Biophilia Hypothesis

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grist.org

Climate change is making poison ivy stronger and itchier

Carbon dioxide and warmer soils could be supercharging everyone’s least favorite plant.

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

Poison ivy is a fixture of the landscape in eastern North America and parts of Asia. The noxious, rash-causing weed grows in rocky outcroppings, open fields, and at the edge of forests — it generally loves to take over disturbed areas. It can grow in partial shade and doesn’t give a damn about soil moisture as long as it’s not growing in a desert. The ivy is often identified in its plant form on the ground, but it can grow into a thick and hairy vine that curls around big trees and chokes out other native flora. No one knows why the ubiquitous plant causes an allergic reaction in human beings and some apes. It doesn’t affect any other animals that way, and researchers suspect that its allergenic defense mechanism may have evolved by accident.

If you live in areas where there is a lot of poison ivy, you may have noticed that the plant appears to be thriving lately. The leaves are looking leafier, the vines more prolific. Your poison ivy rash may even feel more itchy. It’s not your imagination. Research shows that the main culprit behind climate change — increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — is supercharging poison ivy.

The effect has been known since 2006, when Duke University researchers published a six-year study that showed poison ivy grew double its normal size when it was exposed to higher levels of carbon dioxide — levels on a par with the atmospheric carbon scientists anticipate seeing around 2050. The leaves on some individual plants grew by as much as 60 percent. Researchers also found that CO2 makes urushiol, the oil in poison ivy that causes the allergic reaction in humans, stronger. Plants rely on CO2 to make the sugars they need to grow, and increased concentrations of it were helping everyone’s least favorite plant thrive. The researchers surmised that increased levels of CO2 in coming decades would lead to bigger, faster growing, and itchier poison ivy plants.

poison ivy climate change
treehugger.com

New Lawsuit Filed Against Line 3, While Protests Heat Up

Celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, Katy Perry, and Amy Schumer have asked President Biden “to stop construction of Line 3 immediately.”

Excerpt from this story from Treehugger:

Opponents of Line 3 this week filed a lawsuit with the Minnesota Supreme Court in a new bid to stop construction of the controversial pipeline, while protesters have accused law enforcement of carrying out a “counterinsurgency” campaign.

The plaintiffs include two Native American groups (White Earth Band of Ojibwe and the Red Lake Band of Chippewa) and four environmental organizations (Honor the Earth, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Headwaters, and Youth Climate Intervenors). The lawsuit argues that when they approved the project, regulators failed to prove that there is strong demand for the tar sands oil that Canada’s Enbridge will transport through the pipeline.

An appellate court upheld the permit in a 2-1 decision last month. By dissenting, Judge Peter Reyes sided with Native American groups, who oppose the pipeline because it would cross ancestral lands over which they have treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice.3

“Enbridge needs Minnesota for its new pipeline … But Enbridge has not shown that Minnesota needs the pipeline,” Reyes wrote.

The plaintiffs are pursuing another legal case at a Washington, D.C., court to thwart construction of the 1,097-mile duct.

They oppose the pipeline because it could accidentally spill oil on a watershed that feeds into the Mississippi River as well as a wild rice growing area. They argue that instead of giving the go-ahead to a pipeline that will lead to more greenhouse gas emissions, the government should accelerate renewable energy investments.

Celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Jane Fonda, Joaquin Phoenix, and Amy Schumer wrote a letter to President Biden, asking him “to stop construction of Line 3 immediately.”

Enbridge Line 3 Minnesota
treehugger.com

Generation Restoration Is Taking Sustainable Action to Save the Ecosystem

Young people and ecopreneurs around the world, known as #GenerationRestoration, are bringing about change.

Excerpt from this story from Treehugger:

The United Nations’ Decade of Ecosystem Restoration has started. Young people and ecopreneurs around the world, known as #GenerationRestoration, are bringing about change to fix the damage humanity has done and set us on the course to a better future. The World Economic Forum’s Youth Challenge highlighted many amazing projects and ideas around the globe.

The UN Decade runs from 2021 through 2030, which is also the deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals and the timeline scientists have identified as the last chance to prevent catastrophic climate change.

