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Year-end Gifting the Sustainability Action News Digest
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Monsanto’s alternate “facts” on Roundup herbicide
“A landmark study on the safety of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the controversial herbicide Roundup, has been formally retracted by its publisher, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, raising new concerns about the chemical’s potential dangers. The paper which concluded that ‘Roundup herbicide does not pose a health risk to humans’, was among the most cited studies in government reports.
“But the journal’s co-editor-in-chief, Martin van den Berg, said he no longer trusted the study, and that it appears it might have been secretly ghostwritten by employees of Monsanto. Van den Berg concluded that the paper relied entirely on Monsanto’s internal studies and ignored other evidence suggesting that Roundup might be harmful.
“In 2020, the US Environmental Protection Agency released an updated safety assessment on glyphosate that again determined that it was safe and did not cause cancer. But the 2020 EPA health assessment was overturned in 2022 by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which wrote ‘The EPA’s errors in assessing human-health risk are serious, and most studies EPA examined indicated that human exposure to glyphosate is associated with an at least somewhat increased risk of developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma’.”
EPA purges 80 pages of climate science
“Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency purged basic facts about global warming from its website — including references to how human activity releases planet-heating carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. At least 80 pages related to climate change vanished from the EPA’s site in early December.
“Said Gretchen Gehrke, who monitors federal websites with the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, ‘Up till now, we really had not seen hardly any changes on EPA pages’. Many of the previous changes were language swaps, replacing ‘climate change’ with more innocuous phrases like ‘future conditions’ or ‘extreme weather’. The EPA’s most recent overhaul represents a more radical rejection of mainstream science.
“For example, the agency deleted a resource explaining the signals of a warming world — everything from rising temperatures and melting ice sheets to the damage toll on wildlife and human health. Also gone is a website quantifying the physical and economic risks.”
The living world — resources or relatives?
“We’re ready to roll up our sleeves and trace the origins of dualism. Animist tendencies have to be stamped out of children in our culture. They soon learn from acculturated adults the sin of anthropomorphism onto mere ‘things’ — or even animals. No, not even Boots, the family pet. Indeed, we do a number on our kids, molding them into fine little human supremacists.
“Viewing rocks and weather and rivers as part of a single, unified inter-dependent Web of Life, animists are somewhat allergic to both supremacy and hierarchy. Humility is the watchword.
“Prior to agriculture, hierarchies developed in some complex hunter-gatherer cultures, particularly those in which food storage or access to hunting/fishing/foraging could be controlled. Building on this foundation was the mother of all food control: agriculture. Ownership and control displaced humility as watchwords: individuals would claim ownership of land under cultivation, and then store the produced grains in ways that fueled hierarchical control via food disbursement.
“Control also manifested in the management of crops. War was waged against weeds and pests, aiming for eradication. Fences enslaved livestock under the same work-for-food program. Animal reproduction was controlled to promote domestic qualities that were good for human production goals even if not good for the animals themselves.
“Security, accounting, and patriarchy emerged as stored food became vulnerable, as attribution and compensation became important, and as ownership was passed along bloodlines.
“In contrast to animist beliefs that situated humans within — but not above — the Community of Life, hierarchical control-freaks (made prevalent and successful by agriculture and accompanying practices) began to see themselves as separate from—and masters of—the plant-and-animal world. Seeing ourselves as separate from ‘the rest of nature’ was a profound shift—a schism rending what was a unified universe of unity into a divided, divorced dualism.
“I will not try to hide my loathing of Descartes, here. I’ll express my disrespect by dubbing the dude DayKart henceforth. More than any other figure in history, DayKart is tagged with the idea of dualism. Let’s be clear that DayKart did not introduce the world to dualism. But DayKart articulated an assertion of mind/body dualism. That is, the body is simple matter no more dignified than dirt. The mind, however, is made of a different substance altogether, and possessing divine qualities shared by angels.
“The concept of mind apart from body is held by a majority of people in the modern world (roughly 80%). Many who self-identify as materialists may still harbor deep dualist leanings without being aware. In this prevailing view, the mind is the master of the body, commanding its actions. The dualistic premise of souls detached from bodies pervades the Harry Potter series and gets hardly a blink from readers.
