Imagine being so braindead that you think the UK being one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world is a good thing 🤡

wtf are you talking about, they didn't "deplete" the nature of their country, they cultivated their wilderness over centuries into some of the most idyllic pastoral landscapes in the entire world. And they did such a good job of it that the phrase "English countryside" is now synonymous with beauty and serenity and peacefulness. They didn't destroy their country's nature, they became its caretaker, they're right to be proud of it. All you're doing is pretending that the only kind of nature that should count is whatever is completely untouched by human hands.

The UK is literally ranked in the bottom 10% of most nature-depleted countries in the world. The 2023 State of Nature report shows just how dire the situation is. A third of UK bird species have declined since the 1990s, 97% of the UK's wildflower meadows have been lost since the 1930s, raw sewage is constantly being pumped into our rivers and seas with agricultural slurry also causing massive damage to rivers, three quarters of Britain's hedgehogs have been lost in the past 20 years and UK butterfly numbers are at their lowest ever, a sign of impending ecosystem collapse. Plus people in Britain are the most disconnected from nature in Europe.

Not to mention over populated deer destroying what little is left due to a lack of predators, 60 million non-native birds released for sport shooting every year, plus huge amounts of wildlife crime, including large numbers of birds of prey being shot/poisoned.

There is nothing beautiful about a sterile, ecologically damaged landscape that contains nothing but sheep and deer. Don't comment on something you clearly know nothing about. I live in England. I can see first hand just how dire the situation is.

...We know what a landscape maintained and kept healthy by humans looks like and not only is it not like this, it was literally unrecognizable as such to white people, and the people who took care of it were labeled as savages and driven off the very land they cared for, leading to shit like forest fires. My God.

@bisquid

... Kate you reblogged this from me 😂

FUCK

can we stop promoting the idea that nature has to look beautiful to be good?

I am once again thinking about digging holes

It's so fucked up that digging a bunch of holes works so well at reversing desertification

I hate that so much discourse into fighting climate change is talking about bioenginerring a special kind of seaweed that removes microplastics or whatever other venture-capital-viable startup idea when we have known for forever about shit like digging crescent shaped holes to catch rainwater and turning barren land hospitable

More details below. This is thrilling, thanks for posting, OP.

"“You have a constitutional right to fight for life-sustaining climate policy and you have mobilized our people in this case,” Josh Green, the Hawaii governor, told the 13 young plantiffs in the case, saying he hoped the settlement would inspire similar action across the country...

“This is an extraordinary, unprecedented victory for the youth plaintiffs,” Michael Gerrard, the faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told the Guardian.

While Hawaii has long embraced a progressive climate change agenda, with 2045 as a target year for decarbonization, the new settlement is “as big a deal as everyone said it is”, said Denise Antolini, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Hawaii Law School, who has followed climate change litigation for decades.

“It’s written down, it’s enforceable, and that makes all in the difference in the world between a promise and actual implementation,” Antolini said...

The plaintiffs, most of whom are Indigenous, alleged that by contributing to the climate crisis, the state hastened the “decline and disappearance of Hawaii’s natural and cultural heritage”. When the case was filed, the plantiffs were between the ages of nine and 18...

Officials said the legal settlement brings together activists with all three branches of the state’s government to focus on meeting climate change goals, including mobilizing the judicial branch. The court will oversee the settlement agreement through 2045 or until the state reaches its zero emission goals, Rodgers said.

“We have extremely tough goals to hit by 2045 and this is going to make sure we move forward much faster,” Ed Sniffen, the head of the state’s transportation department said at a press conference...

State officials often claim Hawaii is a climate leader. In 2015, it became the first US state to require its electric utilities to zero out its power sector emissions by 2045 – a tall order in a state that has historically obtained most of its energy from oil and coal.

The state legislature has also passed a goal of decarbonizing the transportation sector. And Hawaii’s 2050 sustainability plan calls to make all state vehicles carbon free by 2035.

But the state has moved in the wrong direction. Between 2020 and 2021, carbon emissions in Hawaii increased by more than 16%. The plaintiffs say Hawaii’s department of transportation has missed every interim benchmark to reduce its planet-warming emissions since 2008. And per capita, Hawaii emits more carbon than 85% of countries on Earth, attorneys wrote in the 2022 lawsuit."

-via The Guardian, June 20, 2024

happy PRIDE i’m here i’m queer and i believe the land should be given back to the proper indigenous stewards.

