Tag Archives: Everyone

Don’t be April fooled, Google did not just swear off funding climate deniers

Congratulations! After an approximately 4 billion year–long March, we’ve made it to April 1st. Under normal circumstances, this day would be filled with jolly fun, like cars covered in plastic wrap, sugar in the salt shaker, fake product launches, and of course, the infamous annual Google prank.

But after days or weeks of being shut in our homes, washing our hands to oblivion, eyes glued to charts and maps showing the coronavirus spreading around the country and the number of cases and deaths ticking upward, pranks don’t have much appeal right now. Out of respect for the essential workers who are risking their lives to get us through this, Google officially called off its annual joke.

But it did appear to make a big announcement today. A very convincing statement from CEO Sundar Pichai appeared at the address agreenergoogle.com today, with an exciting message: The company will stop funding climate change deniers.

“In lieu of our normal April Fools’ joke, today we’re getting serious,” it says. The site goes on to list eight organizations that Google has funded or otherwise worked with that have opposed measures to fight climate change like the Paris Agreement and Obama’s Clean Power Plan. It includes an apology for “putting profits over the planet” and for stalling on changing its ways for so long. COVID-19 has forced the company to reckon with the perils of ignoring science, it says.

Sigh, if only that were the case. The site is a prank put out by the New York City arm of the climate protest group Extinction Rebellion. While not everyone will appreciate the group using a global health crisis to further its mission, the message is more sobering than funny. There are more truths on the page than jokes: Google has made substantial contributions to major climate deniers in Washington, including the eight groups listed on the site. It has also been criticized by its own workers for not doing enough to cut its carbon footprint. Despite being a carbon neutral company, the company’s operations still run on fossil fuels, which it makes up for by buying renewable energy and carbon offsets.

As the prank highlights, Google’s funding of climate denial is dangerous. We’re now experiencing something similar to the climate crisis but at “warp speed” and seeing the fatal consequences when people in power fail to heed scientists’ warnings and then downplay the seriousness of a global public health threat. Dumb April Fools’ Day jokes aside, misinformation kills.

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Don’t be April fooled, Google did not just swear off funding climate deniers

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Scooters return to their native habitat, and other brilliant coronavirus memes

In the weeks since Italy’s nationwide lockdown went into effect, reports of dolphins returning to the country’s waterways and canals running clear in Venice circulated on social media, prompting some to wonder whether humans, not COVID-19, were the real scourge. “Nature is reclaiming its spaces during quarantine,” one Twitter user said.

That sentiment may seem innocent enough — who doesn’t like to think about dolphins frolicking in a Venetian canal? — but it’s wrong on more than one front. Many of the reports of nature thriving in humans’ absence are bogus. Elephants getting drunk on wine and passing out in a field? Debunked. Water quality in Venice? More or less the same; the canals just look cleaner because boats aren’t churning up sediment every few minutes. Swans returning to Italian canals? They’ve always been there.

And there’s a darker — if unintended — side to claims that nature is better off without humans. It’s not only misanthropic to turn a blind eye to human suffering in the service of conservation; it also echoes some of the dark, racist strains of the environmentalist movement.

Luckily, Twitter has a way of simultaneously generating bad takes and quashing them. Those tweets about nature coming back spawned a new meme. Turns out, dolphins, swans, and elephants aren’t the only critters making a comeback thanks to the coronavirus.

Lime scooters returned to rivers, their native habitat.

Dinosaurs, thought to have gone extinct 65 million years ago, flocked to the streets of Lisbon.

While all of Italy was under quarantine, some of the region’s most iconic native fauna was spotted in nearby forests.

And London has seen a revival of its unique feral cat population:

See? Nature really is amazing. But, like it or not, humans are very much still here.

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Scooters return to their native habitat, and other brilliant coronavirus memes

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Jair Bolsonaro refutes reports that he tested positive for coronavirus

This is a developing news story.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro — known for his strong anti-environmental policies and his push to open up the Amazon for deforestation — denounced claims and initial news reports saying that he tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Friday.

Bolsonaro was tested on Thursday because his press aide, Fabio Wajngarten, tested positive for the virus after both officials met with U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence at Mar-a-Lago last weekend. Brazilian newspaper O Dia reported that the Brazilian president’s first test came back positive but that he was waiting on a second round of definitive test results. Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo confirmed the positive result to Fox News but warned the media not to jump to conclusions that his father has been infected before seeing more results. He later contradicted his earlier statements and said his father actually tested negative.

Bolsonaro isn’t the only world leader to come into close contact with someone infected with COVID-19, the official name of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will remain in self-quarantine for two weeks after his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, also tested positive for the new virus. Although doctors say that Trudeau has not shown any signs of illness, he was advised to remain in isolation as a precautionary measure.

