Shorebird Populations Drop Globally, Some by a Third

by DGR News Service | Feb 19, 2025 | NEWS, The Problem: Civilization

Editor’s note: “Birds and Offshore Wind: Developing the Offshore Wind that Birds Need”. – 2025 National Audubon Society

With up to a million birds currently being killed each year directly(which does not include indirect causes from mining and manufacturing) by wind turbines in the US, why would an organization dedicated to protecting birds say such a thing? Add on the fact that Wind facilities also require relatively large areas of land and sea. Facility development fragments and otherwise alters habitat in ways that make it unsuitable for species that have historically been present.

Report: “Conflicts of Interest” – Environmental Organizations(Audubon among them) Take Offshore Wind Industry Money

“These offshore projects, which could decimate hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, will be built by some of the largest international oil and gas companies in the world,” the group said. “Our findings take on suspended belief when one considers Ørsted’s involvement with the New Jersey Audubon Society.” The Danish company is the official sponsor of the New Jersey Audubon Society’s fundraiser, the World Series of Birding where funds are raised to support bird conservation.

By Kristine Sabillo / Mongabay

Sixteen shorebird species have been reclassified to higher threat categories as the global population of migratory shorebirds across the world saw a substantial decline, according to the latest update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Conservation partnership BirdLife International, which helps examine the status of the world’s birds for the IUCN Red List, reassessed around half of the 254 species of shorebirds the organization currently monitors, for 2024, according to Ian Burfield, BirdLife International’s global science coordinator.

The reassessment was prompted by a study published last year that showed steep declines in many shorebird species in North America, Burfield told Mongabay via email.

“[B]ut as it only covered part of their global populations, we had to source equivalent data from elsewhere … to produce a global picture, before applying the IUCN Red List criteria to reassess their status,” Burfield said. “Most species did not need recategorizing, but of those that did, virtually all have deteriorated.”

After the latest reassessment, seven of the 16 shorebird species were categorized as “near threatened” and nine are now “vulnerable” to extinction as they experienced global population declines of 20-40% over three generations.

BirdLife International said in a statement that migratory birds are especially at risk as they follow specific migration flyways or routes and stop along the way to rest and feed at certain sites that now face threats like habitat loss and climate change impacts.

“While many of these shorebirds remain numerous and are still commonly encountered along their flyways, new analyses of data from long-term monitoring schemes reveal that the global populations of some species have declined by more than a third in recent decades,” Burfield said in the statement.

Among those that have now been moved into a higher “threatened” category of vulnerable are the gray plover (Pluvialis squatarola) and the curlew sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea), both of which breed in various parts of the Arctic and migrate globally during their nonbreeding seasons. They both face threats from habitat loss and degradation, hunting, and climate change impacts.

The Hudsonian godwit (Limosa haemastica), a large shorebird that breeds in northern Canada and Alaska and migrates to South America during its nonbreeding months, is also now considered vulnerable. The IUCN notes in its assessment of the species that the bird’s population is seeing a “significant decline … most severely noted in numbers recorded at migratory sites in North America.”

BirdLife International said in its statement that protecting shorebirds is also important for the coastal communities that depend on the same habitats as the birds.

‘The perilous declines of migratory birds are a sign that the integrity of flyways is deteriorating,” Burfield said. “Losing the network of habitats that migratory birds depend on to rest and feed during their long journeys could have severe consequences for the millions of people that rely on these sites, as well as the birds.’’

Kristine Sabillo is a wire reporter for Mongabay. She has been a multimedia journalist for more than a decade and has produced political, science and environment content for the online, print, television and radio newsrooms of leading media organizations in the Philippines. Feedback: Use this form to send a message to this author. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the article page.

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

34,000 Year Old Termite Mounds

by DGR News Service | Feb 13, 2025 | NEWS

Editor’s note: The team used an excavator to cut a trench through the center of the termite mounds, then carefully took soil samples every 10 cm down and 50 centimeters across. Another example of the hubris of human supremacy.

By Ruth Kamnitzer / Mongabay

Inhabited termite mounds along the Buffels River in Namaqualand, South Africa, are an astounding 34,000 years old, according to a new study.

Termites are a diverse group of insects that play a vital ecological role by breaking down organic matter. They live in complex social groups, and some species create large underground nests. These can include extensive tunnels and chambers where the termites live and store plant material. Some termite mounds can be very old; in 2018, researchers discovered termite mounds in Brazil that were 4,000 years old.

But a recent Science of The Total Environment study has discovered that termite mounds inhabited by southern harvester termites (Microhodotermes viator) in Namaqualand are far, far older. Using radiocarbon dating, the researchers found that the mounds have been used by termites for 34,000 years, since before the last Ice Age. During this period, humans were busy making cave art while a few Neanderthals were still hanging on in southern Europe. The world was still full of megafauna like woolly mammoths, saber-toothed cats and giant sloths.

The study also gives an unparalleled view of the past climate cycles in the region, and points to a previously unexplored role of termites in storing carbon, says Michele Francis, a senior lecturer at Stellenbosch University and the study’s lead author.

“Our gut told us [the mounds] were special, and when we dug through and saw these old nests and termites, we thought ‘wow,’” Francis says. “It’s like watching a video of the past.”

Namaqualand is a semiarid region in western South Africa, known for abundant spring wildflowers. The land along the Buffels River is dotted with low mounds called heuweltjies, which are about 40 meters (130 feet) in diameter, where the southern harvester termites live in underground nests. A hard calcite layer on top of the mounds protects the termites from aardvarks (Orycteropus afer) and other insectivores.

To sample the mounds, the researchers first used an excavator to dig a trench 60 m (197 ft) wide by 3 m (10 ft) deep through the center. Then, in what Francis describes as hot, dusty work, they took samples across the entire cross section, using small metal spatulas to scrape soil into plastic bags. Sometimes the termites would come out and frantically try to repair their nests, using balls of soil to plug the holes the researchers had made.

Francis says she already suspected the mounds were quite old — but was still surprised when radiocarbon dating analysis revealed that the carbonate was up to 34,000 years old. Organic material, which degrades much faster, was also remarkably well preserved, and was up to 19,000 years old. The younger organic material was found lower down, demonstrating how the termites bury carbon deep in the mound.

The analysis provided an unparalleled view into the past, and indicates that these termites may play a previously unappreciated role in storing carbon, Francis says.

This can happen in two ways. First, the termites gather small sticks or other carbon-rich plant material at the surface and carry them more than a meter (3 ft) underground, where they’re less likely to release carbon into the atmosphere as they decompose. Second, tunnels created by the termites allow rainwater to move through the mound. This rainwater can carry minerals and dissolved inorganic carbon deeper through the soil profile and into the groundwater.

It’s already established that termites contribute to the global carbon cycle, because many termite species use methane-producing microbes to digest their food. But so far their role in carbon storage and sequestration hasn’t really been explored, Francis says.

Francis, along with researchers from the U.S. and elsewhere, now plans to look at exactly how the carbon in the heuweltjies is being stored. She says she suspects that microbes are converting the organic carbon into a mineral form, which would explain why the mounds are so carbon dense. She says she hopes the new research will help put a value on the carbon storage potential of these, and other similar, mounds. As the heuweltjies cover a fifth of Namaqualand, the benefits of conserving the mounds, as opposed to using the land for agriculture, could be substantial.

“We can only do that if we know how much carbon is in there and how fast it’s being accumulated,” Francis says. “So what we’re trying to do is get people to study what was previously boring, so that we can really understand what’s happening under our feet.”