“Dualism is a core problem afflicting humanity these past few millennia, which in turn afflicts the world. On the basis of dualism, we feel justified in commodifying the non-human world as resources. Dualism persists as long as ‘mind’ is believed to be somehow separate from (and typically superior to and having mastery over matter. “
Global economic destabilizing factors
“The US economy is wildly skewed. Entire sectors and regions are in recession, but AI companies have been the only thing keeping the economy as a whole growing. AI is increasingly looking like a bubble.
“Multi-trillion-dollar companies are emerging as markets bet on the prospect of fantastical future returns — of which there is no obvious pathway to realize. Investors are getting increasingly uneasy about its distorting effect on an otherwise depressed, debt-ridden economy. But investment bubbles rarely deflate on their own. They are usually popped by outside forces.
“That trigger might be — as it so frequently is — oil prices. As historian Helen Thompson points out: ‘All but one of the recessions in the US since the Second World war were preceded by a sharp rise in the price of oil’. There are warning signs on the horizon, the main sign being electric vehicles, as Justin Mikulka points out: ‘For the first time in its history the oil industry has an economically superior competitor’.
“Historically, the fossil fuel industry has always rebounded from oil crashes because there was no substitute. Now there is — and it’s not just vehicles. Already in places like Pakistan, solar power is replacing fossil fuel dependence because of the latter’s uncompetitive price.
“There is also the coming subsidy shock in China. The nation’s EV and renewable tech revolution has been staggering. It has even managed to flatten the nation’s CO2 emissions. But it is a bonanza funded by subsidies — nearly all of which are due to expire in 2026. The importance of these subsidies should not be underestimated. No EV companies in China currently make a profit.”
NYC congestion pricing reduces urban traffic
“A new toll applied to cars driving in parts of New York City has led to a 11% drop in traffic, a 14% drop in accidents, and a 22% decline in particulate pollution.
“Congestion pricing came into effect in January, with cars paying $9 to drive through busy parts of Manhattan during peak hours. A new study from Cornell has now tallied the impact on particulate pollution. Particulates issued from tailpipes can aggravate asthma and heart disease and increase the risk of lung cancer and heart attack.
“The decline seen in New York was greater than in other cities with congestion pricing, such as Stockholm and London. Pricing led to a drop in pollution across the greater metropolitan area, according to the study, published in the journal npj Clean Air.“
Plug and play solar electricity
“In Germany, millions of people plug solar panels directly into wall outlets like any other appliance. But in the US, red tape makes it ludicrously costly. ‘Balcony solar’ (AKA ‘plug-in solar’) is booming in Europe and making its way to America, starting in Utah.
“A single panel won’t offset a whole home’s power, but it pays for itself in four or five years and provides a satisfaction that is apparently irresistible. As of the beginning of 2025, something like 4 million balcony solar kits have been installed in Germany. The Netherlands, Austria and Italy have seen similar booms.
“There is nothing special about the panel itself. What makes it special is there is a special microinverter that connects the panels to a standard plug in your wall or to a battery. You cannot just go buy any solar panel and do this. These are panels made for this purpose.
“If you’ve got a back-feed prevention, a piece of hardware that is preventing your house from leaking energy back up into the grid, then your system is invisible to the utility.
“But here is how muddled it is and how we really need to clarify this gray area. Folks have called PG&E in the San Francisco Bay area and described the system and been told by customer service representatives, ‘no, you do not need an interconnection agreement, this is all behind the meter’. Other folks have called and been told by other customer service representatives, ‘oh, no, you do need an interconnection agreement’. This is the madness that we really need to get around to make this a real thing.
“You can buy it in Utah as a package. And if you are clever, apparently you can rig it yourself. Talk about Utah then. You found this Utah Republican lawmaker and he initiated the process. He said, ‘I’m a lawmaker, I can do this’. We wrote the bill with him. It was a bit of a negotiation. Utilities were brought to the table from the very beginning. Utah chose 1,200 watts cutoff size.”
Investor-owned utility rates higher than for public utilities
“Electricity rates are on the rise across the country. But recent analyses has shown a growing gap between the rates charged by investor-owned utilities (IOUs) and those of publicly owned electricity providers [Evergy is investor-owned].
