TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY News you can use. Facts to act on.EVERYTHING IN MODERATION Please direct your Dillons shopping points to us. ______________________________________________________________________
CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS Now it begins: coastal climate refugees
“For people whose lives have been turned upside down by climate change, who have survived wildfires and droughts, lived through hurricanes, and experienced unrelenting heat or unprecedented floods, it is a last-ditch survival strategy: you pull up stakes and move. There’s no doubt that the climate crisis disproportionately affects poor countries. But could Americans experience similar upheavals? Could we, despite our relative wealth and long history of bending nature to our will, one day find that large sections of our country have become uninhabitable? “To answer these questions, Abrahm Lustgarten interviewed more than four dozen experts: economists and demographers, climate scientists and insurance executives, architects and urban planners, and he mapped out the danger zones that will close in on Americans over the next 30 years. What Lustgarten found was a nation on the cusp of a great transformation. “One thing that climate scientists know for sure is that America’s natural environment will be utterly transformed by mid-century. Also by mid-century, large sections of the West will be turning into desert, that the Great Plains and the South will be stricken by heat waves and oscillating periods of drought and flooding that will make farming much less productive, and that parts of the South will be so hot and humid in the summertime that it will be dangerous to go outdoors. “Across the United States, some 162 million people — nearly one in two — will most likely experience a decline in the quality of their environment, namely more heat and less water. For 93 million of them, the changes could be particularly severe. “By 2070, some 28 million people across the country could face Manhattan-size megafires. Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of real estate in the architecture school at Tulane University, estimated that 50 million Americans could eventually move within the country to regions such as New England or the Upper Midwest, driven by increasingly uninhabitable coastal areas. “Such a shift in population is likely to increase poverty. It will accelerate rapid, perhaps chaotic, urbanization of cities ill-equipped for the burden, testing their capacity to provide basic services and amplifying existing inequities. Nor will these disruptions wait for the worst environmental changes to occur. The wave begins when individual perception of risk starts to shift. It begins when even places like California’s suburbs are no longer safe. “It [climate migration] has already begun. “Americans have been conditioned not to respond to geographical climate threats as people in the rest of the world do. Americans are richer, often much richer, and more insulated from the shocks of climate change. They are distanced from the food and water sources they depend on, and they are part of a culture that sees every problem as capable of being solved by money [or technology]. “So even as the average flow of the Colorado River — the water supply for 40 million Western Americans and the backbone of the nation’s vegetable and cattle farming — has declined for most of the last 33 years, the population of Nevada has doubled. At the same time, more than 1.5 million people have moved to the Phoenix metro area, despite its dependence on that same river (and the fact that temperatures there now regularly hit 115 degrees). “Perhaps no market force has proved more influential — and more misguided — than the nation’s property-insurance system. Part of the problem is that most policies look only 12 months into the future, ignoring long-term trends. Even where insurers have tried to withdraw policies or raise rates to reduce climate-related liabilities, state regulators have forced them to provide affordable coverage anyway, simply subsidizing the cost of underwriting such a risky policy. “It was no surprise, then, that California’s property insurers — having watched 26 years’ worth of profits dissolve over 24 months — began dropping policies, or that California’s insurance commissioner, trying to slow the slide, placed a moratorium on insurance cancellations for parts of the state. “Jesse Keenan, though, had a bigger point: All the structural disincentives that had built Americans’ irrational response to the climate risk were now reaching their logical endpoint. A pandemic-induced economic collapse will only heighten the vulnerabilities and speed the transition, reducing to nothing whatever thin margin of financial protection has kept people in place. “Until now, the market mechanisms had essentially socialized the consequences of high-risk development. But as the costs rise — and the insurers quit, and the bankers divest, and the farm subsidies prove too wasteful, and so on — the full weight of responsibility will fall on individual people. And that’s when the real migration might begin.” More at: Low emissions seaweed diet for cattle? – no. Less beef? – yes