Ruth Kamnitzer is a BC-based freelance writer, focusing on biodiversity, climate, food security and creative non-fiction. She has an MSc in Biodiversity Conservation from the University of London and a certificate in Multimedia Journalism from the University of Toronto, and has worked in environmental education and ecological field research in Oman, Mongolia, Botswana and Canada. Her work has appeared in Sierra, Maisonneuve, the Globe and Mail, Chatelaine and other publications.

Photo by Ingeborg Korme on Unsplash

Questioning Lithium-ion Batteries

by DGR News Service | Jan 24, 2025 | NEWS, The Problem: Civilization, Toxification

Editor’s note: When a hurricane like Helene or Milton ravages coastal communities, already-strained first responders face a novel, and growing, threat: the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles, store PV solar, e-bikes, and countless gadgets. When exposed to the salty water of a storm surge or extreme heat, they are at risk of bursting into flames — and taking an entire house with them.

“Anything that’s lithium-ion and exposed to salt water can have an issue,” said Bill Morelli, the fire chief in Seminole, Florida, and the bigger the battery, the greater the threat. That’s what makes EVs especially hazardous. “[The problem] has expanded as they continue to be more and more popular.”

Also petrochemical-based building materials and furnishings have replaced traditional wood, fabric and metal materials in homes worldwide. But plastics are more flammable and release persistent toxic chemicals when burned or exposed to high heat. Over the last 25 years, wildfires have multiplied and intensified due to global warming, and often now jump the wildland-urban interface, burning whole neighborhoods and leaving behind a dangerous toxic home legacy. After the Camp Fire razed Paradise, California, in 2018, water utilities found high levels of volatile organic compounds in drinking water. Similar issues have arisen in places like Boulder County, Colorado, where the Marshall Fire destroyed nearly 1,000 structures in 2021,

“The extreme heatwaves of 2023, which fueled huge wildfires, and severe droughts, also undermined the land’s capacity to soak up atmospheric carbon. This diminished carbon uptake drove atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to new highs, intensifying concerns about accelerating climate change. Widespread wildfires across Canada and droughts in the Amazon in 2023 released about the same amount of carbon to the atmosphere as North America’s total fossil fuel emissions, underscoring the severe impact of climate change on natural ecosystems.”

The multibillion-dollar chemicals company 3M told customers it sold its firefighting foams to as safe and biodegradable, while having knowledge that they contained toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), according to newly uncovered documents, reported The Guardian. A team of academic researchers, lawyers and journalists from 16 European countries has exposed a huge lobbying campaign aimed at gutting a proposed EU-wide restriction on the use of “forever chemicals”.

The following story talks about the Moss Landing fire but there was also a fire that erupted in southeast Missouri at one of world’s largest lithium-ion battery recycling facilities and also in Madison County, Illinois.

By KATIE SINGER / Katie Singer’s Substack

While finishing this Substack, I learned about the explosive fire that started January 16, 2025 at Moss Landing, California’s Vistra Power Plant, the world’s largest battery energy storage facility, housing tens of thousands of lithium-ion batteries. By Friday, January 17, flames had consumed 75% of the facility’s batteries. Toxic fumes from the batteries’ chemicals forced evacuations and closed roads around Moss Landing. Because the highly-charged batteries can’t be extinguished—they must burn out—this fire and its toxins could burn for a long time.

Batteries’ toxic gases can cause respiratory, skin and eye problems. Toxic gases from burning lithium-ion batteries can contaminate wildlife such as Monterey Bay’s unique tidal wetland.

This is the fourth fire at the Moss Landing battery storage facility.

Referring to last week’s explosive fire, County Supervisor Glenn Church said, “This is a wake-up call for the industry. If we’re going to move ahead with sustainable energy, we need a safe battery system in place. State of the art safety protocols did not work.”

County officials lifted evacuation orders Friday evening after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found “no threat to human health.” Still, Highway 1 remains closed, and health officials in Monterey, San Venito and Santa Cruz counties advise residents to stay indoors, turn off ventilation systems and limit outdoor exposure. Www.ksbw.com provides live updates.

WILDFIRES AND URBAN FIRES

When the Los Angeles fires started January 7, I learned about the differences between wild and urban fires. Wildfires occur in forests or grasslands, fueled by trees or other vegetation. More than 80% of wildfires start by human activities like abandoned cigarettes, campfires and barbeques. Wildfire smoke can penetrate deep into peoples’ lungs and aggravate heart and lung diseases.

Urban fires—conflagrations—are fueled by combustible construction materials including wood framing, plastics, metals, furniture fabric and solar panels (hazardous waste). Because of houses’ flammable contents, urban fires burn extremely hot and generate toxic emissions. High winds and insufficient water supply intensify urban fires. Burning houses emit chemical toxins and generate more heat than burning trees (which, if alive, hold fire-resistant moisture).

While powerlines and transformers are designed to withstand wind speeds up to 56mph, some gusts in the LA fires exceeded 100mph.

INCLUDING LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES IN FIRE RISK ASSESSMENTS

Here’s a question: How do lithium-ion batteries contribute to urban fires?

Like much of the world, Southern California is now dotted with lithium batteries at every telecom cell site (for backup in the event of a power outage); in every electric vehicle, e-bike and hoverboard; in every EV charger; in laptops, tablets and smartphones—and their chargers; in smart utility meters on grid-connected houses and buildings; in off-grid rooftop solar PV systems’ batteries; in battery energy storage systems (BESS) for large-scale solar facilities and wind facilities.

That’s a lot of lithium-ion batteries.

If a lithium-ion battery’s chemicals heat up and can’t cool down, the battery can catch fire, explode and release toxic, flammable gases such as fluoride. Like trick birthday candles, EV batteries (holding energy to burn for as much as 24 hours) can re-ignite. Lithium-ion batteries’ temperature can quickly reach 932 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius). They can burn as high as 2200F (1100C). An EV fire burns at 5,000 degrees F (2,760 C). A gas-powered vehicle fire burns at 1,500 F (815C).

Because of the increase and severity of battery storage systems’ explosions and fires, The National Fire Protection Association is considering an update to its Battery Safety Code. These systems should be designed to prevent explosions—not just fires.

RECOGNIZING THE FIRE RISKS CAUSED BY DRY AND COVERED SOIL

LA has endured eight months without rain. Drought increases fire risk.

Do fire risks also increase when soil can’t absorb and hold water? Soil’s ability to absorb and hold water is one of the Earth’s main cooling mechanisms. How do we reconcile this when we’ve covered land with paved roads, houses, malls, parking lots, data centers and battery storage facilities?

How can we re-hydrate a dry region?

REBUILDING QUESTIONS

When rebuilding, what policies will ensure that fire’s toxic emissions (to air, soil and groundwater) will not affect future residents and farmers? Given that Governor Newsom has suspended environmental reviews to speed rebuilding in wildfire zones, what will protect residents in rebuilt areas from toxic exposures?

What materials and practices prevent new fires?

What measures would prevent lithium-ion batteries (at cell sites, in electric vehicles, smart meters, laptops, tablets, smartphones, rooftop solar system batteries, etc.) from catching fire and exploding? Could we prohibit lithium-ion batteries until they’re proven safe and ecologically sound from cradle-to-grave? New Hampshire legislators have introduced an ACT that would allow towns to decline 5G cell sites.

How could rebuilding Los Angeles respect the Earth? To reduce fire risk, support healthy water cycling and increase locally-produced food, could rebuilding policies encourage healthy soil structure?

For inspired building, see Mully (about a Kenyan who has fed, housed and educated 27,000+ orphans and turned dry dirt into an oasis); The Power of Community (about Cuba after the USSR quit supplying it with oil, overnight, in 1989); and Alpha Lo & Didi Pershouse speaking about rehydrating Los Angeles.

To provide much-needed affordable housing in LA and elsewhere, would any mansion-owners turn their homes into multiple-family units?

