The Environment Thread

[Mindy]

[Psy-Fi]

Essential herbicide, but at what cost? Paraquat remains in US despite bans elsewhere

The number of nations where paraquat, an agricultural herbicide, is allowed to be used continues to dwindle, yet paraquat continues to receive stamps of approval from federal regulators in the United States.

"Contrary to these dozens of countries, which have looked at the exact same data and have found that paraquat is too dangerous [and] too toxic to continue using, the United States Environmental Protection Agency reached the exact opposite conclusion," said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney with Earthjustice, a non-profit environmental law firm.

[Psy-Fi]

Humans Are Fueling Global Warming By Just Breathing, Study Claims

[Lisnaholic]

The global warming report card for 2023 is just in:-

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/09/climate/temperature-rise-2023-climate-copernicus-intl/index.html

^ Personally, I found this news article is too depressing to read beyond the opening statements:-

Global warming in 2023 leaped close to the limit the world is trying to avoid.

Global warming in 2023 hit 1.48 degrees Celsius, data published Tuesday shows, as the hottest year on record propelled the world just hundredths of a degree away from a critical climate threshold.

Scientists repeatedly expressed shock in 2023 as successive heat records fell, and warned the world is moving dangerously close to the 1.5-degree limit that nearly 200 countries sought to avoid in the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Round of applause for Joe Manchin and all the Republican Senators who blocked Biden's plans to turn down the heat in the USA. 

 

[jimmy jazz]

It's only going to get worse.

What can you do?

Too many people don't take it seriously for anything to be done now.

[Guybrush]

Yes. It troubles me to think of what kind of world it is my children and (hopefully) my children's children will have to deal with 😢

[Lisnaholic]

What can you do?

Too many people don't take it seriously for anything to be done now.

It's easy to feel that way, jimmy jazz, but I still think that efforts small and large should be made to reduce the damage as much as possible. In all the gloom, one heartening story is how the hole in the ozone layer was repaired through international co-operation. Without that, we would be in a much worse situation today: that means weather would be worse, floods would be displacing more millions of people. So there are many reasons to keep trying to reduce environmental damage, both in our personal lives and at the ballot box:-
i) to save people's homes, farms and lives
ii) to make the world less damaged for the next generation
iii) to have an answer when the next generation asks, "How could you have done nothing?!?"

Lastly, here's an analogy. Scientists have set off the fire alarm; if you're in a burning building, is it really the best response to say, "No point trying to escape."?

[Psy-Fi]

Obama - Al Gore - John Kerry - Are COLOSSAL Climate Hypocrites!

[Lisnaholic]

^ Yes, that's pretty damning hypocracy from John Kerry with his private jet trips ! TBH I didn't watch much beyond that because I found the four people on the sofa to be very annoying. I wish the speaker had just made his points seriously without the attempt to turn it into "entertainment".

Alas, it's always the same message from politicians, "Do as I say, not as I do- because unlike you undistinguished people, I am a special case VIP."

[Lisnaholic]

Seems like the best thread in which to put this statistic that I came across today. It's about land use, and shows the percentage of land  that is devoted to agriculture in eight countries.

Which of these countries would you put at the top of the list for their percentage of agricultural land ?

France .... Germany .... Ireland .... Italy .... Netherlands .... Spain .... United Kingdom .... United States

Have a guess, then click on the graph to see if you were as mistaken as I was:-

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS?end=2021&locations=FR-GB-US-DE-NL-ES-IE-IT&start=1969