Bird Navigation; Migrant Children; Reconciliation Truths; and More

#Kathryn Schultz, "Where the Wild Things Go," The NR, April 5, 2021. - "Salmon that leave their natal stream just months after hatching can return after years in the ocean, sometimes traveling nine hundred miles and gaining seven thousand feet in elevation to do so. Homing pigeons can return to their lofts from more than a thousand miles away, a navigational prowess that has been admired for ages." "To have a sense of direction , a given species might also need to have, among other faculties, something like a compass, a decent memory, the ability to keep track of time, and an information-rich awareness of it's environment." "True migration is the ability to reach a distant destination, without the aid of landmarks."  

"Some animals plainly do have such a map, or, as scientists call it, a map sense -- an awareness mysterious in origin, of where they are, compared with where they're going." "Subsequent experiments found that mature birds can be taken at least six thousand miles from their normal trajectory and still accurately reorient to their destination." 

"Ninety-nine per cent of Americans live someplace where light pollution has reduced, sometimes to just a handful, the number of visible stars in the night sky" "In the past fifty years, two-thirds of those wetlands have vanished, lost to reclamation" -- a word that suggests, Scott Weidensaul, author of 'A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds', bitterly but accurately, "humanity taking back something that had been stolen when in fact the opposite is true." "Species that rely on these wetlands are dwindling at rates of up to twenty-five per cent per year." 

"But the chief insight to be gained from how other animals make their way around the world is not their behavior but our own: the key finding we must learn to do now is not geographic but moral." 

#Jonthan Blitzer, "At the Border," The NR, April 5, 2021. - "There are currently some eighteen thousand unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody, including more than a thousand who remain in holding cells, as the government scrambles to find space to house them." "For much of March, about five hundred and fifty children have been arriving at the border every day." 

"Om average, it takes almost two and a half years to resolve an asylum claim, and there's now a backlog of 1.3 million pending cases, up from half a million under Obama. Trump sought to hide the asylum issue south of the border. Biden is paying a price for bringing it back into view. The question is whether he can withstand the political onslaught long enough to began to set things right."

#Peter Keating and Shawn Assael, "The Truth About Reconciliation," Mother Jones, May + June 2021. - "The Greenboro Commission ran into the problem that bedevils any reconciliation effort, and would surely hover over any national project today: Who gets to decide who apologizes, and for what?" "Critically, even as TRCs became standard international practice, there were hardly any ways to measure their effect on the places where they were supposed to bring about change. Even today, the transitional justice establishment is fuzzy about this." 

"A report issued by the organization [International Center for Transitional Justice] in January states that, while the transitional justice groups have developed some metrics to evaluate their work, 'information about the actual implementation of these measures is often incomplete or unreliable.' " "Many commissions appear to have had little, if any, impact on societal transportation" [James Gibson, a Washington University political scientist] has written. " 'It would not be terribly surprising to find that truth commissions more often fail than succeed.' "

#Mandy Oaklander, "PTSD. Addiction. Depression. Hope?" TIME, April 12/April 19, 2021. "Once dismissed as a fringe, counter-culture vice, psychedelics are rapidly approaching acceptance in mainstream medicine." "More Americans died from drug overdoses last year than ever before, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Weekly counts of drug overdoses were up to 45% higher in 2020 then in the same periods in 2019. according to research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in February." 

In a survey, about 80% said ibogaine eliminated or drastically reduced their withdrawal symptoms; half said their opiod cravings diminished; and 30% said that after ibogaine, they never used opiods again.

#Lisa Abend, "T.G.I.... Thursday?" TIME, April 12/April 19, 2021. - "Already, dozens of companies around the word -- as well as at least one municipal government --have trimmed a day from their weekly schedules. But Spain's pilot is on track to be the first national test." 