RECONSIDER “SUSTAINABILITY”

Many communities and corporations aim to sustain themselves by installing battery energy storage systems and solar facilities. According to the California Energy Commission, since 2020, battery storage in the state has increased sevenfold—from 1,474 megawatts in 2020 to 10,383 megawatts by mid-2024. One megawatt can power 750 homes.

In New Mexico, AES Corporation has proposed building a 96 MW, 700-acre solar facility with 45 MWs/39 battery containers in Santa Fe County. (Each battery is about 39’ x 10’ x 8’.) Santa Fe’s Green Chamber of Commerce, the Sierra Club’s Rio Grande Chapter, the Global Warming Express and 350 Santa Fe support AES’s project.

Opponents of AES’s facility include the San Marcos Association, the Clean Energy Coalition and Ashley Schannauer (formerly a hearing officer for the state’s Public Regulatory Commission).

I frequently hear people call battery storage, solar PVs, industrial wind and EVs “sustainable.” Looked at from their cradles to their graves, this is simply not true. Mining lithium ravages ecosystems. So does burning coal and trees to make solar panels’ silicon. Refining lithium and making silicon electrically-conductive takes millions of gallons of water, daily. At end-of-life, these technologies are hazardous waste.

Meanwhile, I have many friends with rooftop solar systems and EVs. I would welcome forums about reducing our overall use of energy, water, extractions and international supply chains. I would welcome learning how to live with less.

As survivors of the LA fires, battery fires, Hurricane Helene, Israel’s decimation of Gaza and other catastrophes rebuild, what would communities look like if we considered our technologies’ impacts to ecosystems and public health from their cradles to graves? What would our communities look like if we think, “Ecosystems and public health first?”

FOR MORE INFO:

Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore’s documentary, “Planet of the Humans”

Julia Barnes’ film, “Bright Green Lies”

https://www.watchduty.org

alerts and monitors wildfires in the American West.

https//mutualaidla.org

lists mutual aid organizations.

Science and the California Wildfires with George Wuerthner

Sandoval County, NM, also faces a large-scale solar project with 220 MW of solar panels and 110 MW of battery storage.

New Mexicans for Responsible Renewables supports New Mexico’s avoiding unnecessary risks to our communities and further destruction to our environment.

THE POWER GRID

Discovering Power’s Traps: a primer for electricity users

Fire hazards at the battery storage system coming near you

SOS: San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power’s Legacy Note: The documentary starts 2025 with screenings around California, Eugene, Madrid and on Amazon Prime. See also “Risks of geologic disposal of weapons plutonium.”

A Time-Sensitive Invitation to Protect New Mexico from Smart Meters’ Fire Hazards

SOLAR PVs

21 questions for solar PV explorers

Call Me a NIMBY

Do I report what I’ve learned about solar PVs—or live with it privately?

E-VEHICLES

How/can we protect the Earth when we need a car?

Who’s in charge of EV chargers?

When Land I Love Holds Lithium: Max Wilbert on Thacker Pass, Nevada

Banner Moss Landing battery plant fire, January 16-17, 2025.

MY MISTAKE While writing article I got help from a physicist of fire ignition, an electrical engineer, a forensic fire investigator and an electrician. I also went to the Internet, which informed me that in the event of an outage, cell sites’ power is backed up by lithium-ion batteries. This isn’t totally correct. While 5G small cells primarily use lithium ion batteries, larger cell towers usually backup with lead-acid batteries. I apologize for this error.

Net Zero Plans Are Largely Meaningless

by DGR News Service | Jan 11, 2025 | Climate Change, NEWS, The Problem: Civilization

Editor’s note: “75 of the world’s largest 114 fossil fuel companies have now made net zero by 2050 commitments, yet not a single fossil fuel company has committed to phasing out oil and gas production by 2050 nor have any committed to ending exploration for new oil and gas fields or halting the extraction of existing reserves.”

“Real Zero, not greenwashed ‘net zero,’ is essential. As the Corporate Accountability report concludes, it’s time to reject the big polluters’ agenda and implement programs that rapidly phase out fossil fuels and truly eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.”

We “obsess” over getting to “Net Zero” yearly CO2 increases in the atmosphere. The Moderates in Climate Science THEORIZE that when this happens, the GMST will IMMEDIATELY stop going up and will level off.

DOES IT LOOK LIKE “NET ZERO” is going to happen?

If your child is born this year, they are likely going to live through +1.5°C of warming by the time they are 25. A fact that is likely going to cause a 40% to 50% drop in the global food supply and a reduction of 2.5 billion — 4 billion in the global population by 2050, at a minimum.

The overshoot myth of bargaining: you can’t keep burning fossil fuels and expect scientists of the future to get us back to 1.5°C

Melting Antarctic glacier.
Shutterstock/Bernhard Staehli

James Dyke, University of Exeter; Robert Watson, University of East Anglia, and Wolfgang Knorr, Lund University

Record breaking fossil fuel production, all time high greenhouse gas emissions and extreme temperatures. Like the proverbial frog in the heating pan of water, we refuse to respond to the climate and ecological crisis with any sense of urgency. Under such circumstances, claims from some that global warming can still be limited to no more than 1.5°C take on a surreal quality.

For example, at the start of 2023’s international climate negotiations in Dubai, conference president, Sultan Al Jaber, boldly stated that 1.5°C was his goal and that his presidency would be guided by a “deep sense of urgency” to limit global temperatures to 1.5°C. He made such lofty promises while planning a massive increase in oil and gas production as CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

We should not be surprised to see such behaviour from the head of a fossil fuel company. But Al Jaber is not an outlier. Scratch at the surface of almost any net zero pledge or policy that claims to be aligned with the 1.5°C goal of the landmark 2015 Paris agreement and you will reveal the same sort of reasoning: we can avoid dangerous climate change without actually doing what this demands – which is to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industry, transport, energy (70% of total) and food systems (30% of total), while ramping up energy efficiency.

A particularly instructive example is Amazon. In 2019 the company established a 2040 net zero target which was then verified by the UN Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) which has been leading the charge in getting companies to establish climate targets compatible with the Paris agreement. But over the next four years Amazon’s emissions went up by 40%. Given this dismal performance, the SBTi was forced to act and removed Amazon and over 200 companies from its Corporate Net Zero Standard.

This is also not surprising given that net zero and even the Paris agreement have been built around the perceived need to keep burning fossil fuels, at least in the short term. Not do so would threaten economic growth, given that fossil fuels still supply over 80% of total global energy. The trillions of dollars of fossil fuel assets at risk with rapid decarbonisation have also served as powerful brakes on climate action.

Overshoot

The way to understand this doublethink: that we can avoid dangerous climate change while continuing to burn fossil fuels – is that it relies on the concept of overshoot. The promise is that we can overshoot past any amount of warming, with the deployment of planetary-scale carbon dioxide removal dragging temperatures back down by the end of the century.

This not only cripples any attempt to limit warming to 1.5°C, but risks catastrophic levels of climate change as it locks us in to energy and material-intensive solutions which for the most part exist only on paper.

To argue that we can safely overshoot 1.5°C, or any amount of warming, is saying the quiet bit out loud: we simply don’t care about the increasing amount of suffering and deaths that will be caused while the recovery is worked on.

This article is part of Conversation Insights.

Our co-editors commission long-form journalism, working with academics from many different backgrounds who are engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.

A key element of overshoot is carbon dioxide removal. This is essentially a time machine – we are told we can turn back the clock of decades of delay by sucking carbon dioxide directly out of the atmosphere. We don’t need rapid decarbonisation now, because in the future we will be able to take back those carbon emissions. If or when that doesn’t work, we are led to believe that even more outlandish geoengineering approaches such as spraying sulphurous compounds into the high atmosphere in an attempt to block out sunlight – which amounts to planetary refrigeration – will save us.

