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.
An estimated 15 billion trees are cut down each year—more than 41 million per day. Given this pace of land degradation, it’s hard to imagine how traditional reforestation methods, which rely on the hand-planting of live seedlings, could ever keep up. BioCarbon Engineering offers another way—a device, no more than two feet in height, that has the potential to plant 400,000 seeds per day—150 times faster than hand-planting carried out by a human.
http://www.wri.org/blog/2018/01/tree-planting-drones-shade-grown-tea-businesses-are-making-money-reforesting-planet
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
It’s early in the new year and there is no other way to hit the ground running than an inspiring new year compliments and ambitious felicitation, may the new year bring fulfillment to set goals and aspirations.
New year resolution is a tradition in which an individual resolve to change an undesired trait or behavior, to accomplish a certain personal goal or otherwise improve their lives.
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/
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
In its first act to shield California from the Trump administration’s repeal of regulations, the state’s water board has prepared its own rulesprotecting wetlands and other waters.
The proposed new rules, scheduled for a vote by the board this summer, could insulate the state from President Donald Trump’s executive order toroll back the reach of the Clean Water Act. That rollback would strip federal protection from seasonal streambeds, isolated pools and other transitory wetlands, exposing them to damage, pollution or destruction from housing developments, energy companies and farms.
California is preparing to defend its waters from Trump order
Sally and Mike Gale raise grass-fed beef and lambs and grow apple trees on un-irrigated pastureland dependent on rain at Chileno Valley Ranch in Petaluma, CA.