According to the UN:

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, for the benefit of people and nature. It aims to halt the degradation of ecosystems, and restore them to achieve global goals. Only with healthy ecosystems can we enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change, and stop the collapse of biodiversity.
Ecosystem restoration and regenerative, sustainable action is becoming more widely considered, and young Ecopreneurs around the world are leading the charge and driving progress in this arena. They are helping humanity switch from an extractive mindset to one which is all about harmony with nature and renewal. 
Generation Restoration
treehugger.com

Deforestation of Amazon Rainforest Accelerates Under Brazil’s Bolsonaro

For the third consecutive year, Brazil is on pace to raze over 3,861 square miles of forest in the Amazon.

Excerpt from this story from Treehugger:

When the modern environmental movement was born in the 1970s, the Amazon rainforest quickly became its poster child thanks to mass deforestation in Brazil. Decades later, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is still a perfect if alarming proxy for the climate crisis writ large—and still a major roadblock to a healthy planet, according to Brazil’s National Institue for Space Research, INPE, which this month published new data showing accelerating deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon despite a half-century of activism against it.

In June 2021, INPE’s system of forest-watching satellites detected 410 square miles (1,062 square kilometers) of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which represents an increase of 1.8% compared to June 2020. Furthermore, its data show that deforestation in the region has increased 17% year to date, totaling 1,394 square miles (3,610 square kilometers)—an area more than four times the size of New York City, according to Reuters, whose reporting on the subject attributes the spike in deforestation to the pro-development policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. In addition to endorsing mining and agriculture in protected areas of the Amazon, it says, he has weakened environment enforcement agencies and obstructed Brazil’s system for fining environmental offenders.

deforestation Amazon rainforest Brazil jair bolsonaro

This is a documentary, about ten minutes long, addressing regenerative farming and the return to agricultural practices of Indigenous peoples and Black farmers. Description from the producer, Patagonia:

Regenerative practices and knowledge come from Indigenous and Black farmers, and support healthy soil, animals and people. Through rematriation (or remothering the land), this centuries-old sustainable agricultural system has the power to connect Indigenous and Black people with their land in a way that is restorative, healing and rejuvenating for both people and the planet.

In our new film, we asked William Smith, land steward of the Village of Huchiun, and Nazshonnii Brown-Almaweri, land team member of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, to share their thoughts on bringing this growing movement back. [Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is based in Huchiun, in unceded Lisjan territory, what is now known as Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Piedmont, Emeryville and Albany, California.]

Patagonia recognizes that the farms shown in this film are located in the territory of Huchiun, on the unceded homelands of the Lisjan Ohlone peoples. We honor the ancestors of the land, Elders, and other members of their communities, past, present and future. We support the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust’s Indigenous-led land return efforts through the Rematriate the Land Fund. Learn more about this fund and how you can contribute.

regenerative agriculture indigenous people Black farmers Remothering the Land
nytimes.com

Democrats to Propose a Border Tax Based on Countries’ Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Senators will introduce a plan on Monday to tax iron, steel and other imports from countries without ambitious climate laws.

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

Democratic lawmakers on Monday will make public a plan to raise as much as $16 billion annually by imposing a tax on imports from China and other countries that are not significantly reducing the planet-warming pollution that they produce.

The tax would be levied regardless of whether Congress passed new laws to reduce emissions created by the United States. It would be designed to be approximately equivalent to the costs faced by American companies under state and federal environmental regulations.

Experts said a border carbon tax would almost certainly provoke America’s trading partners and could create serious diplomatic challenges ahead of United Nations climate negotiations set for November in Glasgow.

But Senator Chris Coons of Delaware and Representative Scott Peters of California, Democrats who intend to announce the plan on Monday, said American companies deserved protection as the Biden administration moved forward with aggressive policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuels.

“We must ensure that U.S. workers and manufacturers aren’t left behind and that we have tools to assess global progress on climate commitments,” Mr. Coons said.

The plan comes a week after the European Union proposed its own carbon border tax on imports from countries with lax pollution controls.

The proposal from Democrats, which Senate aides said was developed with input from the Department of the Treasury, the Office of the United States Trade Representative and other parts of the Biden administration, is expected to be attached to a $3.5 trillion budget resolution.

customs (tariff) greenhouse gas emissions border carbon tax
axios.com

Northern California wildfire triggers evacuations as 70 large blazes burn across West

A red flag warning is in effect for Monday in the Northern Rockies.
Rebecca Falconer,Yacob Reyes

Excerpt from this Axios story:

Fast-growing wildfires continue to plague northern California, leading to evacuation orders, highway closures and event cancelations — as the threat of “dry lightning” prompts red flag warnings to be issued across the state for Sunday.

