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Microplastics Are Everywhere – In Us Too

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What do beer, oysters, table salt, air & tap water have in common? They’re all ways humans are ingesting microplastics, tiny bits of plastic waste ubiquitous in oceans, lakes and rivers and even soil and air.

Wildlife as diverse as whales, seabirds, fish and zooplankton are polluted by ingesting plastic debris. It’s naïve to assume that humans, sharing the same global environment and eating at the top of the food chain, are magically spared contamination from plastics.

Though no one has yet measured how much plastic pollution humans actually carry around, there’s plenty of evidence we’re taking the stuff in, by eating, drinking and just breathing.   [Read more…]

With a Democratic SuperMajority on the San Diego City Council, It’s Time to Go Bold on the Environment

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I remember a time not so long ago when the very idea of Georgette Gomez sitting on the City Council (let alone being President and setting the agenda), would have been considered wishful thinking in local political circles.

Gomez ran for the District 9 Council seat as the outsider, the person with progressive principles and a background in environmental activism. She persisted, made it through the primary and, despite the not-so-covert maneuvering of the usual propertied suspects, won in the November 2016 general election.

The vote to confirm Gomez as City Council President was unanimous, with both Republicans singing her praises. Go figure–having principles and being honest can foster real progress.   [Read more…]

140+ Arrested as Youth-Led Protests Demand Green New Deal on Capitol Hill

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By Julia Conley / Common Dreams

Before presumptive House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) even appeared at her office to hear from young Americans who had traveled from all over the country to urge her to back a Green New Deal, Capitol police arrived Monday and arrested more than 60 of the protesters. As of this writing, at least 143 demonstrators had been arrested as they lobbied in 50 congressional offices.

More than 1,000 young people and allies flooded the Capitol Hill hallways and offices of Democratic representatives to demand that elected officials listen to their youngest constituents—as well as some of the world’s top scientists—and back the bold proposal to shift the U.S. to a zero-carbon energy system by 2050 in order to save the planet from an irreversible climate catastrophe. Thanks to efforts spearheaded by the youth-led Sunrise Movement, the number of Democratic lawmakers now supporting a Select Committee on a Green New deal has now swelled to 23.   [Read more…]

The Highway to Climate Hell vs The Green New Deal

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The path away from planetary hell got a little steeper with release of a trio of scientific papers produced by 76 scientists from 57 research institutions in 15 countries associated with the Global Carbon Project on the eve of the opening of the 24th annual U.N. climate conference in Poland.

‘Everybody knows’ that something must be done and soon to at least keep the planet habitable for our species beyond the next century. The problem has been the lack of an agreement on a comprehensive course of actions bold enough to have an impact.

Cap and trade, carbon taxes, and increased government regulation are all (probably) well-intentioned piecemeal approaches. All of them together, assuming the political will to implement them could be found, still aren’t enough.   [Read more…]

The Migrant Caravan Is Also About Climate Change

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By Todd Miller / YES! Magazine

Less than a mile south of the U.S.-Mexico border, in Sasabe, Mexico, a Guatemalan man named Giovanni (whose first name is used to protect his undocumented status) propped up his feet while an EMT applied antibiotic ointment to his feet in the shade of a cottonwood. Giovanni left his home country because of a catastrophic drought and was attempting to unite with his brothers who were already in Dallas.

After trying to cross the border into the Arizona desert, his feet were ravaged: discolored, covered in gashes and tender red blisters. One toenail had been ripped off. Across the arroyo, or dry wash, were about 30 more prospective border crossers, primarily Guatemalan, some awaiting a similar medical checkup, others stocking up on water and food.

