Written by Christian Ramp and originally published in The Conversation. This article highlights evidence linking reduction in reproduction of the humpback whale and climate change.
Climate change is having a serious impact on the world’s oceans in various ways, ranging from its devastating effects on tropical coral reefs to melting polar sea ice. But until now, it wasn’t known how these changes could be affecting whale populations.
Globally, humpback whales are increasing in numbers following the end of commercial whaling, but the populations in the northern hemisphere are not recovering to the same extent as those in the southern hemisphere. Our new research confirms that a North Atlantic population has shown a significant decline in the number of calves over the last 15 years.
The Gulf of St Lawrence in Quebec, Canada, has experienced major environmental changes as a result of warmer water and a dramatic reduction in sea ice. These changes have knock-on effects for the whole ecosystem where fluctuations at the bottom of the food web can result in decreases in the abundance of species higher up, including the prey of baleen whales such as schooling fish like herring and capelin.
Humpback whales need to feed intensively during the summer to build up the energy reserves to sustain them for the rest of the year while they fast. The Gulf of St Lawrence is an important summer feeding ground for humpback whales that migrate between the cold, productive waters of the North Atlantic and the warmer waters of their Caribbean breeding ground every year.
Disinformation is dangerous. We fight it with facts and expertise
Fewer mothers with calves have been sighted in the Gulf of St Lawrence over the last two decades, so we wanted to investigate if the major environmental changes recorded in the area could be affecting their breeding success.
We collected small biopsy samples of blubber from adult female humpback whales between 2004 and 2018 to measure reproductive hormones, and effectively carry out a pregnancy test. Colleagues at MICS were able to identify these females from their markings and follow the same individuals over several decades. So every year we knew if they returned to the Gulf of St Lawrence with a calf.
There are only a handful of other whale populations in the world that are studied in such detail. We are the first to combine this long-term information collected over 15 years about their calving rates with pregnancy rates to determine how many pregnancies were successful.
We found that humpback whale pregnancy rates were highly variable over the study period, but 39% of pregnancies were unsuccessful. Annual calving rates declined significantly from approximately 40% to 20% over the 15 years. Working with colleagues at DFO, we gathered information on the annual abundance of their prey as well as data on overall environmental productivity.
Our study confirmed that changes in these environmental data were linked to the decline in calving rates.
The probability of observing mother-calf pairs was related to favourable environmental conditions in the previous year, especially with the abundance of herring, one of their main prey. These results suggest that environmental changes in the Gulf of St Lawrence have resulted in declines in herring abundance, and this is negatively affecting the breeding success of the humpback whales.
We believe this decline could – at least in part – be the result of females being unable to build up the energy reserves needed to sustain pregnancy and meet the energetic demands of nourishing their young in years of poorer feeding availability.
Future of baleen whales
It was previously thought that baleen whales could show some resilience to climate change because of their ability to change their migratory patterns, or switch prey species, for example, if the location, timing or abundance of their main prey changed. However, our research shows that their ability to respond in these ways may not be enough to prevent their breeding success from being impacted by environmental change.
Continued monitoring of this humpback population in the Gulf of St Lawrence is required to assess how the observed decline in calving rates will affect population growth and viability.
A study led by researchers at the University of Queensland, Australia, predicted declines in baleen whale populations in the Southern Ocean as a consequence of reduced prey availability such as copedpods and krill, and increasing competition between whale species in response to diminishing food stocks caused by climate change.
Here, together with studies on North Atlantic right whales and Southern Resident killer whales we show that the effects of climate change and environmental variability could be already being felt in northern hemisphere whale populations.
It is possible that other, less-well studied whale populations are also experiencing declines in their breeding success. While it may not be possible to redress the balance in the short term, what we can do now is minimise other potential stressors on these species, particularly human disturbance, and help them to maximise their ability to reproduce successfully.
DGR are grateful to The Conversation and Christian Ramp for highlighting the facts surrounding these circumstances.
In this two part article Sarah describes her experiences of direct action, of insight into the harm caused to mother earth and offers the reader sharp analysis regarding the dominant culture. The second part will be published on the 14th February 2021
My friend Tyler told me he was heading to Minnesota to join Indigenous Water Protectors protesting an oil Pipeline. I felt sad as I could not go. Tyler and I spent 4 months at Standing Rock. The Indigenous led resistance was strong, aiming to protect the sacred from the onslaught of destruction.
