Rural Landowners, Farmers, and Conservation Groups Celebrate Court Victory Halting Risky Oil and Gas Giveaway of 150,000 Acres of Montana Public Lands | Earthjustice

Victory: Federal judge rules BLM failed to consider risks to Montana’s environment and water supply before issuing 287 oil and gas leases
MAY 1, 2020
Great Falls, MT — Today, Montana landowners, farmers, and conservation groups won an important victory to protect local groundwater and the climate when a federal judge ruled that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) failed to consider risks to Montana’s environment and water supply before issuing 287 oil and gas leases covering 145,063 acres in December 2017 and March 2018 lease sales. The court’s decision will protect Montanans, their livelihoods, clean water, public lands, and our climate by reversing the Bureau of Land Management’s recent approval of oil and gas leases across staggering swaths of Montana’s public lands.

A full moon is seen above Mount Baldy in the Big Belt Mountains near Townsend, Montana, April 2019. Nearby land was recently protected by a federal judge ruling; however, the Big Belt Mountains are still at risk. JOHN LAMBING / ALAMY
Continue reading at: Rural Landowners, Farmers, and Conservation Groups Celebrate Court Victory Halting Risky Oil and Gas Giveaway of 150,000 Acres of Montana Public Lands | Earthjustice

As Trump Claims “Fantastic Job” on COVID, Reporter Laurie Garrett Warns Pandemic May Last 36 Months | Democracy Now!

An inconvenient truth:



As Trump Claims “Fantastic Job” on COVID, Reporter Laurie Garrett Warns Pandemic May Last 36 Months | Democracy Now!

Future of the human climate niche | PNAS

The authors show that for thousands of years, humans have concentrated in a surprisingly narrow subset of Earth’s available climates, characterized by mean annual temperatures around ∼13 °C. This distribution likely reflects a human temperature niche related to fundamental constraints. They demonstrate that depending on scenarios of population growth and warming, over the coming 50 y, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 y. Absent climate mitigation or migration, a substantial part of humanity will be exposed to mean annual temperatures warmer than nearly anywhere today.


The realized human climate niche relative to available combinations of MAT and precipitation. Human populations have historically remained concentrated in a narrow subset (A–C) of the available climatic range (G), which is not explained by soil fertility (H) or potential primary productivity (I). Current production of crops (D) and livestock (E) are largely congruent with the human distribution, whereas gross domestic product peaks at somewhat lower temperatures. Reconstructions of human populations 500 BP are based on the HYDE database, whereas those for 6 Ky BP are based on ArchaeoGlobe (https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CQWUBI, Harvard Dataverse, V4). NPP, net primary productivity. See SI Appendix, Methods.

Continue reading at: Future of the human climate niche | PNAS

Judge Vacates Oil and Gas Leases on 145,000 Acres in Montana - The New York Times

Another legal victory against Trump's insane clear-cut of environmental regulations and protections...

A federal judge, rapping the Trump administration for its weak environmental assessments, has vacated hundreds of oil and gas leases across a large swath of Montana.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Friday vacated 287 oil and gas leases on almost 150,000 acres of land in Montana, ruling that the Trump administration had improperly issued the leases to energy companies in 2017 and 2018.



Custer County in Montana is predominately covered by livestock grazing and agricultural use with drilling sites and resource extraction scattered throughout.Credit...Kristina Barker for The New York Times

The judge, Brian Morris of the United States District Court for the District of Montana, said the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management failed to adequately take into account the environmental impacts of the drilling. In particular, Judge Morris found that the officials had not accounted for the drilling’s impact on regional water supplies and the global impact that the increased drilling would have on climate change.

Continue reading at: Judge Vacates Oil and Gas Leases on 145,000 Acres in Montana - The New York Times

Will protecting 30 percent of Earth prevent the extinction crisis? | Science News

What is needed = at least 30% by 2030, 50% by 2050. How can we do this with 9 Billion people?



Nations are drafting a plan to protect 30 percent of Earth by 2030 to save biodiversity. The number reflects politics more than scientific consensus.

Nature needs to be protected, scientists agree, but how best to do it is up for debate.

For millions of years, giants graced the murky depths of China’s Yangtze River. The Chinese Paddlefish (Psephurus gladius), which could reach 7 meters in length, used its swordlike snout to sense the electrical perturbations made by smaller prey, snatching them in the dark. But no more.

The fish was declared extinct in 2019, a victim of overfishing and habitat loss.

Its story is being played out across the world. From winding rivers to the windswept tundra to the dense tropical forests of Borneo, nature is in trouble.

Plants and animals are increasingly threatened by human activities and habitat encroachment. One study estimates a million species face extinction within decades (SN: 5/8/19). That’s 1 million distinct, idiosyncratic answers to the basic question of how to make a living on planet Earth, gone.



Habitat loss and such human encroachment as this clear-cutting in the Amazon (shown) are a major threat to biodiversity worldwide. The United Nations is drafting an ambitious new set of conservation targets to safeguard species and prevent further losses. LUOMAN/E+/GETTY IMAGES PLUS



Continue reading at: Will protecting 30 percent of Earth prevent the extinction crisis? | Science News

Why Covid-19 Will Not Be The Last Pandemic - Alum Knight Partners - Medium

Zoonotic pathogens — those which transmit naturally between non-human animals to humans — have been the subject of extensive research for decades. These pathogens originate in a host or natural reservoir which is their natural habitat for survival and reproduction. Humans, animals and even the environment (plants, soil and water) are reservoirs of different types of pathogens (infectious agents). When a pathogen is transmitted under natural conditions to humans, the process is called zoonosis.

Over the last four decades, there has been an increase in emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) in humans, and nearly three-quarters of them have been zoonotic infections. Zoonosis is not a new occurrence; the origins of a wide range of human diseases, including plague, influenza, anthrax, yellow fever and tuberculosis, can be traced back to animals, with most of them originating in domestic animals (including livestock) and poultry. However, recent emergences of infectious diseases are frequently being traced back to wild animals. Some of these pathogens transmit directly from the reservoir to humans, while others transmit via an intermediate animal host.



Continue reading at: Why Covid-19 Will Not Be The Last Pandemic - Alum Knight Partners - Medium

We are creating conditions for diseases like COVID-19 to emerge | Ensia

As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, the novel coronavirus outbreak may be just the beginning of mass pandemics


Illicit Endangered Wildlife Trade in Möng La, Shan, Myanmar Photo courtesy of Dan Bennett from Wikimedia, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Continue reading at:We are creating conditions for diseases like COVID-19 to emerge | Ensia

Escaping Pandora’s Box — Another Novel Coronavirus: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2002106?query=TOC in the New England Journal of Medicine

Habitat Destruction And Biodiversity Loss at the Root of Emerging Infectious Diseases: https://www.ucdavis.edu/one-health/habitat-destruction-and-biodiversity-loss-root-emerging-infectious-diseases/

Global shifts in mammalian population trends reveal key predictors of virus spillover risk: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.2736