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Ed Webb

Chemical pollution has passed safe limit for humanity, say scientists | Pollution | The... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...it-for-humanity-say-scientists

sustainability environment ecology ecosystems chemicals petrochemicals agriculture industry

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Jan 22 - Cached
  • The cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the planet now threatens the stability of global ecosystems upon which humanity depends
  • Plastics are of particularly high concern, they said, along with 350,000 synthetic chemicals including pesticides, industrial compounds and antibiotics
  • chemical pollution has crossed a “planetary boundary”, the point at which human-made changes to the Earth push it outside the stable environment of the last 10,000 years
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  • “For a long time, people have known that chemical pollution is a bad thing. But they haven’t been thinking about it at the global level. This work brings chemical pollution, especially plastics, into the story of how people are changing the planet.”
  • a huge number of chemical compounds registered for use – about 350,000 – and only a tiny fraction of these have been assessed for safety.
  • the total mass of plastics now exceeds the total mass of all living mammals
  • “Shifting to a circular economy is really important. That means changing materials and products so they can be reused, not wasted.”
  • There are growing calls for international action on chemicals and plastics, including the establishment of a global scientific body for chemical pollution akin to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
  • “The rise of the chemical burden in the environment is diffuse and insidious. Even if the toxic effects of individual chemicals can be hard to detect, this does not mean that the aggregate effect is likely to be insignificant.“Regulation is not designed to detect or understand these effects. We are relatively blind to what is going on as a result. In this situation, where we have a low level of scientific certainty about effects, there is a need for a much more precautionary approach to new chemicals and to the amount being emitted to the environment.”
  • The chemical pollution planetary boundary is the fifth of nine that scientists say have been crossed, with the others being global heating, the destruction of wild habitats, loss of biodiversity and excessive nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.
Ed Webb

What the US's 'Fair Share' of Emissions Reductions Looks Like - 0 views

earther.gizmodo.com/...amp

US USA opinion climate sustainability development aid USAID

shared by Ed Webb on 22 May 21 - Cached
  • the full weight of American emissions past and present are contributing to the floods, heat waves, and other disasters that disproportionately ravage the Global South. The U.S. owes it to the world to make right on the carbon pollution that allowed it to reach the pinnacle of the world as the richest nation on Earth.
  • Putting meaningful resources into the Green Climate Fund, the United Nations grantmaking body that furnishes capital for international climate action, is one avenue to meet the U.S. climate debt. The new report suggests $8 billion. For context, John Kerry, the Biden administration’s climate czar, promised $2 billion. That would only fulfill the nation’s existing pledges.
  • Research shows that U.S. companies have reduced their emissions and pollution at home by offshoring manufacturing to poorer nations with looser regulations. In the already stifling heat in places like India and Bangladesh, that offshored pollution can become more deadly. American consumption has also created environmental crises abroad. The U.S. is responsible for more plastic pollution than any other country, which can harm marine ecosystems already under stress due to hotter waters and ocean acidification.
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  • USAID and other international development programs could also channel still more money to mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage financing. Ambitiously, the authors of the fair share pledge suggest the country invest up to $3 trillion into a debt relief and green recovery package to help poor countries with limited means adhere to the Paris Agreement’s goals. That should all come without strings attached since it should help relieve the burdens of debt, not create more of it
  • the U.S. should recognize its role in global destabilization and grant people protections within its borders
  • Communities within U.S. borders have also been exploited, from California to Appalachia to the South. This is the wealthiest nation in the world, and the climate crisis is the most urgent threat facing us. There’s no reason to choose between transformative national and international action. We need both.
Ed Webb

How Extreme Weather Is Pushing Climate Policy Forward - 0 views

www.noemamag.com/nition-of-the-planetary-future

climate disasters policy future

shared by Ed Webb on 25 Sep 22 - No Cached
  • We may well look back upon 2022 as that moment when the global simultaneity of climate calamity finally crossed an epistemic threshold, registering in the mind’s eye the most compelling image of the whole Earth, now in peril, since the marvelous “Blue Marble” photograph taken from space by the Apollo astronauts in 1972.
  • sense of an axial shift
  • Prompted by a citizens’ assembly on climate in the wake of the 2018 Yellow Jacket uprising, France is implementing a slew of ambitious measures from banning single-use plastic packaging for perishable products to banning short-haul flights where a train or bus trip of two and a half hours or less in an alternative
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  • Banning the use of private jets is already under discussion in France, where there is a latent recognition, as Genevieve Guenther has written in Noema, that the richest 10% are responsible for 52% of cumulative global emissions.
  • Balancing the interests of present constituencies against future repercussions is the key challenge on the immediate horizon, when time has become an ethical dimension as the window to avoid an irreparable cascade of climate consequences is closing.
  • the emergence of a global situationism — that inherent traits do not exist but are shaped by our environment — which places the single Earth in the forefront as a common site for all cultures
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