Environment Archives - Page 19 of 28

Trump’s War on the Environment and Its Inhabitants

10Aug

By SHOAHNo Comments

Environment, USA

Trump’s War on the Environment and Its Inhabitants

by MELVIN GOODMAN Oil wells on federal lands in Colorado. Photo: BLM. There are no limits to the pernicious ugliness of Donald Trump and his administration. We have examples of personal ugliness toward the late Senator John McCain and his family as well as the treatment of the Gold Star family during the 2016 presidential campaign. There is policy ugliness in the racist Muslim travel ban, which the Supreme Court upheld, and the cruel separation of families at the U.S.-Mexican border, with children held in isolation from their parents. The use of federal forces against peaceful protestors in Washington, D.C. in June and in Portland in July are fascist in their intent. The director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Government Secrecy Project, Steven Aftergoo...

6Aug

By SHOAHNo Comments

Environment, Human Rights, Palestine Affairs, ZIO-NAZI

Nazi regime turning mosques into synagogues, bars

The Omari Mosque in Tiberias, built by Zahir [Wikipedia] One of the landmarks of Tiberias, the mosque, also known as the Zaydani mosque, was built on the Mameluke architecture, with a big dome and a minaret. “Like most Palestinians, the Tiberias residents have fled to Syria and Lebanon following the Nakba,” Kamal Khatib of the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens, told Anadolu Agency. “The Zaydani family, however, moved to the adjacent city of Nazareth,” he said. Khatib said the Zaydani family had asked the Nazi authorities to give them permission to renovate the Umari mosque. “The Tiberias Municipality, however, refused, arguing that it would renovate it, but nothing happened,” he said. “Even since the mosque has been closed with 'Israeli' authorities banning worship...

5Aug

By SHOAHNo Comments

Environment

Thawing Arctic Permafrost

by ROBERT HUNZIKER Photograph Source: Steve Jurvetson – CC BY 2.0 It’s no surprise that first prize, or the blue ribbon, for exceeding 2°C above baseline goes to the Arctic with permafrost that covers 25% of the Northern Hemisphere. Recognition is long overdue, as it’s been totally neglected far too long by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This crucial nugget of knowledge comes by way of a recent virtual science session (1:27 in length) sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences. The webcast is entitled: Thawing Arctic Permafrost: Regional and Global Impacts, hosted by John P. Holdren, Teresa & John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The timing couldn’t be better. The Arctic Ci...

The Coronavirus-Climate-Air Conditioning Nexus

4Aug

By SHOAHNo Comments

Environment, Health

The Coronavirus-Climate-Air Conditioning Nexus

by STAN COX Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair A wave of persistent, intense heat and humidity has enveloped the Midwest, South, and Northeast in this second half of July. By the time it subsides, more than half of the U.S. population will have been hit with heat indexes above 100; for many, the heat wave will last for several days. The severe heat is driving almost all social gatherings and group activities into enclosed, air-conditioned spaces. That’s been the American way for more than fifty summers now, but this summer is different. Getting together these days in the cool indoor world can dramatically raise the risk of coronavirus infection. For the duration of this pandemic, it will always be riskier to gather indoors than outdoors. In a paper published by th...

2Aug

By SHOAHNo Comments

Environment, Health

Climate Change is Genocide

by EVE OTTENBERG Pulp mill, Halsey, Oregon. Photo:L Jeffrey St. Clair. The only good thing to say about Covid is that it caused carbon emissions to drop. Not enough to save humanity from catastrophic climate change, but significantly. At the height of the global lockdown, carbon emissions fell 17 percent – when the whole world basically stopped driving and flying. According to Eric Holthaus’ new book, “The Future Earth,” by 2035 the United States must have a carbon neutral economy or face utter disaster. That, folks, pretty much means the end of capitalism as we know it. Indeed, that’s what “The Future Earth” advocates. A planet of vegan eco-socialists – sounds good to me, though I think the ExxonMobil ceo might stand in the way. With such opposition and other, more ordinary luke...