I took to Facebook to ask if anyone could go in my place. No one has volunteered (so far). I caught wind of another resistance camp. On January 15th, activists Max Wilbert and Will Falk stationed themselves on public land at Thacker Pass, Nevada, an area that is part of the Great Basin (the largest watershed in North America, spanning much of Nevada and into parts of Utah, Oregon, California, Idaho, Wyoming, and Mexico).
I always say that the alien invasion is already here because we live like homesick aliens visiting and trashing a foreign Planet with no respect for the local customs, not realizing that Earth is our estranged motherland!
For today’s installment of ‘Know the Goddamn Planet You Live On’
In a closed endorheic watershed, such as The Great Basin, water is retained within the area with no water flowing out to other external bodies of water, such as rivers and oceans. Instead the water drains to form seasonal and permanent lakes, ponds and swamps, and relies primarily on evaporation to keep moisture balance.
Max and Will are camped in Thacker Pass to protest the Lithium America’s right to develop a huge Lithium mine. Lithium is a lightweight metal used in the industrial manufacturing of everything from cell phones and laptop batteries to ceramics to high tech military equipment to prescription drugs. The Lithium stores at Thacker Pass, if mined, will mainly be used for making batteries for electric cars, all part of the plan to usher in the transition away from fossil fuels to ‘green energy’.
“Well what’s wrong with that?” you may ask, “Aren’t electric vehicles better for the environment?” “Better for the environment” may be a euphemism for “slightly less horrifically devastating for life on Earth but also may have unknown consequences that could end up being worse for the environment than the original thing that was supposed to be the worst thing ever”. THAT is hard to brand, so just stamp “SUSTAINABLE”!
It may be possible for one woman’s experience of rape to not be as horrific as another woman’s but it is still rape. The U.N. pass an international law saying nuclear weapons are illegal. The majority of nations sign up, but the nine countries known to have nuclear warheads of course did not. The U.S. and Russia are roughly tied with having the most weapons, somewhere around 125,000 between them. The other 7 countries with nuclear weapons have less than 2000 weapons between them. In any case, a small fraction of these weapons are enough to destroy all life on earth.
It is estimated that the amount of Life lost due to Industrial Civilization will already take Mother Earth millions of years to restore. The current trajectory due to industrial civilization could result in life being unable to be restored to full health.
“….would impact nearly 5700 acres—close to nine square miles—and which would include a giant open pit mine over two square miles in size, a sulfuric acid processing plant, and piles of tailings. The operation would use 850 million gallons of water annually and 26,000 gallons of diesel fuel per day. The ecological damage in this delicate, slow-to-heal landscape would be permanent, at least on the human scale. At risk are a number of animal and plant species including the threatened Greater Sage Grouse, Pygmy Rabbits, the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout, a critically imperiled endemic snail species known as the King’s River Pyrg, old growth Big Sagebrush and Crosby’s Buckwheat, to name just those that are locally significant. Also present in the area are Golden Eagles, Pronghorn Antelope, and Bighorn Sheep.”
Sometimes you have to break eggs to make an omelet, right?
Right now all we have is a shit ton of broken eggs and no omelet, all for nothing! Well, except for making a handful of white men extraordinarily wealthy while they build their gigantic metal penises in the form of buildings and towers and missiles. In the process of breaking all these eggs we also broke many of the birds who were laying the eggs, the insects the birds relied on for food, the plants the insects eat, we broke the watersheds that fed the plants. We broke the water that fed the watersheds!!!!! That is right, people…we broke water!
We have been led to believe that when it comes to the environment being damaged the means justify the ends. We are approaching the end and I would challenge anyone to find even a crumb of justification. The “means” turned out to be pretty mean in the end.
Just over 20 years ago there were over 1,200,000 Monarch butterflies counted in California. Last year, there were fewer than 2,000. Butterflies are considered by ecologists to be a strong indicator of ecological health. Rut Roh.
It is estimated that a billion animals died in the Australian fires of 2019.
We are losing species at a faster rate than when dinosaurs went extinct!
I wonder how much longer anyone will be around to record these things?
As Mother Earth’s body is ravaged, we make scientific notes on how she reacts. I think it is safe to say at this point that record keeping is not enough of a motivation to make us stop the torture. We do not realize we’re in the throes of THE END mainly because a false sense of security, being generated by the artificial life support systems we are on. Those who benefit the least from securities are busy surviving. Those who DO have the luxury to think about it need to step up NOW. We cannot keep using fossil fuels to run artificial life support systems nor keep the machines going. The natural life support systems are being destroyed at an increasing rate for short term profit and unnecessary luxuries.
