#Jimmy Tobias, "Can We Prevent the Next Pandemic," The Nation, January 14, 2021. - "One-Health starts from the presumption that the fate of humans is ultimately connected with those of wild animals, and the ecosystems on which we all depend. When animals and their habitats suffer, human health takes a beating, too. The current pandemic, with its likely origins in beleaguered wildlife populations, is a terrifying reminder of that fundamental truth." "Our health begins with the recognition that most new diseases are zoomatic, meaning they pass into the human population from animals."
"Could something like Predict work? The answer was yes for 10 years. The program was able to send scientists to over 30 countries and develop research methods that collected nearly 150,000 samples from animals, and identified roughly 200 species." "USAID, meanwhile, is reviewing applications for a new international program to combat zoomatic disease. The program, called Strategies to Prevent Spillover, is not the same as Predict, but it does aim to develop rapid response interventions in zoomatic hot spots in order to head off outbreaks."
#Christopher Ketcham, "Forests to Burn," Sierra, January/February 2021. - "As those new EU energy rules have come into effect, the US South has become the epicenter of a booming wood-pellet industry that has grown tenfold in the past decade." "Meanwhile, the demand for wood pellets is accelerating clearcutting in the South, where forests are being logged at four times the rate of those in the Amazon rainforest."
"In 2018, the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) published a review of the operations of 21 wood-pellet processing facilities in the South. The facilities, all of which were exporting pellets to Europe, emitted some 16,000 tons of air-pollutants annually. More than half the plants, according to the EIP report..." failed to install required pollution controls to keep emissions below legal limits.
#Elizabeth L. Cline, "Wilt the Circular Economy; Save the Planet," Sierra, January/February 2021. - "The apparel industry churns out about 5 billion pairs of jeans each year in a resource-intensive process; making a single pair requires at least 800 gallons of water, and is responsible for the release of 20 kilograms of CO2 equivalents (comparable to charging your phone about 2,550 times)."
"The fashion industry is notoriously wasteful, consuming roughly 108 million metric tons of non-renewable resources each year, from pesticides and synthetic dyes to coal and oil. Only about 1 percent of all textiles are recycled into new clothing."
"These problems are hardly unique to the fashion industry: Our entire economy is built on an inefficient and dangerous system of resource extraction. In 2017, the world passed a grim new annual record of 110 billion tons of resources consumed from gravel and cement to fossil fuels, metal ores, and timber -- an 8 percent increase from just two years before." "But the real cutting edge for circular fashion is material innovations that enable fiber and footwear components to be reused over and over again without degrading, keeping materials out of landfills, and potentially zeroing out the need for virgin fibers." "A 2018 Quantis report on the fashion industry found that scaling up in clothing made from 34 percent recycled materials would only cut carbon emissions across the industry by a mere 5 percent."
"Electronics are now the fastest-growing waste stream in the world." " 'All too often' says William McDonough, who runs the circular economy foundation, 'Fashion for Good,' says 'the circular economy is boiled down to chasing higher and higher rates of recycling without paying enough attention to the types of materials being circulated (like plastics that shed microfibers and come from fossil fuels, or textiles that contain hazardous chemicals.)' "
"The notion that we can go on making as much as we want as long as we use it all is a myth that we'll have to leave behind if we want to realize the dream of a circular economy."
#Kristen Jeffers, "Retooling Our Cities," Sierra, January/February 2021. - "New construction won't began without considering transit access, wildfires and flood risk, and where the water will come from. Research already shows that the majority of Americans support banning new construction in disaster-prone areas." "Rooftop solar, geothermal heating, proper insulation, energy efficiency? In a world that takes the future seriously, these will all be mandatory." "FEMA now requires states and municipalities that ask for disaster aid to rebuild public facilities to higher standards, and (in in some cases) to relocate to safer locations."
#Melissa K. Nelson, "Time to Indigenize Conservation," Sierra, January/February 2021. - "Five indigenous nations spearheaded the effort to establish Bears Ears, and President Obama's order creating the monument [stated how it] was to be managed. This system of Native leadership could and should be a model for for other national parks and national forests." "But the 326 land areas administered as Indian reservations, which cover approximately 56 million acres are dwarfed by the more than 800 million acres of federal public lands across the United States."
"The conservation movements' idea of protecting nature primarily as a space for white people's personal revelations and recreation has been one of the unexamined assumptions of conservationism." "We must honor and respect Indigenous people's environmental knowledge and lifeways, and, in doing so, help restore totem keystone species and cultural keystone processes, from elderberry medicine to salmon migration."
#Harriet A. Washington, "Rx for Environmental Health Disparities, Sierra, January/February 2021. - "A 2008 study determined that African American households with an average income between $50,000 and $60,000 are exposed to more pollution than are white households with an average income below $10,000."
"Environmental racism wreaks mental and psychological havoc upon communities of color -- an ongoing health disaster that the mainstream medical system has largely ignored." "Instead of blaming people of color for illusionary ad stigmatizing drug use, smoking, and drinking, we should devise holistic treatment models that take into account the environmental pollution that may be the basis for poor health."
ADDENDUMS:
*Dorceta E. Taylor, "Environmental Justice Demands Listening," Sierra, January/February 2021. - "When I researched and wrote 'The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations' in 2014, I found that minorities constituted just 14.6 percent of the staff of environmental organizations."
*Naomi Snyder, "Solar Evangelist," Sierra, January/February 2021. - "The Solar Foundation reported that zero percent of the solar workforce for Tennessee was African American in 2015. That jumped to 7 percent in 2019."
*Varehini Prakash, "For a Green New Deal," The New Yorker, December 28, 2020. - "Biden should immediately establish an Office of Climate Mobilization, similar to the Office of War Mobilization created by Roosevelt during World War II."
*Varehini Prakash, "Teach Your Elders Well," Sierra, January/February 2021. - His [Biden's] climate plan encompasses a $1.7 trillion green jobs and infrastructure construction program over ten years, with 40 percent of those investments going directly to frontline communities. "It's hard to even fathom what that could do for communities of color and poor people around the nation. It's far more than any other president or president-elect has committed to this issue."
No comments:
Post a Comment