Throughout his presidency, Bolsonaro — also known as the “Trump of the Tropics” — has repeatedly undermined climate and environmental science, claiming that environmental protections will slow Brazil’s economic growth. The far-right leader has used his presidency to weaken environmental regulations and prioritize corporate interests by opening up the Amazon to cattle ranching, mining, and logging. Deforestation rates in the Amazon doubled during the first nine months of Bolsonaro’s administration.

Brazil is one of the deadliest places in the world for environmental defenders, many of whom are part of indigenous communities. As a candidate, Bolsonaro promised not to “give the Indians another inch of land.”

According to the World Health Organization, Brazil currently has 77 confirmed cases of COVID-19, though that number will certainly rise as more people are tested.

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Jair Bolsonaro refutes reports that he tested positive for coronavirus

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The Story of More – Hope Jahren

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The Story of More

How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here

Hope Jahren

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $11.99

Publish Date: March 3, 2020

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


“Hope Jahren is the voice that science has been waiting for.” — Nature “A superb account of the deadly struggle between humanity and what may prove the only life-bearing planet within ten light years, written in a brilliantly sardonic and conversational style.” —E. O. Wilson “ Hope Jahren asks the central question of our time: how can we learn to live on a finite planet? The Story of More  is thoughtful, informative, and—above all—essential. ” —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction Hope Jahren is an award-winning scientist, a brilliant writer, a passionate teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More , she illuminates the link between human habits and our imperiled planet. In concise, highly readable chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions—from electric power to large-scale farming to automobiles—that, even as they help us, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like never before. She explains the current and projected consequences of global warming—from superstorms to rising sea levels—and the actions that we all can take to fight back. At once an explainer on the mechanisms of global change and a lively, personal narrative given to us in Jahren’s inimitable voice, The Story of More is the essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it.

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The Story of More – Hope Jahren

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What Should We Be Worried About? – John Brockman

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What Should We Be Worried About?

Real Scenarios That Keep Scientists Up at Night

John Brockman

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $9.99

Publish Date: February 11, 2014

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


Drawing from the horizons of science, today's leading thinkers reveal the hidden threats nobody is talking about—and expose the false fears everyone else is distracted by. What should we be worried about? That is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org ("The world's smartest website"—The Guardian), posed to the planet's most influential minds. He asked them to disclose something that, for scientific reasons, worries them—particularly scenarios that aren't on the popular radar yet. Encompassing neuroscience, economics, philosophy, physics, psychology, biology, and more—here are 150 ideas that will revolutionize your understanding of the world. Steven Pinker uncovers the real risk factors for war ● Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi peers into the coming virtual abyss ● Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek laments our squandered opportunities to prevent global catastrophe ● Seth Lloyd calculates the threat of a financial black hole ● Alison Gopnik on the loss of childhood ● Nassim Nicholas Taleb explains why firefighters understand risk far better than economic "experts" ● Matt Ridley on the alarming re-emergence of superstition ● Daniel C. Dennett and george dyson ponder the impact of a major breakdown of the Internet ● Jennifer Jacquet fears human-induced damage to the planet due to "the Anthropocebo Effect" ● Douglas Rushkoff fears humanity is losing its soul ● Nicholas Carr on the "patience deficit" ● Tim O'Reilly foresees a coming new Dark Age ● Scott Atran on the homogenization of human experience ● Sherry Turkle explores what's lost when kids are constantly connected ● Kevin Kelly outlines the looming "underpopulation bomb" ● Helen Fisher on the fate of men ● Lawrence Krauss dreads what we don't know about the universe ● Susan Blackmore on the loss of manual skills ● Kate Jeffery on the death of death ● plus J. Craig Venter, Daniel Goleman, Virginia Heffernan, Sam Harris, Brian Eno, Martin Rees, and more

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What Should We Be Worried About? – John Brockman

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The plan to protect the Chesapeake is failing, and it’s Pennsylvania’s fault

In early January, members of the Chesapeake Bay Commission sat in a gray conference room in Annapolis, Maryland, for a routine meeting. The 21-member legislative body, with representatives from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland, convenes regularly to coordinate interstate efforts to restore and protect the Chesapeake Bay. But as the meeting drew to a close, EPA Chesapeake Bay Program director Dana Aunkst got up and delivered a demoralizing message to the group.

“The TMDL itself is not enforceable,” he said. He was referring to the Total Maximum Daily Load, a set of science-based limits for three pollutants — nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment — flowing into the bay. The states in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed have agreed to achieve the TMDL by 2025, and the EPA committed to enforcing it under the terms of a 2010 settlement. But Aunkst went on to describe the TMDL as merely “an informational document” that was “aspirational.”