Non-Natives reblogging this are great and wonderful

Please remember that "land back" does not mean "indigenous people are mystical elves with innate epigenetic wisdom of land stewardship and they don't belong in big cities," nor does it mean "non-indigenous people can't be farmers." What it DOES mean is that "non-indigenous farmers should be paying the equivalent of property taxes to the native governments their land was stolen from." It means, "there's a great deal of indigenous scholarship on sustainable agricultural practices that farmers should be taking into account, because indigenous agriculture was more advanced than European agriculture at the time Europe invaded the Americas and western agriculture *still* hasn't caught up in terms of figuring out how to produce equivalently high crop yields without compromising the ecosystem." It means, "non-indigenous farmers should be in an intellectual discourse with indigenous agricultural scientists and indigenous peoples that still do traditional farming, figuring how to repair the damage western farming practices have done to the ecosystem."

It also means that indigenous peoples should regain the right to sustain themselves on the land according to the practices they want, and they should have free reign to perform their cultural practices and protect their holy sites, as opposed to the current model where if they try to honor their dead on public lands they get violently removed.

People also get angry at this concept thinking it'd mean non-native people getting mass evicted from their homes but 1) your home is already owned by a bank or big business or government, the difference would mainly be who you're now paying rent to and 2) most of the land in America isn't residential anyway.

This topic isn't about your house that you're already struggling to pay for, it's about thousands of miles of the planet rotting away under the monopoly of big agriculture and oil, but hypothetically speaking I think a local tribe would treat you a shitload better than whatever inhuman real estate brand you're already at the mercy of.

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

Within weeks, the nation will deploy 9,000 people to begin restoring landscapes, erecting solar panels, and taking other steps to help guide the country toward a cleaner, greener future.

The first of those workers were inducted into the American Climate Corps on Tuesday during a virtual event from the White House. Their swearing-in marks another step forward for the Biden administration’s ambitious climate agenda. The program, which President Joe Biden announced within days of taking office in 2021, is a modern version of the Climate Conservation Corps, the New Deal-era project that put 3 million men to work planting trees and building national parks.

During the ceremony, the inaugural members of the corps promised to work “on behalf of our nation and planet, its people, and all its species, for the better future we hold within our sight.” 

The American Climate Corps was among the first things Biden announced as president, but it took a while to secure funding and get started. More than 20,000 young people are expected to join during the program’s first year, according to the White House, with new openings appearing on the American Climate Corps job site in the months ahead. The pay varies depending on the location and experience required, with open positions ranging from around $11 to $28 an hour.

The administration is promoting the corps as a way for young people to jump-start green careers. In April, the White House announced a partnership with TradesFutures, a nonprofit construction company, a sign that the program might help fill the country’s shortage of skilled workers who can help electrify everything. The White House will also place members in so-called “energy communities” like former coal-mining towns to help with environmental remediation and other projects.

“Whether it’s managing forests in the Pacific Northwest, deploying clean energy across the Southwest, or promoting sustainable farming practices throughout the heartland, the president’s American Climate Corps is providing thousands of young Americans with the skills and experience to advance a more sustainable, just tomorrow,” White House climate advisor Ali Zaidi said in a press release on Tuesday.

Listen, I wanted to join the military too. I really, really did. But if your motivation for joining the military is anything except going somewhere far away and killing people, rethink.

If it is getting away from the situation that you’re in, if it’s the ability to serve your country full-time, if it’s camaraderie and wearing a uniform and the opportunity for college and/or job training, if it’s physical fitness and learning to live with other people who are really different than you, heck, if it’s fully paid-for travel and the ability to do cool things like respond to disasters and fight wildfires…

JOIN THE NATIONAL CIVILIAN COMMUNITY CORPS OR A CONSERVATION CORPS INSTEAD.

AmeriCorps NCCC is a residential, team-based national service program. It’s free. They provide all travel, lodging, food, and training. They even pay you a stipend. At the end you get money for college or job training. Almost everyone 18-26 gets in. If you want to be a team leader you can be older than that.

You travel around the country for 1-2 years with a diverse team doing anything from building parks to trail maintenance to serving with a food pantry to disaster relief to cutting fire line to building houses.

If you have any questions I was a team leader with this program. I am happy to answer them.

We laugh at environmental media from the 80s like the villains in captain planet, but we forget that the people making that shit literally would have lived through such terrible air quality

@overcaffienated-aro well said!

I hope everyone understands, when I say “most endangered habitat on earth”, I mean temperate grasslands.

They’re more endangered than tropical rainforests, coral reefs, the arctic tundra, all of those go-to environments that get more of the spotlight.

Where I live, maybe 25% of the prairie remains in a natural state and that number is dropping. Even these fragments are mostly missing the keystone species that maintain their health, like bison, wolves, and prairie dogs. I know this is the case for other grasslands like the pampas and steppe as well. Vast lands empty of many species that used to call them home.

