga. Earth Day 2024 Theme Planet vs Plastics. Tackling Marine Debris. Marine Biology-Facts. The focus is on working to eliminate plastic usage "for the sake of human and planetary health" and to decrease plastic production by 60 percent by 2040. Videos / Activities For Kids
For Earth Day 🌎 Eleven Films brings us the short film #BidensClimateRevolution by Angela Marx. Eleven Films has just released their latest short film in support of the re-election of Joe Biden, and for the Americans across our nation who are concerned about Climate Change and what it means to all of us. How it affects our daily lives and what Joe Biden and the Democrats have already done to get ready to deal with those changes.
ENERGY, EMISSIONS, TRANSPORTATION
Elsewhere in Focus: Democratic Republic of Congo, Part I, Mining by AVeng. How is it like standing between the Satan and the sea? Sorry, the English call him the Devil, do you not? Well, the devil and the deep blue sea? And that with a whole lot of wealth in your hands? You need to only look at what is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to find out. Between extractive policies that support exploitative mining of Congo’s vast mineral wealth and the rebellion from M23 funded by Rwanda—who gets their funding from the West—the Congolese people are being ground down. The funniest thing? Very few governments are doing anything about it. (No not very funny.) That can change if we pay more attention to what is happening in Congo, differentiate the crises and take appropriate actions suited to us and them. This piece is a contribution to that.
Share price declining - sales tanking - is Tesla going the way of Pan Am? by TheCriticalMind. In 1927, two US Army Air Corps Majors, Henry "Hap" Arnold and Carl Spaatz, founded an airline to fly passengers and mail between Key West and Havana. The company they ambitiously called Pan American Airways lived up to its name and more. Pan Am became the unofficial international US flag carrier. It acquired a global cachet. It was a leader in aviation advances, including adopting the Boeing 747 jumbo jet and computerized reservation systems. And it was sexy.It went out of business in 1991. On November 5th, the NASDAQ composite was 15,972. And Tesla stock traded at its all-time high, $407. Today, the NASDAQ is off 2% from that peak. Tesla is down 64%. While stock price does not equal sales, it does reflect the market’s opinion of a company's prospects.
Why Germany Ditched Nuclear Power before Coal—and Why it Won't Go Back by Irontortoise. Recently ran across this report on techxplore.com that does a deep dive into the sources of German power production since 1990, based on data from Clean Energy WireThe article goes on to examine the historical roots of Germany’s seemingly unique antipathy toward nuclear power with the rise of the Greens in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and in particular how the 2011 Fukushima disaster convinced even the relatively pro-nuclear CDU government at the time that politically they had no choice but to continue phasing out their existing nuclear power plants. And while I would certainly side with Greta Thunberg and most other climate activists in questioning this German priority on decommissioning their last remaining nuclear power plants over phasing out coal at a faster rate, I’m still blown away by the trends evident in the above graph: Predictions that the nuclear exit would leave Germany forced to use more coal and facing rising prices and supply problems, meanwhile, have not transpired. In March 2023—the month before the phaseout—the distribution of German electricity generation was 53% renewable, 25% coal, 17% gas, and 5% nuclear. In March 2024, it was 60% renewable, 24% coal, and 16% gas. In 2000 renewables accounted for just 6% of German electricity production, and by 2030 they are projected to reach 80%!
Biden sets rule to end coal-fired power plants and creates one-stop shop to speed power-line okays by Meteor Blades. The Biden-Harris administration on Thursday released its final rules to curb emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants. This will force electricity-generating plants fueled by coal to capture 90% of their carbon emissions by 2039 or shut down. That is a year earlier than the draft version of the rules. The rules are authorized by provisions of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. That doesn’t mean Republicans won’t line up with fossil fuel companies to contest the rules in court. If the change stands up to the inevitable litigation, it will mean the end of the line for coal-fired plants that 25 years ago generated 52% of America’s electricity. Last year this had fallen to just 16%, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, with 382 coal plants having been shut down over the preceding two decades, leaving 148 still in operation. Currently, coal generates 19% of annual U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.The Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates that there are some 42,000 jobs linked directly to coal mining today, down from 73,000 in 2014.
