Singapore has seized more than 14 tons of pangolin scales worth an estimated $38.7 million. Authorities are calling one of
Conservation & Sustainability
awkward night at the museum Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, known for his strong anti-environmental policies and intention to open up the Amazon rainforest to increased deforestation, will be one of the guests of honor next month at a gala at, wait for it, the American Natural History Museum.
On May 14th, the New York museum, whose permanent collections include the hall of biodiversity and the hall of North American forests, is scheduled to house the black-tie event, hosted by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce.
Each year, the organization honors two “persons of the year” — one Brazilian, one American– who have advanced economic ties between the two countries.
While the American honoree has not yet been announced, Bolsonaro is slated to take the Brazilian slot, Gothamist reports.
But the irony of lauding a man who has repeatedly aired racist, homophobic and misogynist views all the while rolling back environmental protections in the Amazon at a venue dedicated to the natural world has not been lost on advocates or fans of the museum.
“The fact that American Museum of Natural History would accept an event for something so counter to their own values, they should be ashamed themselves,” Priscila Neri, a Brazilian activist with the New York City-based human rights organization WITNESS, told Gothamist.
“In a moment when there’s been a rise of authoritarianism around the world, they’re giving a positive nod to a man who is rolling back human rights protections and scientific knowledge.” Bolsonaro, dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics,” has undertaken an aggressive campaign of deforestation and mining that indigenous groups have likened to an “institutionalization of genocide in Brazil.” The Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce has close ties to the Bolsonaro regime.
Earlier this week, Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Ted Helms struck a $9 billion dollar deal with Bolsonaro’s government to sell oil production rights, and the organization’s president and board chairman, Alexandre Bettamio, was reportedly one of Bolsonaro’s choices to run the country’s state-run bank.
To be fair to the American Natural History Museum, the pro-Bolsonaro event is external, meaning the Museum is only acting as a venue; the event was also booked at the before the honoree was announced.
Roberto Lebron, a spokesperson for the museum, told Gothamist that the event “does not in any way reflect the Museum’s position that there is an urgent need to conserve the Amazon Rainforest, which has such profound implications for biological diversity, indigenous communities, climate change, and the future health of our planet.” Museum representatives also tweeted that they are “deeply concerned” and are exploring their options.
Its theme is climate change, marking the second time in eight months that the magazine has dedicated an entire issue to the pressing problem.
The first was Nathaniel Rich’s “Losing Earth,” which took up an entire issue last August and was reportedly the longest article ever published in the magazine.
Lo and behold, the new issue features a second article by Rich that offers a scathing rebuke of corporations for their ruthless pursuit of easy profits.
“It has become commonplace to observe that corporations behave like psychopaths,” he writes, calling out ExxonMobil by name.
“They are self-interested to the point of violence, possess a vibrant disregard for laws and social mores, have an indifference to the rights of others and fail to feel remorse.” He wonders whether capitalism is fundamentally at odds with climate action and ends his piece with the assertion that coercion — economic, political, or moral — “must be the remedy” to whipping corporations into shape.
“The Problem With Putting a Price on the End of the World” Another article from Sunday’s issue evaluates the obstacles to putting a price on climate change.
The central question, he writes, “is whether any policy is both big enough to matter and popular enough to happen.” “Climate Chaos Is Coming — and the Pinkertons Are Ready” Journalist Noah Gallagher Shannon’s piece about a private security contractor prepping for climate fallout paints a bleak and fascinating picture of a future in which huge corporate clients turn to third parties to protect themselves against upheaval.
Turns out, that world is already here.
Pinkerton, an agency originally formed in the mid-1800s “in response to the lawlessness of the frontier,” is rebranding itself as disaster-security-for-hire prepared to mitigate the risks of climate change for its clients: hurricanes, mass migration, violence, food shortages, and more.
Whereas the New York Times Magazine’s previous climate-themed issue focused on a single narrative, its second foray into the world of climate writing puts a lineup of articles in conversation with one another about the economic, political, and moral feasibility of reigning in climate change.
