Stephan: Here for once is some good news about the Amazon forests.
Rhea family of birds snack in soy field Credit: Lisa Rausch
Over the last 14 years, a unique public-private initiative has reduced soy farming deforestation in the Amazon, so much so, that almost no soy coming from the Amazon currently contributes to deforestation.
It began in 2006 when Greenpeace launched a campaign exposing the damage of forest clear-cutting for soy the previous year—more than 1,600 square kilometers (nearly 4 million acres)—and demanded action to curtail the devastation.
In response to the public outcry, major soy companies in the region reached a landmark agreement as signatories to the Amazon Soy Moratorium (ASM), pledging not to purchase any crops grown on recently cleared land—and the success has been remarkable
Today, new research shows that 98.6% of all soy grown in the region complies with the moratorium.
Assistant professor Robert Heilmayr at the University of California-Santa Barbara and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin Madison have now quantified the ASM’s effects and documented how it achieved its goals. The researchers found that while the agreement prevented millions of acres of deforestation in its first decade, the policy did not appear to hamper agricultural growth or push deforestation to other sectors […]
Sara Miller Llana, Staff Writer - Christian Science Monitor
Stephan: Even when pollution is very bad, if citizens, scientific and local, develop and act on a collective intention that things be improved it can be done. Here is proof of that proposition.
Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
GREATER SUDBURY, ONTARIO — When the Superstack was constructed in 1972, it was the tallest structure in Canada – and the tallest smokestack in the world. At 1,250 feet, it’s visible from every vantage point in the area. It can be seen from the bustling streets of downtown to the quiet cul-de-sacs of residential neighborhoods. It looms large in the distance from highways that feed into a city that is home to one of the largest mining complexes in the world.
Built by Canadian company Inco before it was purchased by Vale, the Superstack has long stood as a reminder of the environmental devastation that mining wrought here. But this year the chimney is being fully decommissioned.
Residents of Sudbury harbor mixed feelings about the Superstack. Some see it as a memorial to their rise as a center of nickel and copper mining globally. Others see it simply as a familiar landmark that signals they are home. Gisele Lavigne lives in the Copper Cliff neighborhood at the Superstack’s base. She spends her evenings looking at the towering structure […]
Stephan: Here is the best piece I have read about hydrogen power in many months. I see this as good news, although I am not at all clear about the role hydrogen power will play in a post-carbon era.
Mike Strizki at his home in Ringoes, N.J. His passion for the planet-saving benefits of hydrogen power requires him to refine the fuel himself in his backyard. Credit: Kat Slootsky/The New York Times
In December, the California Fuel Cell Partnership tallied 8,890 electric cars and 48 electric buses running on hydrogen batteries, which are refillable in minutes at any of 42 stations there. On the East Coast, the number of people who own and drive a hydrogen electric car is somewhat lower. In fact, there’s just one. His name is Mike Strizki. He is so devoted to hydrogen fuel-cell energy that he drives a Toyota Mirai even though it requires him to refine hydrogen fuel in his yard himself.
“Yeah, I love it,” Mr. Strizki said of his 2017 Mirai. “This car is powerful, there’s no shifting, plus I’m not carrying all of that weight of the batteries,” he said in a not-so-subtle swipe at the world’s most notable hydrogen naysayer, Elon Musk.
Mr. Strizki favors fuel-cell cars for the same reasons as most proponents. You can make fuel using water […]
Tara Lohan, Deputy Editor of The Revelator - truthout/The Revelator
Stephan: Alabama is governed by Republicans which explains its very poor social outcome data across the board, but even by Alabama's poor standards, this story is a tale of notable failure, incompetence and stupidity.
Alabama could “go from being the king of diversity to the king of extinctions,” says journalist Ben Raines. Credit: W. Drew Senter/Longleaf/Getty
When longtime environmental journalist Ben Raines started writing a book about the biodiversity in Alabama, the state had 354 fish species known to science. When he finished writing 10 years later, that number had jumped to 450 thanks to a bounty of new discoveries. Crawfish species leaped from 84 to 97 during the same time.
It’s indicative of a larger trend: Alabama is one of the most biodiverse states in the country, but few people know it. And even scientists are still discovering the rich diversity of life that exists there, particularly in the Mobile River basin.
Stephan: The Republican Party is destroying America, and that is not a partisan statement, it is a statement of fact, based on the social outcome data. It is not what they say, but what they do.
Companies in the United States will no longer be obligated to pay COVID-related sick leave for American workers due to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blocking a bill that would have extended the much-needed policy as the coronavirus continues to ravage states across the country
Under the CARES Act, which was passed in March, Congress incorporated legislation that gave employees the ability to receive up to two weeks worth of paid leave under a number of COVID-related circumstances including: “to care for a quarantining relative, and up to 10 weeks of paid family leave to care for a child whose school or daycare is closed for COVID-related reasons.”