It is time to pull the plug on artificial life support systems and see what happens. The fact is, the plug will be pulled one way or another. If we pull the plug TOGETHER the transition may be smoother as everything collapses. It is likely, we probably won’t voluntarily pull the plug, so get ready for a world of pain…one that lots of people (and non-human beings) are already experiencing.
While at Standing Rock, part of me had to overlook the narrative that stopping these fossil fuel projects included replacing them with “green, sustainable, and/or renewable” energy. I happen to disagree with this Buckminster Fuller quote:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
This quote speaks to the kind of logic driving the push to replace fossil fuels with green energy. The logic says we have to keep using “low carbon” fuels like fracked gas and Nuclear energy as a way to “transition” to the “good, pure, guilt-free, rainbow-powered” fuels. We have bought the false premise that green energy will make fossil fuels obsolete by using a better DIFFERENT model.
The ‘new model’ is an illusion.
Green Energy is a different WAY to power the existing model. Mother Earth is shouting “I can’t breathe!” as the weight of Industrial Civilization’s knee digs into Her back. Switching to “renewables” will still leave us in the same situation. A system that extracts without replenishing, exploits, destroys, creates inequality and degrading human hierarchies. The same system that strengthens patriarchy and reinforces human supremacy over nature, promotes competition and conflict instead of cooperation and peace, that keeps us separated from Earth, from one another and ourselves. This system categorizes us as either master, consumer, or slave.
A sentiment like the Buckminster Fuller one can only come out of a culture that is disconnected from reality, from intuition and our ancestral wisdom. We are no longer standing on the shoulders of our ancestors. We are paving over and trampling on their unmarked graves.
Nature is the model that works!
All this fanfare over Biden returning to the Paris Climate Deal (PCD) can fuck off, it is “too little too late”. It will not be anywhere near enough to make a difference. It does not matter if we return to the Paris Agreement or not. We need to return to the agreement we used to have with Mother Earth! She gave us Life. We promise not to take more than we need. We offer respect, thanks and praise. We need to return to the systems that She set up, systems we arrogantly think we can control/improve. Systems humans have lived within for over 90% of our existence as a species.
We must come to understand that it is not the way that cars are powered that is the problem. Cars are the problem. There is no “sustainable” number of cars. There is no such thing as “good” gas mileage. The reality is that cars are killers. Car culture makes killers out of us. There is no way to live with killers. They must be stopped. Using non-renewable resources in the current infrastructure while we wait for a better solution means we pollute and kill the Earth. There is no “better” to be had within the context of industrial civilization.
Why bother if it’s over?
You only say that because you have been trained to look in all the wrong places for all the wrong points. The solutions being proposed by the system to “save the planet” are moot points. We have just been disconnected from the truth. The point is both painfully obvious and mysteriously elusive.
The point is spiders using electricity to magically fly through the air!
The point is the whimsical Maui dolphin, the smallest Dolphin in the world who never hurt anyone but SOMEHOW there are only about 50 left due to “overfishing”.
The point is that when a tree falls in the forest, other trees keep the stump alive in a process scientists call hydraulic coupling.
We must let go of doing what’s “better” for the environment. What it needed is to completely and immediately stop ALL means of production that is not necessary. This may not happen if we keep believing in money. I remember once seeing this headline in the fake parody newspaper ‘The Onion’ that read:
‘U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion’
We are facing our own death and the death of countless other beings and still, we refuse to face the reality. As Terrence McKenna says,
“The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer.”
Electric and hybrid cars are not the solution to our dying world, this ‘solution’ is not addressing the root problem.
It reminds me of that old children’s book ‘There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.’ Its grotesque imagery is a cautionary tale. To make even one more new car (electric or otherwise) at this point in the collapse of the biosphere is literally insane. The amount of resources, by-waste, and pollution involved in the PRODUCTION of a vehicle is so great that it will NEVER be able make up for the damage incurred by its production.
