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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS Iran: extreme heat amid ongoing drought
“Iranian authorities have urged people to limit water consumption as the country grapples with severe shortages during an ongoing heatwave. Iran is experiencing its hottest week of the year so far with temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in some areas, with Shabankareh recording a sweltering 52.8°C. “The reservoirs supplying water to Tehran are currently at their lowest level in a century’, following years of steady decline in rainfall. Government officials have initiated discussions with neighbouring countries, including Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, to explore emergency water import agreements. “Shervin [not her real name], an ecology expert in Iran, describes the worsening crisis. ‘In Iran, annual rainfall has decreased by 46% compared with the country’s long-term average. 4 million in Tehran province, will soon have no water to drink or to meet basic hygiene needs’. “Shervin explains: ‘The solution the state is pursuing so far is even worse than having no water. The Ministry of Energy, which oversees the country’s water management, has already applied to drill 250 deep wells in the Tehran region to extract groundwater. But the water beneath Tehran is nothing more than millions of litres of contaminated wastewater, laced with pollutants such as heavy metals’. “Shervin continues: ‘Officially, Iran’s aging pipeline networks waste 15% of the country’s water supply. Industries here still use potable water in their machinery, and outdated irrigation systems in agriculture waste enormous amounts. Meanwhile, the government continues to promote water-intensive farming in the name of independence’.” More at: El Paso, Texas: record heat-related deaths
“Temperatures are rising faster in El Paso than in almost any other U.S. city. And a record 39 deaths were attributed directly or indirectly to heat in El Paso County during 2024. The previous record was set in 2023, when the heat directly or indirectly killed 26 people, according to state data. These were the two hottest years on record in El Paso. The temperature surpassed 100 degrees on 70 days during 2023, including a 44-day streak in June and July. Those were both records. “Neither the city nor county has released the results of any investigations into the rapid increase in heat deaths. And, unlike other heat-afflicted cities like Phoenix and counties like Miami-Dade, El Paso has no staff positions dedicated to heat mitigation. “Climate change is increasing the risks of extreme heat. The average annual temperature in El Paso has increased 5.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970, according to the nonprofit Climate Central. A disproportionate number of heat deaths occur in El Paso County compared to its population. With just under 900,000 people, the county had nearly as many deaths directly attributed to heat in 2024 as Harris County, home to nearly 5 million. More at: Whole systems intellectual curiosity
“What I thought I’d do is a little overview of what I learned this week. Here are five that I’ve learned the last couple days. First, what I learned was an acre of corn can release three to four thousands gallons of water per day, and fast growing corn like GMO types more than that, like 6,000 gallons. I learned about ‘corn sweat’, because the corn has to transpire the water into the local humidity. “The second thing I learned [was that] a board member of one of the largest insurance companies in the world, Allianz SE, by the name of Gunther Thallinger, did a LinkedIn, post saying that climate is going to cause a systemic risk to capitalism. “I quote from his post — ‘This is a systemic risk that threatens the very foundation of the financial sector. If insurance is no longer available, other financial services become unavailable too. A house that cannot be insured cannot be mortgaged. No bank will issue loans for uninsurable property. Credit markets freeze’. “This is a climate induced credit crunch. This applies not only to housing, but to infrastructure, transportation, agriculture and industry. The economic value of entire regions, coastal and wildfire prone, will begin to vanish from financial ledgers. Markets will reprice rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate driven market failure looks like.” More at: Climate insurance a financial house of cards
