13 March 2018 (World Animal Protection) – Ghost gear accounts for 10 percent of all the debris accumulating in our oceans and is a major threat to marine wildlife. Global estimates in 2009 found that at least 640,000 tons of ghost gear are added to our oceans every year. This number is likely now even […]
By Lauren Said-Moorhouse 21 March 2018 (CNN) – Without intervention soon, the amount of plastic littering the world’s oceans is expected to triple within a decade, a new UK government report warns.The Foresight Future of the Sea report from the UK Government Office for Science said our oceans have seen “unprecedented change as a result […]
Delft, the Netherlands, 22 March 2018 (The Ocean Cleanup) – 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic weighing 80,000 metric tons are currently afloat in an area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – and it is rapidly getting worse. These are the main conclusions of a three year mapping effort conducted by an international team […]
By Meara Sharma 6 April 2018 (The Washington Post) – A decade ago, the environmental philosopher Timothy Morton invented a new word: hyperobject. It describes something so “massively distributed in time and space relative to humans” that it eludes our understanding. The best example of a hyperobject is climate change. Its scale confounds our perception. […]
By L.A. McKeown 12 April 2018 (TCTMD) – New data show a surprising pattern of increased emergency department (ED) visits for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular problems on days when wildfires are burning in California. Researchers say the fine particulate matter created by the fires poses significant risk beyond the state’s borders, and in particular to people […]
By Gina McCarthy and Janet G. McCabe 26 March 2018 (The New York Times) – Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has announced that he alone will decide what is and isn’t acceptable science for the agency to use when developing policies that affect your health and the environment.It is his latest […]
5 February 2018 (University of Leeds) – A study led by the University of Leeds has found that no country currently meets its citizens’ basic needs at a globally sustainable level of resource use. The research, published in Nature Sustainability, is the first to quantify the sustainability of national resource use associated with meeting basic […]
5 February 2018 (University of Edinburgh) – Potentially harmful levels of the air pollutant ozone are present in many regions around the world, a widespread study has shown. Levels of ozone in the troposphere – the lower region of the atmosphere – have decreased in much of Europe and the US over the past 15 […]
PORTLAND, Oregon, 1 March 2018 (CBD) – Within the next two years, more than 60 million acres of monarch habitat will be sprayed with an herbicide that’s extremely harmful to milkweed, the only food for monarch caterpillars, according to a new analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity.Monarch populations have already fallen by 80 percent […]
By Scott Waldman and Robin Bravender 16 March 2018 (E&E News) – U.S. EPA chief Scott Pruitt is expected to roll out plans soon to restrict the agency’s use of science in rulemakings, pitting him against critics who say it would threaten public health and environmental protections. In a closed-door meeting at the Heritage Foundation […]