The 2015 Paris agreement was an astonishing accomplishment. The establishment of 1.5°C as being the internationally agreed ceiling for warming was a success for those people and nations most exposed to climate change hazards. We know that every fraction of a degree matters. But at the time, believing warming could really be limited to well below 2°C required a leap of faith when it came to nations and companies putting their shoulder to the wheel of decarbonisation. What has happened instead is that the net zero approach of Paris is becoming detached from reality as it is increasingly relying on science fiction levels of speculative technology.

There is arguably an even bigger problem with the Paris agreement. By framing climate change in terms of temperature, it focuses on the symptoms, not the cause. 1.5°C or any amount of warming is the result of humans changing the energy balance of the climate by increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This traps more heat. Changes in the global average temperature is the established way of measuring this increase in heat, but no one experiences this average.

Climate change is dangerous because of weather that affects particular places at particular times. Simply put, this extra heat is making weather more unstable. Unfortunately, having temperature targets makes solar geoengineering seem like a sensible approach because it may lower temperatures. But it does this by not reducing, but increasing our interference in the climate system. Trying to block out the sun in response to increasing carbon emissions is like turning on the air conditioning in response to a house fire.

In 2021 we argued that net zero was a dangerous trap. Three years on and we can see the jaws of this trap beginning to close, with climate policy being increasingly framed in terms of overshoot. The resulting impacts on food and water security, poverty, human health, the destruction of biodiversity and ecosystems will produce intolerable suffering.

The situation demands honesty, and a change of course. If this does not materialise then things are likely to deteriorate, potentially rapidly and in ways that may be impossible to control.

Au revoir Paris

The time has come to accept that climate policy has failed, and that the 2015 landmark Paris agreement is dead. We let it die by pretending that we could both continue to burn fossil fuels and avoid dangerous climate change at the same time. Rather than demand the immediate phase out of fossil fuels, the Paris agreement proposed 22nd-century temperature targets which could be met by balancing the sources and sinks of carbon. Within that ambiguity net zero flourished. And yet apart from the COVID economic shock in 2020, emissions have increased every year since 2015, reaching an all time high in 2023.

Despite there being abundant evidence that climate action makes good economic sense (the cost of inaction vastly exceeds the cost of action), no country strengthened their pledges at the last three COPs (the annual UN international meetings) even though it was clear that the world was on course to sail past 2°C, let alone 1.5°C. The Paris agreement should be producing a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, but current policies mean that they are on track to be higher than they are today.

Net Zero — Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
Catazul/Pixabay, CC BY

Editor’s note: DGR knows that “renewable” technologies are not sustainable and that the only transition will be to a future that does not include civilization.

We do not deny that significant progress has been made with renewable technologies. Rates of deployment of wind and solar have increased each year for the past 22 years and carbon emissions are going down in some of the richest nations, including the UK and the US. But this is not happening fast enough. A central element of the Paris agreement is that richer nations need to lead decarbonisation efforts to give lower income nations more time to transition away from fossil fuels. Despite some claims to the contrary, the global energy transition is not in full swing. In fact, it hasn’t actually begun because the transition demands a reduction in fossil fuel use. Instead it continues to increase year-on-year.

And so policymakers are turning to overshoot in an attempt to claim that they have a plan to avoid dangerous climate change. A central plank of this approach is that the climate system in the future will continue to function as it does today. This is a reckless assumption.

2023’s warning signs

At the start of 2023, Berkeley Earth, NASA, the UK Met Office, and Carbon Brief predicted that 2023 would be slightly warmer than the previous year but unlikely to set any records. Twelve months later and all four organisations concluded that 2023 was by some distance the warmest year ever recorded. In fact, between February 2023 and February 2024 the global average temperature warming exceeded the Paris target of 1.5°C.

The extreme weather events of 2023 give us a glimpse of the suffering that further global warming will produce. A 2024 report from the World Economic Forum concluded that by 2050 climate change may have caused over 14 million deaths and US$12.5 trillion in loss and damages.

Currently we cannot fully explain why global temperatures have been so high for the past 18 months. Changes in dust, soot and other aerosols are important, and there are natural processes such as El Niño that will be having an effect.

But it appears that there is still something missing in our current understanding of how the climate is responding to human impacts. This includes changes in the Earth’s vital natural carbon cycle.

Around half of all the carbon dioxide humans have put into the atmosphere over the whole of human history has gone into “carbon sinks” on land and the oceans. We get this carbon removal “for free”, and without it, warming would be much higher. Carbon dioxide from the air dissolves in the oceans (making them more acidic which threatens marine ecosystems). At the same time, increasing carbon dioxide promotes the growth of plants and trees which locks up carbon in their leaves, roots, trunks.

All climate policies and scenarios assume that these natural carbon sinks will continue to remove tens of billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year. There is evidence that land-based carbon sinks, such as forests, removed significantly less carbon in 2023. If natural sinks begin to fail – something they may well do in a warmer world – then the task of lowering global temperatures becomes even harder. The only credible way of limiting warming to any amount, is to stop putting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in the first place.

Science fiction solutions

It’s clear that the commitments countries have made to date as part of the Paris agreement will not keep humanity safe while carbon emissions and temperatures continue to break records. Indeed, proposing to spend trillions of dollars over this century to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, or the myriad other ways to hack the climate is an acknowledgement that the world’s largest polluters are not going to curb the burning of fossil fuels.

Direct Air Capture (DAC), Bio Energy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), enhanced ocean alkalinity, biochar, sulphate aerosol injection, cirrus cloud thinning – the entire wacky races of carbon dioxide removal and geoengineering only makes sense in a world of failed climate policy.

Over the following years we are going to see climate impacts increase. Lethal heatwaves are going to become more common. Storms and floods are going to become increasingly destructive. More people are going to be displaced from their homes. National and regional harvests will fail. Vast sums of money will need to be spent on efforts to adapt to climate change, and perhaps even more compensating those who are most affected. We are expected to believe that while all this and more unfolds, new technologies that will directly modify the Earth’s atmosphere and energy balance will be successfully deployed.

What’s more, some of these technologies may need to operate for three hundred years in order for the consequences of overshoot to be avoided. Rather than quickly slow down carbon polluting activities and increasing the chances that the Earth system will recover, we are instead going all in on net zero and overshoot in an increasingly desperate hope that untested science fiction solutions will save us from climate breakdown.

We can see the cliff edge rapidly approaching. Rather than slam on the brakes, some people are instead pushing their foot down harder on the accelerator. Their justification for this insanity is that we need to go faster in order to be able to make the jump and land safely on the other side.

We believe that many who advocate for carbon dioxide removal and geoengineering do so in good faith. But they include proposals to refreeze the Arctic by pumping up sea water onto ice sheets to form new layers of ice and snow. These are interesting ideas to research, but there is very little evidence this will have any effect on the Arctic let alone global climate. These are the sorts of knots that people tie themselves up in when they acknowledge the failure of climate policy, but refuse to challenge the fundamental forces behind such failure. They are unwittingly slowing down the only effective action of rapidly phasing out fossil fuels.

That’s because proposals to remove carbon dioxide from the air or geoengineer the climate promise a recovery from overshoot, a recovery that will be delivered by innovation, driven by growth. That this growth is powered by the same fossil fuels that are causing the problem in the first place doesn’t feature in their analysis.

The bottom line here is that the climate system is utterly indifferent to our pledges and promises. It doesn’t care about economic growth. And if we carry on burning fossil fuels then it will not stop changing until the energy balance is restored. By which time millions of people could be dead, with many more facing intolerable suffering.

