Here is some excellent good news. Now if the countries that produce all this trash would just get their acts together.
‘System 03’ is nearly three times as long as the previous system – Pictured surrounding System 2. Credit: The Ocean Cleanup
Last week, The Ocean Cleanup organization that has been tackling the Great Pacific Garbage Patch deployed their System 03 for the first time—nearly three times larger than the previous technology and capable of cleaning the area of a football field every five seconds.
This follows testing of their two smaller systems which succeeded in extracted over 275 tons of plastic from the Garbage Patch since 2021.
The arrival of System 03 marks a huge leap forward for the Dutch CEO Boyan Slat and his team, and their mission of ridding the oceans of at least 90% of the plastic trash by 2040.
System 03 consists of a floating barrier approximately 1.4 miles (2.2 km) long, which is towed between two slow-moving vessels. This barrier suspends a screen extending 13 feet (4 meters) below the surface of the water, where most floating plastic is encountered.
Once the trash is removed, an onboard crew sorts it […]
Jessica Corbett, Seniors Editor and Staff Writer - Common Dreams
Stephan:
Humanity is simply not taking climate change seriously enough, and this failure is going to lead to incredible misery, death, disruptive internal migrations, and international immigrations. How you vote in 2024 is going to make a difference in the quality of your children’s lives and their children’s lives.
Amid a summer of extreme heat across the Northern Hemisphere, an international report led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revealed Wednesday that greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea level, and ocean heat content hit record highs last year.
“This report is a truly international effort to more fully understand climate conditions around the globe and our capacity to observe them,” NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Director Derek Arndt said of State of the Climate in 2022, which features contributions from more than 570 scientists in over 60 countries.
“It is like an annual physical of the Earth system, and it serves present and future generations by documenting and sharing data that indicate increasingly extreme and changing conditions in our warming world,” Arndt added of the 33rd annual report, published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
As humanity continued to extract and burn fossil fuels and engage in polluting agricultural practices, all three of the main atmospheric greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—reached record concentrations last year. The […]
Degrowth, as described in this article, I think, is the only way we are going to deal with the environment our stupidity and greed has created without ghastly misery, death, migration, and immigration. The problem is that the Republican Party has no interest in any of this. Power, greed, and profit and anocracy are the things the Republicans care about and work for. The 2024 election is going to determine which way we go as a country. Are we up to making that choice, smart enough, compassionate enough? To be honest, I’m not sure that Americans are up to understanding, let along making the degrowth choice. It will depend on people like you not just voting to put Democrats in power, but volunteering to work as election staff, or to participate in wellbeing oriented citizen movements. Are you up to it? Only you can answer that question.
Stave Hill Ecological Park on the former site of the Surrey Commercial Dock in London, UK. blue sky in my pocket Credit: Photodisc / Getty
What Is Degrowth?
Degrowth is the idea that we should prioritize sustainability and human well-being over economic growth.
It comes from the French “décroissance,” which was coined in 1972 by social philosopher André Gorz.
It first emerged as a distinct movement and theory in the early 21st century and entered the English language in 2008.
Between 2000 and 2019, increased renewable energy capacity covered only 16 percent of new energy demand.
Human activity has surpassed five out of nine planetary boundaries: global heating, plastic and chemical pollution, biodiversity loss, habitat loss and nitrogen and phosphorous pollution.
Global North countries are responsible for 92 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in excess of planetary boundaries, and wealthy economies are responsible for 74 percent of unsustainable resource use.
The U.S. has the highest GDP in the world but scores behind several countries on well-being indicators, including Panama and Costa Rica.
Green growth and ecomodernism are two main schools of […]
MARTIN LOCKMAN and MARTIN DIETRICH BRAUCH, Contributing Writers - State of the Planet
Stephan:
For several months I have been looking for a report on this issue because I think that unless specific regulatory steps are taken the carbon industries, in order to protect their profits, will abandon oil wells, fracking installations, and ocean oil and gas platforms leaving the mess to be cleaned up with tax payer money. Your money, my money, and it will be billions of dollars.
Credit: U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
As pressures build for the energy industry to move away from fossil fuels, two new reports examine the risk that fossil-fuel companies will default on future obligations to decommission offshore oil and gas infrastructure and pass the costs on to the public. The reports lay out recommendations to avoid such a scenario. They were just published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), as part of their broader Climate Law and Finance Initiative.
At the same time, many jurisdictions face a growing need to dismantle offshore infrastructure, whether because it is aging, the resources are depleted, or mandated net-zero strategies require some installations to be decommissioned earlier than expected—a process that is can be laborious and expensive. A 2021 forecast by the financial analysis firm IHS Markit estimated that globally, offshore […]
In the Red states all over the country I am watching a particularly nasty trend develop. In state after state the Republican Party, now basically a christofascist White supremacy cult, has made it clear it does not support democracy. Instead Republicans are trying to rig voting so that once in power they cannot be voted out of office. This is a story about Wisconsin, but it could be the story of a dozen other Red states. This is all designed to transform America into a anocracy, and I think it is incredibly dangerous.
From left, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Burlington) and Speaker Pro Tempore Tyler August (R-Lake Geneva) in 2018. Credit: Andy Manis / Getty
There is, however, a light at the end of this tunnel both for small-d democrats and for large-D Democrats in the notoriously contentious swing state. Last April, Justice JanetProtasiewicz won a landslide election victory over a former, very conservative state justice. She took her seat at the beginning of August, giving Democrats a 4-3 majority on the state supreme court. (Technically, supreme court races in Wisconsin are nonpartisan, but every recent race has pitted a liberal […]
Amid a summer of extreme heat across the Northern Hemisphere, an international report led by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revealed Wednesday that greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea level, and ocean heat content hit record highs last year.
