Southern Bookman

Amazon fires a threat to humanity

The Amazon burning looks like the apocalypse.

Fires bringing afternoon darkness to Sao Paulo, 1,500 miles away, were deliberately set, an activist seeking to save the rainforest said on the Chris Hayes show Thursday night.

She said the arsonists were encouraged by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing loon who wants agricultural development of the home of countless species and generator of 20 percent of the world's oxygen.

Hayes pointed out that the Amazon, which absorbs carbon as the world's main barrier against climate change, is now spewing tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

Rather than taking any effective action to stop the fires, Bolsonaro launched a twitter feud with French President Emmanuel Macron, who wants G7 leaders meeting this weekend to discuss action on the Amazon emergency. Bolsarno accused Macron of meddling in Brazilian affairs, while displaying total befuddlement about stopping the conflagration. To him, short-term economic gains take precedence over the world's survival.

While Donald Trump's plan to buy Greenland is fatuous, perhaps the world can purchase whatever's left of the Amazon from Brazil and other countries and make the rainforest a global preserve. Of course, Trump would object, seeing the Amazon as a great place for a hotel and golf course.

In April, Macon vowed to rebuild Notre Dame after the world watched in horror as the ancient cathedral burned. The Amazon can't be rebuilt. Once it's gone, it's gone forever

 

Jay Inslee's exit a blow to Democratic campaign

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee ended his presidential campaign Wednesday night, a serious blow for the Democratic Party.

Inslee based his campaign on climate change as the world's dominant issue, calling for a massive effort to reduce its threat to humanity. An articulate, informed and pleasant campaigner, Inslee presented a range of other progressive ideas.

The large number of candidates in the first two presidential debates gave Inslee less time than he deserved. Lesser candidates such as John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard and the goofy Marianne Williamson received more attention than he did. CNN was especially egregious in silencing Inslee.

Inslee in withdrawing told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that he believed he'd succeeded in making climate change a main campaign issue. On the day after Inslee's withdrawal, Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a major green energy proposal.

But Inslee's loss will weaken future debates and lower the energy needed to defeat Donald Trump.

 

Georgia Health News and WebMD score scoop on toxic chemical's release

A massive public protest has erupted over two suburban Atlanta plants spewing the cancer-causing chemical ethylene oxide into the air.

Galvanized by a report by the online news sites Georgia Health News and WebMD, residents near the Sterigenics plant in Smyrna and the BD plant in Covington packed two public meetings this week and demanded action.

Business-friendly Gov. Brian Kemp moved to halt the companies' toxic releases, while Democratic legislators and local government officials called for the plants to be shut down until further tests can be done.

Founded by my former Atlanta Journal-Constitution colleague Andy Miller, Georgia Health News has been an invaluable source of medical and environmental information for a number of years. It's a pioneering model for nonprofit online news.

The Georgia Health News' success gives hope that nonprofit online news sites can fill the gap in coverage left by the decline in daily newspapers across the nation.

As the public concern ballooned over the ethylene oxide emissions, I wondered what other toxic chemicals stew in Atlanta's air, emitted by vehicles and businesses. Carbon emissions keep rising as climate change advances locally, nationally and globally.

The same level of public outrage over the ethylene oxide releases is required to reduce carbon emissions and stop the worst effects of climate change. So far, most residents in Atlanta and elsewhere have ignored climate change's threat.

 

 

Trump lays waste to Endangered Species Act

The Endangered Species Act is another American institution trashed by Trump.

Passed during the Richard Nixon administration, the act showed that the country cared as much about its natural heritage as it did about economic exploitation. The act protected animals like the bald eagle and Florida alligator that are part of our national identity.

Trump doesn't care. George W. Bush sought to weaken the act, but it survived. The Reagan administration and its anti-governmental philosophy didn't overturn the law. Now the Trump administration will let developers have their way in destroying natural habitat.

As CNN reported, Trump had already tossed aside EPA scientists in allowing an oil and copper mine at Bristol Bay in Alaska. Environmentalists fear the Pebble Mine will destroy the bay's salmon. Trump apparently personally approved the mine after a meeting with Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who cares nothing about his state's natural resources.

The EPA is another Nixon administration legacy that Trump is gutting. The GOP once listed conservation as one of its cornerstones. Beginning with Reagan, the party of Theodore Roosevelt has boosted mining, oil, natural gas and construction over the environment.

But the GOP never fully realized its anti-environmental agenda. It still when politically necessary followed voters' desire to preserve natural areas.

Now, with Trump, the GOP is fulfilling its dream to drill in every natural area, drain every wetland, concrete over every forest and meadow.