Major climate tipping points

Even if we assume that carbon removal and even geoengineering technologies can be deployed in time, there is a very large problem with the plan to overshoot 1.5°C and then lower temperatures later: tipping points.

The science of tipping points is rapidly advancing. Late last year one of us (James Dyke) along with over 200 academics from around the world was involved in the production of the Global Tipping Points Report. This was a review of the latest science about where tipping points in the climate system may be, as well as exploring how social systems can undertake rapid change (in the direction that we want) thereby producing positive tipping points. Within the report’s 350 pages is abundant evidence that the overshoot approach is an extraordinarily dangerous gamble with the future of humanity. Some tipping points have the potential to cause global havoc.

The melt of permafrost could release billions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and supercharge human-caused climate change. Fortunately, this seems unlikely under the current warming. Unfortunately, the chance that ocean currents in the North Atlantic could collapse may be much higher than previously thought. If that were to materialise, weather systems across the world, but in particular in Europe and North America, would be thrown into chaos. Beyond 1.5°C, warm water coral reefs are heading towards annihilation. The latest science concludes that by 2°C global reefs would be reduced by 99%. The devastating bleaching event unfolding across the Great Barrier Reef follows multiple mass mortality events. To say we are witnessing one of the world’s greatest biological wonders die is insufficient. We are knowingly killing it.

We may have even already passed some major climate tipping points. The Earth has two great ice sheets, Antarctica, and Greenland. Both are disappearing as a consequence of climate change. Between 2016 and 2020, the Greenland ice sheet lost on average 372 billion tons of ice a year. The current best assessment of when a tipping point could be reached for the Greenland ice sheet is around 1.5°C.

This does not mean that the Greenland ice sheet will suddenly collapse if warming exceeds that level. There is so much ice (some 2,800 trillion tons) that it would take centuries for all of it to melt over which time sea levels would rise seven metres. If global temperatures could be brought back down after a tipping point, then maybe the ice sheet could be stabilised. We just cannot say with any certainty that such a recovery would be possible. While we struggle with the science, 30 million tons of ice is melting across Greenland every hour on average.

The take home message from research on these and other tipping points is that further warming accelerates us towards catastrophe. Important science, but is anyone listening?

It’s five minutes to midnight…again

We know we must urgently act on climate change because we are repeatedly told that time is running out. In 2015, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the UN special adviser and director of The Earth Institute, declared:

The time has finally arrived – we’ve been talking about these six months for many years but we’re now here. This is certainly our generation’s best chance to get on track.

In 2019 (then) Prince Charles gave a speech in which he said: “I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival.”

“We have six months to save the planet,” exhorted International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol – one year later in 2020. In April 2024, Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change said the next two years are “essential in saving our planet”.

Either the climate crisis has a very fortunate feature that allows the countdown to catastrophe to be continually reset, or we are deluding ourselves with endless declarations that time has not quite run out. If you can repeatedly hit snooze on your alarm clock and roll over back to sleep, then your alarm clock is not working.

Or there is another possibility. Stressing that we have very little time to act is intended to focus attention on climate negotiations. It’s part of a wider attempt to not just wake people up to the impending crisis, but generate effective action. This is sometimes used to explain how the 1.5°C threshold of warming came to be agreed. Rather than a specific target, it should be understood as a stretch goal. We may very well fail, but in reaching for it we move much faster than we would have done with a higher target, such as 2°C. For example, consider this statement made in 2018:

Stretching the goal to 1.5 degrees celsius isn’t simply about speeding up. Rather, something else must happen and society needs to find another lever to pull on a global scale.

What could this lever be? New thinking about economics that goes beyond GDP? Serious consideration of how rich industrialised nations could financially and materially help poorer nations to leapfrog fossil fuel infrastructure? Participatory democracy approaches that could help birth the radical new politics needed for the restructuring of our fossil fuel powered societies? None of these.

The lever in question is Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) because the above quote comes from an article written by Shell in 2018. In this advertorial Shell argues that we will need fossil fuels for many decades to come. CCS allows the promise that we can continue to burn fossil fuels and avoid carbon dioxide pollution by trapping the gas before it leaves the chimney. Back in 2018, Shell was promoting its carbon removal and offsets heavy Sky Scenario, an approach described as “a dangerous fantasy” by leading climate change academics as it assumed massive carbon emissions could be offset by tree planting.

Since then Shell has further funded carbon removal research within UK universities presumably in efforts to burnish its arguments that it must be able to continue to extract vast amounts of oil and gas.

Shell is far from alone in waving carbon capture magic wands. Exxon is making great claims for CCS as a way to produce net zero hydrogen from fossil gas – claims that have been subject to pointed criticism from academics with recent reporting exposing industry wide greenwashing around CCS.

But the rot goes much deeper. All climate policy scenarios that propose to limit warming to near 1.5°C rely on the largely unproven technologies of CCS and BECCS. BECCS sounds like a good idea in theory. Rather than burn coal in a power station, burn biomass such as wood chips. This would initially be a carbon neutral way of generating electricity if you grew as many trees as you cut down and burnt. If you then add scrubbers to the power station chimneys to capture the carbon dioxide, and then bury that carbon deep underground, then you would be able to generate power at the same time as reducing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, there is now clear evidence that in practice, large-scale BECCS would have very adverse effects on biodiversity, and food and water security given the large amounts of land that would be given over to fast growing monoculture tree plantations. The burning of biomass may even be increasing carbon dioxide emissions. Drax, the UK’s largest biomass power station now produces four times as much carbon dioxide as the UK’s largest coal-fired power station.

Five minutes to midnight messages may be motivated to try to galvanise action, to stress the urgency of the situation and that we still (just) have time. But time for what? Climate policy only ever offers gradual change, certainly nothing that would threaten economic growth, or the redistribution of wealth and resources.

Despite the mounting evidence that globalised, industrialised capitalism is propelling humanity towards disaster, five minutes to midnight does not allow time and space to seriously consider alternatives. Instead, the solutions on offer are techno fixes that prop up the status quo and insists that fossil fuel companies such as Shell must be part of the solution.

That is not to say there are no good faith arguments for 1.5°C. But being well motivated does not alter reality. And the reality is that warming will soon pass 1.5°C, and that the Paris agreement has failed. In the light of that, repeatedly asking people to not give up hope, that we can avoid a now unavoidable outcome risks becoming counterproductive. Because if you insist on the impossible (burning fossil fuels and avoiding dangerous climate change), then you must invoke miracles. And there is an entire fossil fuel industry quite desperate to sell such miracles in the form of CCS.

Four suggestions

Humanity has enough problems right now, what we need are solutions. This is the response we sometimes get when we argue that there are fundamental problems with the net zero concept and the Paris agreement. It can be summed up with the simple question: so what’s your suggestion? Below we offer four.

1. Leave fossil fuels in the ground

The unavoidable reality is that we need to rapidly stop burning fossil fuels. The only way we can be sure of that is by leaving them in the ground. We have to stop exploring for new fossil fuel reserves and the exploitation of existing ones. That could be done by stopping fossil fuel financing.

At the same time we must transform the food system, especially the livestock sector, given that it is responsible for nearly two thirds of agricultural emissions. Start there and then work out how best the goods and services of economies can be distributed. Let’s have arguments about that based on reality not wishful thinking.

2. Ditch net zero crystal ball gazing targets

The entire framing of mid and end-century net zero targets should be binned. We are already in the danger zone. The situation demands immediate action, not promises of balancing carbon budgets decades into the future. The SBTi should focus on near-term emissions reductions. By 2030, global emissions need to be half of what they are today for any chance of limiting warming to no more than 2°C.

