Category Archives: Eureka

Can’t eat gluten? Pesticides and nonstick pans might have something to do with it, study says

It seems like everyone knows someone with a sensitivity to gluten — a protein mixture found in cereal grains, like wheat and barley. A third of all Americans say they avoid products with gluten in them, and grocery store shelves are overflowing with gluten-free products that didn’t exist a decade ago.

For roughly 1 percent of the planet’s population, eating gluten triggers a genetic immune response called celiac disease that has wide-ranging consequences. The disease’s symptoms range from mild, like diarrhea, fatigue, gas, to severe. Think nausea and vomiting, osteoporosis, infertility, neurological problems, and even the development of other autoimmune diseases.

The root causes of celiac disease have largely stumped epidemiologists. But a study out Tuesday by researchers from New York University establishes a link between the disease and two groups of manmade chemicals: pesticides and a compound known as PFAS, which is often found in products around the house. It might help explain why some people who are susceptible to celiac disease end up developing it when others don’t. The researchers analyzed the levels of toxic chemicals in the blood of 90 children, 30 of whom had recently been diagnosed celiac. They found that those with high levels of pesticides in their blood were twice as likely to develop the disease.

“Our study establishes the first measurable tie-in between environmental exposure to toxic chemicals and celiac disease,” Jeremiah Levine, a coauthor and a professor of pediatrics at NYU Langone Medical Center, said.

Ben Lebwohl, director of clinical research at Columbia University’s Celiac Disease Center, said the results should be treated with caution. “There are a number of limitations that prevent us from drawing sweeping conclusions,” he said in an email to colleagues on Tuesday. He pointed out that the study only looked at children who had already been diagnosed with celiac. “Children who get diagnosed are likely different in important ways related to health care utilization and socioeconomics, which may be associated with these pollutant levels.”

But Lebwohl said the research added to a growing body of work that suggest that environmental factors increase the risk of gluten intolerance. The study, he said, “mandates follow-up work.”

Levine and the other researchers also tested for toxic chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances found in nonstick cookware and fire retardant and have been linked to multiple types of cancer and other harmful diseases. The study was conducted on subjects under the age of 21 because children and young adults are uniquely vulnerable to chemicals that may disrupt immune function.

They uncovered some surprising results. Young females exposed to higher-than-normal levels of non-stick chemicals like PFAs were five to 9 times more likely to have the disease than children exposed to lower concentrations of those chemicals (women make up a majority of celiac cases worldwide). Young males with elevated blood levels of fire-retardant chemicals were twice as likely to be diagnosed with celiac compared to children with lower levels of fire retardants in their blood.

Some of the chemicals have been out of commission for years. “We found that kids were susceptible across the board to a particular pesticide that had already been phased out of most uses,” Leonardo Trasande, a co-author of the study and a professor of environmental medicine at NYU, told Grist. “That speaks to the fact that we have legacy effects of synthetic chemicals that were used decades ago.”

Trasande said more research and a larger sample size is needed to determine whether those chemicals directly cause the disease and whether they’re linked to other autoimmune disorders. But the study lends more support to those calling for stricter regulation of toxic chemicals and pesticides.

“We do need a more rigorous structure for regulating these chemicals in the first place,” Trasande said.

In the meantime, he suggests a few steps to help reduce exposure at home: Open the windows and use a wet mop to collect organic pollutant dust from furniture and electronics that might still carry flame retardants. Avoid using non-stick pots and pans. Trasande suggests replacing them with cast iron or steel. And finally, avoid athletic wear that’s over-treated with chemicals. “You don’t really need oil-resistance in athletic materials,” he said, “you just need to repel sweat.”

Read more:

Can’t eat gluten? Pesticides and nonstick pans might have something to do with it, study says

Posted in Accent, alo, Eureka, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, organic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Can’t eat gluten? Pesticides and nonstick pans might have something to do with it, study says

Mangrove forests protect coastlines. ‘Synthetic mangroves’ could do the same for cities.

Humans have lots of reasons to thank mangroves. These swampy, stilt-rooted trees store massive amounts of carbon on tropical shorelines, support nurseries for a wide variety of commercially important fish species, and protect coastal areas from storm damage. Besides these benefits for people, mangroves are unique among trees because they thrive in shallow seawater that’s too salty for most living beings to grow in. To better understand exactly how mangroves can grow in the ocean yet pump freshwater up to their leaves, engineers constructed what they’re dubbing “synthetic mangroves”, pressure-driven devices that can draw freshwater out of the saltiest seas — and have the potential to help manage stormwater in cities.

