After the devastating failure of the Israeli intelligence to foresee the sudden Hamas assault at the weekend, many Israelis are describing the huge loss of lives as ‘Israel’s 9/11’.
Although the two events cannot be fairly compared, given the attack on Israel came from a country it has occupied and inflicted a deadly and brutal regime of apartheid on for many decades, the assault by Hamas has had a similarly visceral impact.
“Effectively managing the plants and fungi that form the building blocks of our habitable planet is key to halting wider biodiversity loss and restoring Earth’s ecosystems to full function,” says a scientific report.
Global scientists warn that 45% of known flowering plant species could be threatened with extinction. Photo: Diana Robinson/flickr/CC
Global scientists warned Tuesday that 45% of known flowering plant species could be at risk of disappearing, underscoring the need for urgent international action to tackle the planet’s sixth mass extinction—the first driven by human activity.
That figure is among the key findings from State of the World’s Plants and Fungi, the fifth annual report from the U.K.’s Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew about such species amid the intertwined biodiversity crisis and climate emergency.
The Chungthang Dam on 10-4-2023. Photo: @shubhamtorres09/X
Authorities raised the death toll to 42 on Friday after a glacial lake overwhelmed a dam in the Indian Himalayas earlier this week, in one of the worst disasters in the area in nearly half a century.
The dam breach on Wednesday, which was caused in part by extreme rainfall, had long been predicted by scientists and environmental advocates due both to the climate crisis and inadequate regulations.
The Agua Clara (Clear Water) Locks at the Atlantic (Caribbean Sea) end of the canal. Photo: Dan Lundberg/flickr/CC
It’s been another summer of extreme weather and the relentless drumbeat of climate change syncopating with the warm-water Pacific Ocean cycle of El Niño has reverberated across the globe.
Floods in the Balkans and North Africa have killed thousands, wildfires have raged across much of the Mediterranean, India’s rice crop has been hit by drought and Canada’s wheat harvests by floods. Meanwhile, in Central America, the driest weather in decades is menacing one of the most important transport arteries on earth.
The First Africa Climate Summit was held at the Kenyatta International Convention Center in Nairobi, Kenya on September 6 2023. Photo: Paul Kagame/flickr/CC
The Africa Climate Summit 2023 in Kenya last week united African leaders for a discussion on the climate crisis, with a specific focus on Africa and its policy stance ahead of COP28 in Dubai.
One would have expected African leaders to propose sovereign solutions to the challenges faced by their countries. These include recurrent hunger, flooding, drought, resource exploitation, water and soil pollution, and control of food systems by Western corporations.
“The Corps’ covering for the pipeline company’s outrageous safety record and the reviewer’s serious conflict of interest have now resulted in a failed effort,” said Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire. “They need to start over with adult supervision.”
Opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline hold a protest in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Oct. 25, 2016. (Photo: Fibonacci Blue/flickr/cc)
Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire is leading a fresh demand that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers throw out an ongoing environmental review process of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline and start again from scratch alongside a superseding call for the pipeline to be shuttered completely.
Following Friday’s release of a revised Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), ordered by a federal court, the tribe said the document reveals the entire process has been a failure and that the pipeline—currently operating across their land without consent in what they consider an “illegal” manner by the Energy Transfer company—should be shut down once and for all.
“This racist political stunt has been an ineffective waste of billions of American taxpayers’ dollars—and now we know it has caused immeasurable, irreparable harm,” said Congressman Raúl Grijalva.
Donald Trump stands before a section of border fencing. Photo: rump White House Archived/flickr/CC
A U.S. government watchdog agency on Thursday released a report exposing how former President Donald Trump’s wall construction along the nation’s border with Mexico negatively affected cultural and natural resources, as critics have long argued.
“The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Defense (DOD) installed about 458 miles of border barrier panels across the southwest border from January 2017 through January 2021,” according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. “Most (81%) of the miles of panels replaced existing barriers.”
“Our sacred land is only temporarily safe from oil and gas development,” said one First Nations leader, urging Congress and the White House to “permanently protect the Arctic Refuge.”
Polar bear, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. Photo: Alan D. Wilson/Wikimedia Commons/CC
Indigenous tribes and climate campaigners applauded the Biden administration’s announcement Wednesday that it will cancel all existing oil and gas drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and ban drilling across 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve, while hundreds of groups also called on the U.S. Interior Department to go further on fossil fuel leasing.
Biden’s move in Alaska will reverse former Republican President Donald Trump’s approval of a 2017 law that required leasing in the Arctic Refuge, the nation’s largest area of pristine wilderness which is home to vulnerable species including polar bears, migratory birds, and caribou.
“With so many major drivers of change predicted to worsen,” said one researcher, “it is expected that the increase of invasive alien species and their negative impacts, are likely to be significantly greater.”
The buffelgrass invasion has forever changed the southwestern desert ecosystems by crowding out native plants and fueling frequent and devastating fires in areas where fires were once rare. Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters/flickr/CC
As wildfires burned through 3,200 acres of land on the Hawaiian island of Maui earlier this month, ultimately killing at least 115 people and destroying the city of Lahaina, some observers noted that the dry grasses that colonial occupiers introduced in the place of Hawaii’s natural forests made the fires spread faster than they would have if the land had been left intact.
On Monday, a study resulting from nearly five years of research by experts from 49 countries revealed how the grasses are among thousands of harmful invasive alien species that have been introduced by human activities and placed communities across the globe at risk, with the human-driven climate emergency often exacerbating the negative impact of invasive plant and animal species.
While celebrating the forthcoming review, campaigners also argued that “Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg should put a new rule in place that restores the ban on LNG by rail once and for all.”
Green groups on Friday applauded as the Biden administration suspended a Trump-era rule allowing liquefied natural gas to be transported by train, delivering another blow to New Fortress Energy’s proposal to ship climate-wrecking LNG by rail from Wyalusing, Pennsylvania to Gibbstown, New Jersey.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA)—in coordination with the Federal Railroad Administration, another U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) agency—announced in the Federal Register on Friday that it is amending the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) to suspend authorization of LNG rail transportation.