“Frustrated with their investor-owned utilities, a number of communities across the country have pushed for municipal takeovers in recent years. ‘Public power is simply more affordable’, said John Cote, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. ‘Investor-owned utilities are motivated by profit’, said Ruthie Lazenby, co-author of a June Pritzker Environmental Law and Policy Brief from UCLA.
“While public utilities use municipal bonds to raise money for grid projects, with interest rates of 4 to 5%, investor-owned utilities raise money through a mix of higher-interest bonds and borrowing money from shareholders who receive returns of up to 10 to 11%. IOUs also pay taxes on the profits they earn, while municipal utilities are not taxed on revenue.
“IOUs have a particular incentive to overspend on capital projects. That’s because they’re required to maximize returns to shareholders, and their profits come from building new infrastructure, where they earn a rate of return, rather than repairing and maintaining existing equipment.”
Reduce consumption, conserve energy, degrow the economy
“Efficiency has long been a key pillar of sustainability campaigns. Yet the Brundtland Commission observed that ‘…the compatibility of environmental and economic objectives is often lost in the pursuit of individual or group gains…’ In its latest brief, the Degrowth Institute (DGI) asks ‘what happens to the savings?
“The global economy’s commitment to continual economic expansion means that if the savings from an efficiency initiative are not strictly conserved or protected, then they are available to be re-spent to serve growth elsewhere. Consider a few cases.
- Lightbulb efficiency standards have been celebrated for slashing GHG emissions. But the savings made available by lighting are being rapidly redeployed, driven largely by demands from new datacenters.
- The campaign to ‘please consider the environment before printing’ [meant] graphic paper use has declined by almost 40%, but global paper use for packaging actually increased by 60%. The savings created from not printing from a personal computer are being redirected to the packaging supply.
- Although substantial [auto fuel] efficiencies have been achieved, these gains have been disproportionately directed towards making cars larger, faster, and more convenient, rather than realizing the maximum ecological benefits.
“Each of these examples demonstrates how economic growth liquidates the savings from well-meaning efficiency efforts. Even when efforts are effective in one application, savings can be rerouted to new and extended uses in some other part of the economy. A degrowth transition would help ensure that savings from efficiency measures are truly saved.”
What does it mean to honor equally all life forms?
“In a post collapse world, humans will have less power to destroy [nature] as there will be less energy available. Capitalism is another strong driver for exploitation, and I am convinced that capitalism will collapse. The third [driver is] a culture of seeing nature mainly as a resource, a mine, a dump, and existing only to satisfy our needs. We can call that modernity.
“It doesn’t mean that there was no environmental damages cause by pre-modern humans. But the trinity of modernity, fossil fuels, and capitalism, certainly made it much worse. China also shows that market forces/aka capitalism is far more efficient in speeding up the destruction than a planned economy.
“It is easy to say things such as ‘we must take care of nature’ or ‘humans must respect all other organisms’ or even ‘we are no better/have no more right to exist than frogs/deer/bugs’. But what does it mean? Let me first dissect some prevailing perspectives.
“The term Anthropocene can fuel the notion of how the exceptional creature Homo sapiens has powers bigger than nature. But essentially, it is just a continuation of the sustainable development narrative that since the 1980s have fooled people that there are ways to eat the cake and grow it at the same time.
“Despite all the bravado of the Anthropocene, we are to a large extent still at the mercy of the living and dead. All life is based on the dead matter and essential elements. Life has created its own conditions and changed the dead planet into a wonder of life. The modern industrial technosphere which underpins the modern world is based on the dead organic matter from this period (i.e. fossil fuels).
“We tend to look at the failure of many civilisations caused by deforestation, erosion or other bad farming practices, as a sign of that humanity is doomed to destroy. But many indigenous people practiced sustainable farming or livestock husbandry in immense variation. Chris Smaje says in Finding Lights in a Dark Age that ‘the land wisdom of peasants parallels the land wisdom of Indigenous people’. And many before him (e.g. Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, Robin Wall Kimmerer) have pointed to the value of being native, or indigenous to the place.”
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