It was July, and several days before in a 110-degree heat wave, he had crossed the border with a small group of about five other people from Guatemala. After 14 hours, they ran out of water. After 21 hours, Giovanni gave up and turned back alone. He had no water, no food, and quickly lost his orientation, but he made it back to Sasabe.   [Read more…]

A Climate Change Inspired Poem

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As a girl by herself wandering wantonly within the woods, I was kept company
By animal voices and ancient whispers from the tree canopy

When my bare feet touched warm soil, planted firmly on earth, I was so aware
I was never alone, I belonged to this mystic beauty, and happily had not a care

Yet by the time I was a young woman, ready to journey from my home
The animal voices, many were going quiet it was well known   [Read more…]

Honduras: As Berta Cáceres Murder Trial Nears End, Will True Perpetrators Be Brought to Justice? | Video Worth Watching

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From the Democracy Now! website:

Eight men are on trial in Honduras for the murder of environmentalist Berta Cáceres, who was gunned down in her home in La Esperanza in 2016. A verdict is expected this week. The assassination of Cáceres came a year after she won the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work protecting indigenous communities and her campaign against a massive hydroelectric dam project. We speak with Dana Frank, professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her new book is titled, “The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup.”

  [Read more…]

McClellan-Palomar Airport: The Truth?

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On October 10, 2018, the county Board of Supervisors (BOS) adopted a 20-year plan for McClellan-Palomar (Palomar) Airport in Carlsbad and certified an EIR.

A month later, the citizens group Citizens for a Friendly Airport (see c4fa.org) filed suit challenging the county decision. A suit verdict is likely in mid or late 2019. Issues the court may have to wrestle with include:

  • Accuracy of County Project Description. In public presentations, county staff repeatedly said the purpose of extending the Palomar runway up to 800 feet was to increase aircraft safety, not to attract more aircraft. Yet several supervisors approving the Palomar Master Plan (PMP) glowingly noted Palomar’s ability to act as a “reliever” airport for overflow Lindbergh traffic.

One question for the court would be: Did the county engage in a “bait and switch” – analyzing low levels of Palomar use in the EIR, while encouraging higher use levels with Lindbergh diversions?

  [Read more…]

The Fallen Nest: A Border Story

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The park’s gates had been ripped down and rebuilt, higher and fiercer than he had seen in the year he had lived near the coast. Barbed wire had been looped in a crown around the fence’s top and iron doors installed at either entrance. The nest had fallen and lay in the park beneath a tree thirty feet from the new fence.

On his daily morning walks he looked inside the park, before and after the fence’s reconstruction. The flat green grass of the park appeared so different than the faded winter brown of trees in a California city.

In the evenings, walking by the fence, he looked in the park out of habit after completing his part-time shift at the library near the border-crossing. However, the nest, a ratty gathering of dead grass, straw, and tangled stems and fibers, had fallen. It held a single gray chick, screaming. He did not know what kind of bird but even in the diminishing light, he saw the chick, plaintive and alone, in the fallen nest.   [Read more…]

“New Deeds for New”: Young Activists and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Demand a Green New Deal

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Nothing in the wake of the midterm elections made me quite as happy as the sight of the newly elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joining young climate activists who were protesting outside of Nancy Pelosi’s office in Washington, D.C.

The protesters, who were part of the Sunrise Movement, put their demands bluntly: “They offer us a death sentence. We demand a Green New Deal.”   [Read more…]

Rake America Great Again

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God bless the Finns. They’ve been there for us after the Idiot-In-Chief visited a ravaged California – the death count is now 80, with 993 feared dead – stood awkwardly in the rubble of what was once Paradise, which he called “Pleasure,” and spewed gibberish.

Because many, many people say he knows the best words about how to stop fires, he intoned, “You gotta take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forest, very important…”

He went on, I was with the president of Finland and he said, ‘We have a much different – we’re a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation, and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things. And they don’t have any problem. And when they do, it’s a very small problem, and when it is…I know everyone is looking at that.”   [Read more…]

Legislating a Just Transition off Fossil Fuels: San Diego Champions Lead on Climate and Energy Policies

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By Gladys Limon / Executive Director of the California Environmental Justice Alliance

Californians are united in our commitment to transitioning the state’s power grid to renewable energy. A strong step in that direction was the passage of SB 100 (De León) into law, which sets a goal of transforming our state’s electricity grid to zero-carbon sources by 2045, with an upgrade to the 2030 goal from 50 percent renewables to 60 percent.

Many California cities, including San Diego, Del Mar, and Chula Vista have set their city targets at 100 percent renewable by 2035.

Now, the real work begins: equitably implementing the transition. We need follow-up state and city regulations to ensure that the communities overburdened by fossil-fuel pollution and climate change impacts have ready access to the economic and public health benefits of this transition.   [Read more…]

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