The synthetic mangrove they built resembles a large French press more than a tree, but it has some version of the most important parts of a mangrove: salt-excluding “roots,” a strong “stem”, and thirsty “leaves.” In a real mangrove, the pressure difference between the leaves and the rest of the tree acts like suction on a straw, pulling water up from the roots and through the stem. Natural membranes in the roots filter out the salt. For the synthetic mangrove, the big challenge was getting the fresh water pulled up the “stem” to the leaves without creating bubbles. The team landed on a silica-based layer for the stem and hydrogel for the leaves, and they found that their synthetic mangrove performed just like a real one, even with super-salty water.

Although the design helps engineers better understand how mangroves suck up water while leaving the salt behind, we shouldn’t expect to see fake mangrove forests sprouting up in place of desalination plants — treatment centers that turn saltwater into freshwater — anytime soon. The synthetic mangrove’s elegant pressure-driven desalination process works at small scales, but a large mangrove-inspired desalination plant would foot a hefty energy bill. Instead, the engineers who created the imitation mangrove have another idea for using their wannabe trees: incorporating them into the design of cities to make buildings more resilient in the face of storm surges.

In such a city, “the buildings themselves would soak up excess groundwater and evaporate the water from their walls and roofs,” they write in a recent Science Advances article explaining their invention. Like a mangrove, these buildings would rely on pressure differences to suck the water up, making them self-reliant buffers against storms flooding city streets. At least 30 so-called sponge cities using related technologies already exist in China, and the design may gain traction as storms and storm surges increase in intensity with climate change.

As people continue clearing real, living mangrove forests in alarming numbers, it’s worth remembering that synthetic mangroves don’t replicate all of real mangroves’ benefits. . Mangrove-inspired city design is promising for protecting people from the most extreme effects of storm surges and flooding, but in many places, the best way to do that will be leaving old-fashioned, living mangrove forests intact to do what they do best.

From: 

Mangrove forests protect coastlines. ‘Synthetic mangroves’ could do the same for cities.

Posted in Accent, alo, Eureka, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Sprout, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Mangrove forests protect coastlines. ‘Synthetic mangroves’ could do the same for cities.

STIs can save the planet. No, not those STIs.

The words “climate tipping point” brings to mind collapsing ice shelves, rainforests burning to a crisp, and other irreversible environmental disasters. But what if I told you that not all climate tipping points are bad?

A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences outlines the positive “tipping elements” needed to address climate change — society-wide shifts that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert disaster. Each tipping elements, researchers say, can be triggered by one or more “social tipping interventions” (regrettably abbreviated to “STIs”) — smaller changes that pave the way for societal transformation.

The challenge ahead seems almost insurmountably difficult. Global emissions (which rose every one of the past three years), need to reach net-zero by mid-century in order for the planet to stay below 2 degrees C of warming — the threshold between “bad but manageable” warming and “time to get in the bunker” warming.

But the interdisciplinary team of researchers with backgrounds in earth systems analysis, geosustainability, philosophy, and other fields, say these STIs can keep humanity not just below that threshold, but substantially so. The team surveyed more than 1,000 international experts in the fields of climate change and sustainability, and asked them to identify the tipping elements needed for rapid decarbonization. By aggregating the results, the researchers identified seven interventions that have the potential “to spark rapid yet constructive societal changes towards climate stabilization and overall sustainability.” The biggest takeaway, aside from the fact that there actually is a way (well, seven ways) to avoid climate catastrophe, is that financial markets hold the key to keeping us in the black.

Here are the two interventions that the researchers say can be achieved very rapidly, i.e. within a few years.

Divestment from fossil fuels. If national banks and insurance companies warn the public that fossil fuel reserves are “stranded assets” — that is, resources that no longer have value — companies and people could start withdrawing investments in industries that contribute to climate change en masse, and the flow of money to polluting companies could quickly dry up. We’re seeing the potential of the divestment movement already — BlackRock’s announcement that it’s shedding its investments in coal last week sent a tremor through the financial industry.
Emission disclosures from companies and politicians. People need to know how their actions affect the planet. That means more transparency in things like food labeling — the carbon footprint of a banana, say — as well as corporate and political transparency. Voters need to know if their politicians are bankrolled by fossil fuels, and corporations need to disclose their carbon assets. Once the public can clearly make the connection between their consumer choices and the environment, or their vote and the environment, it could trigger political action and lifestyle change on a massive scale, the study says.