We must greatly reduce and then eliminate the need for cars by creating localization of every aspect of our lives. We must stop calling alternative sources of energy “renewables”! The lithium mine may result in the land needing hundreds of years to renew. I took some of these roadkill photos while walking from Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 after the BP Oil Spill. The dead animals from my Roadkill photo album did not care if they were killed by 100% renewable energy instead of by gas guzzlers. Walking all day long for 3 months drastically altered my perception of time and space.
I remember reading somewhere how there were some Native American tribes that were very resistant to adopting Horse travel, which was not part of their culture until the Spanish brought horses to the American continent in the 16th century. These tribes strongly believed humans were not meant to travel that fast and doing so would propel our body forward while leaving our spirit behind resulting in a fractured state of being.
I felt this the first time I rode in a car after my long walk had finished. It felt dangerous, I adapted.
Something essential and elemental is missing in environmental activism culture.
I will admit that I am afraid that something might be on the verge of being lost forever. Taking action can be a good way to re-activate what is left of the magic of the natural world and that same magic within us. There are still humans left who are the guardians of that magic, but they are greatly outnumbered. Industrial Civilization is closing in on them by the day. It can’t just be about stopping bad things and bad people, like pipelines and presidents. Western Environmental activism needs to evolve past this. Max and Will are embarked on that next chapter of activism evolution. This evolution must be centered around a brutal obliterating honesty, so sharp that it cuts straight through the fat of hope and the tendons of delusion and muscles of bargaining. Right down to the bone.
If we do not break free from the mental and emotional prisons of Industrial Civilization, we will not be able to get past false diagnosis and solutions. Green New Deal is bogus. We need is a ‘Get Real Deal’. It’s truth telling time. We must admit we don’t always know what the truth is. I used to think solar panels and wind turbines were the answer until I learned more and the truth changed.
The final permits for this lithium mine were fast tracked by Trump before he left office in a way that is more difficult to reverse through presidential orders. It is unlikely Biden would stop it, he already has a “save the environment” token, due to his executive order to halt construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. This will serve as a powerful pacifier for liberals. To highlight this point: we have a MLK Day so we do not need a Malcolm X or a Fred Hampton Day. Plus we would not want to offer a radical view now, would we?
Biden is being lauded for stopping Keystone XL.
This culture greatly praises men for doing the t simplest things. I am aware the Biden administration has suspended new oil and gas leasing and drilling permits on U.S. lands and waters. But only for 60 days. Naomi Klein speaks of the tactic of “Shock and Awe” that the ruling elite uses as a means to wear us all down so we give up. The strategy of “Balk and Stall” (copyright, Sarah Baker) is where those in power make a big deal out of decreeing something to be bad to stall while they figure out how to get out of stopping the bad thing.
“FOR 60 DAYS” the permits will be suspended, says the Biden people. It is the fine print that we must see. The “Balk and Stall” I witnessed at Standing Rock, was impressive, after the Army Core of Engineers announced that the DAPL pipeline construction would have to stop until an environmental impact statement was conducted. The celebrations were so intoxicating that it was as if people could not see the continued construction. Similarly, Trump’s wall is still being built even though Biden said he would stop it! The Cleveland Indians announce they will consider changing the name of their team. I have a name for you: how about the Cleveland Colonizers. Their mascot can be a Smallpox infested Blanket.
I was going to post this essay on Inauguration Day but figured I’d wait until the tranquilizing effects of that patriotism packed lullaby for liberals started to wear off. I didn’t see the entire pageantry of that day, but what I did see was quite spew worthy. There was this overall sentiment of: “Shhhhhh, it’s ok, you just had a bad 4 year long nightmare but everything’s fine now, a Democrat is in charge again, so here’s a glass of water made from the joy filled tears of all the Latin American mothers who have been instantaneously reunited with their children at the border. Now let us get you tucked in so you can go back to sleep and dream about Impeachment hearings and Bernie memes.”
A longtime environmental activist, Sarah lives in Ohio US, she loves writing and refusing to mow her lawn. You can read her article published in the Washington Post here.
This article was originally published on January 13, 2021 in The Conversation, known for academic rigour. The authors fight disinformation with facts and expertise.
Anyone with even a passing interest in the global environment knows all is not well. But just how bad is the situation? Our new paper shows the outlook for life on Earth is more dire than is generally understood.
The research published today reviews more than 150 studies to produce a stark summary of the state of the natural world. We outline the likely future trends in biodiversity decline, mass extinction, climate disruption and planetary toxification. We clarify the gravity of the human predicament and provide a timely snapshot of the crises that must be addressed now.
