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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS Modernity’s calamity goes way beyond climate damage
“In a new report, scientists warn that we’ve crossed yet another ‘planetary boundary’, a threshold that keeps Earth’s systems hospitable to life — a sort of global resilience that allows the planet to absorb shocks. “This time, it’s the relentless acidification of the seas that’s crossed into dangerous territory, threatening all manner of marine life, including the organisms at the base of the food web. “Of the nine total planetary boundaries, this is the seventh that’s been breached. Said Levke Caesar, co-author of the report, ‘It actually would be fatal if we just concentrate on climate change, because, as we see, there are six other boundaries that have been transgressed’. “Think of a planetary boundary as a warning sign on a road. At the end of the road is a cliff, representing a tipping point, in which an Earth system dramatically changes, often irreversibly. If that’s the cliff, the concept of a planetary boundary is a big yellow ‘CLIFF AHEAD’ sign. “Seawater absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and indeed has soaked up a quarter of humanity’s CO2 emissions. That’s helped keep the planet from warming even faster, but also creates carbonic acid. Acidification affects a lot of marine organisms, whether that’s for a properly functioning respiratory system, or for building an external or internal skeleton. “This acidification could also shake the very foundation of the oceanic food web. Many species of phytoplankton build shells and may struggle as the oceans relentlessly acidify. These organisms sequester loads of carbon and serve as a critical food source for small creatures known as zooplankton, which in turn are consumed by larger animals like fish.” More at: Chimps are sad tonight — Jane Goodall has died
“The conservation world lost one of its guiding lights last Wednesday when renowned primatologist Jane Goodall passed away at 91. ‘Jane Goodall’s legacy will be forever celebrated’, said Tierra Curry of the Center for Biological Diversity. ‘She overcame obstacles, broke gender barriers, and made a career in conservation seem within reach for women and girls around the world. She was an amazing force for nature, and now we need to carry her mantle on’. “Goodall’s life journey stretches from marveling at the somewhat unremarkable creatures in her English backyard as a wide-eyed little girl in the 1930s, to challenging the very definition of what it means to be human through her research on chimpanzees in Tanzania. “In her pioneering studies, Goodall noted that the most successful chimp leaders were gentle, caring and familial. She famously recorded chimps taking long pieces of grass and inserting them into termite nests to ‘fish’ for the insects to eat, something no one else had previously observed. “Her observations and subsequent magazine and documentary appearances in the 1960s transformed how the world perceived not only humans’ closest living biological relatives but also the emotional and social complexity of all animals, while propelling her into the public consciousness.” More at: On Ivan Illich — visionary xenocryst
“Welcome to Writing Home: a series of letters and essays about what happens when we turn away from the big path. Today, a new essay on Ivan Illich, a thinker who shines brightly within the constellation of those whose work I’m following here. “He saw out the last decade of a century among whose sharpest observers he had been, to die peacefully in his sleep in December 2002 at the age of seventy-six. Back then, he had been treated as an authority in his own right, albeit an iconoclastic one. The 1970 edition of The Great Books Today took as its theme, Revolution, and included Ivan Illich, whose biographical description noted that he had recently been ‘granted by his religious superiors a suspension from his priestly functions’. “The short, sharp books he later called ‘my pamphlets’ were excerpted in the New York Review of Books and on the front page of Le Monde. In the course of Deschooling Society, Tools for Conviviality, Energy & Equity, and Medical Nemesis, he developed a critique of the systems of industrial society, and the tendencies by which they end up producing the opposite of their stated goals. Beyond a certain point, schooling systems increase ignorance and healthcare systems make us sicker, just as prisons produce criminality. “In the age of the Limits to Growth report, Illich challenged audiences to look beyond the quantitative account of limits which presses the case for technocracy, and to engage in a reflection on the desirability of chosen limits, the ways in which they serve to create the conditions of possibility for lives worth living and worlds worth living for. “Half a century later, the challenges which Illich brought can speak to our times, and trouble the new gods of techno-religion, not least the assumption that ‘overcoming limitations’ is always and obviously a desirable objective. To make this clearer, I want to draw attention to a group of relatively unknown texts, written after the years of his fame and as yet unpublished.” More at: The carbon spewing cycle of renewable energy
“I am rather ambivalent about Sun Day. Mostly because I’m rather ambivalent about ‘clean energy’. I don’t think there is such a thing. Solar and wind are certainly less directly responsible for carbon emissions, but both burn a good deal of carbon fuels to mine and manufacture, to transport and maintain, and retire when worn out. “Both also rely on infrastructures such as storage and transmission lines that require even more carbon burning. And, at grid scale, both need base power generation to balance out intermittency, and the only non-intermittent power generation we have right now is burning carbon. “Furthermore, while a parade of EVs is nice, building an electric vehicle is hard on the atmosphere, sending tons of carbon into the skies. The battery alone can have embodied carbon emissions several times greater than driving 10,000 miles on a gasoline engine. Still, yes, it’s a good idea to replace your dead gas hog with a hybrid or an electric. You would do better to simply drive less. “Nothing electronic is going to have much of an effect on carbon spewing. Because carbon spewing is not primarily in service of electric energy. Carbon spewing is fueling long distance transport, manufacturing, mining, and other industrial processes that require high temperatures and torque. The heaviest carbon streams are flowing from processes that can’t be electrified.” More at: Poseur, Trump, projects climate con-job on others