If you live on temperate grasslands, hold onto them tight, because they’ve been exploited like no other land and most people don’t even know how far the devastation goes.

please please pleaseeee listen to this post and learn the value of temperate grasslands. it makes me very sad that not only have these landscapes been destroyed by colonizers, but even most of the people who live there now don’t see their value. when i say i love midwestern landscapes, people call me crazy just because they’ve never seen the beauty of the tallgrass prairie :(

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #13

April 5-12 2024

those anti-oil environmental protestors throwing soup on a Van Gogh painting instead of growing some balls and assassinating an oil baron or ransacking a pipeline construction site at the very least. we need 1970s environmental activism back.

FBI I am totally joking btw just a hehe haha joke I love crude oil I love gas pipelines

In my opinion, the protest was a failure. They succeeded in getting attention but not attention for their cause. They wanted us to feel the rage and frustration they feel about the environment, we all feel rage and frustration but it is mainly towards them and not the oil industry. Their actions were too abstract to get the effect they wanted. They hurt and inconvenience museum staff, not the oil industry. The painting is fine, by the way, but there is minor damage to the frame.

that makes sense

sources:

Dug into this a bit more and like... although yes it's definitely funded by at least one member of the bourgeois and is most likely an ineffective Liberal movement, Getty Oil has been defunct for around a decade and it seems the heiress cited in the articles does not work in the oil industry any more.

I would also say that the New York Times is a bourgeois newspaper that is owned by several millionaires and Fox New is Fox News, the author of that article in particular having several anti-climate change activism articles under his belt.

The rhetoric of "the elites are secretly funding anti-climate change groups to cause damage to the country" is not a one we should be boosting especially from reactionary media such as Fox News.

Edit: mixed up wapo for nyt lol

ok so people are making fun of this but adding this with other anti-global warming tactics will work

This isn’t adding ice just for the sake of denial, it’s adding to the Earth’s albedo. This in turn actually makes the Earth’s climate cooler, and then more ice will be produced naturally because of this.

It isn’t a process we need to continue forever, in fact it’s one that needs to be calculated so that we don’t do it TOO MUCH. The only worry would be cooling down too much.

So yes, this is a good idea. It simply isn’t the only thing we should do because we still have gross pollution.

For the love of god do it . anything just do it. Give us hope.

Here’s the thing: Most environmental catastrophes humans have ever or are currently creating can be fixed. It’s not just a matter of “oh no, things are ruined, and maybe we can stop the degradation so that things don’t get any worse, but we’re stuck with how things are.” There are some things we can’t do, like bringing back extinct species. But there are a lot of other things we can definitely do, many of which are being done right now. The problem is that most of our willpower and effort is spent on bullshit tiny things that won’t solve the problem (individual recycling, etc.) and not on the large-scale things that can and will make a large-scale difference.

Ice caps are melting? Guess what! We know how to make ice. It’s not that hard. Designing mostly-automated robot ships to go to the poles and rebuild the ice caps is well within our current technical capabilities. We just need to fund it.

Deforestation on a massive scale? Destruction of other biomes? Guess what! We know how to plant trees. We know how to plant grasslands. We know how to take barren, lifeless land and turn it back into a viable biome. It’s not that hard. In a lot of cases, if there’s neighboring areas where that biome still exists, all you have to do is dump a few tons of biomass (plant clippings, food waste, etc.) on the barren land and stand back and wait. The biomass will provide nutrients and keep the topsoil from blowing away, and the plants and animals from the neighboring biome will move in. In two decades, even if you don’t do anything besides dumping the biomass on it, you won’t be able to tell what was the barren area and what was the still-existing biome.

Coral reefs dying? Now, coral reefs are a bit more fragile than most biomes, but guess what! We still know how to replant/rebuild them, and in fact are working on that in places affected by coral reef die-off! And we’re learning how to do it better every day.

Desertification? Guess what! We know how to turn desert back into green space. They’re doing it on a large scale in China and sub-Saharan Africa. There are several different techniques, none of which are even very technology-intensive. It takes money and time and labor, but it’s perfectly doable. We know this because we’ve done it.

Plastic in the ecosystem, particularly in the ocean? Guess what! There’s a lot of people working on this, both on “how to remove plastic from the ocean” and “how to reuse/recycle it more efficiently.” And the techniques are improving by leaps and bounds every year. This is a solvable problem. These are all solvable problems.

So if you’re crushed by the weight of the coming environmental catastrophe … don’t be. These are all solvable problems! We can stop things from getting worse, and we can fix the things we’ve broken. The issue is political, not practical.

On the political side, of course, is the need to tighten up environmental regulations across the globe. (What’s the statistic, that 90% of pollution is caused by 100 corporations?) And then of course, we need to fund these programs on a large enough scale.