The problems, all tied to human consumption and population growth, will almost certainly worsen over coming decades.
The damage will be felt for centuries and threatens the survival of all species, including our own. Our paper was authored by 17 leading scientists, including those from Flinders University, Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles. Our message might not be popular, and indeed is frightening. But scientists must be candid and accurate if humanity is to understand the enormity of the challenges we face.
Getting to grips with the problem
First, we reviewed the extent to which experts grasp the scale of the threats to the biosphere and its lifeforms, including humanity. Alarmingly, the research shows future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than experts currently believe.
This is largely because academics tend to specialise in one discipline, which means they’re in many cases unfamiliar with the complex system in which planetary-scale problems — and their potential solutions — exist.
What’s more, positive change can be impeded by governments rejecting or ignoring scientific advice, and ignorance of human behaviour by both technical experts and policymakers.
More broadly, the human optimism bias – thinking bad things are more likely to befall others than yourself – means many people underestimate the environmental crisis.
Numbers don’t lie
Our research also reviewed the current state of the global environment. While the problems are too numerous to cover in full here, they include:
a halving of vegetation biomass since the agricultural revolution around 11,000 years ago. Overall, humans have altered almost two-thirds of Earth’s land surface
about 1,300 documentedspecies extinctions over the past 500 years, with many more unrecorded. More broadly, population sizes of animal species have declined by more than two-thirds over the last 50 years, suggesting more extinctions are imminent
about one million plant and animal species globally threatened with extinction. The combined mass of wild mammals today is less than one-quarter the mass before humans started colonising the planet. Insects are also disappearing rapidly in many regions
85% of the global wetland area lost in 300 years, and more than 65% of the oceans compromised to some extent by humans
a halving of live coral cover on reefs in less than 200 years and a decrease in seagrass extent by 10% per decade over the last century. About 40% of kelp forests have declined in abundance, and the number of large predatory fishes is fewer than 30% of that a century ago.
Major environmental-change categories expressed as a percentage relative to intact baseline. Red indicates percentage of category damaged, lost or otherwise affected; blue indicates percentage intact, remaining or unaffected. Frontiers in Conservation Science
A bad situation only getting worse
The human population has reached 7.8 billion – double what it was in 1970 – and is set to reach about 10 billion by 2050. More people equals more food insecurity, soil degradation, plastic pollution and biodiversity loss.
High population densities make pandemics more likely. They also drive overcrowding, unemployment, housing shortages and deteriorating infrastructure, and can spark conflicts leading to insurrections, terrorism, and war. Essentially, humans have created an ecological Ponzi scheme. Consumption, as a percentage of Earth’s capacity to regenerate itself, has grown from 73% in 1960 to more than 170% today.
High-consuming countries like Australia, Canada and the US use multiple units of fossil-fuel energy to produce one energy unit of food. Energy consumption will therefore increase in the near future, especially as the global middle class grows.
Then there’s climate change.
Humanity has already exceeded global warming of 1°C this century, and will almost assuredly exceed 1.5 °C between 2030 and 2052. Even if all nations party to the Paris Agreement ratify their commitments, warming would still reach between 2.6°C and 3.1°C by 2100.
The danger of political impotence
Our paper found global policymaking falls far short of addressing these existential threats. Securing Earth’s future requires prudent, long-term decisions. However this is impeded by short-term interests, and an economic system that concentrates wealth among a few individuals.
Right-wing populist leaders with anti-environment agendas are on the rise, and in many countries, environmental protest groups have been labelled “terrorists”. Environmentalism has become weaponised as a political ideology, rather than properly viewed as a universal mode of self-preservation.
Financed disinformation campaigns, such as those against climate action and forest protection, protect short-term profits and claim meaningful environmental action is too costly – while ignoring the broader cost of not acting. By and large, it appears unlikely business investments will shift at sufficient scale to avoid environmental catastrophe.
Changing course
Fundamental change is required to avoid this ghastly future. Specifically, we and many others suggest:
revealing the true cost of products and activities by forcing those who damage the environment to pay for its restoration, such as through carbon pricing
rapidly eliminating fossil fuels
regulating markets by curtailing monopolisation and limiting undue corporate influence on policy
reigning in corporate lobbying of political representatives
educating and empowering women across the globe, including giving them control over family planning.
