A Bakers Cousin posted:

I chewed those white foam cups a lot as a kid

Cup Runneth Over posted:

bedpan posted:

https://twitter.com/gblad/status/1325136117201506304

https://twitter.com/gblad/status/1325136135132114946

https://twitter.com/gblad/status/1325136145517309952

Included the last one for the "Biden-Harris administration"

AceClown posted:

wynott dunn posted:

something something carbon capture something Iceland

Mola Yam posted:

found out about a new hell on earth today, thought it belonged here

what's that little white patch in the south of spain?


hm is that a city or something? it covers a huge area


oh it's all greenhouses


plastic tomato greenhouses


where "migrant workers" (slaves) work in 50C+ heat and live in plastic slums


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_farming_in_Almer%C3%ADa







enjoy

ur

tomatoes

AceClown posted:

Mola Yam posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_farming_in_Almer%C3%ADa

Mola Yam posted:

found out about a new hell on earth today, thought it belonged here

what's that little white patch in the south of spain?


hm is that a city or something? it covers a huge area


oh it's all greenhouses


plastic tomato greenhouses


where "migrant workers" (slaves) work in 50C+ heat and live in plastic slums


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_farming_in_Almer%C3%ADa







enjoy

ur

tomatoes

silicone thrills posted:

Just a reminder that winter tomatoes from the US are probably also picked by migrant slaves especially if they were grown in florida.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/06/slavery-in-the-tomato-fields/240140/

silicone thrills posted:

Just a reminder that winter tomatoes from the US are probably also picked by migrant slaves especially if they were grown in florida.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/06/slavery-in-the-tomato-fields/240140/

silicone thrills posted:

Just a reminder that winter tomatoes from the US are probably also picked by migrant slaves especially if they were grown in florida.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/06/slavery-in-the-tomato-fields/240140/

JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:

yo what the gently caress

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

I'm enjoying The Ends of The World, about the mass extinctions of the past

IAMKOREA posted:

The full terrifying weight of this statement will become lmao after the next chapter

silicone thrills posted:

Just a reminder that winter tomatoes from the US are probably also picked by migrant slaves especially if they were grown in florida.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/06/slavery-in-the-tomato-fields/240140/

IAMKOREA posted:

The full terrifying weight of this statement will become lmao after the next chapter

JeremoudCorbynejad posted:

I'm enjoying The Ends of The World, about the mass extinctions of the past

IAMKOREA posted:

The full terrifying weight of this statement will become lmao after the next chapter

Koirhor posted:

now thats a solid thread title

mediaphage posted:

in canada they're all grown in greenhouses in leamington, ontario



there are so many foreign workers brought in from mexico that there's actually a mexican consulate in this rural ontario town

The Wisest Moron posted:

The Mexican Consulate ensures the safety and fair compensation of the Mexican workers right?

The Wisest Moron posted:

The Mexican Consulate ensures the safety and fair compensation of the Mexican workers right?

Karach posted:

The beekeeping industry in Canada is all about migrant slaves too. Minimum wage for hefting 80 lb honey supers and getting stung all day long.

quote:

60 Years after Silent Spring Warned Us, Birds—and Humanity—Are Still in Trouble
Data show alarming declines in wildlife but also point to ways to save it

Rachel Carson’s classic best seller about ecological threats, Silent Spring, started a wave of American environmentalism. It played a direct role in the 1972 decision by the newly formed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ban use of the pesticide DDT. Ernest Gruening, one of the first two U.S. senators from Alaska, said Carson’s writings had “altered the course of history.” It will be 60 years ago this June that the public was introduced to Carson’s arguments, as her book chapters were serialized in the New Yorker magazine. The coming anniversary makes this a good time to consider whether the book achieved one of her major goals: protecting wildlife and, in particular, birds.

Carson took a complex technical subject—the damaging effects of persistent pesticides—and expressed it in one simple, poetic image: a spring in which no birds sang. She asked us to imagine what it would be like to awaken in the morning to a world without these songs. She wrote with grace, and she made us feel the loss. But how well have we acted on Carson’s warnings?

With some exceptions, we haven’t been very successful, and neither have birds. In 2019 a major study, led by Cornell University ornithologist Kenneth V. Rosenberg, showed that 29 percent of North American birds have vanished since 1970. The study was notable because of its sweep: it integrated data across scores of species and the different biomes birds live in, and it used a variety of approaches to validate its counts; an article published by the Audubon Society called the result “a sobering picture” of widespread avian decline. Grasslands were the hardest hit, with a documented loss of more than 700 million breeding individuals—a decline of more than 50 percent. But major declines occurred in every biome save one and in nearly every species. The net toll amounted to nearly three billion individual birds, a figure that sparked a campaign with tips on what people can do to save them. (Top two: add decals to windows and keep cats inside.)

