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TUESDAYS — YOUR INBOX — ASSUREDLY
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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS
Which is it Mr. Gates: AI promotion, or AI warning?
“Bill Gates has increasingly sounded the alarm on AI dangers. He warns that he can see a future where AI wipes out humanity. ‘AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths’, he told Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. ‘Even though it’s pretty hard to get to 100%, there’s never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools’.
“Gates released a memo in August that defined AI as a technology more consequential than virtually any other in history. ‘AI will either be the greatest equalizer or the worst source of injustice. On the current course and speed, there’s a very high chance of a net negative outcome’, he said.” [click the links for the full articles]
Technology caused our dilemma — it likely won’t solve it
“Climate change is a huge, complicated problem. Therefore, many people have an understandable tendency to mentally simplify it by focusing on just one cause (carbon emissions) and just one solution (alternative energy). Sustainability scholar Jan Konietzko has called this ‘carbon tunnel vision’.
“Understanding climate change requires us to embrace complexity: not only are greenhouse gases trapping heat, but we are undermining natural systems that cool the planet’s surface and sequester atmospheric carbon — systems of ice, soil, forest, and ocean.
“Almost everything we’re doing to cause climate change involves technology. We humans love technology: it yields profits, jobs, comfort, and convenience (for some, anyway). So, predictably, we’re looking to alternative technologies to solve the biggest dilemma humanity has ever created. But what if more technology will actually worsen the problem in the long run?
“What machines are touted as our main climate solutions? There are four broad categories.
“The first include solar panels, wind turbines, and nuclear power plants. Building these energy sources at sufficient scale to replace our current energy usage from fossil fuels would require enormous amounts of materials, some of them rare, and mining those materials destroys habitat and pollutes the environment.
“The second tech category includes energy-using technologies for running the modern industrial world, such as cement making and aviation, two industries that will be hard to decarbonize. And again, there is the dilemma of scale, and the requirement for more materials at an unprecedented burst of resource extraction and energy usage.
“A third category of technologies for fighting climate change consists of machines for capturing carbon from the atmosphere. However, these machines suffer from problems of scale, cost, materials requirements, high energy usage, and a ‘track record of failure’.
“There is one last resort: technologies for cooling the planet via solar radiation management. Critics point out that these technologies might have unintended consequences as bad as, or worse than the problem they are trying to solve.
“Throughout hundreds of millions of years, nature has developed cooling cycles that keep the planet’s surface temperature within certain bounds. Chief among these is the water cycle, which operates on both a large and a small scale. Industrial agriculture, urbanization, and destructive forestry practices reduce overall vegetation, and therefore also reduce evapotranspiration. Result: even if we weren’t loading the atmosphere with excess carbon dioxide, we’d still be warming the planet.
“The obvious solution: restore nature’s cooling cycles. Re-vegetate the planet, thereby increasing evapotranspiration. Restore soils so they hold more water. And get rid of pavement wherever possible. Our first order of business should be to protect existing old-growth forests. We have to stop doing all the things we’re currently doing that harm soils — including annual tillage and application of herbicides and pesticides.
“Regardless of which energy sources we choose, using this much energy results in environmental harms such as resource depletion and toxic pollution. If we want our species to be around for the long haul, we must reduce energy demand. The best ways to do that are to encourage a smaller population and to establish economies that aim for increased human happiness rather than growth of resource extraction, manufacturing, and transport.” [click the link for the full article]
Coral reefs are reservoirs of biodiversity
“One of the most pristine coral reefs in the world is in the center of the Pacific Ocean. The corals of Palmyra Atoll are an example of what reefs are supposed to look like. Researchers have found its marine ecosystem is still largely preserved, from tiny fish to a thriving population of sharks, remaining largely free of human disturbances.
“Corals are highly vulnerable to heat, which turns them a bone-white color, a process known as coral bleaching. Prolonged heat can kill corals. Worldwide, the current bleaching may become one of the worst on record due to the powerful El Niño climate pattern.
“Marine scientists are finding that healthy reefs like Palmyra’s have key ingredients that can help speed recovery. Those lessons are being used at coral restoration projects around the world. Coral reefs are reservoirs of biodiversity, but also support hundreds of millions of people who rely on them.
“The corals themselves are the size of cars, sporting their own rainbow of colors. Some have delicate branching arms like deer antlers. Others are flat like undulating ribbons of fabric or round like massive boulders. Joe Pollock says, ‘It’s coral on coral, which is exactly what you want to see’.” [click the link for the full article]
Ecovillage tour — an insightful journey by Albert Bates
“I just got back from touring 11 German ecovillages, which is a bit like touring 11 different flavors of the same miracle — the miracle being that a critical mass of otherwise employable adults woke up one morning, looked at the conventional life plan laid out for them, and said, politely but firmly, ‘no thank you’.
“That’s really the whole essay, if you want to leave now. But stick around, because the details are where the Germans, bless them, always overachieve.
“Here’s what I keep noticing, tour after tour, decade after decade. Nobody stumbles into an ecovillage. You have to actively climb out of the trajectory your parents spent eighteen years constructing for you, and step off into the weeds on purpose.