The true cost of environmental damage should be borne by those responsible.Shutterstock
Don’t look away
Many organisations and individuals are devoted to achieving these aims. However their messages have not sufficiently penetrated the policy, economic, political and academic realms to make much difference.
Failing to acknowledge the magnitude of problems facing humanity is not just naïve, it’s dangerous. And science has a big role to play here.
Scientists must not sugarcoat the overwhelming challenges ahead. Instead, they should tell it like it is. Anything else is at best misleading, and at worst potentially lethal for the human enterprise.
Authors
Corey J. A. Bradshaw Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University
Daniel T. Blumstein Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles
Paul Ehrlich President, Center for Conservation Biology, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University
On Friday, January 15th, two activists drove eight hours from Eugene, Oregon, to a remote corner of public land in Nevada, where they pitched a tent in below-freezing temperatures and unfurled a banner declaring:
“Protect Thacker Pass.”
You’ll be forgiven if you’ve never heard of the place—it’s seriously in the boonies—but these activists, Will Falk and Max Wilbert, hope to make it into a household name. One of the activists is Will Falk, a writer and lawyer who helped bring a suit to US District Court seeking personhood for the Colorado River in 2017. He describes himself as a “biophilic essayist” and he certainly lyrical in describing the area where they set up:
“Thacker Pass is a quintessential representation of the Great Basin’s specific beauty. Millions of years ago a vast lake stretched across this land. Now, oceans of sagebrush wash over her. If you let the region’s characteristic stillness settle into your imagination, you’ll see how the sagebrush flows and swells like the ancient lake that was once here. On the north and south ends of the Pass, mountains run parallel to each other. The mountains feature outcroppings of volcanic rock left by the active volcano that was here even before the ancient lake. The mountains cradle you with the valley’s dips and curves up to the ever-changing, never-ending Great Basin sky. During the day, the sun shines down full-strength creating shape-shifting shadows on the mountain faces. At night, the stars and moon shine with such intensity and clarity that you can almost hear the light as it pours to the ground.”
I’ve spent enough time in the Great Basin to attest to its beauty myself: the dramatic ranges, the expansive flats, the gnarled trees, the stiff-stemmed wildflowers, and the lean, sinewy jack rabbits; they are all expressions of endurance in a landscape imbued with the echoes of the ancient. How long ago it must have been, when waves lapped the foothills, yet the shapes they left are unmistakable. The sense is palpable of being elevated, inland, and isolated from the ocean—the waterways here don’t run to the sea, hence the name “basin.”
Austere as it all is, humans have lived in the area for many thousands of years, digging roots, gathering seeds & berries, harvesting pinenuts and hunting game.
These traditions, though assaulted, survive.
To the Europeans seeking fertile valleys to farm or dense forest to cut, the Great Basin offered little to nothing, so most of the folks from “back east” just passed through. But ranching and mining cursed the region since the invasion began, and its grasses were razed and its rocks ripped open. Still, many areas, especially up the slopes, were spared the hammering that befell the tallgrass praries of the Midwest and the old growth forests of the West, which were extirpated to the degree of 95% or more. In fact, some of the last best wildlife habitat in the lower 48 still hangs on in the Great Basin, ragged though it might be around the edges.
Yet it seems the time has come when these “wastelands,” as so many erroneously consider them, will be put on the chopping block for a new kind of exploitation: “green” energy development. Massive solar arrays and huge wind farms have been taking the lead in this latest wave of exploitation, and now mining is being imposed. Not coal for fuel or gold for wealth but lithium for electric car batteries.
The Proposal
Thacker Pass is the site of a proposed lithium mine that would impact nearly 5700 acres—close to nine square miles—and which would include a giant open pit mine over two square miles in size, a sulfuric acid processing plant, and piles of tailings. The operation would use 850 million gallons of water annually and 26,000 gallons of diesel fuel per day. The ecological damage in this delicate, slow-to-heal landscape would be permanent, at least on the human scale. At risk are a number of animal and plant species including the threatened Greater Sage Grouse, Pygmy Rabbits, the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout, a critically imperiled endemic snail species known as the Kings River Pyrg, old growth Big Sagebrush and Crosby’s Buckwheat, to name just those that are locally significant. Also present in the area are Golden Eagles, Pronghorn Antelope, and Bighorn Sheep.