The latest: A red flag warning is in effect across the Northern Rockies, which are currently engulfed in a heatwave that threatens to spark new fires.

The big picture: A red flag warning is in effect for the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon, currently the largest wildfire in the United States — which grew even larger Sunday to a whopping 476 square miles, about the size of Los Angeles, AP reports.

  • The Bootleg Fire is about 22% contained, as of Sunday afternoon, per InciWeb.
  • The Tamarack Fire, south of Lake Tahoe near the Nevada border, is among 70 large fires burning across more than a million acres in the United States, including nine in California.
  • It comes as another heat wave grips the country, this time with the intensity focused on the northwest and northern areas.
  • Many of the wildfires started amid an unprecedented heat wave that scientists say was driven by human-caused climate change.
  • As of yet, the largest wildfire on record this year is the Beckwourth Complex Fire, which has scorched 92,988 acres and was only 66% contained, per CNN.

What’s happening: The Tamarack Fire was being driven by “gusty winds” and “critically dry fuels” as it was burning uncontained near the town of Markleeville, per a statement from Humboldt Toiyabe National Forest. It has razed some 21,000 acres after being ignited by lightning on July 4.

  • Mandatory evacuation orders were issued for several nearby areas, forcing Death Ride to cancel its extreme bike event through the Sierra Nevada Saturday, according to a statement posted on its website.
  • “The fire left thousands of bikers and spectators stranded in the small town and racing to get out,” AP reports. The blaze saw part of Highway 89 close, at the intersection with Highway 4.

By the numbers: 17 wildfires were burning in Idaho, 13 in Montana, nine in Oregon, seven in Washington state, six in Alaska, four in Arizona, two in Wyoming, and one apiece in Colorado, Utah and Minnesota, National Interagency Fire Center statistics show.

wildfires western US
earthjustice.org

Drilling for Oil in the Everglades Is Exactly as Stupid as It Sounds

We're making sure that federal and state governments keep their commitments to protect Florida’s wetlands.

Excerpt from this story from Earthjustice:

At the tail end of 2020, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) handed Florida the power to grant permits to projects that could damage the state’s wetlands. Now, we’re seeing why this was a terrible idea: an oil drilling proposal in the Everglades is on track to move forward.

Here are some obvious reasons this shouldn’t happen:

  • The Big Cypress National Preserve, located north of Everglades National Park, is an important freshwater swamp ecosystem. It nurtures a diversity of wildlife, including alligators, orchids, and the critically endangered Florida panther, and its waters replenish the Everglades. Drilling here would devastate this ecosystem and wreak havoc on endangered species.
  • Oil drilling would also harm the nearby lands of the Miccosukee Tribe, who have lived on these lands for generations. This development is a continuation of the destructive practices of the past which have harmed the Miccosukee Tribe’s homeland, cultural resources, and way of life.
  • We can’t afford more fossil fuels when urgent action is needed to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis. The Biden administration’s climate plan recognizes that conserving lands and waters is a critical part of the solution. Wetlands in particular store carbon, mitigate floods, and recharge aquifers used for drinking water. So, sacrificing one of the largest wetland ecosystems in the Western Hemisphere would be a step in the wrong direction.

Florida developers are rushing into the Everglades because the government opened the door.

  • On its way out in December, the Trump administration gave Florida unprecedented power to greenlight projects in the state’s sensitive wetlands — a power that the federal government controlled until now. It did this despite the state’s consistent track record of rubberstamping wetland destructionThe state has shown its inability to run the environmental programs already under its control, and its takeover of the wetlands program will be no different. The administration has given the state — and any developers it grants permits to — carte blanche to harm as many endangered species as they want, forever, without any guidelines or limitations. This is a blatant violation of the Endangered Species Act.
Everglades Florida oil drilling

What you’re seeing, described by Earth Island Journal:

This may look cool, but being thrown out of an airplane isn’t the best experience for baby fish. Utah’s wildlife department apparently dumps tens of thousands of fry from the air into lakes every year in an effort to restock the state’s roughly 200 high-elevation, popular fishing waterbodies that aren’t easily accessible by other vehicles.

Utah fish restocking