Norway’s $1 trillion oil fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, is to plunge billions of dollars into wind and solar power projects.
The decision follows Saudi Arabia’s oil fund selling off its last oil and gas assets.
Analysts say the investments are likely to power faster growth of green energy.
Unlisted projects make up more than two-thirds of the whole renewable infrastructure market, which is worth trillions of dollars.
But now the sum the fund can invest in green projects has been doubled to $14 billion.
“Even a fund built on oil is seeing that the future is green,” said Jan Erik Saugestad, CEO of Storebrand Asset Management.
In March, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund said it would dispose of its investments in 134 companies that explore for oil and gas, worth almost $8 billion.
The fund divested $6.5 billion of coal-related investments in 2015.
“Unlisted renewable energy is a growth industry,” said Tom Sanzillo at IEEFA.
In 2017, $18.8 billion went into fossil fuel investments, compared with just $0.4 billion into renewables.
More than 5 million birds from at least 250 different species fly through the Windy City’s downtown every fall and spring.
Deadly appetite: 10 animals we are eating into extinction Read more The famous skyline of Manhattan is another death trap for birds, especially those migrating.
“They wind up landing somewhere that’s unfamiliar, like a sidewalk somewhere,” said Susan Elbin, director of conservation and science at New York City Audubon, a leading bird advocacy organization.
Any city with glass structures and bright lights at night is a culprit, but some are more dangerous to birds than others.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology published a study this week that ranks cities based on the danger they pose to migrating birds.
Houston and Dallas, which also lie along some of the most popular migration paths, round out the top three most deadly cities after Chicago.
“We’re trying to raise awareness – trying to provide data and insight that could help,” he said.
The organization estimates about 90,000 to 200,000 birds are killed via building collision in the city each year.
Local Audubon chapters and other bird conservation groups around the country coordinate similar data collection exercises.
Conservationists also advocate that buildings adopt more “bird-friendly” designs, for example using patterned glass and dimmer lighting.
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Content loading… New York lawmakers are close to enacting a sweeping ban on single-use plastic bags in an effort to curb pollution and save denizens from their own worst impulses.
The new proposal could be part of the state’s budget bill, which is expected to pass next week.
The initiative already has the support of Democratic Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, who initially proposed the measure last year but failed to get it passed by the then-Republican-controlled state Senate.
“These bags have blighted our environment and clogged our waterways,” Cuomo said in a statement to The New York Times.
He said the proposal would “protect our natural resources for future generations of New Yorkers.” The ban, if implemented, would outlaw the use of single-use plastic bags at most stores, but would allow certain industries to continue using them.
Restaurants would still be allowed to use bags for takeout and newspapers would still be delivered in them.
The proposal would also allow individual counties to opt-in to a 5-cent-per-bag fee for paper bags in an effort to encourage consumers to bring their own reusable totes.
Lawmakers in Hawaii have proposed a pair of bills that would take a hard-line against most plastic in the restaurant industry and a proposal in Maryland could make the region the first in the nation to completely ban polystyrene food containers.
Climate Desk This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
“I have no legal obligation to personally maintain a calendar,” Bernhardt wrote in a letter to Congress in late February.
“Further, no Agency guidance exists recommending that I create or retain one.
“It worries me a lot that that’s not being followed,” House Natural Resources Chair Raúl Grijalva (a Democrat from Arizona) tells Mother Jones.
His calendars often have little detail in them; the environmental group Western Values Project has noted how few of his emails turn up in their frequent Freedom of Information Act requests to the Interior.
House Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings (a Democrat from Maryland) pressed the question in a hearing earlier with an acting deputy FOIA director earlier this month.
“Is the calendar for the acting Secretary deleted at the end of each day, do you know that?” he asked.
