Environment

BY GARY LEUPP Lahaina, after the fire. Youtube screen grab. It’s a damn tough life full of toil and strifeWe whalermen undergo.And we don’t give a damn when the day is done/gale has stoppedHow hard the winds did blow.’cause we’re homeward bound from the Arctic groundWith a good ship, taut and freeAnd we won’t give a damn when we drink our rumWith the girls of Old Maui. (Chorus) Rolling down to Old Maui, me boysRolling down to Old MauiWe’re homeward bound from the Arctic ground Rolling down to Old Maui. This sea song (not technically a “shanty”) was sung from at least the 1850s, by mariners en route from “six hellish months” in the whaling grounds of “the cold Kamchatka Sea,” driven by “a northerly gale,” towards their “island home” in Old Maui. The Maui “girls” ref...

BY SONALI KOLHATKAR Photo by Chris Gallagher As temperatures soar in the United States this summer, some among us are lucky enough to be able to remain in air-conditioned interior spaces, ordering food, groceries, clothing, and other products to be delivered to us. The rest, toiling in the extreme heat to pull products off hot warehouse shelves and drop them off curbside in scorching delivery trucks, are risking health and even life. July 2023 marked the planet’s hottest month on record. In San Bernardino, California, where retail giant Amazon has a massive warehouse and fulfillment center, daily temperatures reached triple digits for the majority of days in July and have been dangerously hot all summer. Workers with the Inland Empire Amazon Workers U...

BY ROBERT HUNZIKER Image by Roxanne Desgagnés. The Far-Right takeover of the Republican Party has readied a battle plan for 2025 that will crucify commitments to fight global heat, namely: Project 2025 / Presidential Transition Project, a 920-page formal proposal to take over and reconstruct government via abandonment and/or defunding of federal agencies that protect the nation’s health and environment. Project 2025’s call to arms: “The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.” (Source: The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, A Note on “Project 2025” Mandate for Leadership: The Co...

BY JUDITH DEUTSCH Image by Agustín Lautaro. How many people are dying due to climate change? How does climate cause death, and what are the omissions, deceptions, and confusions about this interaction of climate and death? In the U.S., climate-related deaths are narrowly classified as heat-related, so googling this question came up with 106 deaths for 2022. On the other hand, vector-borne diseases that proliferate due to heat, like malaria, dengue, zika, account for 700,000 deaths/year. Monbiot wrote that the burning of Indonesia’s tropical forests for biofuels (alternative to coal) from sugar cane/palm oil plantations, caused air pollution leading possibly to 15,000 child deaths. And the U.S. oil war for fossil fuels and the UN Iraqi oil-for-food program led to millio...

BY JOSÉ SEOANE Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair In 2023, different climatic anomalies have been recorded that set new historical records in the tragic progression of climate change at the global level. Thus, in June, the surface temperature in the North Atlantic reached the maximum increase of 1.3 degrees Celsius with respect to preindustrial values. In a similar direction—although in lower values—the average temperature of the seas at the global level increased. On the other hand, the retraction of Antarctic ice reached a new limit, reaching the historical decrease of 2016, but several months earlier in the middle of the cold season. The combination of these records has led scientists who follow these processes to warn of the danger of a profound change in the currents t...