Coral reefs have always lived near the edge. Now, thanks to global warming, life there is five times more precarious.
Forty years ago, the world’s coral reefs faced a known risk: every 25 or 30 years, ocean temperatures would rise to intolerable levels.
Corals would minimise the risk of death by everting the algae with which they lived in symbiotic partnership: that is, the reef animals would avoid death by getting rid of the algae, deliberately weakening themselves.
Planting trees as a business venture
The World Resources Institute (WRI) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) analyzed over 140 companies that have made landscape restoration and reforestation their core business model. Out of all those companies, 14 who had reached median sales growth of 100 percent in 2017, were showcased in a new report titled The Business of Planting Trees: A Growing Investment Opportunity.
The restoration economy, according to the report, refers to the network of businesses, investors, and consumers that engage in an economic activity related to restoring the land. And while there are no officials records on the size of the restoration economy, yet, it does include a vast array of companies, including early stage, pre-revenue startups to timber funds that manage billions of dollars. Similarly, the goods and services produced by these companies vary widely as well, from biofuels to climate-smart credit systems to green infrastructure.
http://www.wri.org/publication/business-of-planting-trees
Renewable energy has emerged as an increasingly competitive way to meet new power generation needs. This comprehensive cost report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) highlights the latest trends for each of the main renewable power technologies, based on the latest cost and auction price data from projects around the world.
http://www.irena.org/publications/2018/Jan/Renewable-power-generation-costs-in-2017
The planned investment is significantly higher than the previously announced target of $4.5bn by 2020.
Of the 40 electrified vehicles Ford plans for its global line-up by 2022, 16 will be fully electric and the rest will be plug-in hybrids, executives said.
Vast 1.8m sq km fishing-free zone would protect species, such as penguins, leopard seals and whales, and help mitigate the effects of climate change.
China wants forests to cover 26 per cent of its land by 2035.
China has announced plans to plant new forests in 2018 that will cover at least 6.6 million hectares, an area roughly the size of Ireland.
The move is China’s latest bid to shed its polluting image and become world leader in environment protection, since President Donald Trump chose to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement last year.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/05/china-plant-forest-size-ireland-bid-become-world-leader-conservation/
According to the World Meteorological Organization, atmospheric CO2 levels have reached the highest level in 800,000 years – a gain that took just a few decades. The agency warns that urgent action is needed to reverse this worrying trend — and notes that we have the technology, but perhaps not the political will.
This announcement is especially alarming, given that the Trump administration has adopted aggressively anti-environmental policies, including placing climate change deniers in key policymaking positions.
https://www.care2.com/causes/atmospheric-co2-reaches-highest-level-in-nearly-a-million-years.html
2017 saw the US scorched by record-breaking wildfires in California, record-breaking rainfall events like Hurricane Harvey in Houston (just one of the three most expensive hurricanes to ever hit the US, which all occurred in 2017), damaging hail events, tornadoes, and extreme droughts that wiped out crops.
These extreme weather events, most of which were fueled at least in part by anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), cost the US nearly a third of a trillion dollars ($306 billion) over the past year.
That is more money than the US government spent on transportation, housing and community, international affairs, energy and the environment, and science, combined, in 2015.
The total cost of these extreme weather events was, by nearly $100 billion, a US record.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43178-costs-of-2017-us-weather-disasters-demolish-previous-record
People yearn for alternatives to industrial agriculture, but they are worried. They see large-scale operations relying on corporate-supplied chemical inputs as the only high-productivity farming model. Another approach might be kinder to the environment and less risky for consumers, but, they assume, it would not be up to the task of providing all the food needed by our still-growing global population.
Contrary to such assumptions, there is ample evidence that an alternative approach—organic agriculture, or more broadly “agroecology”—is actually the only way to ensure that all people have access to sufficient, healthful food. Inefficiency and ecological destruction are built into the industrial model.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/01/12/farming-small-planet