“The residents I met had all done exactly that, generally as young adults, generally against enormous domestic headwind, and generally because they’d stopped believing that getting theirs first, world be damned, was actually a viable life philosophy. They chose aparigraha — simplicity, non-grasping — over acquisition.” [click the link for the full article]
Drumph digging his own grave — and ours too
“The first day of Donald Drumph’s second term was a national energy emergency, at least according to the president himself. Experts said was a false alarm. At the time, the U.S. was doing fine with its fossil fuel production.
“Roughly 18 months later, things have clearly changed. The nation is steeped in an energy crisis of Drumph’s own making, largely due to his tariff agenda and war of choice with Iran. Drumph’s recent announcement that the U.S. will take control of Venezuela’s oil fields to the tune of some 65 billion barrels, smacks of desperation. Extracting oil from Venezuela would be extremely costly and risky.
“This week, oil came in at slightly over $104 a barrel, the highest it’s been since July, and on Thursday, diesel hit an average of $6 a gallon — for the first time ever. It goes without saying that the ripple effects this will have on shipping and agriculture, and thus food prices, will be profound.
“Both the Iran war and high gas prices are extremely unpopular among all voters. Drumph’s blustering response to all this is to keep calm and vote MAGA. All you have to do is clap your hands and believe!” [click the link for the full article]
Methane super-emitter, Energy Transfer, way ahead of pack
“Dallas-based Energy Transfer, located near the city of Shreveport, is named as the biggest single ‘super-emitter’ in new rankings of US oil and gas operations for the largest releases of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that is rapidly overheating our planet, according to a new UCLA study.
“The Shreveport facility spewed out methane 15 times larger than the threshold defined as a super-emitter. Energy Transfer oversees a huge network of pipelines and processing properties in the US and is linked to four of the 15 sites highlighted in the new rankings. Other major corporate methane producers include Enterprise Products, Targa Resources and Enlink.
“Energy Transfer did not respond to questions on what it is doing to stem methane from its facilities or whether the Shreveport site has been intentionally venting the gas or has experienced some sort of leak. Kelcy Warren, Energy Transfer’s billionaire chief executive, donated millions of dollars to Drumph’s last election campaign.” [click the link for the full article]
Fly executive class — Earth and taxpayers to foot the bill
“The Institute for Policy Studies’ new report, High Flyers 2026, examines the growing use of private aircraft, the public infrastructure supporting them, and the tax policies benefiting private jet owners. Owners are not paying their fair share of aviation tax despite the average owner’s wealth being $190m and private jets being up to 14 times more polluting than commercial flights.
“Private jets and charter services now account for roughly 16% of flight operations. Climate-heating emissions linked to that mode of travel has risen by 50%, according to the most comprehensive global analysis to date.
“Private flights, used by an estimated 256,000 people (just 0.003% of the world’s population), are the most polluting form of transport, producing direct carbon emissions 10 to 14 times greater per passenger than commercial aviation travel” [click the link for the full article]
Desert life sequesters 28 percent of land-based CO2
“Donald Drumph’s Bureau of Land Management is pushing to aggressively expand solar farms into the Mojave Desert, which advocates say would decimate its vast biodiversity. Drumph stated that the government doesn’t need to regulate AI since he’s monitoring it. ‘The only control that AI needs is a strong and smart (high IQ) president’ he said.
“I find myself in Rhyolite, Nevada — just seven miles east of the broiling Death Valley National Park — to meet up with two activists who’ve dedicated their lives to protecting the surrounding Mojave Desert. Kevin Emmerich and Laura Cunningham, founders of the Beatty-based Basin and Range Watch, are concerned that two major solar projects on nearby BLM-managed lands will destroy the desert ecology and provide little benefit to the local community.
“Cunningham explained, ‘There’s biological soil crust [with a] deep network under the soil that sequesters carbon, literally sucks it out of the atmosphere. And deserts, believe it or not, actually have a high level of carbon sequestration. Building on these habitats is actually [contributing to] climate change. Deserts account for up to 28% of land-based uptake. It’s one reason why a patchwork of solar farms out here is a troubling prospect’.
“There are better locations for solar that will yield better results for people and the environment. Many of our popular ideas about places like the Mojave — such as the idea that they’re lonesome, empty wastelands, devoid of life — sustain the myth that desert solar farms have fewer drawbacks and are essential in the fight against climate change. Not many assumptions could be more untrue.
“Emmerich said, ‘Other environmental groups are really conflicted about ‘green’ energy. We just had a little spat with one group. They want some of this public land development. If we do use renewable energy, we want to put it in the built environment where it doesn’t have much of an impact’.” [click the link for the full article]
Portland OR Fruit Tree Project gleans fruit from urban spaces
“It’s a sunny summer morning in Vancouver, Washington, and the plum tree in Kaitlynd Grey’s front yard is exploding with ripe yellow fruit. The branches are so weighed down that instead of the two stories they typically reach, they’re bent, nearly touching the ground.
“Said Grey, ‘I don’t want to waste them, but I don’t have the time and energy to take care of them right now’. Enter the Portland Fruit Tree Project. Since 2006, this nonprofit has been harvesting fruit from overgrown community gardens, sidelines of school sports fields and long-forgotten parking strips — and from yards just like Grey’s.
“Last year, the Portland Fruit Tree Project donated more than 28,000 pounds of fruit to community partners like senior centers, food pantries and culturally specific organizations. Volunteers also preserve fruit that may be bug-damaged or overripe, giving it a second life as jams and jellies, dehydrated fruit and even batches of vinegars and syrups.” [click the links for the full articles]
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