It is the responsibility of those who hold most power – politicians and business leaders – to act now. To that end we must demand twin targets – all net zero plans should include a separate target for actual reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. We must stop hiding inaction behind promises of future removals. It’s our children and future generations that will need to pay back the overshoot debt.

3. Base policy on credible science and engineering

All climate policies must be based on what can be done in the real world now, or in the very near future. If it is established that a credible amount of carbon can be removed by a proposed approach – which includes capture and its safe permanent storage – then and only then can this be included in net zero plans. The same applies to solar geoengineering.

Speculative technologies must be removed from all policies, pledges and scenarios until we are sure of how they will work, how they will be monitored, reported and validated, and what they will do to not just the climate but the Earth system as a whole. This would probably require a very large increase in research. As academics we like doing research. But academics need to be wary that concluding “needs more research” is not interpreted as “with a bit more funding this could work”.

4. Get real

Finally, around the world there are thousands of groups, projects, initiatives, and collectives that are working towards climate justice. But while there is a Climate Majority Project, and a Climate Reality Project, there is no Climate Honesty Project (although People Get Real does come close). In 2018 Extinction Rebellion was formed and demanded that governments tell the truth about the climate crisis and act accordingly. We can now see that when politicians were making their net zero promises they were also crossing their fingers behind their backs.

We need to acknowledge that net zero and now overshoot are becoming used to argue that nothing fundamental needs to change in our energy intensive societies. We must be honest about our current situation, and where we are heading. Difficult truths need to be told. This includes highlighting the vast inequalities of wealth, carbon emissions, and vulnerability to climate change.

The time for action is now

We rightly blame politicians for failing to act. But in some respects we get the politicians we deserve. Most people, even those that care about climate change, continue to demand cheap energy and food, and a constant supply of consumer products. Reducing demand by just making things more expensive risks plunging people into food and energy poverty and so policies to reduce emissions from consumption need to go beyond market-based approaches. The cost of living crisis is not separate from the climate and ecological crisis. They demand that we radically rethink how our economies and societies function, and whose interests they serve.

To return to the boiling frog predicament at the start, it’s high time for us to jump out of the pot. You have to wonder why we did not start decades ago. It’s here that the analogy offers valuable insights into net zero and the Paris agreement. Because the boiling frog story as typically told misses out a crucial fact. Regular frogs are not stupid. While they will happily sit in slowly warming water, they will attempt to escape once it becomes uncomfortable. The parable as told today is based on experiments at the end of the 19th century that involved frogs that had been “pithed” – a metal rod had been inserted into their skulls that destroyed their higher brain functioning. These radically lobotomised frogs would indeed float inert in water that was cooking them alive.

Promises of net zero and recovery from overshoot are keeping us from struggling to safety. They assure us nothing too drastic needs to happen just yet. Be patient, relax. Meanwhile the planet burns and we see any sort of sustainable future go up in smoke.

Owning up to the failures of climate change policy doesn’t mean giving up. It means accepting the consequences of getting things wrong, and not making the same mistakes. We must plan routes to safe and just futures from where we are, rather where we would wish to be. The time has come to leap.

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James Dyke, Associate Professor in Earth System Science, University of Exeter; Robert Watson, Emeritus Professor in Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, and Wolfgang Knorr, Senior Research Scientist, Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘Monumental Victory’: Norway Halts Plans for Deep-Sea Mining

by DGR News Service | Dec 27, 2024 | Lobbying, NEWS

By Olivia Rosane is a staff writer for Common Dreams from Dec 02, 2024

Environmental organizations cheered as Norway’s controversial plans to move forward with deep-sea mining in the vulnerable Arctic Ocean were iced on Sunday.

The pause was won in Norway’s parliament by the small Socialist Left (SV) Party in exchange for its support in passing the government’s 2025 budget.

“Today marks a monumental victory for the ocean, as the SV Party in Norway has successfully blocked the controversial plan to issue deep-sea mining licenses for the country’s extended continental shelf in the Arctic,” Steve Trent, CEO and founder of the Environmental Justice Foundation, said in a statement. “This decision is a testament to the power of principled, courageous political action, and it is a moment to celebrate for environmental advocates, ocean ecosystems, and future generations alike.”

Norway sparked outrage in January when its parliament voted to allow deep-sea mining exploration in a swath of its Arctic waters larger than the United Kingdom. Scientists have warned that mining the Arctic seabed could disturb unique hydrothermal vent ecosystems and even drive species to extinction before scientists have a chance to study them. It would also put additional pressure on all levels of Arctic Ocean life—from plankton to marine mammals—at a time when they are already feeling the impacts of rising temperatures and ocean acidification due to the burning of fossil fuels.

“The Arctic Ocean is one of the last pristine frontiers on Earth, and its fragile ecosystems are already under significant stress from the climate crisis,” Trent said. “The idea of subjecting these waters to the destructive, needless practice of deep-sea mining was a grave threat, not only to the marine life depending on them but to the global community as a whole.”

“Thankfully, this shortsighted and harmful plan has been halted, marking a clear victory in the ongoing fight to protect our planet’s blue beating heart,” Trent continued.

In June, Norway announced that it would grant the first exploratory mining licenses in early 2025. However, this has been put on hold by the agreement with the SV Party.

“This puts a stop to the plans to start deep-sea mining until the end of the government’s term,” party leader Kirsti Bergstø said, as The Guardian reported.

Norway next holds parliamentary elections in September 2025, so no licenses will be approved before then.

The move comes amid widespread opposition to deep-sea mining in Norway and beyond. A total of 32 countries and 911 marine scientistshave called for a global moratorium on the practice. More than 100 E.U. parliamentarians wrote a letter opposing Norway’s plans specifically, and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has sued to stop them.

“This is a major and important environmental victory!” WWF-Norway CEO Karoline Andaur said in a statement. “SV has stopped the process for deep seabed mining, giving Norway a unique opportunity to save its international ocean reputation and gain the necessary knowledge before we even consider mining the planet’s last untouched wilderness.”

Haldis Tjeldflaat Helle, the deep-sea mining campaigner at Greenpeace Nordic, called the decision “a huge win.”

“After hard work from activists, environmentalists, scientists, and fishermen, we have secured a historic win for ocean protection, as the opening process for deep-sea mining in Norway has been stopped,” Helle said in a statement. “The wave of protests against deep-sea mining is growing. We will not let this industry destroy the unique life in the deep sea, not in the Arctic nor anywhere else.”

However, Norway’s Arctic waters are not entirely safe yet.

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, of the Labour Party, toldTV2, on Sunday, “This will be a postponement.”

The government said that other work to begin the process of deep-sea mining, such as drafting regulations and conducting environmental impact surveys, would move forward. Norway is currently governed by the Labour and Center parties. The two parties leading in polls for September’s elections—the Conservatives and Progress Party—also both back deep-sea mining, according toReuters.

“If a new government attempts to reopen the licensing round we will fight relentlessly against it,” Frode Pleym, who leads Greenpeace Norway, told Reuters.

Other environmental groups tempered their celebrations with calls for further action.

Trent of the Environmental Justice Foundation said that “while today is a cause for celebration, this victory must not be seen as the end of the struggle.”

“We urge Norway’s government, and all responsible global actors, to make this a lasting victory by enshrining protections for the Arctic Ocean and its ecosystems into law, and coming out in favor of a moratorium or ban on deep-sea mining,” Trent added. “It is only through a collective commitment to sustainability and long-term stewardship of our oceans that we can ensure the health of the marine environment for generations to come.”

Trent concluded: “Today, thanks to the SV Party and all those around the world who spoke up against this decision, the ocean has won. Now, let’s ensure this victory lasts.”

Andaur of WWF said that this was a “pivotal moment” for Norway to “demonstrate global leadership by prioritizing ocean health over destructive industry.”

