Author: Organikos

Slowed Growth Of Fossil Fuel

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For those who might say too little too late we say this still counts as good news worth reading, so thanks to Yale Climate Connections:

‘Turning point in energy history’ as solar, wind start pushing fossil fuels off the grid

Fossil fuel growth has stalled while wind and solar are growing.

Solar and wind energy grew quickly enough in 2023 to push renewables up to 30% of global electricity supply and begin pushing fossil fuels off the power grid, the Ember climate consultancy concludes in a report released May 8. Continue reading →

Ever Green & Restoration Of Abundance

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We missed Ever Green when it was published last year, but it came to our attention through this essay by one of its co-authors in the current issue of The Atlantic. The essay is about a path to the restoration of hope:

Our Once-Abundant Earth

Protecting species from extinction is not nearly enough.

When Otis Parrish was a kid in the 1940s, abalone were abundant. Each abalone grows in a single, beautiful opalescent shell, which can get as big as a dinner plate. Parrish’s father showed him how to pry the abalone off the rocky shoreline at low tide with an oak stick or the end of a sharpened leaf spring. Continue reading →

Sounds Right

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You will have to sleuth for background information, because the website does not provide any; it just says in boldface and a few lines of detail what the initiative is trying to do:

music selection opens in Spotify

Sounds Right is a music initiative to recognise the value of NATURE and inspire millions of fans to take environmental action. For the first time, NATURE can generate royalties from its own sounds to support its own conservation. Continue reading →

Magrathea Metals & Seawater Bounty

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A system for testing technology to draw minerals from seawater at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Sequim, Washington. PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY

Thanks as always to Jim Robbins and Yale e360:

In Seawater, Researchers See an Untapped Bounty of Critical Metals

Researchers and companies are aiming to draw key minerals, including lithium and magnesium, from ocean water, desalination plant residue, and industrial waste brine. They say their processes will use less land and produce less pollution than mining, but major hurdles remain.

Can metals that naturally occur in seawater be mined, and can they be mined sustainably? Continue reading →

Paul Watson, Inspiring Parley In 2024

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Visit the website of Parley to learn more. We knew Paul Watson‘s reach was far and wide, so no surprise that talent like this has followed his lead:

Everything starts with inspiration. In pirate lore, a parley is a conference or discussion, especially between opposing sides as a negotiation for terms of a truce. The root of the word parley is parler, French for “to speak” or “to talk.” Parley was founded to create a space where seemingly disparate parties can talk, think and act together to negotiate peace between humankind and the life-giving ecosystem that connects us all: the oceans.

Before growing a global network, we launched with a series of Parley Talks. Each session is a curated gathering with a dedicated topic. The talks are meant to give an overview of the state of the oceans, present a specific cause and garner support for a related initiative, and inspire actual change — be it at home, on a campus, in the workplace, across an industry or around the world.

Amphibious Soul, Reviewed

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HarperOne

Thanks to National Public Radio’s Barbara King for this review:

My Octopus Teacher’s Craig Foster dives into the ocean again in ‘Amphibious Soul’

The film My Octopus Teacher tells the story of a man who goes diving every day into the underwater South African kelp forest and forms a close relationship there with an octopus. That man — the diver, and also the filmmaker — was Craig Foster, who delighted millions of nature lovers around the world and took home the 2021 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Continue reading →

Hammerheads Back In The Caribbean

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Scalloped hammerhead sharks are critically endangered. But the discovery of a schooling population in the Caribbean is giving local researchers hope. Blickwinkel/Alamy Stock Photo

Thanks to David Shiffman writing in Hakai Magazine:

In the Caribbean, Hammerhead Sharks Return to School

The detection of schooling behavior is a promising sign of recovery for this iconic and endangered animal.

Hammerhead sharks—fish with pronounced oblong heads and bodies as long as small cars—are unmistakable. Continue reading →

Price Adjustments & Carbon Emmissions

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illustration: javier jaén/getty images

The Economist shares this news:

Carbon emissions are dropping—fast—in Europe

Thanks to a price mechanism that actually works

“Our most pressing challenge is keeping our planet healthy,” declared Ursula von der Leyen on the day she was elected president of the European Commission in July 2019. Continue reading →

Honeybee Facts & Figures

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Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Getty.

