weird biological news / Unforeseen Consequences

[leashedForLife]

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from the Center for Biological Diversity, QUOTE:

In under two weeks, we'll have used up all the resources the planet can renew in a single year. That means we'll live in debt for the next five months, as our increasing demands drive climate change, drought, pollution, habitat loss, & other pressures on endangered species & the environment.

Earth Overshoot Day comes earlier each year as our population & rampant overconsumption grow. This year, we partnered with the Global Footprint Network to make sure human population growth is part of the conversation. There's a #MoveTheDate pledge dedicated to the issue, & a special-edition Endangered Species Condom design that reads "Before your seduction, think Footprint reduction" that will be given away at Earth Overshoot Day events, & in the U.S. cities with the highest carbon footprints.

LINK: Take action to help push back Earth Overshoot Day, & read on for the latest progress - and obstacles - to creating a more-sustainable world.

For the wild,
- Stephanie Feldstein
Population and Sustainability Director
Center for Biological Diversity

P.S. Today's world population is: 7,637,052,658 humans.
We can still save room for wildlife - spread the word, & share this e-mail.
_________________________________
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We don't have a spare - this is the only planet that's livable, & we need to stop wasting it.

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[leashedForLife]

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SURPRISE!! -
another massive Intl Corporation *knew* their product/s caused harm, & COVERED IT UP.
What a shock!... / Not.

Yet again, like the tobacco industry as a whole re smoking / chewing & cancer, like Dow Chemical, like Teflon, like asbestos, like DDT, like the continuing assault of "pressure-treated lumber" on our global & personal environments, glyphosate had risks well-known to the maker, & they agreed to continue churning it out & selling it, while denying that risk existed.

Am i surprised? - no. P*ssed off, yes; not surprised. This in its essence is the perfect flowering of Capitalism, which believes that the "market" decides everything, & Profit is its God.
Rampant capitalism is destroying our planet, & measuring everything by its effect on the "bottom line" in business is the largest driving factor; if it makes money, do it. If it COSTS money - don't.
Having a conscience costs money - in the view of Corporate Business, or often even Private Business, U can't afford to consider larger Qs such as right / wrong, knock-on effects, pollution, or exposing entire generations to a known carcinogen.

LINK:
The Monsanto Papers

That website includes evidentiary documents from multiple trials; in-house e-mails, memos, in-house research findings, etc, which all prove that MonsLanto lied in its corporate teeth, when they publicly insisted that glyphosate - popularly known as Round-Up!, now the world's most often used herbicide - was "safe", or at least not KNOWN to be un-safe.
*MonsLanto* knew it to be unsafe - but they also knew it was massively profitable, so labeling it unsafe was never considered.

Moreover, at least one upper-echelon EPA official colluded with MonsLanto to quash any questions on its safety & falsely reassure the public.

Ordinary home-gardeners apply this cr*p in their own gardens, on lawns, on weeds in the driveway or sidewalk or patio - & they, their families, their pets, their neighbors, visiting wildlife, passersby who walk along their property, are all directly exposed.
Everyone who eats conventionally-grown produce or grains are exposed; it's in the wind, the soil, the water.
Large-scale ag operations use it by the ton.

Monsanto Bullies EPA on Glyphosate Ruling

Glyphosate now the most-used agricultural chemical ever

In 2016, enuf Round-up had been sold worldwide to put half-a-pound on every single acre of land under cultivation around the globe. // That, of course, includes all the acreage which is organically farmed - & thankfully, more farmers are going organic every year.

Along with stimulating cancers of multiple kinds, glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor.
Precisely what effect it may have on the individual human, or on the species germ plasm, is as yet unknown [& MonsLanto will throw every conceivable barrier, in front of any research that might want to find out.]

Around the world, some countries have banned it altogether; some cities have also issued bans, as have counties, towns, districts, & townships.
Where is Glyphosate Banned? | Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman


California is the only state of 50, in the USA, to put a warning on the label.
This means most USA users, whether home-gardeners with a handkerchief-sized lawn, or farmers with thousands of acres, are utterly ignorant of the risk - for themselves, & for everyone else.


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[leashedForLife]

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New research has found 2 disquieting things specific to humans, per climate change / global warming -
A - it will prompt more suicides, & they've quantified the effect in Mexica & the USA.
B - it will prompt more violence; more murders, assaults, riots, un-civil civil wars, tribal wars, revolutions, etc.


Climate change could drive tens of thousands of additional suicides in North America

for every 1' C increase in monthly average temps, the suicide rate is expected to rise by 0.7% in the U-S, & by 2.1% in Mexico.
Under a "business as usual" emissions scenario, global surface-temps could climb 2.5˚C by 2050 in the U-S & by 2.1˚C in Mexico, estimated to provoke an added 9,000 suicides in the USA, & another 40,000 suicides in Mexico.
One hypothesis:
high temps directly affect mental well-being, possibly as "side effects of thermoregulation". // IOW, blood flow in the brain changes, as the body tries to maintain homeostasis & regulate core-temp.

Hot and Violent


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[leashedForLife]

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So far this year, over 4-million acres of U-S wild lands have burned - mostly west of the Mississippi.

Yosemite is the latest wildfire, & tourists were evacuated for the 1st time in 27 years.
Air quality there is worse than in heavily-polluted Beijing, China.

Despite all evidence, our current nat'l Admin insists "climate change" is a hoax.
That explains the change in rainfall patterns, massive jump in severe weather events, droughts, blizzards, floods, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, hail, & all the damage they cause - IT'S A HOAX.

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[leashedForLife]

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Entire ecosystems across Oz are collapsing under the strain of climate change -

Ecosystems across Australia are collapsing under climate change

Koalas are in serious trouble; individuals & groups are ravaged by an outbreak of Chlamydia & single koala are often attacked by dogs, but drought is taking entire popns out, wholesale.
But ecosystems aren't one species - they're a network of interlocking parts, a complex web of soil, water, plants, invertebrates, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, & even carrion-eaters or dung-feeding specialists.

Ppl used to think all predation was bad, & killed all predators - to eliminate competition for prey species that WE, humans, wanted to eat - but it is now axiomatic that natural predation is far-preferable to human predation, since we want to kill exactly the individuals that Nature wants to keep breeding - excellent adult specimens, "trophy" quality.

the Great Barrier Reef, the largest living organism in the world, & the only natural construction visible with the naked eye from space, is dying.
Mangrove forests stretching along 1,000-km of the Gulf of Carpentaria shoreline are dying back.
Floodplain forests along the Murray River are shrinking fast.
Former kelp-forests have died altogether & been replaced by seaweed turf - or in some areas, by nothing.
Gondwana was extensively burned in 2016, & shows no signs of recovering.
Repeated fires, starting in 2003, have converted enormous areas of former alpine forest to scrubland.

Australia has always had an extreme climate, but many of its native flora & fauna were well-adapted to its heat, cold, aridity, annual floods, & toxic plants [like eucalyptus] - but they can't cope with extreme stressors on top of an already-extreme "norm".

- terry

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[leashedForLife]

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warning from the U.N. -
QUOTE,
"Development gains across the Arab region could be swallowed up by climate change, LINK: a new report from the UN Development Programme has warned.

The local bureau chief said a decade of droughts had brought 'famine & food insecurity, loss of livelihoods & life, & the displacement of millions'."


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