“To reduce cattle emissions can we have our cake and eat it too? Or in this case, have our climate-intensive beef burgers and call them climate-friendly? In a new study out of UC Davis’s School of Animal Science, researchers wanted to see if feeding seaweed pellets to grazing beef cattle could reduce methane emissions from cow belches. “Cattle are the leading source of agricultural emissions and a top source of U.S. methane. They’re also a leading driver of deforestation, habitat loss, direct wildlife killing, and species endangerment — and require the most land and water to produce. So while factory farms aren’t climate solutions, grass-fed systems where cattle belch methane for longer periods aren’t either. “Livestock emit at least 16.5% of global greenhouse gases, with cattle alone responsible for 65% of those emissions. In the U.S., the beef industry emits a whopping 243 million metric tons (MMT) CO2e (equivalent) of greenhouse gases each year, with the dairy industry emitting 99 MMT CO2e annually. “As climate change worsens drought, it becomes increasingly difficult to feed cattle. Feed crops such as alfalfa require an enormous amount of water. Cattle production is the largest source of agricultural water use, and is responsible for native wildlife decline by creating conflicts over land and water. “The fact is there’s no solution for ‘climate-smart’ beef. Just as we can’t ‘clean coal’ our way out of fossil fuels, we can’t ‘seaweed’ our way out of beef’s climate destruction. Research already conclusively shows the urgent need for dietary shifts. Eating less beef, not feeding cattle more seaweed pellets, is what’s needed.” More at: Let Malibu burn: history of L.A. wildfires
“In this month’s massive Los Angeles fires, so far 24 people have died, thousands of structures have been destroyed and approximately 16,308 hectares have been burned. And as happens when major fires erupt in Los Angeles, urban historian Mike Davis’s 1998 book Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster is being shared. Specifically: its controversial third chapter, The Case for Letting Malibu Burn. “A Californian born 19 km outside Los Angeles, Davis was no government apologist. In 2020, Davis wrote: ‘After every fire emergency, [Governor of California, Gavin] Newsom and other liberals call for urgent action to reduce emissions. But in doing so, they deliberately elide the question of what needs to be done on the ground, here and now’. “In the 20-odd years since his book was published, he continued, too much new housing in California had been built ‘profitably but insanely, in high-fire-risk areas’. Fire experts call these areas ‘the wildland-urban interface. By one estimate, a quarter of the state’s population now lives in these interface areas’. “In The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, Davis harrowingly described a 1930 Malibu fire unintentionally ignited by walnut pickers. Malibu had already long been subjected to rampant and unregulated property development. Davis argued, ‘the 1930 fire should have provoked a historic debate on the wisdom of opening Malibu to further development’. Despite a series of subsequent fires between 1935 and 1938, public officials persisted in prioritizing real estate expansion in environmentally sensitive areas.” More at: Urban-wildland fire air quality is notably toxic
“The wind-driven fires that have leveled a broad swath of Los Angeles have killed at least 25 people, consumed approximately 12,000 homes, schools, and other structures. Wildfires, particularly in the West, typically occur in forests or where wildlands meet communities. It is extraordinarily rare to see them penetrate an American city, but that’s exactly what happened in the nation’s second-largest metropolis. “‘These fires are different from previous ‘wildfires,’ because there are so many structures that burned’, said Yifang Zhu, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. ‘Everything in the households got burned — cars, metal pipes, plastics’. “For several days after the first fire started, the city’s air quality index, or AQI, exceeded 100, the threshold at which air becomes unhealthy to breathe for children, the elderly, and those with asthma. In some parts of the city, the AQI reached 500, a number rarely seen and always hazardous for everyone. “Said Kai Chen, an environmental scientist at the Yale School of Public Health, ‘In addition to fine particulate matter, there are potentially other hazardous and carcinogenic organic compounds — gas pollutants, trace metals, and microplastics’. It’ll be months before that data is fully analyzed, but Zhu suspects she will find a dangerous mix of chemicals, including, potentially, asbestos and lead — materials used in many buildings constructed before the 1970s.” More at: Indigenous wisdom episode #7: with Paty Gualinga
“This podcast is about bringing forward the perspectives of Indigenous communities as we reckon with the consequences of a global, industrial society built on growth, extraction, and colonialism. “Indigenous people around the world are, and always have been, the most important leaders when it comes to protecting the Earth. Before we can take the necessary actions to serve and protect the Earth, we must first fully understand and embody the interconnectedness of all things. Paty Gualinga of the Kichwa people spoke directly to this.