Shrink-Wrapped: Plastic Pollution and the Greatest Economic System Jesus Ever Devised

28Jul

By SHOAHNo Comments

Environment

Shrink-Wrapped: Plastic Pollution and the Greatest Economic System Jesus Ever Devised

by DANIEL BEAUMONT Photograph Source: Marco Verch – CC BY 2.0 When exactly I began putting plastic items in a special tub for recycling I don’t remember. Probably in the 1980s when I moved to Princeton. Then my wife and I separated plastic items, tin cans and newspapers from the regular garbage and put them in a special can to be recycled. Then too certain plastic bottles were separated from all of the other plastic items and joined with aluminum cans in a large leaf bag—plastic of course—because we took those to the supermarket where they earned us a nickel a piece. And all of this continued in Rochester after we moved there and bought a house where I live now—by myself since my wife and I parted ways. I continued to separate the plastic bottles from the rest of the plastic i...

Will Covid Start a Trade War Over U.S. Meat Exports?

12Jul

By SHOAHNo Comments

Environment, Health, Politics

Will Covid Start a Trade War Over U.S. Meat Exports?

by MARTHA ROSENBERG Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair On June 21, the official China website posted that products from Tyson Foods’ Springdale, Arkansas plant “that have arrived or are about to arrive in Hong Kong will be temporarily suspended by the customs department.” Two days earlier, 455 Tyson Foods workers living in Benton and Washington counties in which Springdale is located were found to be COVID-19 positive. Most were asymptomatic. The meat industry and public health groups say transmission of a virus like COVID-19, SARS or MERS through meat is unlikely. But apparently China, whose love of eating palm civet cats mired it into a huge SARS outbreak, is less sure. Scientists also have their doubts. Researchers writing in the EMBO journal found the enz...

US to Form Icebreaker Fleet for the Arctic. “Polar Security Cutter”

7Jul

By SHOAHNo Comments

Environment, USA

US to Form Icebreaker Fleet for the Arctic. “Polar Security Cutter”

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida In the past few months, the United States has tightened its policies in the Arctic, as several measures show. For decades, Washington has not been concerned with strengthening its military presence at the poles, giving greater focus to other regions of the planet, such as the Middle East. Due to this lack of attention to the Arctic, the US does not yet have a fleet of icebreaker ships, far behind its rivals such as Russia and China. Now, the American government intends to change this attitude. On June 9, Donald Trump announced that he plans to create a fleet of icebreakers by 2029, according to a statement made to several departments. The fleet would be used in the Arctic and Antarctica. The project already has a name: Polar Security Cutter. The...

Invisible Rainbow: 5G Electromagnetic Radiation and the Evolution of Life on Planet Earth

6Jul

By SHOAHNo Comments

Education, Environment, Health

Invisible Rainbow: 5G Electromagnetic Radiation and the Evolution of Life on Planet Earth

By Robert J. Burrowes In his recently revised and updated book The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life, scientist Arthur Firstenberg has made both science and history comprehensible by explaining the importance and significance to life on Earth of a vital consideration that has long been ‘invisible’: electricity. Indeed, as Firstenberg makes clear, if we want to understand life on Earth, we cannot do so without understanding the role that electricity plays in making life possible, healing it and, if abused, threatening us all. Firstenberg’s book is unusual on at least two counts. Based on decades of scientific research, he carefully explains each point in language accessible to the non-scientist while documenting his case with exceptional clarity a...

3Jul

By SHOAHNo Comments

Environment, Health, Human Rights

Warning over pollution link to Covid-19 as public calls for cleaner air

Respiratory expert warns of worse outcomes for coronavirus patients who live in polluted areas By: Dominic Penna High levels of air pollution have combined with other factors to create a perfect storm resulting in worse outcomes from coronavirus in polluted areas, a prominent respiratory expert has said. Professor Fan Chung, professor of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London’s National Heart and Lung Institute, pointed to mounting research suggesting that air pollution worsens the outcomes of those who contract the disease. His comments come as a new YouGov poll found two-thirds of Britons support stricter laws to tackle pollution after the pandemic, and a report from the Clean Air Fund called on governments to do more on the issue. “Po...