As WWF called on Norway to abandon its mining plans, it also urged the nation to reconsider its exploitation of the ocean for oil and gas.

“Unfortunately, we have not seen similar efforts to curtail the Norwegian oil industry, which is still getting new licenses to operate in Norwegian waters, including very vulnerable parts of the Arctic,” Andaur said. “Norway needs to explore new ways to make money without extracting fossil fuels and destroying nature.”

Greenpeace also pointed to the role Norway’s pause could play in bolstering global opposition to deep-sea mining.

“Millions of people across the world are calling on governments to resist the dire threat of deep-sea mining to safeguard oceans worldwide,” Greenpeace International Stop Deep-Sea Mining campaigner Louisa Casson said. “This is a huge step forward to protect the Arctic, and now it is time for Norway to join over 30 nations calling for a moratorium and be a true ocean champion.”

Photo by Alain Rieder on Unsplash

Plastic Pollution Pushing Earth Past All Planetary Boundaries

by DGR News Service | Dec 15, 2024 | NEWS, The Problem: Civilization, Toxification

Editor’s note: Major plastic polluters win as the UN Treaty talks conclude without an agreement. Modern lifestyles and practices are intimately entwined with the use of plastics. Our phones, computers, food packaging, clothes, and even renewable energy technologies, such as wind turbine blades and the cables that connect them to the power grid, are all largely made from plastics. Plastics production requires fossil hydrocarbons and this connection continues to grow stronger daily. Powerful oil producers, both private companies and governments of oil-producing nations, were seen as the key impediment to a consensus deal. What will happen next? “Agree to a treaty among the willing even if that means leaving some countries that don’t want a strong treaty or concede to countries that will likely never join the treaty anyway, failing the planet in the process.”

“Plastic has been found everywhere on Earth — from deepest oceans to high mountains, in clouds and pole to pole. Microplastics have also been found in every place scientists look for them in the human body, from the brain to the testes, breast milk, and artery plaque. Microplastics pose health risks to humans and wildlife, researchers warn.” PFAS(perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances) – “forever chemicals” contaminate biosolids(waste from sewage) used as fertilizer and pesticides, they also contain heavy metals and nitrates.

Today’s cheerleaders for increased birth rates are well aware of the silent cause of the ongoing rapid decline in male sperm counts. It’s the very industries these corporate managers run and governments regulate that is the blame. So you can be almost 100 percent sure that they are not going to address the real problem in order to achieve the goal of increasing human birth rates.

Laws must mandate companies to reduce their plastic footprint through production reduction, product redesign, or reuse systems — higher-priority strategies in the Zero Waste hierarchy,

By Sharon Guynup / Mongabay

Bottlenose dolphins leapt and torpedoed through the shallow turquoise waters off Florida’s Sarasota Bay. Then, a research team moved in, quickly corralling the small pod in a large net.

With the speed of a race car pit crew, veterinarians, biologists and their assistants examined the animals, checking vital signs while taking skin, blood and other samples. They held a petri dish over each dolphin’s blowhole until it exhaled, with an intensity similar to a human cough. Then, they rolled up the net and the dolphins swam off unharmed. A pod in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay was similarly tested.

Generations of dolphins have been part of this ongoing dolphin health study, which has been run by the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program since 1970. It tracks populations and individuals and also looks for health issues related to pollutants in the marine environment.

In the lab, scientists discovered that all 11 of the dolphins had breathed out microplastic fibers, shed from synthetic clothing, says Leslie B. Hart, associate professor at the College of Charleston and an author on this research. The fibers resembled those found in human lungs in previous studies, proving that dolphins, like us, are breathing plastic. In people, microplastic has been linked to poor lung function and possible lung disease.

An earlier collaboration linked phthalates circulating in the dolphins’ blood to alterations in their thyroid hormone levels — an effect also found in humans that can impact nearly every organ in the body. Phthalates, toxic chemicals found in flexible plastics, readily leach into the environment. The full effects on marine mammals remain unknown.

The dolphin studies are part of a larger quest to understand how plastic pollution is impacting the world’s wildlife. While thousands of human studies have demonstrated damage from tiny plastic particles entering both cells and organs throughout the body, little is known about animal impacts because long-term field studies are difficult and costly. “We’re really just starting to skim the surface,” Hart says.

Beyond the threat plastics pose to individual animals and species, other researchers have detected broader, global harm, a new report warns. Plastic pollution is transforming Earth systems needed to support life, worsening climate change, increasing biodiversity loss, making oceans more acidic and more.

The plastics crisis is escalating rapidly: Each year, petrochemical manufacturers make more than 500 million tons of plastics –– but the world recycles just 9%. The rest is burned, landfilled or ends up in rivers, rainwater, the air, soil or the sea. Today, the planet is awash in plastic. “It’s everywhere. It’s pervasive and it’s persistent,” says Andrew Wargo, who focuses on ecosystem health at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

Since the 1930s the polymers industry has completely altered daily life: Plastics are in our homes, cars, clothes, furniture, and electronics, as well as our single-use throwaway water bottles, food packaging and takeout containers.

In 2022, the U.N. Environment Assembly voted to address the plastic crisis by creating a legally binding international plastics treaty in hope of curbing and regulating production. But plastics-producing nations, including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the U.S. resisted progress, influenced by a $712 billion plastics and petrochemicals industry and its lobbyists.

A critically important fifth round of negotiations begins Nov. 25 when delegates hope to hammer out final treaty language for ratification by U.N. member states.

Meanwhile, the natural world is in great danger, threatened by a biodiversity crisis, a climate crisis and serious degradations of planetary systems. Researchers are now scrambling to understand the growing threat plastics pose to the health of all living organisms.

Plastics conquer the world

Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic product ever made, came on the market in 1907. By the 1950s, production ramped up, changing the course of history and revolutionizing modern life. Plastics facilitated innumerable human innovations — and spawned a throwaway culture. Add in poorly regulated petrochemical manufacturing processes and industrial fishing’s plastic gear, and global plastic pollution stats soared.

People have now produced some 11 billion metric tons of plastic. Globally, we discard 400 million tons of plastic waste every year; without controls imposed on overproduction, that may reach 1.1 billion tons within the next 25 years.

It can take 500-1,000 years for plastic to break down, and scientists are beginning to question whether it ever fully degrades. Today, 50-75 trillion microplastic particles litter the seas, according to a United Nations estimate, 500 times more than all the stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Microscopic life in the ocean has been dubbed “the Plastisphere,” with early research finding that even phytoplankton, the food-web base vital to marine ecosystems, is under threat.

Plastic debris was first noticed in the oceans in the early 1960s. For a long time, ecologists’ main wildlife concerns focused on the threat to sea turtles and other marine creatures that ate plastic bags or became tangled in plastic fishing nets. Now, everything from zooplankton to sharks and seabirds eat it and are exposed to it.

Hart emphasizes the problem’s global scope: “Plastic pollution has been found on every continent and in every ocean, in people, terrestrial wildlife and marine wildlife.” It contaminates creatures across the tree of life and concentrates up the food chain, threatening

every living thing, from insects, rodents, rhinos and frogs to clams, whales, snakes, wildcats and a host of migratory animals. Carried to the poles on wind and tide, even Arctic foxes and penguins carry microplastics.

A gannet amid plastic. — Seabirds are at particular risk from microplastics, easily mistaking particles for food. Ingestion causes physical and hormonal damage to cells and organs. Image by A_Different_Perspective via Pixabay (Public domain).

