This Week on Earth Archives | Earth Day https://www.earthday.org/category/this-week-on-earth/ Join the worlds largest environmental movement Thu, 21 Mar 2024 00:38:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://www.earthday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/favicon-150x150.png This Week on Earth Archives | Earth Day https://www.earthday.org/category/this-week-on-earth/ 32 32 This Week on Earth: 6 months to avoid a climate crisis https://www.earthday.org/this-week-on-earth-6-months-to-avert-a-climate-crisis/ https://www.earthday.org/this-week-on-earth-6-months-to-avert-a-climate-crisis/#respond Fri, 19 Jun 2020 09:00:00 +0000 https://www.earthday.org/?p=36960 Highlights of the latest environmental news.

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Good morning, and welcome back to This Week on Earth. Each week, we highlight the latest environmental news and what it means for our planet.

Protests continue across the world, including the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and March on Washington this Saturday. Global daily emissions are jumping back to pre-pandemic levels as countries reopen. And it turns out, plastics are everywhere. 

Check out our week in review.

Climate change and pregnancy risks

Research published this week linked climate change to negative health effects for pregnant women and babies. As climate change worsens, heat rises and air pollution increases, factors that increase the likelihood of premature, underweight or stillborn babies. According to the study, black mothers are affected most.

“We already know that these pregnancy outcomes are worse for black women,” said Rupa Basu, one of the paper’s authors, to the New York Times. “It’s even more exacerbated by these exposures.”

Big Dairy’s huge climate footprint

A new study found that the world’s 13 largest dairy farms have the same climate footprint as the entire United Kingdom, reports Grist. 

Cows are a huge source for methane emissions, a greenhouse gas that absorbs much more heat than CO2. Meanwhile, according to the report, consolidation and rising production among dairy companies have accelerated these emissions. 

Many know the link between meat consumption and climate change, but the latest study shows the huge, and growing, climate impact of dairy. The news provides yet another reason to go plant based (here are some of our favorite plant-based recipes to get started).

PG&E pleads guilty to 2018 wildfire

In late 2018, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history tore through the northern part of the state. At least 84 people died directly from the blaze and it damaged towns across Butte County. 

On Tuesday, California utility company Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and one felony count of unlawfully causing a fire, reports NBC News. 

“Our equipment started that fire,” PG&E Corporation CEO and President Bill Johnson said in a court hearing. “I wish there was some way to take back what happened, or to take away the impact, the pain that these people have suffered. But I know that can’t be done.”

The EPA’s latest failure: Air quality

Research shows that current air pollution standards are inadequate to protect public health, yet lately the Environmental Protection Agency’s deregulatory and skeptical-science approach has trumped all else, including human lives.  

The EPA, initially created to protect its citizens from environmental pollution, is now refusing to tighten restrictions on air pollution. And since the costs of air pollution are inequitably distributed, low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately bearing the brunt of the EPA’s failures. 

Read the full story at Vox. 

Unilever’s ambitious carbon goal

Unilever, one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world, recently set an ambitious goal: The company plans to reach net-zero emissions by 2039, 11 years before the official deadline, set by the Paris Climate Agreement. 

Hundreds of countries and companies promise to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 — but many continue to miss these targets. Perhaps the latest from Unilever can start reversing that trend. Read the full story by Fast Company. 

Did we say 2050? Scratch that 

Energy experts predict we have six months to change the course of the climate crisis and prevent a post-pandemic rebound in greenhouse gas emissions, reports The Guardian. If we don’t, a climate catastrophe is all but guaranteed. 

Calls for a green coronavirus recovery are now even more urgent. 

“A post-Covid world must be a fair one,” said Jamie Peters, campaigns director at Friends of the Earth, in an interview with The Guardian. “It will only be equitable if the government prioritises health, wellbeing and opportunity for all parts of society. As if the case was not compelling enough in a dangerously heating planet, it is even more urgent post-Covid.”

Green recoveries, sans U.S. 

Speaking of green coronavirus recovery, the U.S. has yet to see any of its  $3 trillion in relief packages go toward addressing climate change.

“It is irresponsible from a very basic good government perspective to not have any of that money go to clean energy and fighting climate change,” Julian Brave NoiseCat, Vice President of Policy and Strategy at Data for Progress, tells NPR.

Other economic disasters — like the Great Depression and the 2008 recession — led to massive shifts in the energy sector. So far, that’s not been the case for the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter.

Heat is killing Americans — and we’re not responding fast enough

This is a long read, but well worth the time. Five reporters investigate how a decade of neglect and politics undermined the Center for Diseases Control and Prevention’s fight against climate change, specifically extreme heat. 

Interviewing experts, outlining histories and telling stories of people on the frontlines of heat waves, the team of reporters depict a nationwide tragedy in which the U.S. has failed to respond. This investigation was conducted by Columbia Journalism Investigations and the Center for Public Integrity and co-published in partnership with The Guardian.

Save the platypuses

Now, for some good news: A small group of wild platypuses rescued from the Australian wildfires is returning home after months at the zoo. 