Aunkst’s comments were jarring to some in the room, but they weren’t entirely out of left field. Pennsylvania, by far the largest source of pollution entering the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, has failed to meet its pollution reduction benchmarks for years, with little response from the EPA. This single state’s negligence threatens the success of the entire regional program.

The Chesapeake is the largest estuary in the United States, a nationally significant economic resource, and a crucial habitat for thousands of species. But the influx of pollution from upstream sources has led to fishery declines, recurring “dead zones” where pollutants starve aquatic animals of oxygen, and regular algae blooms that suffocate underwater plant life. Even after nearly 10 years of strategic planning and implementation of these pollution reduction plans by neighboring states, its overall health is still poor.

And Pennsylvania seems increasingly to blame. In August of last year, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection released its third and final Watershed Implementation Plan, or WIP. The plan admitted that PA was only about 30 percent closer to achieving its target for nitrogen pollution than it had been in the 1980s. Not only was the Keystone State entering the final phase of the cleanup far behind where it should have been, but the state’s plan for phase three still had it falling 25 percent short of the 2025 target. That underwhelming plan also had a funding deficit of about $324 million per year. In December, the EPA signed off on the plan with no indication of imposing consequences.

According to Harry Campbell, the Pennsylvania executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a nonprofit that works closely with watershed states on the cleanup effort, there are a few reasons the state is having such a hard time making progress.

Of all the sources of pollution going into the watershed, Pennsylvania has already tackled the lowest-hanging fruit — wastewater treatment plants. In fact, the state met its 2017 pollution reduction goals for wastewater treatment plants three years early. But the vast majority of PA’s contribution doesn’t come from these easy “point source” targets, it comes from “non-point sources,” like stormwater from the thousands of municipalities in the watershed, and runoff from 33,000 small farms.

About 80 percent of the nitrogen Pennsylvania needs to tackle comes from those farms. And convincing 33,000 farmers — who are already operating on razor-thin profit margins because of trade wars and a poor farm economy — to shoulder new conservation practices is a time- and labor-intensive process. “You have to work with individual farmers, meet them at their table, oftentimes provide the technical and financial assistance necessary to actually design and implement those practices,” said Campbell.

Part of the problem was also the planning process the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection employed for its earlier WIPs, which was not very inclusive of the various communities and entities whose buy-in was necessary for success. But according to Campbell, a lack of funding and leadership from the legislature have also plagued the state’s performance. “If the legislature and the administration invested in implementation of those plans, we’d be in a far better place than we are right now,” Campbell said.

When it came time to draw up the WIP for phase three of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup, the state finally made an effort to start from a more grassroots level. It created workgroups for each sector that included farmers and county commissioners. But Campbell, who was on the Local Area Goals Workgroup, said that even though the process was improved, the funding gap hung over the proceedings. “We just see it every day — whether it be the local county conservation districts or the partners on the ground, like watershed groups and land trusts — this persistent and consistent scarcity-like mentality, that we just don’t have enough to get the job done,” he said. “And so everyone was able to sense it, feel it, or otherwise acknowledge it.”

The governor of Pennsylvania, Democrat Tom Wolf, has proposed a tax on natural gas extraction in the state to raise money for infrastructure projects for five years straight. His latest proposal, the Restore Pennsylvania Plan, would raise $4.5 billion and fund many of the water pollution reduction strategies written into the WIP. But the tax is unlikely to make it through the Republican-controlled legislature.

Over the years, the EPA has penalized Pennsylvania for its lack of progress in small ways. It has objected to permits for wastewater treatment plant expansions, temporarily withheld funding, and most recently, redirected funding in order for it be used more efficiently. But those consequences have not been enough to get the attention of elected officials who continue to devalue the program, putting the entire cleanup effort at risk, said Campbell.

One of Pennsylvania’s neighbors has had enough. Following Aunkst’s comments at the meeting, the Republican governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, who’s administration has spent a record $5 billion on Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts, directed his attorney general to sue both Pennsylvania and the EPA. But it’s unclear whether EPA can be held liable for not enforcing the TMDL in Pennsylvania.

In response to the lawsuit, Governor Wolf’s office suggested that Hogan’s time would be better spent using his sway as a Republican to help Wolf secure more funding for the program. “Instead of protracted litigation that will take resources away from our efforts to improve water quality in the watershed and undermine the partnership that has helped make progress, Governor Hogan and the foundation’s time would be better spent convincing Republicans that control the legislature in Pennsylvania to support Governor Wolf’s plan,” said J.J. Abbott, a spokesperson for Wolf.

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The plan to protect the Chesapeake is failing, and it’s Pennsylvania’s fault

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At COP25, indigenous groups are making sure their voices are heard

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At COP25, indigenous groups are making sure their voices are heard

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A chemical plant exploded in this Texas town. Some residents want to ‘show grace.’

