The Life Slant - Page 2

SAN FRANCISCO — The latest Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) review of three widely used neonicotinoid insecticides shows that the majority of endangered plants and animals are in harm’s way from these deadly nerve poisons.

In the midst of the accelerating man-driven Sixth Mass Extinction, the animal and plant kingdoms cannot contend with the ever-increasing onslaughts of horrible poisons.

In addition to plants and animals, the soils are in danger too. Soils are vital not just because they give us our food, they store a whopping 1500 billion metric tons of carbon. Poisons that destroy life within soils lessen the chances of the Gen Zs (under 26s) reaching 2040.

SAN FRANCISCO – Mother Earth defender and author, Jocelyn Zuckerman, has penned an excellent detailed account in Planet Palm of the insidious and ubiquitous palm oil trade. Victress.

Zuckerman journeyed to four continents and witnessed firsthand this planetary destructive, crafty industry. It’s a riveting read.

If ever there was one farmed crop that begged the United Nations (UN) to enact a Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth, palm oil is it.

A West African tropical palm, Elaeis guineensis, produces bunches of fruits the size of plums, which yields copious pulp and kernel oils that are loaded with saturated fats. 

Today, those oils are the backbone of processed everything, from personal care products to deep fried foods and pastries to instant noodles. Humans also burn a shit ton of it, one-third of all biofuels annually are palm oil. They emit four times more planet-cooking gases per unit than diesel fuel.

The air, the scents, the sounds, the scenery;
What more could there be?
A cry of an eagle,
A thrum of a hummingbird,
The mastery of a spider’s web.
Bravissimo!

WASHINGTON (DC) – About 72 species of sea grasses are nature’s protective chainmail that filter land runoff, boost water quality, recharge aquifers and provide habitat for thousands of species. Yet they, too, are being assaulted and plundered by man.

Sea grasses in mesmerising meadows occupy the coasts of every continent except Antarctica. Although their total ocean area is about 0.1%, sea grasses hold an astonishing 11% of the ocean’s carbon (sometimes referred to as ‘blue carbon’).

Some of my colleagues affectionately call the sea grasses ‘the lungs of the sea’. And for a good reason, one square metre of a sea grass meadow releases 10 litres of oxygen each day of the year. Bonanza!

Each year, Mediterranean sea grass meadows are helping to protect the deep North Atlantic ocean and all life therein by sieving 900 million pieces of pernicious petroleum-based plastics.

SAN FRANCISCO – This week the United Nations (UN) climate body, the IPCC, issued its sternest warning a ‘climate code red.’ Yet every IPCC decarbonising scenario has GDPs (Gross Domestic Product) rising not falling. The jarring reality is that it’s not possible for civilisation to grow enough food with increasing, intensifying and longer lasting ferocious heatwaves.

Combustion heat from fossil fuels and wood pellets has supercharged the oceans by adding the equivalent heat of detonating 10 Hiroshima atomic bombs every second of the year. The oceans drive the climate, which is becoming terrifyingly unstable.

Climate fires are raging all over the globe. Siberia is one giant firestorm with untold losses of our brethren and sistren, the animals. Over 40 million acres are charred across Russia’s Northern Asia. For the first time in recorded history the North Pole is blanketed with thick choking climate smoke.

SAN FRANCISCO – Professor Suzanne Simard is a remarkable woman – a passionate, courageous forest ecologist who has upended Canada’s, male dominated, planet-killing forestry sector.

Simard’s new book, Finding the Mother Tree, is an epic read loaded with curiosity, grit, discovery, grief and triumph.

Fearless, intelligent, caring women are healing our planet. Simard is indeed amongst them.

Old-growth rainforests are superlative carbon storehouses and incomparable intercontinental climate-makers, secondly only to the oceans. We cannot inhabit this planet without old-growth inhaling carbon and exhaling oxygen.

SAN FRANCISCO – This week, climate fires, climate floods, climate heatwaves and climate mega-droughts are laying waste to people and Mother Earth.

A mega-drought across America’s West is deepening. In California, a million acres are fallow. Billions of dollars forgone. No mid winter Sierra Nevada snowpack, no spring groundwater recharge, so millions of taps across the Golden State have begun to trickle.

In June amid record U.S. heat, the world’s coal producers announced 432 new coal mines, mostly in China, Australia and Russia. Avarice bankers, oligarchs and the world’s leaders are unconcerned about adding more combustion heat into the biosphere that has become a gigantic land and sea graveyard.