The next two can be achieved in 5 to 10 years.

Decentralized energy. Transitioning to locally controlled power systems, like community solar co-ops or community-owned power plants, could lead the way to total decarbonization. The biggest obstacle at the moment is cost. It’s expensive to move energy generation off the main grid. But as technologies develop and more communities invest in local energy initiatives, those costs will come down.
Green cities. The energy needed to construct and power buildings contributes 20 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. Tweaks to building codes all over the globe, particularly in poor and developing countries, could spark demand for fossil-fuel-free resources and tech, like laminated timber. One of the ways to inspire such a shift would be for governments to make massive infrastructure investments in carbon-neutral cities, which could stand as an example to other cities and have a “spillover” effect on developing urban areas.

Flipping the next switches will take longer — 10 to 20 years.

Subsidies for green power. If governments redirect national subsidy programs to existing green technologies like wind and solar and eliminate tax breaks for fossil fuels, renewables can become more profitable than other fuel sources. “Our expert group believes that the critical mass that needs to be reached is the moment when climate-neutral power generation generates higher financial returns than fossil-based power generation,” second lead author Jonathan Donges said in a statement.
Widespread climate education. If educators incorporated climate change into their curricula it could have enormous implications for students, parents, and public decision-making, once those kids enter the workforce and the voting booth. Mass media campaigns, like the one targeting tobacco companies in the U.S. in the 1970s, can work alongside educational campaigns to trigger social transformation.

The final STI will require upward of 30 years of efforts to take effect.

Moral reckoning. Once humans understand the moral case for ditching fossil fuels — aka the devastating effect of carbon emissions on vulnerable communities and future generations — societal norms could change and fossil fuels could become, in effect, taboo. But in order to achieve this, a majority of social and public opinion leaders would have to “recognize the ethical implications of fossil fuels and generate pressure in their peer groups to ostracize the use of products involving fossil fuel burning.”

All of this may seem a bit far-fetched at first. Will stamping foods with their carbon footprints really persuade shoppers to make more climate-friendly choices? Will teaching third-graders about carbon cycles really inspire them to vote for green politicians in a decade? The cool thing about this study, which incorporates findings from previous climate, health, and behavioral studies, is that the researchers found historical parallels for each of the interventions they recommend. The perceived health benefits of eating organic in the early aughts spurred shoppers to look for that label in the grocery store, boosting the global market for organic products by 10 percent every year. A literacy campaign in Cuba in the 1950s slashed illiteracy rates from 24 percent to 3.9 percent in less than a year. Progress is possible — it’s just a matter of opening the right floodgates.

Source – 

STIs can save the planet. No, not those STIs.

Posted in Accent, alo, Eureka, FF, GE, LG, ONA, organic, Pines, PUR, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on STIs can save the planet. No, not those STIs.

Sweltering heat means 25,000 more babies are born early every year

View article – 

Sweltering heat means 25,000 more babies are born early every year

Posted in Eureka, FF, GE, ONA, Ringer, Springer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Sweltering heat means 25,000 more babies are born early every year

Sea-level rise threatens 13 million Americans. Can FEMA help?

Entrepreneur and presidential hopeful Andrew Yang caught flak at the second Democratic debate in July for saying that the time has come to move Americans living in the path of sea-level rise to higher ground. “You can run but you can’t hide” doesn’t make a particularly good presidential slogan. After all, admitting defeat and letting nature take its course isn’t exactly our first instinct as human beings.

Managed retreat — abandoning areas that become so threatened by sea-level rise that they are, for whatever reason, considered not worth saving — has been a far less popular idea than adaptation strategies like flood gates, levees, and pumps. (Just look at Miami.)

But in many respects Yang’s realism is spot on. If the world keeps burning fossil fuels as usual, between four and 13 million Americans will see their homes inundated by sea-level rise this century. In the future, managed retreat will become unavoidable.