Given these data, it is tempting to conclude that despite the brilliance of her writing, Carson did not succeed in protecting birds. Moreover, the avian decline is part of a tremendous loss of global biodiversity driven by human activity. According to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), more than 40 percent of amphibian species, almost 33 percent of reef-forming corals and more than a third of all marine mammals are threatened. In all, biologists estimate that more than a million species are at risk. This also endangers human well-being, and the group notes that “we are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”

Still, the 2019 bird study, despite its grim results, also suggests that protecting biodiversity (and thereby ourselves) is not a lost cause. One important exception in the otherwise bleak picture its scientists painted is wetlands (and the waterfowl that inhabit them). There bird abundance increased 13 percent. What distinguishes wetlands from other ecological areas? One answer is that wetlands have been especially shielded from excessive industrial activity for a long time. The areas have been under a host of legal protections on the federal, state and tribal level. Some of these laws, such as Massachusetts’s powerful Wetlands Protection Act, prioritized wetlands for their diverse ecological value. Others safeguarded such areas because they are important to navigation and commerce, fisheries, flood control and water supplies. The 1899 Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act, for instance, secured wetlands as parts of navigable waterways.

The other encouraging exception in the bird study was raptors, a group that includes the majestic bald eagle. Raptor numbers have increased by 15 million individuals. Bald eagles were on the verge of extinction at the time Carson wrote, but they recovered in large part as a result of the ban on DDT. A news story published by the Audubon Society notes that “the numbers show that taking steps like wildlife management, habitat restoration and political action can be effective to save species.” Scientists have documented the current threat to biodiversity. Their data also show that if we act on this information, we can change the outcome.

quote:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/03/briefing/climate-optimism-ukraine-week-ahead.html

Against despair
Among the headline-grabbing wildfires, droughts and floods, it is easy to feel disheartened about climate change.

I felt this myself when a United Nations panel released the latest major report on global warming. It said that humanity was running out of time to avert some of the worst effects of a warming planet. Another report is coming tomorrow. So I called experts to find out whether my sense of doom was warranted.

To my relief, they pushed back against the notion of despair. The world, they argued, has made real progress on climate change and still has time to act. They said that any declaration of inevitable doom would be a barrier to action, alongside the denialism that Republican lawmakers have historically used to stall climate legislation. Such pushback is part of a budding movement: Activists who challenge climate dread recently took off on TikTok, my colleague Cara Buckley reported.

“Fear is useful to wake us up and make us pay attention,” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, told me. “But if we don’t know what to do, it paralyzes us.”

In a climate change-focused survey of young people in 10 countries last year, 75 percent of respondents said the future was frightening. Some people now use therapy to calm their climate anxieties. Some have drastically changed their lives out of fear of a warming planet — even deciding not to have kids.

Climate change of course presents a huge challenge, threatening the world with more of the extreme weather we have seen over the past few years. And the situation is urgent: To meet President Biden’s climate goals, experts argue, Congress must pass the climate provisions of the Build Back Better Act this year.

But rather than seeing the climate challenge as overwhelming or hopeless, experts said, we should treat it as a call to action.

Reasons for hope
The world has made genuine progress in slowing climate change in recent years. In much of the world, solar and wind power are now cheaper than coal and gas. The cost of batteries has plummeted over the past few decades, making electric vehicles much more accessible. Governments and businesses are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into clean energy.

Before 2015, the world was expected to warm by about four degrees Celsius by 2100. Today, the world is on track for three degrees Celsius. And if the world’s leaders meet their current commitments, the planet would warm by around two degrees Celsius.

That is not enough to declare victory. The standard goal world leaders have embraced to avoid the worst consequences of climate change is to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. Unfortunately, that does look increasingly unreachable, experts said.

But every drop in degrees matters. One-tenth of a degree may sound like very little, but it could save lives — by preventing more wildfires, droughts, floods and conflicts over dwindling resources.

And while the best outcome now seems doubtful, so does the worst. Scientists have long worried about runaway warming that generates out-of-control weather, leaves regions uninhabitable and wrecks ecosystems. But projections right now suggest that scenario is unlikely, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State.

Channeling despair
Experts and advocates want to capture legitimate concerns and funnel them into action. The world’s governments and biggest businesses have set goals to reduce greenhouse emissions in the coming decades, but they will need the public’s help and support.

One model for this is road safety. Drivers can reduce their chances of crashes by driving carefully, but even the safest can be hit. The U.S. reduced car-crash deaths over several decades by passing sweeping laws and rules that required seatbelts, airbags and collapsible steering wheels; punished drunken driving; built safer roads and more — a collective approach.

The same type of path can work for climate change, experts said. Cutting individual carbon footprints is less important than systemic changes that governments and companies enact to help people live more sustainably. While individual action helps, it is no match for the impact of entire civilizations that have built their economies around burning carbon sources for energy.

The need for a sweeping solution can make the problem feel too big and individuals too small, again feeding into despair.

But experts said that individuals could still make a difference, by playing into a collective approach. You can convince friends and family to take the issue seriously, changing what politicians and policies they support. You can become involved in politics (including at the local level, where many climate policies are carried out). You can actively post about global warming on social media. You can donate money to climate causes.

The bottom line, experts repeatedly told me: Don’t give up on the future. Look for productive ways to prevent impending doom.

T-Paine posted:

https://twitter.com/dwallacewells/status/1510585158935752707
That seems like a lot