40% of world’s plants are threatened with extinction
Welcome to Planet Week, where we highlight the last week of environmental news and what it means for our planet.
Welcome to Planet Week, where we highlight the last week of environmental news and what it means for our planet.
Data found that Amazon’s fires are the worst in a decade. Cambridge University pledged to quit fossil fuel investment by 2030. And United States President Donald Trump, a noted climate denier and science skeptic, tested positive for coronavirus.
In case you missed it, here’s what else happened around the planet:
Monday, September 28
Countries pledge to reverse biodiversity loss
Ahead of the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity, 64 world leaders signed an ambitious commitment to restore nature, reports The Guardian. The Leaders’ Pledge for Nature — signed by Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, among others — outlines 10 actions to complete in the next 10 years, all with the goal to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
The actual Biodiversity Summit wasn’t as rosy: “Humanity is at war with nature,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in his opening remarks. Meanwhile, the U.S. skipped the Summit, and Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro lashed out on others for the destruction of the Amazon.
Still, there’s reason to think we can restore nature, as we wrote this week in Planet Days.
Tuesday, September 29
Could an enzyme solve our plastics problem?
As the world drowns in plastics, scientists are looking to nature for a solution: A recent study found further evidence of plastic-eating super enzymes.
Japanese scientists first discovered Ideonella sakaiensis — the bacteria that produces the enzymes — in 2016, and researchers have been desperately trying to recreate them in the lab. These enzymes are special because they speed up plastic degradation by hundreds of years, potentially changing the way we recycle. Earther has the full story.
Climate change comes up at the worst debate ever
The first U.S. presidential debate of 2020 was a total trainwreck, but at least we got to hear Trump try to greenwash his environmental record and discredit climate science.
This was the first time in 12 years that the candidates were even asked to talk about our changing climate, and the whole thing took up about 11 minutes of the 90-minute event. There was still a lot to unpack, but one thing was abundantly clear: Trump has no climate plan.
“It was the part of the debate with fewest interruptions,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, in an interview with WIRED. “I don’t know — maybe that’s because Trump just hadn’t prepared for it at all and didn’t really know what to say.”
We broke down the climate-talk during Tuesday’s debate in Planet Days.
This really complicated climate solution may just work
We don’t talk much about nuclear power, but it is a source of emission-free energy that generates about 10% of the world’s electricity. The problem with going nuclear, though, is its enormous costs and dangerous waste.
Nuclear fusion, however, is a different story. Unlike traditional nuclear fission power plants, nuclear fusion usually runs on isotopes of hydrogen, which is far more abundant than uranium, and produces less radioactivity and waste than fission plants.
A collection of peer-reviewed research published Tuesday in the Journal of Plasma Physics found that generating electricity with nuclear fusion, which mimics how the sun produces energy, may just may work — though we’re still about a decade off from anything practical. The New York Times has the story.
Wednesday, September 30
40% of plants are threatened with extinction
Habitat destruction and climate change are driving nearly 40% of plants to extinction, according to a new study by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. This is troubling not only for biodiversity but also given plants’ role as food, fuel, and medicine.
“We’re losing the race against time because species are disappearing faster than we can find and name them.” Alexandre Antonelli, professor director of science at Kew, told the BBC. “Many of them could hold important clues for solving some of the most pressing challenges of medicine and even perhaps of the emerging and current pandemics we are seeing today.”
Shell to cut 9,000 jobs
Another reason to think we may have hit peak oil: Shell plans on cutting up to 9,000 jobs, or 11% of the workforce, within the next two years, reports Bloomberg. Already, 1,500 Shell employees have taken pay cuts this year.
Pandemic-induced lockdowns have been terrible for Big Oil. With people traveling far less (more than 60% of oil is used for transportation), demand has tanked and may never recover, as BP suggested last month.
In other oil news, a recent HuffPost/Unearthed investigation found that Shell, despite its vows to decrease its carbon footprint, is still an active member of at least eight anti-climate lobby groups.
Thursday, October 1
Elite law firms are fucking the planet
America’s elite law firms have been working overtime for the sinking fossil fuel industry, according to a new report. The findings show that, between 2015 and 2019, top law firms handled 10 times as many cases that exacerbated climate change as those that would have combated it.
“Law firms write the contracts for fossil fuel projects, lobby to weaken environmental regulations, and help fossil fuel companies evade accountability in court,” Alisa White, a Yale Law School student and a lead author of the report, said in a statement. Read more at Grist.
Bonus
Bird brainiacs
Crows are surprisingly smart, and a new study suggests they may also be self-aware — an attribute thought only to be in primates.
“I think the results of our study open up a new way of looking at the evolution of awareness and its neurobiological constraints,” Professor Andreas Nieder, a neurobiologist at the University of Tübingen (which produced the report), told IFLScience. “It becomes more likely that also other animals on different branches of the tree of life, and with brains that strikingly differ from ours, also have sensory consciousness.”
Have a great week,
Brandon and Sam
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