As regular newsletter readers know, Israel has a huge positive impact on the world. This week’s news includes an Israeli Covid-19 treatment that also helps cancer patients; super-fast blood tests and DNA sequencing; plus good news for ALS patients, back pain sufferers and sick elderly Ukrainians. Israeli tech is providing better education opportunities for religious women, refugee Ukrainian children, language students, business managers, and those wishing to re-train in the hi-tech industry. The environment is benefiting from smart Israeli agriculture devices and new low-pollution manufacturing and construction processes. Israel’s economy gets better and better, with an unprecedented level of hi-tech exports, European and Asian partnerships, and continued investment in Israeli startups. Finally, as travel restrictions are removed, there is no better opportunity for overseas visitors to get a better view of this remarkable country.
The photo is of Israel’s Dead Sea resort. For many medical conditions, this is one of the best places in the world to get better.
Loose regulations and a gung-ho development culture brought polluting industries in low-income Dallas neighborhoods. Can a new wave of zoning reform drive them out?
See the full story: Patrick Sisson,CITY LAB, March 9, 2022, 11:42 AM EST
Growing cities, overuse of fertilizers, and factory wastewater have degraded China’s water supplies to the extent that half the nation’s rivers and lakes are severely polluted. See more photos here.
It all began with Högertrafikomläggningen, Swedish for “the right-hand traffic reorganisation”.
On 3 September 1967, Sweden switched from driving on the left to driving on the right. The change mainly took place at night, but in Stockholm and Malmö all traffic stopped for most of the weekend while intersections were reconfigured.
So sweet was the resulting city air that weekend that environmental enthusiasm went sky high. It was a moment that would change the world.
Three months later Sweden, citing air and other pollution, asked the UN to hold the first-ever international environmental conference, initiating a process that would lead to a groundbreaking gathering in its capital in 5 June 1972, the 50th anniversary of which will be marked next week. This was the beginning of a long and slow struggle to find and agree global solutions to these newly understood global environment problem. Twenty years later, the Rio conference would follow in the same month, kicking off UN climate summits, the most recent of which was held in Glasgow last autumn.
And yet critical mistakes were made at this early juncture. Progress, as we know, has been glacial in the years since. Now, looking back at the first steps on that journey, it’s hard not to see that, although in there were so many issues the conference got right, there were also some crucial issues it got wrong.
The Stockholm conference – held in the city’s Folkets Hus the site of both a former prison and a theatre specialising in farces – gave green issues international import. In the 1960s, environmental issues had seemed local, not global. In Britain, for example, the last of the great London smogs killed 750 people in 1962, while tragedy struck four years later in Aberfan, Wales, with the collapse of a colliery spoil tip. In Japan, people wore masks against air pollution. There was drought in the Sahel. And in 1969 a passing train ignited oil in Ohio’s Cuyahoga River, setting it ablaze.
But this was also a decade in which there were early stirrings of revolt against the environmental destruction. The World Wildlife Fund launched in 1961 with a special issue of the Daily Mirror carrying the front-page headline “DOOMED”. Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring savaged pesticides the next year, and in 1969 an undergraduate Prince Charles first entered the fray, lobbying the then British prime minister, Harold Wilson, about Atlantic salmon at an event at the Finnish embassy.
But these were isolated voices, denounced and dismissed by the powerful. Carson said the US chemical industry wanted to return to “the dark ages” where “insects and vermin would once again inherit the Earth”. The then US agriculture secretary wrote to former US President Dwight Eisenhower, saying that since Carson was unmarried, despite being “attractive”, she was “probably a communist”.
The plan for an international conference in Stockholm initially had so little support that it was dismissively called “the Swedish matter” at the UN. It took two years of lobbying, against UK and French opposition, before the general assembly backed the proposal. As it happened, this (January 1970) was when I was told by a far-sighted editor at the Yorkshire Post that we needed to be covering this stuff and my long stint on the environment beat – the longest in the world as far as I am aware – began.
An outright ban on the common use of plastic “microbeads” from products that enter wastewater is the best way to protect water quality, wildlife, and resources used by people, a group of conservation scientists suggest in a new analysis.