Don’t take Yang’s word for it. That’s one of the conclusions of a new study in Science Advances — the first to evaluate how managed retreat is functioning in the United States on a national scale. The study’s authors analyzed the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s voluntary buyout program — an initiative that allows owners of flood-prone properties to sell their homes and land to local governments, usually in the aftermath of a disaster. The aim of the program is to get vulnerable people and assets out of flood plains and to ensure that at-risk property doesn’t go back on the market so some other unfortunate soul ends up buying a house that floods once a year. So far, a little more than 40,000 people in 49 states have taken advantage of the program. That’s not a lot of households, and the study found that the number of buyouts overseen by FEMA has actually gone down over the past three decades.

By looking at buyouts that occurred between 1989 and 2017, the study’s authors were able to evaluate the way communities are utilizing (or not utilizing) FEMA’s buyout program, what demographics are benefiting from the program, and how retreat fits into a wider climate strategy.

The study took FEMA’s publicly available buyout data, compared it to other data sets, and found that the counties that take advantage of the program on average have higher income and population density than those that don’t. Within those counties, however, the neighborhoods where the buyouts took place were actually lower-income, denser, and more racially diverse. To the authors of the study, these trends signal that not all local governments have equal access to the program. For example, in Harris County, which includes Houston, there have been more than 2,000 buyouts since 1989. But Louisiana, Florida, and Mississippi — the three states that have had the highest levels of property damage from flooding — rank lowest in the nation in state-wide property buyouts.

The study also found that counties are, for the most part, buying up a few properties at a time with FEMA funds, instead of entire swaths — a predictable outcome when buyouts are voluntary. That’s a missed opportunity to restore flood plains and reduce overall risk to the community. To compound the complexity of the issue, FEMA hasn’t done a good job of documenting its own progress — when logging buyouts in its system, the administration neglected to fill out nearly half of the entries. That means that in many cases researchers don’t know what type of residence was bought out, including whether it was a rental or mobile home.

Millions of Americans may have to contend with managed retreat; why have so few taken advantage of FEMA’s program? Part of the reason may be due to the fact that retreating to higher ground hasn’t really been a central part of states’ flood risk mitigation plans thus far. Local governments have long prioritized approaches like disaster assistance and improved engineering. That could change, though, thanks to a perfect storm of factors. “Even places that have not done buyouts to date are increasingly thinking about the combination of hazards,” Katherine Mach, the lead author of the study, said in a conference call with reporters. “In Louisiana, for example, it’s the combination of oil extraction plus reduced sediment supply plus sea-level rise in normal circumstances versus disaster circumstances.” Buyouts will likely be part of the state’s “full suite of responses,” Mach said.

So what happens if Yang’s prediction of devastating sea-level rise comes true? There are 49 million housing units on the U.S. coast and over $1 trillion worth of infrastructure within 700 feet of the coast, says study author A.R. Sider. “If even one-tenth of that needed to relocate, we’d be talking about orders of magnitude larger than we’ve ever done before with buyouts,” she said.

The study’s authors hope their work lays the groundwork for more research on this topic. “One of the questions we’re trying to answer is what the impacts of buyouts are for the households that participate in them,” said Caroline Kraan, another of the study’s authors. “Where do these households move to? Are they better or worse off in the long term?” We know at least one presidential candidate who’s probably very interested in the answer.

Source: 

Sea-level rise threatens 13 million Americans. Can FEMA help?

Posted in Accent, alo, Amana, Eureka, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Sea-level rise threatens 13 million Americans. Can FEMA help?

Some economics nerds just realized how much climate change will cost us

A bunch of economists just put down their calculators and concluded that we should act on climate change sooner rather than later. Really.

For decades, economists have suggested that the government should charge a fee on every ton of carbon dioxide that gets emitted, giving companies a bottom-line incentive to change their polluting ways. The conventional wisdom is that we’d ease into it, starting with a low price — say, $40 per ton — and gradually ramp it up over time.

But according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that prevailing wisdom is backwards. The authors argue that a carbon tax should start out steep, above $100 per ton (and potentially above $200 per ton), rise higher for a few years, and then slowly fall over the next few centuries as people get the whole climate crisis thing under control.

Such a high price would encourage countries and businesses to clean up their act much faster. Part of the reason is that we need to make up for lost time. The implication is that the United States and most governments have waited so long to put a price on carbon that a milder approach just doesn’t make much sense.