“In a xenophobic, hate-filled speech laden with lies and disinformation, President Donald Trump declared before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that climate change is ‘the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world’, and railed against all forms of green energy. It was more than just a rant; it is Trump’s policy. “Trump has set his sights on Alaska as a test case for his disastrous ‘National Energy Dominance’ agenda. He wants to double oil production in the state, open up vast new tracts of land to exploitation, kneecap renewable energy, and push construction of a massive 800-mile-long gas pipeline. “People across Alaska are pushing back against an agenda they see as catastrophically harmful to their pocketbooks, their way of life, and even their existence. Trump signed an expansive executive order to open Alaska’s oil and gas veins to extraction in a state that is already being pummeled by the impacts of the burning of fossil fuels driving the climate crisis. “‘All of these horrible projects that we’ve been working to stop with thousands of Alaskans following tribal leadership to protect these lands is now once again under attack by Trump’, says Enei Begaye, executive director of Native Movement. The U.S. is already the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas, which has reduced domestic supplies of gas and increased costs, driving a surge in home power bills across the nation. “Native Iñupiat Aisenna-Tia Holley serves on the advisory board of Native Movement, which is working for a just transition off of fossil fuels, part of the Alaska Just Transition Collective of Alaskan groups. She attributes her current husband’s kidney disease to exposure to toxins while on the job, ultimately forcing him to retire. “Native Iñupiat Rosemary Ahtuangaruak is executive director of Grandmothers Growing Goodness, dedicated to “elevating the understanding and protection of Iñupiat culture and people in the face of rampant oil and gas development and climate change. She attributes worsening health harms experienced by local residents to growing fossil fuel development.” More at: Grasping at fantasy solutions instead of curtailing fossil capitalism
“What if we were to install a network of lamps above tropical forests to increase plants’ uptake of CO2 to ‘completely offset’ humanity’s carbon emissions? The researchers plan didn’t factor in where the clean energy needed for all this additional electricity would come from, or how the light would probably disturb the local fauna. “Swedish academics Wim Carton and Andreas Malm attempt to explain how such complicated ideas have arisen from society’s unwillingness to challenge ‘fossil capital’, the extensive network of infrastructure, assets, and systems owned by companies intent on preserving business interests associated with fossil fuels. “Volumes have been written about the often flawed math behind carbon removal and the hubris associated with geoengineering. But Carton and Malm’s book, The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late, brings them under one roof, explaining how we got here and why it has been so hard, under capitalism, to accomplish what’s needed.” More at: Urban food forests, community orchards, local food
“‘Edible forests’ are popping up in Boston. Scattered across the city, once-empty lots have been overtaken by fruit trees and berry-filled bushes. Open to the public, they are forage-friendly pockets in the urban grid. The rise of urban food forests in Boston can be attributed to the decade-long work of the nonprofit Boston Food Forest Coalition, also known as the BFFC. “Food forests differ from traditional community gardens by design and intent. While community gardens usually contain flowering annual plants, food forests center on perennial and indigenous fruit-bearing plants. “When BFFC opened the Egleston Community Orchard, the city owned the land. That meant at any point, the city could decide to develop it. So in 2015, Orion Kriegman, BFFC’s founder, formally established BFFC as a community land trust that can acquire and hold land to ensure it remains permanently accessible for community use. “The nonprofit has now opened 13 food forests, with a goal of opening 30 by 2030 — a target shared by the city as part of its 2030 Climate Action Plan. The idea is simple: More trees and plants provide shade in areas lacking greenspace and suck carbon dioxide.” More at: Industrial food, cheap food high profits, low health
“The FAO has estimated that the external health costs of the food system are at least $10 trillion annually. The report found that 70% of hidden costs are driven by unhealthy diets that are high in ultra-processed foods, fats and sugars, leading to obesity and non-communicable diseases, and causing labour productivity losses. This is particularly the case in richer countries. 20% of the total costs are environment-related, from greenhouse gas and nitrogen emissions, land-use change and water use, with all countries affected. “The cheap food assumptions that sit behind this are: consumption drives growth; cheaper food is good for growth; markets are the best way to provide cheaper food; and changing diets is not the job of government. “The near-monopoly companies created by market concentration act to reinforce this system, and are able to leverage pricing in ways that mean that ‘cheap food’ often has high [profit] margins, which investors like but which has terrible external costs. “It’s also worth looking at the political environment in which the food system gets negotiated [among] markets, politicians, and consumers/citizens (And whether consumers/citizens see themselves primarily as citizens or consumers does matter here.) “ “Intermediaries connect the three corners of the triangle. This triangle is being destabilised by externalities. In short: unlocking the triple lock-in is essential if we are going to get to systemic change in the food system.” More at: “Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes” book review (5th in a series)
“This post covers six books I read (and/or listened to) over the summer. Loosely speaking, the theme revolved around gaining a better anthropological sense of who we really are as a species. Some paved the way to others in a memorable story of its own. “One of the books that was already on my radar was Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes, the account of Daniel Everett who went as an evangelical missionary to live with the Pirahã (pee-da-HAN) people of the Amazon. The Pirahã had been uniquely resistant to cultural infiltration. “Everett ultimately concluded that Christianity and Western culture could not offer anything remotely as graceful and complete and satisfying as the life and culture already lived by the Pirahã: no conceivable improvements possible. That’s incredible, isn’t it? A Christian missionary was essentially converted by experiencing decades of life among a people unburdened by the trappings of modernity. “The Pirahã have an unusually low tolerance for indirect experience. A story about a man named Jesus who no living person has ever met had zero chance of holding their attention. As crafted by their environment, they are extremely successful as a people and a culture. By contrast, modernity crafted a sixth mass extinction in no time—so there!” More at: | 