“We have different parts, different ways. But there is one spirit that connects everybody. All the spirituality is just one. The Sarayaku people recognize that the forest, the jungle, the Amazonia, it’s alive. And we need to respect that the Amazonia feels. You know, the trees, the animals. And there are these protectors, like they’re not like real persons, but they are just like these energies that protect the forests. It’s protecting life together with that, and it’s about what they believe and they have this Cosmo-vision to protect the Earth. “Paty Gualinga is an Indigenous rights defender and foreign relations leader of the Kichwa people of Sarayaku, an Indigenous community based in the Ecuadorian Amazon.” More at: Protecting biodiversity in your neighorhood
“Biodiversity comes from the term ‘biological diversity’. Many biologists have followed the most simple and concise definition: ‘The totality of genes, species, and ecosystems in a region’. Biodiversity in one region can be very different from another, even within the same state, province, or country, and it is necessary to preserve and protect it all. Protecting Earth’s biodiversity is essential because it ensures the stability of ecosystems, which provide vital resources like clean air, water, and food. “Indigenous groups understand the importance of protecting nature and biodiversity more fundamentally than Western societies. Said Beverly Longid of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact, ‘For centuries, our values and practices have sustained and cared for the environment and kept biodiversity [in] balance. Our life, our culture, and our identity are linked intimately to our lands and territories. Colonialism and capitalism have wrought havoc upon Mother Earth, eroding our symbiotic relationship with the land. It has cut down our forests. It has dammed our rivers. It has ravaged our mountains’. “Thankfully, it is relatively easy to begin your journey in understanding and preserving sacred land—and the biodiversity it supports, close to where you live, with the following.” - Understand Sacred Lands
- Become a Curious Naturalist
- Research Online
- Consult and Visit Local Resources
- Volunteer with local, state, or regional organizations
- Document your observations of species and sacred sites
More at: Lee Zeldin oiled his way through the EPA confirmation hearing
“President-elect Mump* has chosen Lee Zeldin to lead the EPA, and the former New York Republican lawmaker is poised to reverse the clock on climate progress and hand America’s environment over to its most notorious polluters. As a member of Congress, Zeldin was awarded something called the ‘Oil Slick Award’ by a nonprofit environmental group called Environmental Advocates in 2011. “Zeldin had a lifetime environmental voting record of 14% with the League of Conservation Voters. He voted to overturn the 2020 election and sat in Mump’s* VIP box at the Republican National Convention. Zeldin is currently chair of the China Policy Initiative and the Pathway to 2025 program at the America First Policy Institute. “Zeldin appeared in Washington last Thursday before members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, as firefighters on the West Coast battled the devastating Palisades wildfire in the Los Angeles area. Said Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, ‘The question, then, for Mr. Zeldin is simple. Will he follow the science and the economics and protect our air, water and climate — or will he merely be a rubber stamp for looters and polluters who are setting the Trump agenda?’ “Echoing Whitehouse’s concerns was Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who asked Zeldin whether he agreed with Trump that climate change was a hoax. ‘I believe climate change is real’, the nominee told Sanders. But he demurred on the president-elect’s comments, saying instead that he had heard Trump talk about climate change as part of a ‘criticism of policies’. “Sanders wasn’t convinced. ‘I respectfully disagree with you’, he said. ‘I think he has called it a hoax time and time again’. Trump has on several occasions referred to what he calls ‘the global warming hoax’ and has suggested that rising sea levels and other impacts of climate change are nothing to worry about.” More at: * Mump regime — Musk plus Trump. Mu…mp. Bicycle transportation friendly state rankings for 2024
“Washington has reclaimed the title of the most bike-friendly state in America — but no state is really doing enough to support people on two wheels, the League of American Bicyclists says. The Evergreen State has once again ranked first in the League’s list of Bicycle Friendly States, toppling Massachusetts. Oregon, California and Minnesota rounded out the top five. Meanwhile, Mississippi ranked as the least bike-friendly state in the country, with Missouri, Nebraska, South Carolina and Alabama also sinking to the bottom of the barrel. “The League combined publicly available data on things like crash rates and funding with a comprehensive survey of departments of transportation themselves. No states are prioritizing active modes — or even counting how many people are getting around outside a car. According to a new question on this year’s survey, only 22 states ‘operate or fund bicycle survey or count programs’, which is four fewer than in 2022. Key findings from the 2024 Rankings Report are: Record Bicyclist Fatalities, New Focus on Safe Speeds, Infrastructure Investment, and Every Ride Counts in Data. “Kansas ranked #21 nationwide and #6 in the Midwest Region, improving from two years ago. It still lacks a complete streets policy, and doesn’t spend 2% or more of federal funds on bikeways. Missouri ranked #49 nationwide and #13 in the Midwest Region, a drop from two years ago. It has no safe passing law nor speed limit laws for #SlowRoads, doesn’t spend 2% or more of federal funds on bikeways, and has not updated a state bicycle plan for 10 years or more.” More at: Panasonic battery plant goes on-line in March
“One of the largest economic development projects in Kansas history will start churning out lithium-ion batteries as soon as March, Panasonic announced last Friday. Executives from the Japanese tech giant gave updates on its 300-acre manufacturing facility in De Soto, alongside a suite of lawmakers who helped bring the project to Kansas. Project leaders said they expect to have 1,000 on-site employees by the summer, and 2,000 by 2026. Democratic Lt. Gov. David Toland was a top proponent for bringing the project to Kansas. He said the project puts Kansas at the forefront of a burgeoning clean-energy industry. House Speaker Dan Hawkins and Senate President Ty Masterson hailed the project as a bipartisan accomplishment in polarized times.” More at: | 
