New Year’s Message: We need to stop the destroyers of our planet
It's getting desperate and urgent. Our climate is getting destroyed, countless species are becoming extinct while politicians cling to the system that is destroying our planet, reproducing and accelerating that senseless destruction. We have a good idea who they are that are destroying the planet: It's the insane ultra-rich space tourism developers Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, it's the same and other insane ultra-rich cnuts with their climate-destroying superyachts, privately-owned islands, private jets and jetset lifestyles, it's the insane petrochemical and coal industries, it's the insane media magnates, it's insane politicians pursuing the destruction of the planet - Boris Johnson and Joe Biden included. The planet, the people of this planet, it's plants and animals can't afford these absolutely climate-destroying cnuts. We need a clean break so that this world is managed sustainably to survive instead of being run for the benefit of a few super-rich cnuts, much less than 1% really. May be altered, extended or elaborated 28/2/22 Artic tourism
Within Decade, Planet’s Natural World Facing Largest Mass Extinction Event Since Dinosaurs
Latest analysis by World Wildlife Fund warns humanity—possible “victim of it own lifestyle”—might ultimately be added to list of threatened species.
JULIA CONLEY December 30, 2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Endangered_arctic_-_starving_polar_bear.jpg
Increasingly dire ecological damage and severe impacts of the climate crisis are pushing the natural world towards a mass extinction event unparalleled since the age of the dinosaurs, conservationists in Germany warned this week, with humanity possibly facing self-annihilation if behaviors do not change.
Releasing its annual “Winners and Losers” list on Wednesday, the World Wildlife Fund’s German branch said 40,000 of the 142,500 species listed on the Red List of Threatened Species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are “threatened with extinction.”
“If the earth is sick, so will the people [be], because we depend on vital ecosystems and biodiversity for our own safe and healthy life.”
The Red List is now longer than it has ever been since the IUCN began cataloging threatened species in 1964.
More than 40% of amphibians, 27% of shark and ray species, a third of reef building corals, and more than a quarter of all mammals on the Red List are threatened with extinction.
At the current rate of species loss, “around one million species could go extinct within the next decade—which would be the largest mass extinction event since the end of the dinosaur age,” WWF Germany said in a statement.
With planet-heating atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions reaching a record high this year—contributing to drought, habitat loss, extreme weather, and health problems in humans as well as other species—the organization noted that humans should view the extinction crisis as one that could affect them directly.
“Species conservation is no longer just about defeating an environmental problem, but is rather about the question of whether or not humanity will eventually end up on the Red List in an endangered category—and thereby become a victim of its own lifestyle,” WWF Germany director Eberhard Brandes said.
“If the earth is sick, so will the people [be],” he added, “because we depend on vital ecosystems and biodiversity for our own safe and healthy life.”
The “losers” on the WWF’s list include the polar bear, which is already suffering from the erosion of its Arctic habitat as the northern region becomes warmer. The Arctic Ocean could be completely free of ice by 2035 at the current rate of loss, making it increasingly difficult for the bears to find food.
Sharks and rays also made the list, the result of overfishing, habitat loss, and the climate crisis. A third of all sharks and rays in the oceans were classified as threatened in 2021, the WWF said.
African forest elephants have been considered “critically endangered” for the first time this year, as their population in Central and West Africa has plummeted by 86% in the past three decades.
The inclusion of 40,000 species on the IUCN’s list of threatened species represents a major acceleration of biodiversity loss. In 2010, 17,300 species were considered to be under threat, according to The Guardian.
The WWF’s list of “winners” this year includes bearded vultures, which have benefited from a resettlement program in the last 30 years that’s resulted in more than 300 of the birds now living in the Alpine region; the Iberian lynx, whose population has increased more than tenfold in the past 18 years; and Siamese crocodiles in Cambodia. Eight young crocodiles were found by researchers this year, marking the first time in more than a decade that the species has reproduced in nature.
“The winners of the list show that there are still opportunities for species protection,” said Brandes. “If we implement effective nature conservation measures, we can protect plants, animals and, ultimately, the climate.”
From https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/30/within-decade-planets-natural-world-facing-largest-mass-extinction-event-dinosaurs licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
It Is ‘Strange,’ Says Greta Thunberg, That Biden Is Seen as a Climate Leader
“The U.S. is actually expanding fossil fuel infrastructure,” the 18-year-old Swedish climate activist said in a new interview.
JAKE JOHNSON December 28, 2021
In an interview published in The Washington Post Magazine on Monday, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said it is “strange” that some consider U.S. President Joe Biden a climate leader even as his administration fails to take the ambitious steps necessary to tackle the intensifying planetary crisis.
When asked whether she is “inspired” by Biden or other world leaders, Thunberg pointed out that “the U.S. is actually expanding fossil fuel infrastructure” under the current administration.
“I’ve met so many people who give me very much hope and just the possibility that we can actually change things.”
“Why is the U.S. doing that?” she asked. “It should not fall on us activists and teenagers who just want to go to school to raise this awareness and to inform people that we are actually facing an emergency.”
“People ask us, ‘What do you want?’ ‘What do you want politicians to do?'” added Thunberg, who helped spark a global, youth-led climate protest movement with a solo strike outside of the Swedish Parliament building in 2018. “And we say, first of all, we have to actually understand what is the emergency.”
“We are trying to find a solution of a crisis that we don’t understand,” she continued. “For example, in Sweden, we ignore—we don’t even count or include more than two-thirds of our actual emissions. How can we solve a crisis if we ignore more than two-thirds of it? So it’s all about the narrative.”
While Biden has touted his decision to bring the U.S. back into the Paris agreement, his pledge to cut the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and other initiatives as a show of leadership in the face of an existential threat to humanity, his administration has also approved oil and gas drilling permits at a faster rate than former President Donald Trump’s did.
During Biden’s presidency, according to a report released earlier this month by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has approved an average of 333 oil and gas drilling permits per month this year alone—40% more than it did over the first three years of Trump’s White House tenure.
“When it comes to climate change policy, President Biden is saying the right things. But we need more than just promises,” Alan Zibel, the lead author of the report, said in a statement. “The reality is that in the battle between the oil industry and Biden, the industry is winning. Despite Biden’s campaign commitments to stop drilling on public lands and waters, the industry still has the upper hand. Without aggressive government action, the fossil fuel industry will continue creating enormous amounts of climate-destroying pollution exploiting lands owned by the public.”
Biden Continues Drilling Boom on Public Lands Despite Campaign Pledge, Analysis Shows
Thunberg’s interview with the Post came at the end of a year that saw planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions quickly rebound to pre-pandemic levels as the U.S. and other major nations continued to burn fossil fuels at an alarming and unsustainable rate.
As Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate Research noted Tuesday, “2021 saw the second-biggest absolute increase in fossil CO2 emissions ever recorded.”
Despite the failure of world leaders to act with sufficient urgency as the climate crisis fuels devastating extreme weather events across the globe, Thunberg said she is “more hopeful now” than she was when she kicked off her lonely school strike in 2018.
“In one sense, we’re in a much worse place than we were then because the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are higher and the global emissions are still rising at almost record speed. And we have wasted several years of blah, blah, blah,” said Thunberg. “But then, on another note, we have seen what people can do when we actually come together.”
“I’ve met so many people who give me very much hope and just the possibility that we can actually change things,” she added. “That we can treat a crisis like a crisis.”
Republished from https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/28/it-strange-says-greta-thunberg-biden-seen-climate-leader under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.