These microbeads are one part of the microplastic problem in oceans, freshwater lakes and rivers, but are a special concern because in many products they are literally designed to be flushed down the drain. And even at conservative estimates, the collective total of microbeads being produced today is enormous.
In an article just published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, scientists from seven institutions say that nontoxic and biodegradable alternatives exist for microbeads, which are used in hundreds of products as abrasive scrubbers, ranging from face washes to toothpaste. Around the size of a grain of sand, they can provide a gritty texture to products where that is needed.
“We’re facing a plastic crisis and don’t even know it,” said Stephanie Green, the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow in the College of Science at Oregon State University, and co-author of this report.
A new mouse study reveals the impact of air pollution on male fertility. Researchers report air pollution reduces sperm count in mice by inducing inflammation in specific brain areas.
It’s Mermay and somehow I’ve only ever been able to draw mermaids in the context of pollution.
Every time I take my dogs to the beach, it’s covered in trash and dead leopard sharks, rays, and sturgeons. We are witnessing mass extinction in real time.
It’s important to recognize that creating clothing causes a lot of pollution in the world. People don’t realize the chemicals companies use, the waste they make, or even the way the clothes have to be transported causes much pollution that isn’t widely talked about. “Made in Italy” or “Made in China” is constantly seen, but people don’t seem to understand that those clothes made a mark on the earth’s ozone layer by having to be shipped from so far away.
Reformation, a brand started only a couple years ago, is attempting to “wake people up” in order for their customers and everyone to see that “fashion is the third most polluting industry in the world.” Not only that, but they actually are a brand that creates less pollution and uses recycled materials to leave less of a carbon footprint. With every garment they produce, they show the customer what exactly went into making the item of clothing (i.e. chemicals and waste). Reformation isn’t highly known, but their work is extraordinary. It’s time for other brands to #jointhereformation, and clean up their footprint.
Hello my lovely humans, welcome back to what I like to call informal essays. Today brings together two very important topics to me, food and conservationism. This is going to be longer than my last post and is going to involve some sidetracking as well.
I came up with this topic while looking at all the spices I was using to make butter chicken for dinner tonight and wondering how much the price was going to go up when shit really hits the fan, if we could have such dishes like this again, etc. So, essentially my anxiety spiral led me to doing research and wanting to discuss the intersectionality of culinary arts, climate science, and farming. In our current state, beef reigns supreme in terms of climate change contribution, the most eaten meat in the world is actually chicken, which is significantly less harmful than beef or pork, and yet beef and pork have the greatest climate impact and are highly susceptible to diseases (poultry is as well, don’t get me wrong). In general animal farming is a big contributor to climate change, crop farming is as well…
Crop farming, which I talk about here, also emits a lot of fossil fuels, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and pollutes ground water, depletes soil, and flows downriver along with cow and pig manure, thus killing fish, crustaceans, marine reptiles, and mammals who live in or around the sea. This combination of disregard after disregard for natural ecosystems leads us into where we are now. The Midwest is on the cusp of desertification, there’s been no agriculture reform or sign of actual change, which is why we need to take it upon ourselves to start vertical farming, hydroponics, and soil-less farming on an industrial scale. Not only is it more efficient, it’s better for the environment in every possible aspect, even using less water and requiring very little usage of fertilizers, but how do you replace animal farming? Answer: You don’t, you just get rid of it, the least amount of impact out of any animal is the chicken, so it may be able to stay, but cows and pigs cannot be farmed en masse anymore, it’s dangerous for our environment and our health, so they must be used all at once, and composted (with the rich preferably). It sounds cruel, I know, but there aren’t many better options. Of course the meat and dairy industries will try to interfere like they always do, but we knew that would happen anyway.
Moral of the story, our modern agriculture industry is profit focused and not based around the health or well-being of us or our planet, causing both a rise in greenhouse gas emissions, water and land pollution, and is just generally bad for us in the dietary respect.
Anyway, that’s all for today babes. This has been @punkofsunshine have a good one and stay safe.