Platypuses are extinct in 40% of their historic range, and this estimate came before the devastating 2019 bushfires consumed habitats holding more than one billion animals. The Taronga Zoo in Sydney organized several rescue missions into the affected areas — saving seven of these animals, deemed a “legacy species.”

Read the full New York Times story.

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]]> https://www.earthday.org/this-week-on-earth-6-months-to-avert-a-climate-crisis/feed/ 0 This Week on Earth: Climate disasters in the time of coronavirus https://www.earthday.org/this-week-on-earth-climate-disasters-in-the-time-of-coronavirus/ https://www.earthday.org/this-week-on-earth-climate-disasters-in-the-time-of-coronavirus/#respond Fri, 22 May 2020 08:00:00 +0000 https://www.earthday.org/?p=36027 Highlights of the latest environmental news.

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Good morning, and welcome back to This Week on Earth. Each week, we highlight the latest environmental news and what it means for our planet. 

We’re in what feels like the 5,437th day of the pandemic. All 50 states in the United States have lifted restrictions in some way. Air pollution rebounds in China after the country reopened. And several intense natural disasters remind us of the destructive forces of Earth.  

Check out our week in review.

Super Cyclone Amphan hits India and Bangladesh 

Super Cyclone Amphan is the strongest storm to form in the Bay of Bengal since 1999. As of Thursday afternoon, 84 people have been killed across India and Bangladesh.

Aggressive evacuation efforts seemed to spare lives, but now officials worry about the risk of COVID-19 with families crammed in shelters across the countries. This highlights a new dilemma: climate disasters in the time of coronavirus. 

The cyclone comes the same week that a new study found that climate change makes hurricanes stronger. 

Super Cyclone Aphan makes landfall. Image credit: Lauren Dauphin/NASA Observatory

Spring flooding in full swing

The dam breach in Michigan was a tragic reminder of the intense flooding in the Midwest. Flood waters are expected to reach five feet higher than what Midland, Michigan, saw in 1986 — their last major flood. 

“In the 1986 flood, it was considered a 100-year flood,” Midland City Manager Brad Kaye told ABC News. “Current flood is predicted to be the equivalent of a 500-year flood.”

If it seems like these disasters are hitting the Midwest more often than ever before, it’s because they are. The flooding is also complicating social-distancing efforts, with over 10,000 residents displaced. Read more in the New York Times. 

The end of the “human climate niche”

David Wallace-Wells, in typical David Wallace-Wells fashion, again reminds us of our “Uninhabitable Earth,” the title of his landmark essay and best-selling book. This week, he wrote about the end of the “human climate niche.” 

The term comes from a study published last month that highlighted the surprisingly narrow range of temperatures that make human flourishing possible. Climate change is narrowing the gap, shrinking how much of the planet can support prosperous, comfortable life.

“We have been shown repeatedly, and yet do not learn, that we live within nature, subject to its laws and limits and brutality, and that many of the fortresslike features of modern life that we once assumed were unshakable and unmovable turn out to be very fragile and vulnerable indeed,” writes Wallace-Wells in New York Magazine. 

Add cancer to the long list of climate change effects

Outdoor air pollution is already a proven cause of cancer, and air quality worsens with a warming climate. But scientists at the American Cancer Society and Harvard University are now adding cancer to the long list of climate change effects. 

Hotter temperatures fuel more frequent natural disasters, like wildfires and hurricanes. These storms release large amounts of carcinogens into the air and can delay access to cancer treatments, which lowers cancer survival rates. Read more at CNBC.

Still freaking out about climate change? So is most of the U.S.

Isolation, unemployment, death. Amid everything the pandemic has brought, people still have climate change on the mind. That’s according to a new report from Yale and George Mason universities, which found that two-thirds of Americans are still worried about climate change.

“The latest figures add to a trend of increasing belief in global warming since 2015, which some have attributed to changing demographics and impossible-to-ignore consequences of climate change in everyday life — like record temperatures and record-shattering heat waves around the world,” writes Grist. 

Bag bans on hold

States were finally banning single-use plastics. The pandemic changed that. Amid fears of the virus sticking to reusable bags and cups, states are shifting policies. New York postponed its plastic bag ban set to take effect on May 15. Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon and Massachusetts “temporarily transitioned” back to single-use plastics as well.   

“I think [preventative actions are] the appropriate thing to do,” George Leonard, chief scientist at Ocean Conservancy, told Vox. “But we’re also really worried about whether this pushes us back 10 years in terms of the real progress that has been made to reduce plastic consumption and use.”

Read the full story in Vox. 

3 billion more trees before 2030

Over the next decade, the European Union pledges to plant three billion trees as part of a larger commitment to protect nature on the continent. More than half of Europe’s forests have disappeared in the past 6,000 years. 

“This is the first truly serious biodiversity strategy at a large scale that we’ve seen,” Brian O’Donnell, director of the nonprofit Campaign for Nature, said in an interview with Fast Company. “There’s a huge opportunity to do reforestation and to bring back some of the original function of the ecosystems there.”