"In a study published in January in the 'Cambridge Journal of Economics', Louis Cardenas and Paloma Villanuva found that a five-hour reduction in work hours across Spain in 2017 would have created 560,000 jobs, raised salaries by 3.7%, and increased the GDP by 1.4%." "According to one European study, women spent an average of 62 hours a week caring for children, and 23 hours doing housework, while men devoted 36 and 15, respectively."

ADDENDUM:

*Camille Walsh, "Taxpayer Dollars." Mother Jones, May + June 2021. - "The taxpayer myth has deep roots, throughout history it has been intertwined  with the idea that all forms of resources from the government belong to white people, to do with as they please." "Black families were actually taxed disproportionately for a segregated school system, thanks to all-white school boards." 

Climate Change: Exxon's Denial; Newborn Footprint; and Hopeful News

I. Exxon's Denial of Climate Change
In 2015, a pair of researchers independently uncovered proof that as early as 1977, Exxon executives knew that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels were contributing to global climate change. "In a 1982 memo that circulated among company executives, Exxon's environmental affairs manager reported that addressing the greenhouse effect 'would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion' and that without the reductions, 'there are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered.' " [1]

Greenhouse gases are increasing due to "the burning of fossil fuels," an ice researcher with Exxon's Canadian division told a group of engineers at a 1991 conference. The researcher noted that "Nobody disputes this fact."

Peter Leherer, with Earthjustice, says that "Exxon's private acceptance of climate science elevates its pattern of public climate denial from a case of negligence to one of intentionally."

By the mid-1980s, Exxon scientists had repeatedly informed company managers that burning oil, gas and coal would raise global temperatures, bringing changes to food and water supplies and other essentials of civilization. [2]

II. Newborn Carbon Footprint
In a 2009 report, statisticians at Oregon State determined that giving birth to one more American adds about 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average female. "Factoring in grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it multiplies her lifetime emissions by a factor of six." "40 percent of Americans fear that climate change will harm their family members, and a majority under the age of 40 believe it will affect them over the course of their lives." [3]

III. Hopeful Developments on Coal Mine Closures and California Renewables
On January 15, 2016, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced a 3-year moratorium on new coal-mine leases on publicly owned land, as well as a comprehensive review of the "environmental and public health impacts" of coal mining. This is big news, because publicly owned coal in Wyoming's Powder River Basin alone, accounts for ten percent of the country's annual greenhouse-gas emissions. [4]

China will halt coal mine approvals for three years and close roughly 1,000 existing mines, the head of the National Energy Administration , Neu Beleri, announced on December 29, 2015. Together, China and the U.S. account for about 60 percent of global coal consumption. [5]

California is in first place in just about every renewable energy category: largest wind farm and largest solar thermal plant. In June 2016, Solar Star began sending 579 megawatts of electricity -- making it the most powerful solar farm in the world -- across Southern California, the equivalent of a quarter of a million homes. SB 350, the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act, says that by 2030, California must get half of its electricity from renewables and double the energy efficiency of its emissions by 5.5 percent, while increasing its GDP by 17 percent -- under the nation's most stringent energy regulations. By 2025, 16 percent of all new vehicles sold in the state would have to be zero-emissions. In 15 years, Mary Nichols, California's energy czar, wants new car buyers to only be able to shop for zero-emission vehicles. [6]

The transportation sector accounts for 37 percent of California's greenhouse-gas emissions. Remarkably, California is the 8th-largest economy in the world but accounts for about one percent of global emissions.

ADDENDUMS:
*"So-called light pollution has gotten so bad that by one estimate, 8 of 10 children born today, will never encounter a sky dark enough for them to see the Milky Way." [7]

Footnotes
[1] Jason Mark, "Bit Oil in the Hot Seat," Sierra, May/June 2016.

[2] Mark Hertgaard, "Exxon and the Climate Fight After Paris," The Nation, February 22, 2016.

[3] Madeline Ostrander, "Child of Hope and Disaster," The New Yorker, April 4, 2016.

[4] Hertsgaard.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Sarah Begley, "Night of a Thousand Stars," Time, May 30, 2016.