“To me the most surprising result of the research was how quickly the cost of delay increases over time,” said Robert Litterman, a risk management expert who used to work for Goldman Sachs, in a statement accompanying the study. His team found that if the world procrastinated on a carbon price by just one more year, the damages from climate change would climb an additional $1 trillion. Waiting 10 years would put the price tag at $100 trillion. In other words, the time to act was yesterday (or, like the 1980s).

No one knows exactly how much our planet is going to heat up in the coming decades. The degree of nightmarishness depends on the amount of greenhouse gases we send into the atmosphere and how quickly and ferociously the planet responds with feedback loops that accelerate warming. The euphemism for this is “uncertainty.”

Because studying the climate is a risky business, the researchers borrowed a model from the world of finance, which is hyper-focused on measuring risk (hello β). Their unconventional model considered the damage climate change would bring to agriculture, coastal infrastructure, and human health in the future. Their takeaway: For something as high stakes as the climate crisis, governments should be trying to avoid the worst outcome at all costs.

“We need to take stronger action today to give us breathing room in the event that the planet turns out to be more fragile than current models predict,” said Kent Daniel, a professor at Columbia Business School, in the statement.

The researchers aren’t the first to recommend this “start high, decrease later” approach to implementing a carbon tax, nor are they the first to propose such a steep price. A landmark report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year suggested that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels would take an array of tough climate policies, including a carbon price of at least $135 per ton by 2030, and perhaps as high as $5,500 per ton.

Around the world, carbon prices are either nonexistent or simply not cutting it. Though more than 40 countries have implemented some sort of carbon price, including Canada, Mexico, and Switzerland, their prices are generally considered too low to be very effective.

Even though old-school Republicans and even some oil companies have publicly called for a nationwide carbon tax, it’s not like voters are clamoring for it. Measures have failed in otherwise environmentally-friendly states such as Washington and Oregon in recent years. No carbon tax exists in the United States, though California and a group of states in the Northeast have cap-and-trade programs that serve a similar purpose. Offering an even higher tax would unlikely help a measure’s odds of passing.

So how to square all this? Perhaps a little wordplay will help. A recent study said that people might be more willing to rally behind a plan to tax carbon if proponents simply dropped the t-word and called it “a fine on corporations” instead.

Link – 

Some economics nerds just realized how much climate change will cost us

Posted in Accent, alo, Eureka, FF, GE, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Some economics nerds just realized how much climate change will cost us

Rising temperatures pose ‘extreme danger’ to Muslims on Hajj pilgrimage

It’s not always easy to have faith — especially when your faith might involve trekking through temperatures upwards of 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

For the world’s estimated 1.8 billion Muslims — roughly a quarter of the world’s population — making a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca is considered a religious duty. Hajj, as the ritual is called, brings millions of people to the Saudi Arabian holy city each year. But according to a new study, climate change could lead to an increase in temperatures and humidity along the heart of the route, putting many devotees in “extreme danger” of developing heat-related illnesses.

“When it comes in the summer in Saudi Arabia, conditions become harsh, and a significant fraction of these activities are outdoors,” Elfatih Eltahir, MIT engineering professor and lead author of the study, said in a press release.

When the Hajj falls in the summer — the timing of the annual migration changes every year due as it depends on the lunar calendar — it may not be safe for participants to remain outdoors during the trip. This year, the Hajj fell in August, and temperatures in Mecca averaged about 109 degrees F (43 degrees C). Saudi officials cautioned visitors that temperatures could reach as high as 122 degrees F (50 degrees C) on some days.

While rising temperatures along the traditional holy route are worrying, Saudi Arabia has some time to prepare for the increased danger. Each year the Hajj occurs about 11 days earlier, so there will only be the occasional stretch of five to seven years where the pilgrimage falls during the hottest summer months. According to the study, the Hajj won’t fall during the summer again until 2047. In the meantime, researchers are arguing for Saudi Arabia to introduce countermeasures or restrictions on participation in the pilgrimage, warning of an even more severe toll on human health. But even with mitigation measures in place, Eltahir says, “it will still be severe.”

“It is time for the Muslim community to become the leaders in the fight, with not just countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan under threat now, but increasingly the holy site of Mecca.” Tufail Hussain, director of Islamic Relief U.K. told Sky News in response to the study.

“If we don’t act now, not only will people suffer the impact of more frequent and intense disasters, but our children born from today will no longer be able to perform the sacred duty of Hajj.”

