Of Animals and Bees and Flowers Wild as Earth Day Nears
Serious concerns for anyone who cares for wildlife and the planet we inhabit.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/04/18/animals-and-bees-and-flowers-wild-earth-day-nears
Serious concerns for anyone who cares for wildlife and the planet we inhabit.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/04/18/animals-and-bees-and-flowers-wild-earth-day-nears
‘Beyond Comprehension’: In Just Two Years, Half of All Corals in ‘Forever Damaged’ Great Barrier Reef Have Died
Global warming, researchers warn, “is rapidly emerging as a universal threat to ecological integrity and function.”
Global warming transforms coral reef assemblages
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0041-2
Plastics everywhere was bad enough, but now multiple studies have found that 94 percent of our drinking water and 93 percent of sampled bottled water worldwide are full of plastic particles and chemicals, including BPA, heavy metals, phthalates, pesticides, PCBs and other chemicals, many of which are linked in animal studies as well as some human studies to cancer, premature puberty, reduced immunity, birth defects, endocrine disruption, insulin resistance, and other major diseases. And we have no idea and neither does the FDA, EPA, or any other federal agency, whether this lethal cocktail, which binds together with other toxins, is having an even more profound impact on our health and that of our kids. What we get now from those agencies is “conflicting findings” and “uncertainties” about the potential impact of plastics-related chemicals. What we do know is that governments only test or analyze the impacts of individual chemicals to determine the levels of potentially life-threatening exposure, making it impossible to figure out the combined total load of chemicals from plastics our babies can safely absorb.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/03/31/wrapped-sea-plastic
Scientists arrived at this figure, which is around 16 times higher than previous estimates, by assessing aerial images alongside data from ships dragging nets through the region.
Occupying the waters between California and Hawaii, the patch is the largest of five major offshore waste accumulation zones that result from converging ocean currents.
The research was conducted by scientists at the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, who are attempting to understand the true extent of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.
“Overall you would expect plastic pollution is getting worse in the oceans because we are producing and using more plastics, globally and annually,” Dr Laurent Lebreton told The Independent.
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastic-pollution-oceans-environment-fish-a8269951.html
Around 8 million tons of plastic waste is dumped in the ocean annually. That equates to emptying a garbage truck of plastic into the sea every minute , most of it single-use products, such as plastic bags, candy wrappers, sachets and soda bottles.
This mismanagement not only pollutes oceans and harms marine wildlife, but also makes life harder for locals, whether they are residents of neighborhoods that regularly flood (owing to drains clogged with plastic), workers at coastal resorts that cater to tourists or fishermen facing dwindling fish stocks. The economic implications are startling. Marine debris cost the 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation member economies around $1.3 billion in 2008, and that number is only going up as the problem gets worse.
We’re encouraged that the world is waking up to the crisis of plastic waste in our ocean, and working together to resolve it. News outlets around the world highlighted the shocking video earlier this month of the British diver swimming through plastic waste off the coast of Bali. The recent World Ocean Summit, held in Mexico earlier this month, focused extensively on plastic waste. The sixth International Marine Debris conference convened last week in San Diego and highlighted new and emerging science that will help us tackle this growing problem. Earlier this year, Evian, Coca-Cola and other businesses announced efforts to address packaging waste and improve recyclability of their products. 
A new study says that even in the ‘unrealistic’ event of a total halt to the flow of agricultural chemicals the damage will persist for 30 years.
The enormous “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico will take decades to recover even if the flow of farming chemicals that is causing the damage is completely halted, new research has warned.
Intensive agriculture near the Mississippi has led to fertilizers leeching into the river, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico, via soils and waterways. This has resulted in a huge oxygen-deprived dead zone in the Gulf that is now at its largest ever extent, covering an area greater than the state of New Jersey.
A new study has found that even if runoff of nitrogen, a fertilizer chemical, was fully stemmed, the Gulf would take about 30 years to recover. Even this scenario is “not only considered unrealistic, but also inherently unsustainable”, researchers stated in the work, published in Science.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/22/dead-zone-gulf-of-mexico-decades-recover-study
An enormous area of rubbish floating in the Pacific Ocean is teeming with far more debris than previously thought, heightening alarm that the world’s oceans are being increasingly choked by trillions of pieces of plastic.
The sprawling patch of detritus – spanning 1.6m sq km, (617,763 sq miles) more than twice the size of France – contains at least 79,000 tons of plastic, new research published in Scientific Reports has found. This mass of waste is up to 16 times larger than previous estimates and provides a sobering challenge to a team that will start an ambitious attempt to clean up the vast swath of the Pacific this summer.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/22/great-pacific-garbage-patch-sprawling-with-far-more-debris-than-thought
Plastic production wreaks havoc on people and the planet—from fracking wells and pipelines in Pennsylvania, to air pollution from plastic plants in Scotland.
We are choking the planet in plastic. Everything from wasteful water bottles to grocery shopping bags are polluting our waterways, and endangering marine life and the natural environment. It’s fair to say that even the most casual news consumer has probably encountered a Facebook post, TV report, or radio segment about the garbage patches in the Pacific Ocean.
But what’s less well-known is what is fueling this plastics binge: fracking. As the Guardian recently reported, in less than a decade, tens of billions of dollars have been invested in creating new manufacturing sites around the world to turn fossil fuels into resin pellets used to manufacture plastic products. The companies profiting off this surge in plastics are contributing to a growing climate crisis while generating mountains of plastic garbage.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/we-are-drowning-in-plastic-and-fracking-companies-are-profiting-20180214
CLIFFE, KENT – JANUARY 02: Plastics and other detritus line the shore of the Thames Estuary on January 2, 2018 in Cliffe, Kent. Tons of plastic and other waste lines areas along the Thames Estuary shoreline, an important feeding ground for wading birds and other marine wildlife. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), at current rates of pollution, there will likely be more plastic in the sea than fish by 2050. In December 2017 Britain joined the other 193 UN countries and signed up to a resolution to help eliminate marine litter and microplastics in the sea. It is estimated that about eight million metric tons of plastic find their way into the world’s oceans every year. Once in the Ocean plastic can take hundreds of years to degrade, all the while breaking down into smaller and smaller ‘microplastics,’ which can be consumed by marine animals, and find their way into the human food chain. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Three new studies of how the world works show that seabird excrement plays an unexpected role, as do polar algae and rotting trees.
Buckingham Palace outlined new waste plans and said there was a ‘strong desire to tackle the issue’ at the highest levels of the Royal household.
It is thought that the Queen became personally interested in the problem of plastic after working with Sir David Attenborough on a conservation documentary dealing with wildlife in the Commonwealth.
The new measures include gradually phasing out plastic straws in public cafes and banning them altogether in staff dining rooms.
Internal caterers at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh will now only be allowed to use china plates and glasses, or recyclable paper cups.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/11/queen-declares-war-plastic-david-attenborough-documentary/