We have done our part to share, perhaps erroneously, that honeybees are in trouble. We hope we have been wrong:

The Great Honeybee Fallacy

For years, people have understood them to be at imminent risk of extinction, despite evidence to the contrary. Why?

Everyone, for so long, has been worried about the honeybees. Continue reading →

Community Income From Rewilding

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Rewilding Spain’s sustainable forest management support service helps municipalities generate income through activities such as resin extraction. NEIL ALDRIDGE

In the decade since we have been watching the work of Rewilding Europe we have seen income generation growing in importance:

Allowing trees to grow old in healthy ecosystems can help to lock up and store huge amounts of carbon.
JUAN CARLOS MUÑOZ ROBREDO /

Rewilding forest generates revenue for communities in the Iberian Highlands

Rewilding Spain has signed its first agreement to protect an old-growth forest in the Iberian Highlands. A change in forest management will support natural regeneration, delivering benefits to both nature and people. With other owners of old-growth forests interested in signing similar agreements, there is significant scaling-up potential.

The old-growth forest protected by the new agreement is popular with mushroom pickers.
SEBASTIAN URSUTA

The importance of old-growth forests

Letting forests naturally regenerate is one of the most practical, immediate, and cost-effective ways of addressing our ecological and climate emergencies. As vital ecosystems that support millions of animals and plants, mature natural forests – or old-growth forests – lock up and store huge amounts of carbon. They are more resilient to climate change and disease than young tree plantations, with their diverse mix of native species allowing them to better adapt to a far wider range of conditions. Continue reading →

Trillion Cicada Thrill

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Illustration by Bjorn Lie

Cicadas were in our pages a few times a decade ago but now is the real time for celebrating them. This story by Rivka Galchen is as good as any:

The Peculiar Delights of the Enormous Cicada Emergence

As loud as leaf blowers, as miraculous as math, the insects are set to overtake the landscape.

Their parents passed away thirteen, or maybe seventeen, years ago. They grow up alone, hidden in tunnels of their own making, nursing from the rootlets of trees. Continue reading →

How Many Trees Are Needed In The Amazon?

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Forest restoration workers planted native Amazonian seedlings on degraded pastureland in Mãe do Rio, Brazil.

We do not know how many trees are needed but hope that the answer to the question below is yes:

Can Forests Be More Profitable Than Beef?

Cattle ranches have ruled the Amazon for decades. Now, new companies are selling something else: the ability of trees to lock away planet-warming carbon.

The residents of Maracaçumé, an impoverished town on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, are mystified by the company that recently bought the biggest ranch in the region. How can it possibly make money by planting trees, which executives say they’ll never cut down, on pastureland where cattle have been grazing for decades? Continue reading →

Seaweed Mining Explained

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Scientists still have a lot to figure out, but the idea of sourcing critical minerals from seaweed is too tantalizing not to look into. Photo by Upix Photography/Alamy Stock Photo

Plenty of links to articles about the importance of various types of seaweed in our pages, but in Hakai Magazine  the environmental journalist Moira Donovan asks and provides a cogent answer to the most basic question:

What the Heck Is Seaweed Mining?

Preliminary research suggests seaweed can trap and store valuable minerals. Is this the beginning of a new type of mining?

Seaweed is versatile; it provides habitat for marine life, shelters coastlines, and absorbs carbon dioxide. Continue reading →

Andrea Vidaurre, Making Good Trouble in California

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Take five minutes to celebrate Andrea’s activism and its accomplishments:

2024 GOLDMAN PRIZE WINNER

Andrea Vidaurre

Andrea Vidaurre’s grassroots leadership persuaded the California Air Resources Board to adopt, in the spring of 2023, two historic transportation regulations that significantly limit trucking and rail emissions. The new regulations—the In-Use Locomotive Rule and the California Advanced Clean Fleets Rule—include the nation’s first emission rule for trains and a path to 100% zero emissions for freight truck sales by 2036. The groundbreaking regulations—a product of Andrea’s policy work and community organizing—will substantially improve air quality for millions of Californians while accelerating the country’s transition to zero-emission vehicles.