View original – 

Rising temperatures pose ‘extreme danger’ to Muslims on Hajj pilgrimage

Posted in Accent, alo, Casio, Eureka, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Rising temperatures pose ‘extreme danger’ to Muslims on Hajj pilgrimage

Julián Castro’s Trump-defying plan to save endangered species

Hold your horses, because presidential candidate Julián Castro just came out with an animal welfare plan on Tuesday. The former housing secretary’s proposal may be the first policy proposed by a presidential candidate to highlight the connection between animals, climate change, and extinction (if only because we just learned how bad the extinction situation is about to get). And it arrived on the heels of the Trump administration’s attempt to weaken the Endangered Species Act.

As the effects of the climate crisis — more severe wildfires, floods, and hurricanes — have become clearer, politicians on the left have generally stopped talking about animals under threat and started talking about people at risk. Research indicates that that’s a good thing: Earlier this year, the author of a Yale University study on effective climate change imagery told Grist that the picture of a starving polar bear is pretty much tapped out. After all, most Americans have never even seen a polar bear up close.

But it’s not just charismatic megafauna under threat. A United Nations assessment this spring found that climate change could wipe out 1 million species if left unchecked. Evolution, you see, is hardly a fair match for our fast-warming planet. A new study out on Tuesday from Cornell University shows the climate is changing more speedily than animals can adapt to it. By studying 10,000 climate change papers, a team of international scientists found that normal functions like hibernation, reproduction, and migration are under threat due to shifting seasons and warming temperatures.

Article continues below

“The climate crisis is accelerating an unprecedented decline in biodiversity, threatening not only the future of animals but human life,” Castro writes in a Medium post detailing his new proposal. “Public policy must also confront the consequences of the climate crisis, including the threat of animal extinctions.”

He notes that much progress has been made on the animal welfare front in recent years: California recently established new standards for farming chickens, pigs, and cows. Delaware became the first “no-kill” state this month, meaning that its shelters save at least 90 percent of the cats and dogs that enter their doors (San Antonio, Castro’s hometown, achieved no-kill status a few years ago). But climate change, he posits, threatens to undermine that progress.

In order to make public policy match the scale of the crisis, Castro suggests establishing a $2 billion National Wildlife Recovery Fund aimed at protecting animals from imminent extinction. He also wants to preserve 30 percent of America’s lands and oceans, a first step toward an ambitious 50 percent goal by 2050. How does he aim to accomplish this? The proposal doesn’t say. But Castro does write that he’d appoint a conservation scientist to head up the Department of the Interior to clean up “Trump’s environmental disaster.” He would also double the Multinational Species Conservation Fund — an act approved by Congress that gives grants to projects that benefit elephants, great apes, rhinos, and sea turtles around the world.

One of the Cornell study’s coauthors, André Dhondt at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said Castro’s plan seemed like a good idea. Creating a fund to address the crisis, as Castro proposed, “would help everybody,” he said — people and animals included.

Castro’s plan could be interpreted as a return to old school conservation — using wildlife to hook mainstream audiences, or in this case, voters. But it could also be understood as a foray into new territory. By marrying the climate crisis to the extinction crisis, Castro is paving the way for a more enlightened conversation about conservation among the 2020 Democratic hopefuls, two of whom happen to already be vegan (Senator Cory Booker and Representative Tulsi Gabbard). And not a moment too soon.

“Animals have been going extinct forever,” Dhondt said. “The problem is now its happening faster, or will happen faster, than ever before.”

Original article – 

Julián Castro’s Trump-defying plan to save endangered species

Posted in Accent, alo, Eureka, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Julián Castro’s Trump-defying plan to save endangered species

Boaty McBoatface makes huge discovery about sea-level rise on maiden voyage

View original post here – 

Boaty McBoatface makes huge discovery about sea-level rise on maiden voyage

Posted in alo, Eureka, FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Boaty McBoatface makes huge discovery about sea-level rise on maiden voyage

Lab-grown insect cells could be the planet-friendly ‘meat’ of the future

Read More – 

Lab-grown insect cells could be the planet-friendly ‘meat’ of the future

Posted in alo, Eureka, Everyone, FF, GE, ONA, Paradise, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Lab-grown insect cells could be the planet-friendly ‘meat’ of the future