“Top insurers fear the climate crisis could soon outpace industry solutions, effectively threatening to make entire regions around the world uninsurable. Günther Thallinger, a board member at Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurers, recently outlined how the world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for financial services, such as mortgages and investments. “According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, we are on track to breach the 1.5 °C warming threshold within six years or less. This is not a future concern but a present financial reality. Record heatwaves, vanishing ice and billion-dollar disasters are reshaping how risk is modeled and priced. “Climate change is not tied to political cycles or market sentiment. Its impacts are structural and cumulative, reshaping both the physical world and global finance. As the Business Breakthrough Barometer notes, ‘where governments lead with clarity, business capital follows’. With governments falling short, markets are beginning to price in climate resilience — and for many sectors, it’s no longer optional. “But the deeper concern is what these market signals tell us about systemic risk. If insurers are already struggling to price and manage climate risk at today’s warming levels, how will they handle impacts as we approach irreversible tipping points? Yet the climate crisis is not being treated as a systemic threat in the here and now. Most central banks still treat it primarily as a long-term future threat rather than a possible immediate driver of financial instability.” More at: Highway spending means more traffic, speed, and death
“In his new book, Overbuilt: The High Costs and Low Rewards of US Highway Construction, Erick Guerra lays out several essential points. First, while the originally planned Interstate expressway system was completed in 1992, the pace of highway construction spending since then has not slowed. Second, though President Dwight Eisenhower intended the Interstate system to be rural, most of the construction funding went to urban and suburban sections. Third, though the length of highways may not be increasing, there are nearly twice as many lane miles of urban interstate today as in 1990. “But has ceaseless highway construction relieved traffic congestion and made drivers safer? On the contrary, the average time spent in traffic increased from twenty-nine hours in 1991 to fifty-four hours in 2019. Meanwhile, the US traffic fatality rate is two to four times higher than in Canada or wealthy European countries. “Guerra writes that about $2.5 trillion have been doled out, mostly going to urban highway projects. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will put hundreds of billions of dollars into building, rebuilding, widening, and maintaining an already overbuilt roadway system. Due to induced demand, however, the new or expanded highways quickly fill up and even the demand during routine weekday ‘rush hour’ stays ahead of roadway supply.” More at: Slow bicycling for conviviality, not competition
“On any given morning in cities like Amsterdam, Paris, Montreal, or Portland, you’ll find a growing number of cyclists coasting — not racing — through the streets. These riders aren’t hunched over in aerodynamic positions [and spandex], or timing their commute down to the second. Instead, they’re upright, alert, and unhurried, pedaling with baskets full of groceries, bouquets, or a small dog in tow. “This isn’t under-training or inefficiency — it’s a movement. The rise of slow biking marks a cultural pivot away from competitive, high-speed cycling and toward something softer, more intuitive, and fundamentally human. “Slow biking values presence over performance and connection over competition. Unlike cycling disciplines geared toward endurance, racing, or technical mastery, slow biking emphasizes comfort, safety, and the sheer joy of movement — to notice the changing leaves, stop for a chat with a neighbor, or take the scenic route home for no reason other than it feels good.” More at: Reclaiming the commons for mutualism and equitable governance
“The commons refers to shared cultural and natural resources, such as air, water, and land, which are accessible to and protected by all members of a community. More than just a collection of resources, the commons represents a foundational model for organizing social and economic life through collective care, mutual responsibility, and sustainable stewardship. “For millennia, this model has sustained communities, fostering systems rooted in cooperation rather than competition. However, over the last several centuries, the commons have been eroded by the forces of privatization, militarization, and capitalist expansion, to commodify nature and generate private wealth. “In early medieval Europe, common lands were collectively managed and governed according to local customs. The rise of centralized states and expanding militarized economies led to the systematic enclosure and privatization of communal resources. The English Enclosure Movement of the 16th century epitomized this shift. “Feminist scholars have been at the forefront of exploring the gendered dimensions of the commons and highlighting how its destruction disproportionately impacts women. Their work underscores the commons as a social and political structure that fosters collective care, solidarity, and equitable governance—not merely as a set of resources to be exploited. “Maria Mies, a sociologist and ecofeminist, demonstrates how the appropriation of women’s labor parallels the appropriation of land and natural resources, saying that, ‘the commodification of resources is not just a matter of economics