A cultural heritage also exists in this area. In describing the north-south corridor immediately to the east of Thacker Pass, wildtender Nikki Hill says:
“This pass in Nevada is a bridge of great importance. My auntie, Finisia Medrano, would speak of how this was the way one would travel by horse or foot from the wild gardens of Eastern Oregon to continue into Nevada and still be supported, finding food and water for the journey. She would speak of how there was no other real good way to make this crossing, due to a lack of resources in the surrounding landscape. If this is the case for a human, it is the case for all the non human people traversing this area as well. There is so much fragmentation, in landscape, mentality and relations, all stemming from a displaced sense of belonging. How will we know our way back to places, both in spirit and in touch, without threads of continuity to weave together?”
It’s industry vs. ecology once again, and there’s nothing “sustainable” about it for the thousands of creatures who will lose their lives or homes if the mine is allowed to happen.
The reason that Will Falk and his fellow activist Max Wilbert rushed to the site on January 15th was because that’s the day the Bureau of Land Management issued it’s “record of decision,” which greenlighted this horrific project. The BLM considered four alternatives and admitted that it did not choose the “environmentally preferable” one—which was no mine—because it would not have satisfied the “purpose and need”—which was obviously the mine itself. I point this out to illustrate that US land management decisions are primarily made in favor of development not preservation. Typically, what environmental regulations do exist are weak, poorly enforced, and increasingly watered down. Hence, Falk and Wilbert’s decision to take direct action.
This is not the most comfortable time of year to be camped out in northern Nevada, so I admire them for making this choice. Overnight lows are in the teens and twenties at this time of year, and daily highs in the thirties and forties. Snow is possible. But it’s the truth that showing up is often the only way to make a difference.
They sent out a press release on Monday, January 18th, announcing their encampment. Said Falk:
“Environmentalists might be confused about why we want to interfere with the production of electric car batteries.”
Here, Falk is speaking to the fact that over the last twenty years, the focus of mainstream environmentalism has narrowed in on carbon pollution as a central concern, too often to the exclusion of issues like industrial development, technological consumption and other forms of pollution. Specifically, the topic of automobile use has been reduced to a question of emissions when, in reality, cars and car culture are problematic for many other reasons:
Car-related deaths in the US are typically around 40,000 per year, and far more people are injured, sometimes maimed for life.
Cars kill countless animals annually in both urban and rural settings. Whether the vehicle is gas-powered or battery-powered doesn’t make a difference to the poor squirrel, cat, coyote, skunk or deer who is taken out.
Roads themselves demand a tremendous amount of resources for their construction and upkeep. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of carbon in the world.
In rural areas, roads fragment habitat, preventing natural pattern of foraging, hunting and migration.
Car tires contain toxic substances that are harmful to wildlife, and as the Guardian recently reported, Salmon in the Pacific Northwest are being killed by a chemical being washed into rivers and streams by the rain.
City life is made far less hospitable by the quantity, speed, and dominating presence of cars. Streets and parking lots can take up 50% of a US city. Much of that would be better be used for other purposes like pedestrian plazas, green spaces and urban agriculture.
Then there are the cultural aspects of car culture. The car-based suburbs struck a terrible blow to localized communities in the US, breaking up close-knit urban neighborhoods and replacing them with atomized subdivisions, in which each household (now reduced to its “nuclear” form, without extended family) was isolated with a propaganda machine. The “conveniences” imposed on us then ended up having a far higher price tag than advertised, and the resulting consumer culture is now swallowing up the world. From a mental health stand point, the alienation the suburbs inflicted on our society still tortures us to this day.
More subtle, but very real, is the way our perception is shaped by observing the world from inside a metal box at great speed. From a vantage of insulation and separation, other objects—including people—are reduced to mere obstacles. The dehumanization that is imprinted this way doesn’t immediately end when we get out of the vehicle.
Replacing gas stations with charging stations is not going to address any of this. Though the globalized system of extraction that supports all of this is itself running out of fuel, I fear that electric vehicles will only draw out the agony.
Some will argue that electric cars are beneficial regardless of all of the above, because they do reduce emissions while driving, and doesn’t that make them worth it? That’s unclear. The entire calculus must include the damage incurred by lithium mining, and by all the other extractive activities needed specifically for electric cars. The air might indeed be fresher in the city, but at the cost of habitat destruction, pollution and human suffering in another place—in somebody else’s home.