Tamarind, Taste Of Place

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Illustration by Giacomo Bagnara

Taste of place stories are a regular feature here; more surprising is that Madhur Jaffrey did not show up in our pages during our seven years living and working in India. Better late than never:

A Tamarind Tree’s Sweet and Sour Inheritance

My ancestor was gifted a huge orchard just outside Delhi. The fruits it produced were the taste of my childhood.

Gifts from ancestors take the darndest forms. Mine included a tamarind tree, the tallest and most magnificent in our yard. My grandfather’s grandfather—a tall, corpulent Indian, prone to indulging in fine wines, fine poetry, and fine art—lived in Delhi and worked for the British. This was 1857, a time when Indians were gearing up to fight the British. The conflict that ensued would later be called India’s First War of Independence. The British would call it the Indian Mutiny. Continue reading →

Wind Farm Fishing

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(Photo credit: Ionna22 / CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)

Wind power has had reasonable detractors as well as those who resist for aesthetic reasons. Sometimes nimbyism gives way to pimbyism, and in this case it is people who fish that we can thank for the latter. Thanks to Yale Climate Connections for sharing this story:

Some anglers say Rhode Island’s Block Island wind farm has improved fishing

The bases of the turbines attract fish, survey respondents reported.

Off the coast of Rhode Island, anglers fish for striped bass, fluke, and mahi-mahi. Continue reading →

The Most Important View, If Climate Change Interests You

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In a vulnerable, defendable part of the Amazon, the hundred-and-ten-foot-high tree house was built to attract wealthy tourists—and potential funders of conservation.Photograph courtesy Tamandua Expeditions

Tree house lodging is not new, but beyond beauty is impact. In that regard the accommodations with the most important view right now might be here:

The Highest Tree House in the Amazon

In 2023, conservationists and carpenters converged on Peru to build luxury accommodations in the rain-forest canopy.

Every day, empty logging trucks rumble into Puerto Lucerna, a small outpost on Peru’s Las Piedras River, which snakes through the lush Amazon rain forest. There, workers load them up with pyramids of freshly cut logs—cedar, quinilla, and, most important, ironwoods, which are prized for their hardness and rich color. Continue reading →

Marsh Matters

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Coastal marshlands exist in a precarious state: they need enough sediment to stay above water but not so much they get buried. In San Francisco Bay, the US Army Corps of Engineers and others are working to develop a less destructive way of giving marshes the mud they need. Photo by Aerial Archives/Alamy Stock Photo

For the record, marshes matter, so our thanks to Erica Gies, writing for Hakai:

Making a Marsh out of a Mud Pile

In San Francisco Bay, scientists are looking for a better way to rebuild flagging marshland.

The water in California’s San Francisco Bay could rise more than two meters by the year 2100. For the region’s tidal marshes and their inhabitants, such as the endangered Ridgway’s rail and the salt marsh harvest mouse, it’s a potential death sentence. Continue reading →

Heat Pumps, Circa 2024

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Heat pumps are energy efficient and considered by many to be powerful tools in combating climate change. Jackie Molloy for The New York Times

The technology is still young, and raising questions, but also full of promise according to this article by Hilary Howard in the New York Times:

Why Heat Pumps Are the Future, and How Your Home Could Use One

The highly efficient devices are the darlings of the environmental movement. Here’s why.

Heat pumps, which both warm and cool buildings and are powered by electricity, have been touted as the answer to curbing greenhouse gas emissions produced by homes, businesses and office buildings, which are responsible for about one-third of the emissions in New York State. Continue reading →

Are We Anthropocenic Or Not?

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Art works by Aletheia Casey

Thanks, as always, to Elizabeth Kolbert for illumination on this mystery:

The “Epic Row” Over a New Epoch

Scientists, journalists, and artists often say that we live in the Anthropocene, a new age in which humans shape the Earth. Why do some leading geologists reject the term?

A few months into the third millennium, a group called the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (I.G.B.P.) held a meeting in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Among the researchers in attendance was Paul Crutzen, an atmospheric chemist best known for his research on ozone-depleting chemicals, such as chlorofluorocarbons. Continue reading →