CLIMATE EMERGENCY & EXTREME WEATHER
Caribbean Matters: Building hurricane resilience in Antigua and Barbuda by Denise Oliver-Velez. When looking at the impact of climate change on the Caribbean, it is important to pay attention to and support local efforts to mitigate it. Our news agencies tend to cover climate disasters only as they are happening—then they move on, rarely returning to see how people are faring, coping, or recovering. The Caribbean countries are no exception to this rule. That’s the reality for the dual-island Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda. You may remember that Hurricane Irma virtually wiped out Barbuda (not to be confused with Barbados) in September 2017; you may not know that nearly seven years later, tiny Barbuda—comprising just 3% of the nation’s 101,489 residents—and its larger sibling Antigua have been facing multiple challenges ever since.
Heavy downpours submerge large swathes of Nairobi, Kenya, and Tanzania, drowning hundreds by Pakalolo. From CBS News: Hundreds of people in Tanzania and Kenya are dead after heavy rain during the region's monsoon season, officials said. Flooding in Tanzania caused by weeks of heavy rain has killed 155 people and affected more than 200,000 others, the prime minister said Thursday. That is more than double the number of deaths reported two weeks ago as the amount of rainfall increases, especially in the coastal region and the capital, Dar es Salaam. Flooded schools have been closed and emergency services have rescued people marooned by the flood waters. Roads, bridges, railways and other infrastructure have also been destroyed, officials said.
Glacial melting may drive ocean circulation over W Antarctica's continental shelf, decaying the ice by Pakalolo. A new study from researchers specializing in mathematical models and oceanography models, Yidongfang Si, Andrew L. Stewart, Alessandro Silvano, and Alberto C. Naveira Garabato, found that the steering of the undercurrent is the meltwater from the massive ice cavities carved by warming waters decaying the ice, a result of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. Increasing melt at the bedrock strengthens the Antarctic Slope Current melt, amplifying the Circumpolar Deepwater delivery to the ice. The study argues that it indicates positive feedback likely to accelerate the melting of the ice shelves, weaken an already threatened Amundsen Sea Embayment, and further destabilize the highly vulnerable West Antarctica Ice Sheet. Melting ice represents up to 25 percent of today's sea level rise. If you have read this far, you are astonished by the level of complexity in this process. I doubt we have a solution for reversing or slowing Earth's most substantial current (Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC)), particularly the change in the slope current meltin ice.
Europe's colonization and the extensive slaughter of Native Americans cooled the global climate by Pakalolo. A 2019 scientific study by the University College London, UK, found that European colonization and genocide of the indigenous people of the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century cooled the planet, the authors concluded. The new research, funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council, suggests that this led to a regrowth of forests and a reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, which in turn contributed to the Earth’s cooling. The scientists report that as the population plummeted, land was abandoned and farming ceased causing natural vegetation to grow back. Scientists believe that the changes to land use led to a lowering of CO2 levels sufficient enough that the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere eventually fell by 7-10ppm. The researchers estimate that over the 100 years after European arrival, the indigenous population of the Americas dropped from 60 million (ten percent of the global population) to only 6 million due to waves of epidemics, warfare, and famine. The land used by native Americans began a massive reforestation, causing more CO2 to be absorbed and sunk in the soil, cooling the Earth.
President Biden sponsored the very first climate change bill ever: Boosting Biden Day 78 by GoodNewsRoundup. In 1986, Biden introduced the Global Climate Protection Act, the first climate change bill in the Senate. The act directed the government to research and develop a strategy to deal with global warming. Biden’s climate change bill died in the Senate. But the following year a version of it survived as an amendment to a State Department funding bill. Reagan signed it into law. Biden spoke about the bill on the Senate floor in January 1987 in terms that are pretty similar to what we talk about today. He talked about the threat to human habitat resulting from melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels. "Life on this planet exists only under highly specialized circumstances," Biden said. "Indeed, so special are these circumstances that even a small rise in temperature could disrupt the entire complicated environment that has nurtured life as we know it."
