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human impact

Consumerism/Lifestyle

A million bottles a minute: world’s plastic binge ‘as dangerous as climate change’

18th July 2017

From The Guardian: A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20% by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some consider as serious as climate change. The demand, equivalent to about 20,000 bottles being bought every second, is driven by an apparently insatiable desire for bottled water….

Conserve/Resist

Study: The world is facing a ‘biological annihilation’ of species, researchers warn

14th July 2017

From The Independent: Scientists warn in a new study that Earth is undergoing a sixth mass extinction that’s “more severe than perceived.” Not only that, human activity —including pollution, deforestation, overpopulation, poaching, warming oceans and extreme weather events tied to climate change— is to blame for this massive loss in biodiversity, according to the analysis….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Why meat eaters should think much more about soil

3rd July 2017

John Sauven writes in The Guardian: Farm animals that are raised intensively require a staggering amount of animal feed and water. Livestock production occupies the vast majority of agricultural land and is the main reason why nearly 50% of the wildlife we share our planet with has disappeared since the start of the industrial revolution….

ALTERNATIVES

Can we live without progress?

1st July 2017

Kurt Cobb writes: The idea of progress is embedded in the socio-economic system, and we cannot attack carbon emissions without attacking the idea of progress itself. If the progress we’ve made since the beginning of industrial civilization only leads to a complete reversal of all our supposed gains, can we really call what’s happening progress?…

Coral reef in Papua New Guinea's Kimbe Bay. Almost all coral reefs may experience bleaching by 2050

David Doubilet/National Geographic

Conserve/Resist

The oceans can’t protect us anymore—here’s why

27th June 2017

From National Geographic: Our waters have borne the brunt of global-warming for decades, but dying corals, extreme weather, and plummeting fish stocks are signs that it can handle no more. And people are already experiencing direct consequences, such as more extreme weather events, says a new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature….

Bookshelf

‘A reckoning for our species’: the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene

17th June 2017

From The Guardian: The chief reason that we’re waking up to our entanglement with the world we’ve been destroying, Timothy Morton says, is our encounter with the reality of hyperobjects –the term he coined to describe things such as ecosystems and black holes, which are “massively distributed in time and space” compared to individual humans….

Climate Justice Action Network

ALTERNATIVES

What is Eco-Socialism? Who is an Eco-Socialist?

11th June 2017

The determinant element in the concept of eco-socialism is the prefix eco. And that means the rejection of industrialism. A good socialist only needs to rejects capitalism. But to be an eco-socialist one must also reject industrialism as a future perspective for mankind, and agree to a program of de-industrialization (now often clumsily called de-growth)….

Education/Awareness

How plastic took over the world in 50 years

2nd June 2017

Currently, 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in the ocean each year – the equivalent of a dump truck of plastic rubbish every minute. At current rates, by 2050 there will be as much plastic in the oceans as fish. A closer look at the plastic tsunami menacing the world, and particularly, our oceans….

ALTERNATIVES

Why we need ‘technologies of reunion’

9th April 2017

Charles Eisenstein writes: We need a parallel system of technology development that can guide society as conventional systems unravel and conventional technologies fail to adequately address our problems. Imagine a worldwide archipelago of land-based institutions of learning, sanctuaries of alternative technologies of earth, mind, matter, and body that are marginal or absent within conventional universities….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Earth’s ‘technosphere’ now weighs 30 trillion tons, research finds

1st April 2017

CBC News reports: A new report has calculated the total mass of all manmade things-from buildings to cars and computers- to be an astounding 30 trillion tons, seven times more than the total amount of living matter on Earth. It shows the sheer magnitude of the human impact on our planet, which is still growing….

SvitalskyBros

ALTERNATIVES

Marxism, ecology and the Anthropocene: A debate

26th March 2017

Editor’s Note: Last week, Ecologise carried the well-known Marxist scholar John Bellamy Foster’s foreword to a new book, Facing the Anthropocene. In response, noted eco-socialist writer Saral Sarkar posted a comment questioning the usefulness of Marxist analysis in understanding the global ecological crisis. This short piece, first published on Ecologise, is Foster’s reply to Sarkar….

ALTERNATIVES

Bookshelf: Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System

17th March 2017

John Bellamy Foster writes in the foreword: It’s capitalism and the alienated global environment it has produced that constitutes our “burning house” today. Mainstream environmentalists have generally chosen to do little more than contemplate it, while flames lick the roof and the entire structure threatens to collapse around them. The point, rather, is to change it….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

We are addicted to convenience, and it’s fatal both for us and the planet

21st February 2017

Ashish Kothari writes: Convenience is trashing the earth. Unlimited motorised transport, electrical and electronic gadgets, chemicals and packaging for increased shelf-life mean carbon emissions, pollution, chemical contamination, mining. Other species and other people (whose homes happen to be above the mining deposits) are just collateral damage for a society drunk on the technologies of convenience….

CLIMATE CRISIS

The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration

17th February 2017

The Great Acceleration marks the phenomenal growth of the global socio-economic system, the human part of the Earth System. It is difficult to overestimate the scale and speed of change. In little over two generations –or a single lifetime –humanity (or until very recently a small fraction of it) has become a planetary-scale geological force….

Bramble Cay melomys’ is the first recorded extinction of a mammal due to human-caused climate change

Conserve/Resist

Paul Ehrlich: Radical overhaul needed to halt earth’s sixth great extinction

18th November 2016

Growing numbers of scientists have asserted that our planet might soon see a sixth massive extinction— driven by the escalating impacts of humanity. Others, such as the Swedish economist Bjørn Lomborg, have characterised such claims as ill-informed. We argue that the jury is in and the debate is over: Earth’s sixth great extinction has arrived….

The White Rhino - one of many endangered large animals

Conserve/Resist

Report: World on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals by 2020

2nd November 2016

The Guardian reports: The number of wild animals on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, which a new report attributes to an ongoing mass extinction. The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020….

The Bramble Cay melomys is the first mammal recorded extinct due to climate change.

Conserve/Resist

Ecologists are fiddling while our natural heritage burns, says Harvard scientist

21st October 2016

Aaron M. Ellison writes in Nature: Better data will not save elephants, rhinos or any other species. Countless individuals, institutions, governments, and multinational and non-governmental organizations have been collecting, assimilating and organizing such data for decades, essentially fiddling while our biological heritage burns… I suggest three crucial actions that scientists can take, beginning right now….

The White Rhino - one of many endangered large animals

Conserve/Resist

Warning from 40 top scientists: Tigers, elephants may go extinct by 2100

16th August 2016

40 scientists from across the world have recently announced that megafauna – large animals like elephants, lions, tigers, cheetahs, rhinoceroses – will not survive much longer if we don’t act fast. Examining population trends, the scientists said that human activities like deforestation and hunting can wipe out their populations by the end of this century….

Conserve/Resist

Vanishing act: Why insects are declining and why it matters

21st July 2016

Christian Schwägerl writes: According to data for 452 species, there has been a 45 percent decline in invertebrate populations over the past 40 years. So far, only the decline of honeybee populations has received attention, mostly because of their vital role in pollinating food crops. The rest of the insect world has been widely ignored….

Conserve/Resist

The diversity of life across much of Earth has plunged below ‘safe’ levels

15th July 2016

Chris Mooney reports: In an ambitious study representing the latest merger between big data approaches and the quest to conserve the planet, scientists have found that across a majority of the Earth’s land surface, the abundance or overall number of animals and plants of different species has fallen below a “safe” level identified by biologists….