Sources of plastic marine pollution — Image by Alpizar, F., et al. via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Insidious plastic harm to health

It’s well known that animals regularly mistake plastic debris for food. Shearwaters and other seabirds, for example, can choke and starve when plastic pieces block their digestive tracts or pierce internal organs. At least 1,565 species are known to ingest plastic. For decades, scientists have noted dead animals ensnared in plastic nets, fishing gear or six-pack rings.

But those big pieces of petrochemical plastic (along with their chemical additives) don’t decompose; they degrade into ever-smaller pieces, getting smaller and smaller. Eventually, they break down into microplastics, tiny particles no bigger than a grain of sand, or become nanoparticles, visible only under a high-powered microscope. These microplastics can leach toxic chemicals. Of the more than 13,000 chemicals currently used in plastics, at least 3,200 have one or more “hazardous properties of concern,” according to a U.N. report.

Most of what we know today about the health impacts of plastics and their chemical additives is based on human medical research, which may offer clues to what happens to animals; that’s unlike most health research, which is done on animals and extrapolated to people.

We know from human medical research that microplastics can damage cells and organs and alter hormones that influence their function. Plastic particles have crossed the blood-brain barrier. They have lodged in human bone marrow, testicles, the liver, kidneys and essentially every other part of the body. They enter the placenta, blood and breast milk. Exposure may affect behavior and lower immunity.

And what plastics do to us, they likely do to animals. The phthalates found in Florida dolphins, for example, along with phenols, parabens and per- and polyfluoroalkyls, are just a fraction of the many endocrine disruptors released by plastics and their chemical additives that can alter hormone levels and derail body functions. Exposure may affect behavior and lower immunity.

Doctors have confirmed links between plastic and human disease and disability. “They cause premature birth, low birth weight, and stillbirth as well as leukemia, lymphoma, brain cancer, liver cancer, heart disease and stroke,” Phil Landrigan, a pediatrician and environmental health expert stated in a press conference earlier this year.

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals can also interfere with reproduction in humans: They’re partially responsible for sperm counts that dropped to one-seventh of 1940s levels. These chemicals can also damage the placenta and ovaries. Experts think this is likely happening in animals, too, raising serious concern for endangered species already in decline.

In the wild, animals are now exposed daily to microplastics, eating and breathing them, while many freshwater and marine species swim in a plastic soup. But little is known about the long-term impacts of chronic exposure or what microplastics do within animal tissues, with even less understood about what happens when microplastics shrink to nano size and easily enter cells.

There are some data: Oysters produce fewer eggs. Pregnant zebrafish can pass nano-polystyrene to their embryos, while other research showed plastic exposure slowed fish larvae growth rates. Seabirds, including shearwaters, develop “plasticosis,” a newly declared disease characterized by thick scarring in the stomach due to plastic ingestion, which inhibits digestion. Microplastics also damage the heart structure of birds and permeate the liver, muscle and intestines in cod.

In lab experiments, microplastics in the lungs of pregnant rats easily passed to their fetuses’ brains, hearts and other organs. In adult mice, plastic nanoparticles crossed the blood-brain barrier, triggering swift changes that resembled dementia. In a wild animal, cognitive decline can quickly prove fatal, making it difficult to find food, avoid predators, mate or raise young.

In the lab, fish were more susceptible to a common virus after a one-month exposure to microplastic. They then shed more virus (a fish public health problem) and died in high numbers. Surprisingly, “there’s a lot of similarities between fish and humans, so that we have a lot of the same immune pathways,” explains Wargo, an author on this study. However, the reaction depended on the type of plastic. Nylon fibers had the biggest effect; most nylon sheds from synthetic clothing.

Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) carcass — Nearly all Laysan albatross (*Phoebastria immutabilis*) carcasses found on Midway Atoll contain marine plastic debris. Experts estimate that albatrosses feed their chicks approximately 10,000 pounds of marine debris annually on Midway, enough plastic to fill about 100 curbside trash cans. Image by USFWS – Pacific Region via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

One challenge to researching health impacts, Wargo explains, is that “plastics oftentimes are lumped into one category, but they’re [all] very different: their structure, chemical composition, their shape and size,” creating thousands of variations. These factors influence how toxic they are, he says, which likely varies between individual animals and different species. Investigation is further complicated and obstructed by petrochemical companies that zealously guard their proprietary polymer product formulas.

The ubiquity of plastics and their global presence means that polymers likely have many undetected and unstudied wildlife health impacts. Some impacts could be masked by other environmental stressors, and untangling and analyzing the particulars will likely take decades.

What we do know is that the poor health, decline or disappearance of a single species within a natural community ripples outward, affecting others, and damaging interconnected ecological systems that have evolved in synchrony over millennia. Here’s just one speculative concern: We know microplastics can bioaccumulate, so apex predators, which balance ecosystems by keeping prey species in check, may be at high risk because they consume and build up large concentrations of microplastics and additive chemicals in their organs.

Plastics harm wildlife –– and humans –– in additional ways: by polluting the air and contributing to climate extremes. Currently, about 19% of plastic waste is incinerated, releasing potentially harmful chemical aerosols into the air. In addition, plastic production sends 232 million metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere yearly. Then there’s the pollution and carbon released from fracking and drilling operations to source the oil and gas to make these products.

Lastly, the microplastics animals and humans ingest are “Trojan horses.” These tiny particles absorb and carry a wide range of pollutants and bacteria, which then can enter and lodge within our bodies.

Single-use plastic bottles and other throwaway plastic packaging are a major cause of plastic pollution, with many activists and nations calling for a ban. While plastic bottles can be recycled, they frequently aren’t. Also, plastics degrade every time they’re recycled and are usually recycled only once or twice. Image by Hans via Pixabay (Public domain).

Stanching ‘a global-scale deluge of plastic waste’

Climate change and the plastics crisis spring from the same source: The world’s seven largest plastic manufacturers are fossil fuel companies. The U.S. produces the most plastic waste of any country, more than the entire EU combined: 42 million metric tons annually, or 287 pounds per person, according to a 2022 congressional report. It noted that “The success of the 20th-century miracle invention of plastics has also produced a global-scale deluge of plastic waste seemingly everywhere we look.”

Consumers can take small actions to protect themselves and limit plastic pollution by avoiding single-use plastics and carrying reusable bags and stainless-steel water bottles. Disposable fast-food packaging makes up almost half of plastic garbage in the ocean, so cutting back on takeout and bottled water could help.

But realistically addressing the planet’s plastics emergency requires a global paradigm shift that reframes the discussion. Many nations still think of plastics as a waste management issue, but responsibility needs to fall on the shoulders of regulators — and the producers, specifically fossil fuel companies and petrochemical manufacturers.

An international consortium of scientists has stressed the need for “urgent action” in the run-up to this month’s United Nations plastics treaty negotiations, the fifth and hopefully final summit intended to establish international regulations.

The U.S. had been among the largest, most influential dissenters in efforts to limit global plastics production and identify hazardous chemicals used in plastics. But in August 2024, prior to the U.S. presidential election, the Biden administration publicly announced it had toughened its position, supporting production limits, but submitted no position paper. Then, this week it returned to its earlier stance that would protect the plastics industry from production caps.

The plastics treaty summit in Busan, South Korea, beginning Nov. 25 and ending Dec. 1, aims to finalize treaty language that will then need to be ratified by the world’s nations. Regardless of the summit’s outcome, scientists continue to uncover new evidence of plastic’s dangers to humans, animals and the planet, raising the alarm and need for action.

This beach on the island of Santa Luzia, Cape Verde, dramatically illustrates a global problem: a world awash in plastic waste. What it doesn’t show is the breakdown of this debris by wind and tide into microplastics, now sickening people and animals. Image by Plastic Captain Darwin via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Banner: A black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus) forages in a swamp polluted with plastic and other trash. Image by Sham Prakash via Pexels (Public domain).

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