In some ways the political aspect is the hardest, but consider this: we are at a tipping point. Things are changing about the way politicians talk about climate change and ecological degradation. More ordinary people are concerned about this, which means more pressure on politicians. One of the ways that things are changing is that people–even conservatives–are starting to talk about “job opportunities in new green fields” and switching the conversation so that it’s not “rainforest vs. jobs” makes political action a lot more possible. And no, it’s not going to happen on its own, but it can happen.

This is a solvable problem.

I *needed* this. Climate change has had me feeling SO helpless, having a list of things that can actually potentially be done is beautiful

Climate change is a technological problem. This statement does not exclude social problems, but the core of the matter is that the fastest most effective way to solving this crisis is through technology.

The corporate bastards WANT you to despair because if we all give up, we stop being a thorn in their side. If people know it’s not hopeless and there’s actually specific things that can be done & will make a huge difference? We’ll keep giving them shit.

Don’t despair. Don’t give up.

(Remember the hole in the ozone layer? And how it’s shrinking now? YEAH!)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/mach/amp/ncna1039561 so the submarine is a very cool idea (just a design so far) but there are definitely some serious doubts about it.

That said I totally agree with the spirit of this post. Aside from loss of species, we got ourselves into this mess and we can get ourselves out. We have a good sense of what the problems are and there are a lot of ways to alleviate and (if circumstances would allow) totally reverse them. Even just more algae and trees would do so much for our atmosphere

I’m going to scream. Pushback on the narrative that climate breakdown can be averted by individual decisions centres around the fact that NORMAL PEOPLE do not contribute to a significant amount of carbon emissions cos the average NORMAL PERSON emits 7 tons of CO2 a year. Not Taylor fucking Swift who has emitted over 8000 tons of emissions this year SO FAR. Her CO2 emissions from private jet use alone are equivalent to that of TWO THOUSAND normal people. We absolutely should be blaming individuals if those particular individuals are emitting two thousand people’s worth of emissions.

We need to save our water from evaporation here in CA. We should be doing everything possible to store what rain we are lucky to get.

California is about to test its first solar canals!

"Turlock Irrigation District, in California’s San Joaquin Valley, will build the first solar canal prototype in partnership with project developer Solar Aquagrid, researchers and others and supported by the state Department of Water Resources.

The prototypes in this mile-long demonstration project, along with future pilots, will help operators, developers and regulators refine designs, assess co-benefits and evaluate how these systems perform. With more data, we can map out strategies for extending solar canals statewide, and potentially across the West."

So, there's apparently research coming out now about microplastics being found in people's bloodstreams and the possible negative effects of that and I feel the need to get out ahead of the wave of corporate sponsored "be sure to recycle your bottles!" or "ban glitter!" campaigns and remind everyone: It's fishing nets. It's fishing nets. It is overwhelming fishing nets It always has been fishing nets. Unless regulations are changed, it will continue to be fishing nets. The plastic in the ocean in largely discarded nets from industrial fishing. The microplastics are the result of these nets breaking down. The "trash islands" are also, you guessed it. Mostly fishing nets and other discarded fishing industry equipment. Do not allow them to continue to twist the story. Do not come after disabled people who require single use plastics. Do not come after people using glitter in art projects and makeup. These things make up a negligible amount of the issue compared to corporate waste, specifically in the fishing industry. Do not let them shift the blame to the individual so they can continue to destroy the planet and our bodies without regulation.

Industries are incredibly resistant to taking responsibility for their own waste, to the point where “consumers are responsible for industrial waste” is somehow considered a sensible, ethical, worthy sentence.

It is actually perfectly reasonable to say that “industries are responsible for industrial waste” and “the effects of industry can, should and must be fixed by industry” and “Industry can, should and must be held responsible for its impacts on the commons, such as air, water, oceans and land.”

The video talks about why cottage core is appealing to queer people and its implications. It isn’t saying ‘EVERYONE SHOULD BE INTO COTTAGE CORE ITS AMAZING’ it’s a genuine video essay and discussion

I’m gonna need yall to start at least watching the videos if you’re gonna mock the thumbnail lmao...

Once again people failing to think critically and only taking something at face value

Honestly its annoys me so much how so many "hot takes" on this website are from people who've never even interacted with the thing they're criticising.

On top of that, this specific creator is rather lovely- making lots of videos about queer culture historically speaking in order to further pass on our history since it is so rarely talked about

In my favorite video by her (discussing polari) she mentions that pirates actually use polari to communicate as well, which further enriched the language and made it more versatile for many uses. She also discusses why the language died out. She does complex deep dives into things and makes them easy to understand for general consumption.

Please don't mock something/someone before you actually watch the video and know what they're like/what they're discussing jfc