The new Endangered Species Act regulations will let developers for the first time present alleged "economic benefits" of a project. To Trump and his cronies, natural habitats have no economic benefits. The economic benefits will be what a developer says they are. That means whatever profits can be squeezed  from a place where wildlife once thrived.

Can Atlanta keep wasting water?

A neighbor watered his lush green lawn Thursday night, just after a new report on the earth's vanishing resources.

Four nozzles sent sent streams from every corner of the yard. Down the street, another neighbor watered his front yard with an old-fashioned back and forth device attached to a hose.

The watering in North Atlanta has tenuous connection to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report that deforestation and poor land use will cause a global food crisis. The New Yorker's Carolyn Kormann produced a full summary, connecting land degradation in Africa to Amazon deforestation.

Poor areas in Africa, Asia and South America will be the most hurt by water scarcity, soil degradation, and once fertile areas turning into desert. Rich countries like the United States will be less affected, although migration from countries like Guatemala, El Salvadore and Honduras will burgeon.

While I understand my neighbors' desire to keep their lawns green, the watering struck me as wasteful. Atlanta had received a heavy rainfall only a few days before. Was the excessive watering necessary?

For years, experts have warned that Atlanta's torrid population growth would threaten its water supply. Georgia, Alabama and Florida have battled for years over Atlanta taking more and more water from the Chattahoochee River. Over the years, Atlanta has undergone severe droughts.

When I covered the Georgia Legislature several years ago, I never heard any mention of climate change or global warming. The Republican-controlled General Assembly and then Gov. Nathan Deal believed economic growth would last forever, and that the state will be immune from global climate changes.

Savannah might sink under rising Atlantic waters, but at least it will have remnants of the port. Jekyll and Cumberland islands will lose beaches. The Chattahoochee will be reduced to a trickle.

As temperatures grow hotter and emissions rise, Atlantans build bigger homes, drive larger cars, and keep watering heir lawns. Some day, the bill will come due.

 

 

A morning walk, as the planet burns

I've been walking in the morning, enjoying cooler temperatures and low humidity in Atlanta.

Those I meet along the way comment how nice it is, compared with the 90-plus days of a week or so ago.

Morning brings hope: The newly risen sun shining through the trees. People walking their dogs. Folks driving off to work.

Meanwhile, in Paris, temperatures rise above 100 degrees. Paris!

In London, insufferable heat has replaced the mild summers of Shakespeare's plays.

A new report in the British journal Nature found that warming is now uniform across the globe. For most of the last 2000 years, warming and cooling have occurred at different places at different times, even events like the Little Ice Age. But now, temperatures keep rising at the same time over most of the globe.

It's a beautiful morning. They used to not seem so rare.

New Orleans, environs threatened by environmental catastrophe

New Orleans again stands on the edge of environmental apocalypse.

The city hammered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 is now threatened by a new storm gathering strength in the Gulf of Mexico. Thunderstorms Wednesday brought massive flooding to the low-lying city, including the French Quarter, which escaped Katrina's flooding.

The tropical storm that will be called Barry is expected to develop into a weak hurricane by the weekend. Hurricane warnings have been issued for the entire Gulf Coast. Barry's threat comes early in the hurricane season. There have only been three July hurricanes historically, all in the last 40 years, according to media reports.

The arrival of Barry comes as the Mississippi River stands at unusually high levels for this time of year. Heavy spring rainfall has raised the river's level to 16 feet at the Carrollton Avenue gauge, according to media reports.

Barry, if hits Louisiana, could bring up to 18 inches of rainfall, swelling the New Orleans river level to 20 feet or more, according to reports. That will put severe pressure on the levees that protect the city, as reported in a New Republic article.

A Corps of Engineers official expressed confidcnce that New Orleans' levees would hold, according to a wire story. But The Times-Picayune Advocate reported that water might overlap levees in the city's lower Ninth Ward, Algiers and St. Bernard Parish.

The threat from Barry comes after an environmentally ominous spring in which Mississippi River towns farther north suffered catastrophic flooding. The turgid Mississippi brought an increase of pollution washing downriver, threatening Louisiana's fisheries, as detailed in a Huffiington Post article.

The opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway an unprecedented two times caused a heavy infusion of fresh water pouring into Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico.

The nutrient-rich chemical, hazardous and human waste carried by the heavy volume of river water led to a profusion of algae in the gulf, forcing the closure of Mississippi beaches. Scientists are also reporting an ominous rise in dolphin deaths, and an expected widening of the dead zone that develops each summer in the gulf.