“The biodiversity crisis is every bit as dire as the climate crisis, and sacrificing biodiversity in the name of climate change makes no scientific or moral sense. Over the last 50 years, Earth has lost nearly two thirds of its wildlife. Habitat loss is the major cause. Humans can’t keep destroying important wildlife habitat and still avoid ecosystem collapse.”
Human rights issues are also in the mix. Lest we forget, the US-backed right-wing coup in Bolivia in late 2019 was motivated in part by desire to control the lithium deposits in the Andean highlands, a place of otherworldly beauty. (See “Coups-for-Green-Energy added to Wars-For-Oil.”) Though the Bolivian people have since taken back their government, they experienced violence and suffering in the meantime. Unfortunately, the socialist party returned to power also favors mining the lithium. Their model is Venezuela, where oil profits were used to fund social programs. So, US leftists should take note that overthrowing capitalists does not automatically translate into “green” policy.
As Falk said: “It’s wrong to destroy a mountain for any reason – whether the reason is fossil fuels or lithium.”
The real answer, of course, is fewer cars.
Plenty of activists, academics and planners have been talking about how to do that for years, and there’s plenty of solutions to pick from. What’s been lacking so far is the political will and the vibrant movement needed to force that will.
Nikki Hill further commented:
“The answer to the climate crisis is not ramping up new, more, green energy. This ‘green’ is just a word coloring the vision of insatiable growth, peddled by green greed. The green we need so desperately is the one that fills our hearts with connected wonder with the rest of the living world. And that requires slowing the fuck down.”
Indeed. And as of Friday, January 15th, two activists are camped out in Thacker Pass, Nevada, to slow down—and hopefully stop—that insatiable growth.
Over 90% of the excess heat due to global warming is absorbed by the oceans.
Heat content change in the upper 2000 meters of the global ocean. (Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, January 2021)
Even with the Covid-19-related small dip in global carbon emissions due to limited travel and other activities, the ocean temperatures continued a trend of breaking records in 2020. A new study by 20 scientists from 13 institutes around the world, reported the highest ocean temperatures since 1955 from surface level to a depth of 2,000 meters.The study was published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences on January 13. It concluded with a plea to the policymakers and others to consider the lasting damage warmer oceans that can be caused as they attempt to mitigate the effects of climate change.
“Over 90% of the excess heat due to global warming is absorbed by the oceans, so ocean warming is a direct indicator of global warming — the warming we have measured paints a picture of long-term global warming,” said Dr. Cheng Lijing, lead author of the study and associate professor with the International Center for Climate and Environmental Sciences at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
“However, due to the ocean’s delayed response to global warming, the trends of ocean change will persist at least for several decades, so societies need to adapt to the now unavoidable consequences of our unabated warming. But there is still time to take action and reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases.”
Using a method developed by IAP, the researchers calculated the ocean temperatures and salinity of the oceans down to 2,000 meters with data taking from all available observations from various measurement devices from the World Ocean Database. They found that in 2020 the upper 2,000 meters of the world’s oceans absorbed 20 more Zettajoules than in 2019. By comparison, all human activities use about one-half of a zettajoule each year.
“Why is the ocean not boiling? Because the ocean is vast. We can imagine how much energy the ocean can absorb and contain, and, when it’s released slowly, how big the impact is.”
The researchers reported other effects, such as ocean salinity pattern amplification and more stratification due to the upper layer warming quicker than the deeper sections. Both changes could cause harm to ocean ecosystems.
“The fresh gets fresher; the salty gets saltier. The ocean takes a large amount of global warming heat, buffering global warming. However, the associated ocean changes also pose a severe risk to human and nature systems.”
Cheng noted the 2020 wildfires that ravaged Australia, parts of the Amazon region, and the west coast of the United States.
“Warmer oceans and a warmer atmosphere also promote more intense rainfalls in all storms, especially hurricanes, increasing the risk of flooding. Extreme fires like those witnessed in 2020 will become even more common in the future. Warmer oceans also make storms more powerful, particularly typhoons and hurricanes.”
The researchers will continue to monitor the ocean temperatures and the impacts of warming on other oceanic characteristics, such as salinity and stratification.
“As more countries pledge to achieve ‘carbon neutrality’ or ‘zero carbon’ in the coming decades, special attention should be paid to the ocean. Any activities or agreements to address global warming must be coupled with the understanding that the ocean has already absorbed an immense amount of heat and will continue to absorb excess energy in the Earth’s system until atmospheric carbon levels are significantly lowered.”