The deputy FOIA director, Rachel Spector, replied she didn’t, but acknowledged “that the solicitor’s office in the department is working with the records officer in the department to determine what’s occurred there, and whether it’s consistent.” Interior’s political appointees have exerted more control over the FOIA process in recent months.
Then, at a House Natural Resources budget hearing on Wednesday, Grijalva pointed to a March 14 email from a senior Interior official, whose name was redacted, asking that “any correspondence being sent to any Senator as well as Representative Grijalva NOT be sent until you have further direction.” Grijalva noted the timing of the instructions was significant: The next day the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee publicly announced Bernhardt’s confirmation hearing date.
Democratic senators plan to ask Bernhardt directly about his calendars in the Thursday hearing.
It smelled like burning plastic.
Joshua Paul for HuffPost The group of residents Pua worked with — including a lawyer, a former village leader and a stay-at-home mom — spent their weekends and lunch hours scouring Jenjarom for evidence of burn piles.
The illicit recyclers are apparently responsible for dumping and burning trash that is too contaminated or damaged to recycle.
There’s this smell,’” the minister said.
Yeo and her ministry are now pushing for reform of the global recycling industry, which she says benefits wealthy countries like the U.S. but harms developing countries.
Joshua Paul for HuffPost The threats on her life and safety, Pua said, began last year.
Joshua Paul for HuffPost Tan, the former Jenjarom village head, said he remembers when the smell of burning plastic began invading his neighborhood.
The community activists beseeched the local council and state government to do something about these plants.
That same month, Malaysia announced that it was temporarily banning the import of plastic scrap.
Where is your plastic going?” she said.
It’s entirely possible the cultivated roses, while colorful and aromatic, don’t actually have pollen.
But if you’re looking for beautiful flowers that also create pollinator habitat, don’t despair.
Not All Green Space is Equal Before diving into the details of the new research and what it means for your backyard, here’s a reminder: Pollinators are important.
The world’s pollinator species – including bees, flies, beetles and butterflies – are required by more than 85 percent of the flowering plants for reproduction.
They found that not all green spaces are created equal in the eyes of pollinators, and while urban nature reserves and parks are good, community vegetable gardens can be even better.
Nothing Replaces Wildlands While Baldock and her colleagues make the point in their new paper that cities can be useful refuges for pollinator species, they aren’t saying cities are better than open, unaltered hillsides, forests, and meadows.
On the other hand, cities can be useful boosting some of the rarer bees that find food and refuge later in the season in contrast to the native vegetation.
“Many crops benefit from pollination and benefit pollinators because they produce good amounts of pollen and nectar,” Baldock says.
And if you have an area that you can allow to grow naturally with native plants, let it be a little wild.
The longer the grass the more opportunity for growing species that help pollinators.
When I arrive, the ground floor is buzzing with activity.
We can buy cheaply and replace often, and it’s not always in companies’ interests to make products long-lasting or easily fixable.
So stuff gets chucked in the trash.
Consumer movements are arguing for the right to fix their own gadgets, either by themselves or through third-party repairers, and not be held hostage by manufacturers.
That starts by removing barriers to keeping and maintaining it.” The U.S. grassroots repair movement has traditionally been more fragmented than the U.K.’s, but that’s starting to change, says Janet Gunter, co-founder of U.K. repair charity The Restart Project.
“Blocking small companies from the ability to make their own repairs prevents them from being able to support whatever their customers want fixed, and is just a ruse to sell new products,” says Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of The Repair Association, an umbrella organization of businesses, charities and individuals that want or need to be able to repair.
Some small businesses are pushing back.
In 2017, Henrik Huseby, the owner of a small electronics repair shop in Norway, got a letter from Apple’s lawyers insisting he stopped using aftermarket iPhone parts to repair phones.
“If they see there’s real public appetite for change, then they’ll be more ambitious.” Organizations such as Restart, which helped organize the event I went to in Hackney Wick, are well aware of the power communities have to drive change.
“The game-changer will come when companies realize that making better, more easily repairable products is just inevitable.
