Let's Start the Day With Something Amazing

The Guardian has a collection of classic wildlife photos with the backstory behind each of them.  In a world consumed by the "selfie culture" of photography, it is instructive to realize how much effort goes into seeing nature as it really is.

Cool cat by Isak Pretorius

Building Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria That's Going to Kill Us

The worlds rivers are awash in antibiotics.  Antibiotics were once wonder drugs that saved lives.  They still are today, but our global inability to manage waste is creating an environment where antibiotic resistant bacteria can thrive.  The result will be super bacteria that can't be treated with what were once life saving antibiotics.  

The rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a global health emergency that could kill 10 million people by 2050, the UN said last month.

 The drugs find their way into rivers and soil via human and animal waste and leaks from wastewater treatment plants and drug manufacturing facilities. “It’s quite scary and depressing. We could have large parts of the environment that have got antibiotics at levels high enough to affect resistance,” said Alistair Boxall, an environmental scientist at the University of York, who co-led the study.

Researchers test sites in 72 countries and found antibiotic pollution in 65% of 711 sites tested.  Over 15% of the sites demonstrated antibiotic pollution exceeding levels considered safe.  Rivers in poor countries are the most saturated with antibiotics, creating a situation where those in the most economically disadvantaged areas of the world face the most serious repercussions.  

Botswana Reinstitute Elephant Trophy Hunting

After a five year moratorium, Botswana has ended its ban on trophy hunting of elephants.  Botswana is considered the last haven in Africa for elephants with a population of estimated at 126,114.  The decision to allow hunting to cull herds flies in the face of a consensus of conservations organizations that have raised the alarm regarding a significant and pervasive increase in poaching targeted on breeding age males.  The decision to remove protections for elephants appears to be heavily driven by political considerations - does that remind you the decisions being made in the US?

The narrative that Botswana’s elephant population is exploding and has exceeded the country’s carrying capacity is repeatedly used to rationalise trophy hunting and the ivory trade. Mokaila claimed, for instance, that Botswana’s elephant population was at 160 000, nearly three times the “carrying capacity” of 54 000.

But a scientific aerial survey of northern Botswana – where the country’s elephants are concentrated – conducted in 2018 disputes this. The survey estimated a national population of 126 114, indicating stability since 2014. It also revealed a sharp increase in poaching.    (Credit CAT)

"What We Worry?"

On May 6, the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) issued a comprehensive global assessment on the health of our planet.  It's not a pretty picture.

“The overwhelming evidence of the IPBES Global Assessment, from a wide range of different fields of knowledge, presents an ominous picture,” said IPBES Chair, Sir Robert Watson. “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”

“The Report also tells us that it is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global,” he said. “Through ‘transformative change’, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably – this is also key to meeting most other global goals. By transformative change, we mean a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values.”

Despite the dire warning outlined in the report and the glimmer of hope held out for humanity, if we act quickly and comprehensively, the reports conclusions were largely ignored by the news media - most egregiously so in the United States.  Unfortunately, the report was issued on the same day as a little boy, who became 7th in line for the completely ceremonial role as British monarch, was born.  In the US, a country that tossed off the yoke of a real British monarch, the media coverage of a child who will likely grow up to be a minor celebrity was close to wall to wall.

Media Matters tracked broadcast news coverage on May 6 and found that ABC and NBC's nightly news programs failed to even mention the U.N. biodiversity report. They did, however, air two segments each on Archie. CBS was the only national broadcast network that ran a segment on the biodiversity report that night, and of course it ran one on the baby, too.

The perverse priorities of TV newscasters became even more obvious in the following days. Archie stayed in the news. Biodiversity and climate change stayed out of it.

One US network ABC, actually devoted more time on the royal birth in May than it devoted to climate change coverage through the entire year in 2018.  

US Media Remains Disinterest in Climate Change

Students around the world demonstrated on Friday calling for governments around the world to address the climate crisis.  In the United States, this movement was largely ignored.  US media outlets were much more interested in  broadcasting falsified videos and giving the new cycle to the idiot "president" of the United States who still believes that it's all a "Chinese manufactured hoax."

The student movement to raise awareness of man-made climate change is well underway in Europe and Asia, even as their voting parents keep pulling the lever for right-wing gasbags and fraudsters, much as they did in the United States.

Leaving a wrecked and ruined planet to our childrens doesn't seem like much of a legacy.   Here's a global view of some of the 100s of demonstrations of which Americans are largely ignorant.

Extinction Is Hard Work

I guess humans have to take credit for the efficiency we have developed in driving species to extinction.  In the history of the planet, species extinction takes hard work, even cosmic events.  

For tens of millions of years, Earth's oceans were crowded with 5,000-lb. (2,200 kilograms) turtles, whale-size sea cows and sharks as large as school buses. Then, about 2.6 million years ago, they started dying in droves.

Koch Brothers Fund Anti-electric Bus Propaganda

What a surprise!  The Koch Brothers are worth $120 billion dollars, a fortune built on oil, gas and other extraction industries.  They hate the concept of electric buses for a simple reason, the don't use oil or natural gas as fuel.  So, the Koch are using their network of propagandists to attack electric buses.

Electric buses are replacing existing diesel-fueled fleets at an accelerating rate, and the transition to battery-powered buses is outpacing even the most optimistic projections. In this light, it should come as little surprise that commentators and organizations with ties to the Koch network and the oil industry are attacking a transportation option that yields fewer fossil fuel profits and cleaner, healthier air for people and planet.