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A chemical plant exploded in this Texas town. Some residents want to ‘show grace.’

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‘OK, boomer’: The perfect response to a generation that failed on climate

On Monday, Chlöe Swarbrick, a 25-year old member of New Zealand’s Parliament, gave a speech to her fellow lawmakers about the urgent need to take action on climate change. When she raised the point that the issue was of special concern to younger generations that will actually be alive to see the damage wrought by prior generations, an indistinct heckle rose from the audience.

“OK, boomer,” Swarbrick fired back. And then she continued with her speech without missing a beat. Iconic.

As someone born on the cusp between millennials and generation Z, I love the “OK, boomer” discourse. I get a rush of pleasure every time I’m scrolling through Twitter and I encounter a quote-tweeted absurd opinion from an old white dude accompanied by a dismissive “OK, boomer.”

This joy undeniably stems from righteous indignation as much as simple amusement — the two words feel downright poetic after years of hearing my generation blamed for “killing” everything from restaurant chains to department stores to relationships, even as so many of the challenges people my age face — student loan debt, general economic instability, and, of course, a rapidly warming planet — are the result of short-sighted decisions made by earlier generations.

Has the “OK, boomer” discourse gone a little too far, to the point of absurdity and possibly meaninglessness? You’ll have to decide for yourself (but probably yes — that’s the way things go on the internet).

But let’s not entirely do away with “OK, boomer” just yet. Because as a slogan for pushing climate-friendly changes, the phrase is, quite simply, perfect — as Swarbrick so clearly demonstrated.

For one thing, climate change is a generational issue. Although Americans’ views on whether or not climate change is a) happening, b) caused by humans, and c) urgent are usually divided according to political party, a Pew Research Survey from last year found that millennial Republicans are twice as likely as older Republicans to believe in climate change. And another survey by the research group Ipsos showed that millennial Republicans hold similar positions as Democrats of the same age on environmental issues.

And what generation do you think the President and many of his cabinet members belong to? I’ll give you a hint: They’re in positions to take meaningful action on the climate crisis but instead choose to roll back environmental regulations and deny climate change is happening, endangering the health of everyone who has to live on the planet when they’re gone. (If you guessed “baby boomer,” congrats.)

OK, boomer.

The two words manage to convey everything I want to say in response to older adults who call climate activists unreasonable, unrealistic, or naive. “OK, boomer” is just a more efficient way to say, “Why should we listen to you when your position directly contradicts the scientific consensus that our planet faces an existential threat?” Packed into the short phrase is a longer message: “Your generation has known about the problem for decades and failed to do anything to stop it, and you’re not going to have to live with the consequences and we will, so why are you still telling us what to do?”

And as an added bonus,  the phrase works just as well — with one slight modification — to brush off another obstacle to climate progress: the people who think it’s too late to do anything.

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‘OK, boomer’: The perfect response to a generation that failed on climate

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SUVs are back, and they’re spewing a boggling amount of carbon

How can we end our love affair with sport utility vehicles?

Sure, I get it: They carry more people than sedans, and they look cooler than minivans. But consider the facts. A new analysis from the International Energy Agency shows that there are 35 million more SUVs on the road today than in 2010. The number of electric vehicles increased by just 5 million in the same time period. The result: The business of driving humans around is guzzling more gas. So, while greenhouse gas pollution from regular passenger vehicles actually declined since 2010, emissions from SUVs and trucks have increased enough to wipe out those gains, and then some. SUVs, counted alone, are now warming our planet more than heavy industry.

These gas guzzlers could single-handedly eliminate the possibility that the world achieves the climate goals set in Paris in 2016 by insuring that transportation emissions continue to swell. The new IEA analysis concludes: “If consumers’ appetite for SUVs continues to grow at a similar pace seen in the last decade, SUVs would add nearly 2 million barrels a day in global oil demand by 2040, offsetting the savings from nearly 150 million electric cars.”

If you aren’t motivated by the long-term threat of climate change, perhaps you may learn to dislike SUVs if they threaten to kill you. As Kate Yoder pointed out, every one of these vehicles that goes on the road makes the world more dangerous for everyone but the people in them. Pedestrian deaths have reached the highest levels in decades, thanks largely to the influx of bigger vehicles packing heavier punches.

So more deaths and more emissions. We got a preview of this trend in recent numbers coming out of California, where SUVs are also threatening to leave state climate goals broken and bleeding into the gutter.

The fact that beefy vehicles make their drivers a little safer, while endangering everyone around them is a hint as to why it’s been so hard to end our toxic relationship with SUVs. The people making the choice reap the benefits, while everyone else bears the cost. That’s the larger problem popping up here, in the form of surging SUV sales. It’s the problem that runs, and ruins, the world.

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SUVs are back, and they’re spewing a boggling amount of carbon

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