Jane Goodall Talks Green New Deal, Tarzan, and Avoiding the Impossible Burger

Fifty-nine years ago, Jane Goodall, an animal lover with no formal academic training, traveled to Gombe, Tanzania, to observe chimpanzees for famed anthropologist Louis Leakey. Within months, the 26-year-old witnessed a chimp extracting termites from a mound using long blades of grass, upending mankind’s very understanding of itself: Humans were no longer the only species to make tools, no longer unequivocally superior. She went on to discover that chimps,like humans, have complex social and familial hierarchies, sharp intelligence, and deep-seated wells of emotion. Goodall has spent the rest of her life devoted to conserving the world they live in, one that’s disappearing due to climate change and the interests of big business. “What we’re doing to the planet is shocking and irresponsible, and it’s all done for making money,” she says. “We’ve got to understand we need money to live, but it goes wrong when we live for money.” At 85, the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace travels over 300 days a year, spreading the gospel of conservation. She spoke to ELLE from the institute’s U.S. headquarters in Washington, DC.

MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER BROWN
The kind of slow and steady observation you did for years contrasts so much with the fast-paced, technologically driven world we live in. Growing up today, would your story have been the same?
I think my story would have been very different. Screens, in a way, are killing us. I’d hesitate to say whether they totally stifle imagination, but they certainly would have stifled
mine. I read Tarzan when I was 10 and fell in love with him, and that’s what triggered my dream of going to Africa and living with wild animals. My mother saved up to take me to an early Johnny Weissmuller film, and after about 10 minutes, I burst into tears. I told her, “But that wasn’t Tarzan!” My imagination had created my own picture of Tarzan, and that’s something that the modern world certainly prevents children from doing.
Continue reading at: Jane Goodall Talks Green New Deal, Tarzan, and Avoiding the Impossible Burger

If Climate Change Doesn't Kill Me, My Anxiety About It Will

How the earth's devastation is burrowing into our psyches.
Ever since I could read, my time-honored method of dealing with any kind of uncertainty has been to flood the zone with data. Terrifying-seeming symptom? Hit the CDC website to convince myself it’s probably not an aneurysm in progress. Unfamiliar destination? Learn so much about the terrain that I could double as a local travel guide. But one patch of my anxiety quilt has gone unassuaged by this information-seeking compulsion, and that’s climate change. I’ve probably read more about the topic than anyone who doesn’t need to for her job. And with every article I read, book I devour, or haunting image of an emaciated polar bear or trash-gorged whale I see, I sink deeper into the quicksand of hopelessness.

VICKI KING
Then there’s the never-ending soundtrack that is my inner monologue: Am I abetting the decline of my own civilization? Sure, I recycle, I don’t buy throwaway fashion, I call my representatives, but I’m a part of an industry (fashion) known for stoking a demand for more, more, more, even as my own habits tend toward self-abnegation. I’m incalculably lucky that my day-to-day life hasn’t been affected by climate change in the way that so many others have. But the fact that the threat is more abstract only makes the black hole seem more menacing. When will it swallow me, my hypothetical kids, and my even-more-hypothetical grandkids?
Continue reading at: If Climate Change Doesn't Kill Me, My Anxiety About It Will

June was the hottest ever recorded on Earth

Experts say climate change contributed to record-breaking temperatures across Europe
Last month was the hottest June ever recorded, the EU‘s satellite agency has announced.
Data provided by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the EU, showed that the global average temperature for June 2019 was the highest on record for the month.
The data showed European average ​temperatures were more than 2C above normal and temperatures were 6-10C above normal over most of France, Germany and northern Spain during the final days of the month, according to C3S.

A German Police helicopter pours water over a forest fire near Lieberoser Heide in Germany on 25 June. Reuters
The global average temperature was about 0.1C higher than during the previous warmest June in 2016.
Experts have said climate change made last week’s record-breaking European heatwave at least five times as likely to happen, according to recent analysis.
Continue reading at: June was the hottest ever recorded on Earth

Polluters Bear No Responsibility While Michigan’s Water and Communities Suffer - Michigan Currents -- June 2019 | Clean Water Action

In Antrim County, an estimated 13 trillion gallons of groundwater are contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE). As of 2016, the state has already spent more than $20 million on remediation and clean water access efforts in the County.
In 1985, the toxic chemical dioxane was discovered in residential drinking water wells in Washtenaw County. The plume is still there to this day, with the threat of the plume reaching drinking water sources growing more ominous everyday.