but of power, based on the appropriation of the surplus value of women’s labor, just as it is based on the appropriation of the surplus value of the land, nature, and human labor in general’. “The efforts of Indigenous groups to reclaim their lands echo these feminist critiques. Such movements are not simply about land — they are about restoring cultural heritage, reversing the erasure of Indigenous women’s leadership in resource management, and dismantling the patriarchal, colonial systems. “American writer and activist David Bollier’s extensive research on the commons focuses on the importance of collective governance and shared decision-making. Bollier argues that the commons offer a compelling alternative to both the war economy and the neoliberal market economy. He writes, ‘The commons is a way of organizing life that stands in direct opposition to the war economy’s individualism, militarization, and resource extraction’.” More at: Livestock and climate, in the larger scheme of things
“Let me say that I think much of the global livestock industry is a horror show, and it’d be great to bring the curtain down on a lot of it. Also that cutting down wild forests or ploughing up wild grasslands are terrible ideas. And that there are a lot of good reasons to opt for veganism. That’s not what this is about. I have nineteen numbered points, in which I try to navigate what this is about. “The main greenhouse gases (GHGs) of importance are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. They have different potencies and different lengths of persistence. Over the short-term on human timescales the natural carbon and nitrogen cycles are quite stable and the climate doesn’t change much as a result of them. However, modern human activities add in a lot more of these gases to the mix. “The major relevant activities that do this are (1) burning fossil fuels, (2) land use change, particularly deforestation and agricultural, (3) methane emissions from ruminant livestock (and also from rice cultivation), (4) nitrous oxide emissions, mainly from agricultural fertilisers, (5) carbon dioxide emissions from cement manufacture. “Directly or indirectly, there’s a fossil fingerprint behind most contemporary climate change. In the case of land use change (LUC), there are both sources of carbon (e.g. deforestation) and sinks (e.g. afforestation). Wedderburn-Bisshop’s main argument is that we should not use a net measure for LUC and a gross one for fossil fuels. But this doesn’t make sense from the point of view of accounting accurately for the overall carbon balance. “The different atmospheric persistence of GHGs means there is no one single ‘correct’ way to measure for the radiative forcing — the time period under consideration matters. Anti animal agriculture activists often emphasise the benefits of cutting methane. If we cut out all ruminant livestock, then that would potentially reduce atmospheric methane and create some short-term climate relief. “But if we did so without cutting fossil fuels, that short-term relief would not prove ‘meaningful’ in the long-term because it would be very much more than offset by ongoing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. Moreover, fossil fuel combustion also involves methane emissions of roughly the same magnitude as methane emissions from ruminant livestock. “If we were going all out for climate relief, then it might be meaningful to cut out ruminant livestock at the same time as cutting out fossil fuels. It seems harder to argue that cutting the former without cutting the latter is meaningful, except as a short-term palliative whose positive impact is soon lost.” More at: Is Antarctic breakdown irreversible?
“Seen from space, Antarctica looks like a great sheet of ice set in contrast to the dark waters. Get closer, though, and you’ll find an extraordinarily complex interplay between the ocean, sea ice, and ice sheets and shelves. That relationship is in serious peril. “A new paper in the journal Nature catalogs how several abrupt changes are unfolding in Antarctica and its surrounding waters, reinforcing one another and threatening to send the continent past the point of no return — and flood coastal cities everywhere. “Said climate scientist Nerilie Abram, lead author of the paper, ‘When we change one part of the system, that has knock-on effects that worsen the changes in other parts of the system’. Scientists define abrupt change as a bit of the environment changing much faster than expected. In Antarctica these can occur on a range of times scales, from days or weeks for an ice shelf collapse, and centuries and beyond for the ice sheets. “A major driver of Antarctica’s cascading crises is the loss of floating sea ice, which forms during winter. In 2014, it hit a peak extent. But since then, the coverage of sea ice has fallen not just precipitously, but almost unbelievably, contracting by 75 miles closer to the coast. Put another way: The loss of winter sea ice in Antarctica over just the past decade is similar to what the Arctic has lost over the last 46 years.” More at: | 
