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Protecting the Environment
Climate change is mostly about bad weather becoming worse over time, to the detriment of humans and the rest of the biosphere. However, one doesn’t have to believe in climate change to care about bad weather and its impacts. Nor does one need to believe in climate change to want to fix problems associated with today’s bad weather. And since problem-solving capacity builds over time, whatever is learned fixing today’s problems will help us fix similar problems in the future.
The same goes for fossil fuel companies and the meat industry. Yes, these are businesses whose main interest is profit and survival. I don’t expect them to willingly self-destruct. That doesn’t mean they can’t be allies on some environmental issues, eg, reducing methane emissions. But I don’t require that they really care about these issues. Environmental allies don’t need to be pure of motive as long as they contribute…
Granted climate change skeptics are unlikely allies in the fight against climate change, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be allies for other environmental causes. One can doubt the existence or seriousness of climate change and still care about protecting wild habitat and endangered species. Why not?
“News organizations increasingly use the terms “climate emergency” and “climate crisis” to convey the urgency of climate change; yet, little is known about how this terminology affects news audiences...[The results of our study] showed no effect of terminology on climate change engagement; however, “climate emergency” reduced perceived news credibility and newsworthiness compared to “climate change.” …No interactions with political ideology were found.” - Feldman & Hart (2021) Upping the ante? The effects of “emergency” and “crisis” framing in climate change news.
The following list is from “Adaptation Actions for Water Utilities” (Environmental Protection Agency. December 10, 2024). The EPA actually lists 49 adaptation actions and includes numerous examples and links. Read it while you can.
AI technologies can be used to analyze large amounts of data and identify patterns that aid in selecting superior plant varieties used in plant breeding to accelerate crop improvement and develop new varieties with higher yields and greater resilience to climate changes, such as more frequent and severe periods of drought.
AI Overviews are a wonderful tool but shouldn’t be considered the final word on a topic or query. They are, however, a good place to begin an exploration.
With that in mind, I’ll start subsequent Survive and Thrive posts with an AI Overview on the topic under consideration and then proceed to whatever more I’ve found out in my own explorations.
A year ago I posted Some Tips for Living in a Warmer World, which was rather long on dire predictions and short on tips. I hope to flesh out those tips in this series.
The last four posts focused on countries with the highest CO2 emissions as a percent of global CO2 emissions: total emissions per country, per capita emissions, changes in emissions since 2000, and the decoupling of emissions from economic growth. This post will look at global trends in CO2 emissions since 2000 and 2010.
It’s rather obvious from the above that CO2 emissions are no longer rising in sync with economic growth, ie, they have decoupled (for the most part).
Per the above chart, CO2 emissions have declined since 2000 in most of the high-income developed countries but are still climbing in several middle-income nations.
The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) is a joint project of the European Commission Joint Research Centre and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency which estimates emissions of all greenhouse gases (GHGs), air pollutants and aerosols. The latest EDGAR report is a treasure trove of greenhouse gas emissions data…
This series of posts will focus on countries with the highest CO2 emissions: China, the U.S., India, Russia, Japan, Iran, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Canada, and South Korea. First, the percent of total global CO2 emissions for each country
“Food production is the biggest driver of biodiversity loss across the world. This was true for most of our history and is still true today.” -Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser/Our World in Data
Americans used to be fairly united on the need to protect the environment through stricter laws and regulations. That consensus took a nosedive in the 1990s and has never recovered…
Climate change and the environment were simply non-factors in this year’s election - no surprise, given that polls have repeatedly documented declining public concern about the environment. For example, in a recent Gallup poll “environmental quality” ranked 12th among issues that Americans worry about, after inflation, crime and violence, hunger and homelessness, the economy, healthcare affordability and availability, federal spending and the budget deficit, illegal immigration, drug use, the Social Security system, the possibility of terrorist attacks, and the availability and affordability of energy. That’s a lot of competition for scarce resources.
By 2023, US Fish and Wildlife and other US agencies had adopted a wildlife management framework called Resist-Accept-Direct, or RAD. The RAD framework allows natural resource managers the option to actively shape “change in ecosystem composition, structure, processes, or function toward preferred new conditions” (Schuurman et al, 2022). That option allows moving species outside their historic range, to benefit the receiving ecosystem, the migrating species, or both.
On the left we have intensive farming, clearly not the way to go. On the right, “agroecological agriculture”, clearly on the side of virtue and biodiversity. Now here’s another example of intensive agriculture…
“Intensive” is rarely used in a positive context for farming. People tend to associate it with low animal welfare, pollution and faceless corporations…But there are lots of different ways to farm intensively.” - - Emma Garnett, Five misused food and farming terms, from natural to intensive – and what they really mean, 2023
Ok, so global CO2 emissions continue to rise, except for a pandemic-induced dip in 2020. But look closely at the above chart and you’ll see definite signs of progress, especially since 2010. For one, CO2 emissions are increasing more slowly than global population and GDP per capita. Two, energy intensity - a measure of energy inefficiency - has been declining steadily for over 30 years. And, three, there’s an accelerating decline in “carbon intensity”, which means…