Climate Crisis -- Do You Have Enough Nutrients? by birches. This week’s question is Do You Have Enough Nutrients? This is an odd question until you look at the data. Multiple environmental crises are reducing food nutrients. Increases in CO2 are changing plant biology to reduce nutrient levels in plants. This reduction is ongoing and substantial. The nutrients of most concern/notice so far seem to be proteins, iron, zinc, and calcium, but the degree of chemistry change occuring will likely have effects on many of the nutrients we get from plants. This is because chemical reactions can be impacted by the relative amounts of available reactants, and we are still increasing the amounts of available CO2. Plastics, at micro and nano scales, are everywhere, and we are eating them and drinking them every day. Plastics leech chemicals into our bodies (such as PFAS, dioxins, PAHs, and endocrine disruptors) that are harmful in a wide variety of ways. Plastic particles also do physical damage in our bodies by cutting and tearing. Not surprisingly, plastics also directly change plants by causing RNA transcription reprogramming and protein production changes. These changes reduce plant nutrients.
It's the climate, stupid by ScottPLA. If you're willing to lie about the climate, what are you not willing to lie about? There are few things as cut and dried as hundred year old physics. There are few things as obvious as the fact that if you extract massive amounts of hydrocarbons from the ground, burn them, and change the mass, volume, and composition of the atmosphere, other atmospheric parameters such as temperature, wind speed, and humidity are going to change, too. And there are few things as consequential as ecosystem collapse, mass extinction, and climate chaos. And yet, politicians continue to delay climate action and the corporate media continue to help them get away with it. When Rick Caruso ran for Los Angeles Mayor, the media refused to mention that he has 0 solar panels on billions of dollars of real estate, and, if elected, would most likely have appointed climate change deniers to run the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest municipal utility in the United States. By spending $100M on advertising, he gained the support of all major media outlets, and they completely ignored the dramatic difference between his climate position and that of Karen Bass (who fortunately won).
How Hot is It? by Dooey. It should be abundantly clear and obvious to all of us that we are in extinction. Biden needs crossover votes — he is not going to make declarative statements about an existential threat of climate change — he can’t or we face fascist overthrow ( which they are going to go for despite the ballot box). People don’t want to hear it is over. Not on KOS, not anywhere. We have past the point of needing experts to inject scientific research analysis and clarification. If it isn’t obvious that humans are going to struggle to maintain habitat, food supply, and infrastructure in 120+ degrees Fahrenheit — what can anyone say. The Southern Hemisphere had peaks in excess of 127 just a few months ago — the Northern Hemisphere is now up to bat. The north pole will not go to a blue ocean event in 2024 — that’s good news. the bad news is that ice coverage ain’t lookin so good. A blue ocean event at the north pole is a good indicator that we are finished. When coverage drops below 15% get worried https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
The Stakes in 2024: It's Life or Death, Now or Never by wruckusgroink. I’m often critical of the New York Times, but I’m grateful for today’s magnificent Opinion piece by Stephen Markley. He illuminates the choice we have in the 2024 election: We must look at this election and understand that its now or never... The climate movement can either fight like hell for Mr. Bien’s re-election or watch a Mr. Trump and his allies set fire to the planet. [...] So what happens to this progress if Donald “I Hate Wind” Trump is elected? Markley rightly notes that what saved us from utter calamity in 2016 — Trump’s tiny attention span, ignorance, and fecklessness in navigating the D.C. establishment — will not save us this time. This time, the hard-right Fascist cabal of ideologues and corporate plutocrats are locked and loaded to vaporize whatever progress Biden has made. They’re salivating over the opportunity to set the planet on fire to caffeinate their stock prices. Trump’s marching orders from the shovel-ready-on-Day-One Project 2025 begins with this table-setter: “The Biden Administration’s climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding.”
AGRICULTURE, FOOD, GARDENING, WATER
Saturday Morning Garden Blogging Vol.20.17 Planting Out Tomatoes & Peppers; slowly… by Downheah Mississippi. Morning Y’all, and welcome to another DownHeah edition of Saturday Morning Garden Blogging. Members and regular visitors here at SMGB know that I pretty much grow only tomatoes and peppers, and if it’s mid April, then this is my “planting out” diary. I grow most of my plants from seed, and I scheduled my seed starting with an eye towards planting out in mid April, and I did begin on 4/17, but...what I like to call “this, that & the other thing” have conspired to put me behind. No major calamity, but rather a series of aggravating, time consuming, shitty little things. Bed/container prep is behind; hardening-off is behind; obviously, weed control is behind. UGH! Ok, my little rant is over. The remainder of this diary will consist of me just captioning a bunch of pictures.