Michigan taxpayers’ money is funding the ongoing cleanup efforts at these polluted sites because state law makes it very difficult to hold those polluters who caused the contamination accountable. As of 1995, the state has to prove in court that a company is liable for contamination before they are required to spend any money on cleaning up the mess they created. We must put healthy communities and a clean environment ahead of corporate interests and make polluters pay again.
One of the fastest growing concerns regarding water contamination is PFAS, a class of thousands of chemicals that are harmful in very small amounts. As of May 2019, Michigan has identified more PFAS contaminated sites than any other state in the nation. From Gwinn to Rockford to Howard Township, we are finding new sites all the time.
Continue reading at: Polluters Bear No Responsibility While Michigan’s Water and Communities Suffer - Michigan Currents -- June 2019 | Clean Water Action

UNEP Previews Global Resources Outlook 2019 | News | SDG Knowledge Hub | IISD

The Global Resources Outlook 2019 analyzes the demographic and socioeconomic forces driving the extraction and use of natural resources globally, and reports on how these drivers and pressures have determined our current state.
The report assesses the environmental and well-being impacts, and considers the distribution and intensity of the environmental and human health impacts resulting from the changing state of our environment.

It concludes that decoupling of natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic activity and human well-being is an essential element in the transition to a sustainable future.

An average person living in a high-income country consumes over 13 times what is consumed by someone in a low-income country.

• The use of natural resources has more than tripled from 1970, and continues to grow; 
• Historical and current patterns of natural resource use are resulting in increasingly negative impacts on the environment and human health;
• The use of natural resources and related benefits and environmental impacts are unevenly distributed across countries and regions;
• In the absence of urgent and concerted action, rapid growth and inefficient use of natural resources will continue to create unsustainable pressures on the environment;
• The decoupling of natural resource use and environmental impacts from economic activity and human well-being is an essential element in the transition to a sustainable future;
• Achieving decoupling is possible and can deliver substantial social and environmental benefits, including repair of past environmental damage, while also supporting economic growth and human well-being;
• Policymakers and decision makers have tools at their disposal to advance worthwhile change, including transformational change at local, national and global scales; and
• International exchanges and cooperation can make important contributions to achieving systemic change.

Continue reading at: UNEP Previews Global Resources Outlook 2019 | News | SDG Knowledge Hub | IISD

Resource extraction responsible for half world’s carbon emissions | Environment | The Guardian

Extraction also causes 80% of biodiversity loss, according to comprehensive UN study.
Extractive industries are responsible for half of the world’s carbon emissions and more than 80% of biodiversity loss, according to the most comprehensive environmental tally undertaken of mining and farming.
While this is crucial for food, fuel and minerals, the study by UN Environment warns the increasing material weight of the world’s economies is putting a more dangerous level of stress on the climate and natural life-support systems than previously thought.
Resources are being extracted from the planet three times faster than in 1970, even though the population has only doubled in that time, according to the Global Resources Outlook, which was released in Nairobi on Tuesday.
Each year, the world consumes more than 92b tonnes of materials – biomass (mostly food), metals, fossil fuels and minerals – and this figure is growing at the rate of 3.2% per year.

Massive dump trucks by the Syncrude upgrader plant, Canada. The tar sands are the largest industrial project on the planet, and the world’s most environmentally destructive. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
Since 1970, extraction of of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) has increased from 6bn tonnes to 15bn tonnes, metals have risen by 2.7% a year, other minerals (particularly sand and gravel for concrete) have surged nearly fivefold from 9bn to 44bn tonnes, and biomass harvests have gone up from 9bn to 24bn tonnes.
Continue reading at: Resource extraction responsible for half world’s carbon emissions | Environment | The Guardian

Trees may become the key to ‘greener’ foam products | Science News for Students

Made from wood pulp, they’re just as strong as Styrofoam — and work better at keeping things cold.
If you’re heading to the beach on a hot summer day, you don’t want to forget the cooler full of drinks. You might load that cooler with ice. However, ice on its own won’t keep things cold for long. That’s why a cooler packs insulation in its walls. The best insulators have long been plastic-based foams, such as Styrofoam. But a new type of foam made from wood pulp works even better. And it’s friendlier to the environment.

Unlike this Styrofoam cup, made from plastic, a new kind of foam is biodegradable. TOMSCHIRTZ/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS
Plastic foam is both incredibly useful and popular. Filled with millions of tiny air pockets, its frothy structure is both lightweight and strong. This material protects fragile packages during shipping. And when used as an insulator, plastic foam’s tiny bubbles help keep heat in — or out — for hours. That’s why people have relied on it for everything from cups and coolers to packaging and home insulation.
Continue reading at: Trees may become the key to ‘greener’ foam products | Science News for Students