With Barry gaining strength in the gulf, officials in Plaquemines Parish south of New Orleans have ordered a mandatory evacuation, while New Orleans officials are waiting to see what happens.

The evacuation of Plaquemines brought to mind a notorious historical catastrophe. As the momentous 1927 Mississippi River flood rushed toward the gulf, the levees were dynamited south of New Orleans to ease pressure on the city, as memorably recounted in John M. Barry's definitive book on the flood.

While New Orleans was spared, Plaquemines suffered devastating flooding. The memory of that event, evoked in Randy Newman's anthem "Louisiana 1927," persisted in rumors during Hurricane Katrina that the federal government intentionally blew up the levees around New Orleans so that poor people's neighborhoods would be destroyed to save rich white homes.But affluent Lakeshore neighborhoods also were inundated.

Plaquemines, one of the south Louisiana parishes losing land to the Gulf of Mexico at alarming rates, now hopes to avoid an echo of the 1927 debacle. And New Orleans prays it won't suffer a catastrophe like Katrina.

But even if New Orleans avoids devastation, the long-term threats of climate change and human pollution remain. Extreme weather will become a normal event.

 

Australian "coal hugger" takes unexpected victory

The global battle against climate change suffered another blow with the unexpected re-election of Australian prime minister Scott Morrison, a conservative notorious for his anti-environmental policies.

Goodbye, Great Barrier Reef. Like the Amazon rain forest, threatened by Brazil's hard-right president, you're going down.

Morrison's election had the Wall Street Journal's editorial page chortling Monday. Australian native Rupert Murdoch's newspaper seemed giddy over Morrison's unexpected win over the Labor Party. Polls had consistently predicted a victory for Labor and its anti-climate change policies. A WSJ news story called Morrison a "coal-hugger."

Like Brazil, Australia is a sensitive flashpoint for the world's environment. Its Great Barrier Reef shelters a multitude of oceanic species. The reef's slow death is a barometer of the rapidly intensifying effects of global warming.

Media reports claimed that Australian voters were worried that Labor's green intitiatives would hurt the economy. Voters don't appear to understand the economic devastation of extreme weather, drought, loss of wildlife habitat and other climate change disasters.

The Australian election is another sign that the world is refusing to heed a rising chorus of climate change alarms.

Widespread species extinctions threaten human existence, report warns

The dinosaurs were killed off by a meteor. Now, we are the meteor rapidly destroying life on Earth.

Human activity at its present rate will bring the extinction of a million plant and animal species, according to a U.N. report.

The extinctions are the largest in human history, the report found. Human life depends on the threatened ecosystems, the report warned.

While climate change exacerbates the loss of life, the primary causes come from human activity like deforestation, poaching, and overfishing.

Natural habitat is being lost at accelerating rates. In Thailand, rain forests are being turned into palm-oil plantations, devastating wildlife habitats. The death of coral reefs threatens marine diversity.

The report had a ray of hope. "Through transformative change, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably," concluded Sir Robert Wilson, who led the research for the Intergovernmental Seience-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Such a transformative change will also be required to reduce carbon emissions and lessen the devastation of global warming.

Those sounding the alarm about climate change and widespread species extinctions keep saying that humanity has time to take action. Instead, the world accelerates faster and faster toward disaster.

 

Black hole mission a model for effort required to fight climate change

That black hole image was great.

Now, scientists need to get busy to find a solution to global warming.

As the Event Horizon mission revealed the dark orb's photo from 55 million light years away,  the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that Alaska's March temperatures averaged 20 degrees higher than normal.

A high of 42 degees Farenheit, 30 degrees above the usual, was recorded on March 30 in Kotzebue, according to The New York Times.

Alaska's spring heat wave was the result of the Bering Sea losing its ice and the jet stream shifting to the south, the Times said, adding that the Arctic is experiencing more extreme temperature increases than any other region. That will bring more melting, and an escalating chain of climate change reactions.

If urgent action is not taken soon, climate change will reach its own event horizon, or point of no return.

The black hole image from the Messier 87 galaxy in the Virgo constellation emerged from a global network of telescopes, according to media reports. A young graduate student, Katie Bouman,  played a leading role in a team developing an algorithm to link the telescope data.

Such a concentrated global effort will be required to prevent the worst devastation from climate change.

But the Trump administration's climate change denial, support of fossil fuel industries and budget cuts to agencies like NOAA threaten humanity's future.

A sustained political, economic and scientific mobilization against climate change is needed or else our world will turn as desolate as a black hole swirling in space.