Big Beef, the author’s main producer. The best all around tomato I’ve ever grown ...
Today [April 26] at 12:30 pm: Fishermen, Tribal Members Ask CA Water Board to Deny Voluntary Water Agreements by Dan Bacher. Native Americans, fishing industry and conservation community talk about disastrous salmon numbers, closed fishing season and impacts to culture and livelihoods. [...] The State Water Resources Control Board (SWB) is in charge of developing and implementing a water control plan for the Bay-Delta but has delayed updating this plan for decades. As part of the Bay-Delta Plan update process, the SWB is considering the adoption of exclusionary Voluntary Agreements that will not provide the water flows the watershed and salmon need and will harm the health of the Bay-Delta ecosystem and the people who rely on it. A low number of salmon predicted to be in the ocean this year has led fishery managers to recently close ocean salmon fishing for 2024 – the second year in a row. The Bay-Delta watershed covers more than 75,000 square miles and many rivers and is the largest estuary on the Pacific coast of the Americas. Native species in the Bay-Delta are experiencing an ecological crisis due to habitat conversion, degraded water quality, harmful algal blooms, reductions in flows, and the inability to access natural habitats that are blocked by dams and levees. This has led to severe decline and extinction of native fish and other aquatic species. The salmon levels have become so low that salmon fishing has been canceled in California for the second year in a row and only the fourth time in history. Climate change and frequent, unpredictable weather patterns leave the health of the Bay-Delta uncertain and especially vulnerable each year. Years of scientific studies have shown that 65% of the water in the Delta watersheds needs to stay in the rivers for clean water and fisheries.
MISCELLANY & AGGREGATIONS
Overnight News Digest: Americans like Biden’s climate policies if aware of them. Most aren’t by Magnifico. Few have heard about Biden's climate policies, even those who care most about issue — CBS News poll. CBS News President Joe Biden made addressing climate change a key issue in his 2020 campaign. Three years into his presidency, what do those who care about the issue most think about what he's done? How much do they know? Few Americans say they've heard a lot about what the administration has done on climate change. That extends to those in the president's own party and to those who rate the issue of climate change as very important. Half of them have heard little or nothing at all about what the administration has done. […] But they do like the Biden administration's policies when they hear about them.
131 Million People in US Live in Areas with Unhealthy Air Pollution Levels by C0RI0LANUS. The American Lung Association released its 25th annual “State of the Air” survey for the US, reporting that 40% of the population live with poor air quality, an increase of nearly 12 million people since last year’s survey. More people than ever have experienced “very unhealthy” or “hazardous” air quality days. Air pollution can exacerbate people’s medical conditions such as asthma and psoriasis, as well as affect pregnancies. The Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health noticed an uptick in preterm births during periods of heavy wildfire events: “When we have weeks of poor air quality, we see more pregnant individuals coming in and delivering before 37 weeks.” They counsel parents about the risk factors associated with of heat and smoke during pregnancy.
The 2024 FEMA Wildfire National Risk Index rating represents a community's relative risk for wildfires when compared to the rest of the US. The American Lung Association reports increases in wildfire smoke and climate change have been chipping away at decades of cleanup efforts made through the 1963 Clean Air Act, a federal law to regulate air pollution and set air quality standards.
President Biden Created Clean Energy Jobs: Boosting Biden Day 77 by GoodNewsRoundup. Joe Biden sees protecting the planet, creating jobs, and eliminating inequality as all part of the same puzzle. Much of what he does helps push all three of those forward. A great example is clean energy jobs — which have been booming under the Biden administration. This is from a White House report late last year: Bidenomics in Action: Clean Energy Jobs and Investments Taking Hold Across Americ. Between January 2021 and March 2023, the economy added 21,000 jobs in power generation and supply, reaching its highest level in more than a decade following a prolonged decline in employment in the industry. Notably, more than half of these job gains occurred between August 2022 (when the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act were signed into law) and March 2023.