Restoring forests and protecting biodiversity have never been more important — read our recent post on the benefit of urban trees. Visit our reforestation campaign, The Canopy Project, to donate — every dollar plants a tree. 

Image credit: NPS/Matt Turner

Recreate responsibly

If you’re like us, you love a good National Park. While the pandemic has closed some parks, some remain open. But if you go to a National Park, or any park for that matter, remember to “recreate responsibly.” 

To remind us of safe social distancing, the National Park Service rolled out some new posters: They’re retro, colorful and, best yet, informative. Stay safe, explore a virtual park and keep six feet — or the width of a moose’s antler — apart. Check out all the posters online. 

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]]> https://www.earthday.org/this-week-on-earth-climate-disasters-in-the-time-of-coronavirus/feed/ 0 Week In Review: Environmental News for Feb. 10-16 https://www.earthday.org/week-in-review-environmental-news-for-feb-10-16/ Sat, 16 Feb 2019 18:46:49 +0000 http://archiveedn.wpengine.com/?p=11926 Green New Deal A group of Republican Senators may be trying to sink the #GreenNewDeal by pushing for an early vote, but the legislation’s popularity could hinder their plans: https://t.co/BT0ao6lf8L via @VanityFair pic.twitter.com/uQRC1QhUNt — Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (@YaleClimateComm) February 16, 2019 “If Not the Green New Deal, Then What?” (Emily Atkin, New […]

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“If Not the Green New Deal, Then What?” (Emily Atkin, New Republic)

As momentum for the Green New Deal grows, so do its detractors. The ambitious plan to fight climate change introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey last week has been called everything from “brainless” to “delusional” by conservatives…. More…

Climate Change

“It’s official: El Niño is back. Now what?” (Eric Holthaus, Grist)

This year’s El Niño is expected to remain relatively weak, but that doesn’t mean this one won’t be felt — in fact, its cascading consequences already in motion…. More…

“My generation trashed the planet. So I salute the children striking back” (George Monbiot, Guardian)

“We tell you that if you make a mess you should clear it up. We tell you that you should take responsibility for your own lives. But we have failed to apply these principles to ourselves…”

The Border Wall

“National emergency dashes hopes for 5 ecologically sensitive sites spared by the spending bill” (E.A. Crunden, Think Progress)

Thousands of scientists and researchers have expressed concern about the wall’s likely impacts on the environment and public health, in addition to broader humanitarian worries…. More…

“By the End of the Century, San Francisco’s Climate Could Feel Like LA” (Brian, Kahn, Earther)

The results show that cities’ climates will, at the end of the century, look more like cities 528 miles south do today if emissions continue rising in line with current trends….More…

Public Lands

“The Senate just passed the decade’s biggest public lands package. Here’s what’s in it” (Juliet Eilperin and Dino Grandoni, Washington Post)

The measure protects 1.3 million acres as wilderness, the nation’s most stringent protection, which prohibits even roads and motorized vehicles. It permanently withdraws more than 370,000 acres of land from mining around two national parks, including Yellowstone, and permanently authorizes a program to spend offshore-drilling revenue on conservation efforts…. More…

Plastic Pollution

“Plastic pollution: One town smothered by 17,000 tonnes of rubbish” (Yvette Tan, BBC)

…the 17,000 tonnes of rubbish left by these factories is still there – and not insignificant for a town of 30,000. Most of this waste has been repossessed by the authorities, but a staggering 4,000 tonnes of waste plastic still sits on a single site – open to anyone who might walk by…. More…

Environmental Protections

“E.P.A. Will Study Limits on Cancer-Linked Chemicals. Critics Say the Plan Delays Action.” (Coral Davenport, New York Times”

…environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers criticized the plan, saying it in effect delayed desperately needed regulation on a clear public health threat from chemicals that are commonly used in cookware, pizza boxes, stain repellents and fire retardants…. More…

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]]> Week in Review: Environmental News for Nov. 10-16 https://www.earthday.org/week-in-review-nov-10-16/ Sat, 17 Nov 2018 20:51:00 +0000 http://archiveedn.wpengine.com/?p=10822 We are still without EPA leadership committed to protecting us. Now that Wheeler’s getting the official EPA nomination, it’s a good time to re-up this story about likely confirmation battles. https://t.co/LQOCQ6YLI7 — Robin Bravender (@rbravender) November 16, 2018 “Put bluntly, the dramatic decline of EPA enforcement is a threat to public health,” says Environmental Data […]

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]]> We are still without EPA leadership committed to protecting us.

We lost an environmental leader and friend, Antonio González.

Hoorah for science!

The annual American Association for the Advancement of Science Journalism Awards were announced, as well as the Forbes “30 Under 30 In Science 2019.”

There’s a high cost for inaction on climate change.

Yes, there’s a connection between climate change and California’s wildfires.

… and the climate change is a threat public health.

The midterm election votes have been counted and there is some good news for climate action and environmental protection.

We need more diversity in the environmental movement.

City leaders are continuing to step up on climate change.

Species need our help in ensuring they are protected.

On America Recycles Day, we were reminded that we have a long way to go in reducing plastic pollution.

Photo: CalFire

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