what next: May 2016

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

How plastics are changing the planet | World Economic Forum

Future archaeologists aren’t just going to be digging up old bones: Looks like they’re also going to be sifting though old fossilized plastics.

A review published (paywall) in the journal Anthropocene this month finds plastic has discernibly changed the surface of the planet since humans began using the material in the mid-20th century. They see this as evidence that the Earth is entering what the study’s authors call the “Age of Plastics.”

This chart from the World Economic Forum report The New Plastics Economy Rethinking the future of plastics shows the growth in Global Plastics Production 1950–2014. Data source: PlasticsEurope, Plastics – the Facts 2013 (2013); PlasticsEurope, Plastics – the Facts 2015 (2015).

MORE: How plastics are changing the planet | World Economic Forum

Monday, May 16, 2016

Noam Chomsky: Climate Change & Nuclear Proliferation Pose the Worst Threat Ever Faced by Humans | Democracy Now!

President Obama has just passed a little-noticed milestone, according to The New York Times: Obama has now been at war longer than any president in U.S. history—longer than George W. Bush, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Obama has taken military action in at least seven countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Just last month, President Obama announced the deployment of 250 more Special Operations troops to Syria in a move that nearly doubles the official U.S. presence in the country. As war spreads across the globe, a record 60 million people were driven from their homes last year. Experts warn the refugee crisis may also worsen due to the impacts of global warming. Over the weekend, NASA released data showing 2016 is on pace to be by far the hottest year ever, breaking the 2015 record. Meanwhile, many fear a new nuclear arms race has quietly begun, as the United States, Russia and China race to build arsenals of smaller nuclear weapons. These multiple crises come as voters in the United States prepare to elect a new president. We speak with one of the world’s preeminent intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, institute professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught for more than 50 years. His latest book is titled "Who Rules the World?"

READ:Noam Chomsky: Climate Change & Nuclear Proliferation Pose the Worst Threat Ever Faced by Humans | Democracy Now!

Saturday, May 7, 2016

Ecological bankruptcy | Greenpeace International

There may not be a single large-scale industry or multi-national corporation on Earth that is genuinely profitable if they had to account for their ecological impact. A recent UN-supported report shows that the world's 3,000 largest publicly-traded companies alone caused US$2.15 trillion (€2 trillion) of environmental damage in 2008, that the total cost is much higher, and that companies and communities downstream in the global supply chain are at risk from the environmental impacts.

For centuries, businesses have cheated on this accounting by calling ecological impacts "externalities," presumably not effecting the business. Thus, air and water pollution, toxins in the environment, or eradicated species were deemed "external" and not worth accounting for.

We now know that these ecological costs are not "external," and that if businesses were obliged to account for ecological liabilities, almost no business on Earth would be profitable without dramatically raising prices for consumers...

more: Ecological bankruptcy | Greenpeace International

Monday, May 2, 2016

Feds Rely On Industry-Funded Study To Push For More Offshore Oil Exploitation | DeSmogBlog

...what they say in public rarely matches what takes place behind closed doors.

Less than one day after President Obama tweeted out that message on climate change, David Sirota and Ned Resnikoff from the International Business Times aimed a spotlight at the Obama administration’s hypocrisy in an investigative piece that exposed again the fossil fuel industry's influence over our government. Prior to that, the Public Accountability Initiative had revealed the massive influence that the industry had over the government's assessment of the economic impacts of offshore drilling.

According to the IB Times report, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s recent analysis of the economic benefits of increased offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and on the Pacific Coast near Alaska was funded partly by the fossil fuel industry. The analysis is currently being used by the administration to sell the project to the American public...