4/25 Good News Roundup: Do YOU Know What's in the IRA? by Mokurai. NYT : Democrats Say Biden Hasn’t ‘Made the Case’ on Climate Despite Achievements. President Biden has done more than any president to tackle climate change, but strategists are grappling with an uncomfortable fact: Voters don’t seem to know it. Public Supports More Drug Price Regulation, Unaware of Inflation Reduction Act Provisions. The IRA took some steps to address these issues for people with Medicare. The law caps monthly insulin costs at $35 per prescription, creates new programs to negotiate the price of some drugs and penalize companies for raising prices faster than inflation, and redesigns Part D prescription drug coverage to include an out-of-pocket cap for enrollees. The polling shows none of these provisions are widely known. Only a quarter of adults are aware of the provisions on insulin, drug negotiation, or the out-of-pocket cap. The inflation rebate is even less widely known, with only one in ten aware of that provision. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get the word out to to your community, to influencers on social media, to editors at local papers, to Democratic Party organizations, to issue organizations...What did I leave out?
Building Resilience, Saving Lives by David McCall. Scott Cox sprinted across the field, slogging through ankle-deep water, to where his parents’ house stood moments before. He found a mountain of debris from the EF5 tornado, a milk truck that the unusually powerful twister had flung into the yard, and his parents’ horse, bleeding, covered with welts, standing dazed near the remnants of the back deck. And then Cox, a longtime member of the United Steelworkers (USW), heard his mother’s cries. He dug her out of the rubble by hand, saving her, only to lose his father, who was too injured even for CPR and perished along with 15 others in Smithville, Miss., that day. The people of Smithville opened a domed tornado shelter following the April 2011 disaster, but that merely underscored America’s need for a comprehensive, forward-looking approach that empowers communities to fortify defenses, construct new bulwarks and avert climate-related destruction in the first place. Now, thanks to President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the nation is building that kind of lifesaving resilience. The USW-backed IIJA delivers billions for projects to end droughts, protect the coasts against hurricanes, harden infrastructure, build stronger buildings, and provide grants for storm-resistant safe rooms.
Happy Earth Day - Let's Address Overpopulation by PopulationMediaCenter. Conversations about overpopulation can quickly become controversial because they beg the question: Who exactly is the cause of the problem and what, if anything, should be done about it? Many population experts worry discussions around overpopulation will be abused by small-minded people to suggest some are the “right people” to be on the planet (like themselves), and some people are “the wrong people” (usually people in poverty, people of color, foreigners, and so on—you get the drift). But there are no “right” or “wrong” people on the planet, and discussing the problems of global overpopulation can never be an excuse, or in any way provide a platform, for having that type of conversation. Each human being has a legitimate claim on a sufficient and fair amount of Earth’s resources. But with a population approaching 8 billion, even if everyone adopted a relatively low material standard of living like the one currently found in Papua New Guinea, it would still push Earth to its ecological breaking point. Unfortunately, the “average person” on Earth consumes at a rate over 50% above a sustainable level. Incredibly, the average person in the United States uses almost five times more than the sustainable yield of the planet. When we use the term “overpopulation,” we specifically mean a situation in which the Earth cannot regenerate the resources used by the world’s population each year.
Our 'Age of Anxiety' is getting ready for its close-up as we face the trials of the century… by vjr7121. There is a palpable anxiety that haunts our time. So much is up in the air as we lurch our way through trials and tribulations, each one in other times would seem enough. Each now takes its turn in the headlines— the Mideast, Ukraine, the climate crisis, the trials of Donald Trump, the rise of fascism, anti-Semitism… “The wolves will get you if the moths won't.” ― W.H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue History tells us that we are not alone in our anxiety. A few generations before, a bitter war that took more than 22 million lives followed a Great Depression that engulfed the world. Good times have always punctuated the anxiety-riddled times that seem to interject themselves so often and for so long. It appears the world is on the brink once again. I am reminded of the 20th-century poet W.H. Auden’s Pulitzer Prize-winning final long poem, the book-length The Age of Anxiety written in 1947 at the end of World War II— an end that birthed the anxiety-laden atomic era. “When the historical process breaks down and armies organize with their embossed debates the ensuing void which they can never consecrate, when necessity is associated with horror and freedom with boredom, then it looks good to the bar business.” — from the prologue, ”The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue”
