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TOPIC: environment

This Happened

This Happened - March 24: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

The oil tanker, Exxon Valdez, ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on this day in 1989, causing a massive oil spill. The captain, Joseph Hazelwood, had left the bridge, leaving an inexperienced third mate in charge, who then failed to properly maneuver the ship.

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Ratatouille Was A Documentary: A French Philosopher Dives Into The Paris Garbage Crisis

The ongoing strike of garbage collectors in France shows us why we try so hard to hide how much garbage we throw out. As trash piles up in the streets, philosopher Gaspard Koenig reminds us that it wouldn't be so hard to recycle and compost more of it.

-Essay-

PARIS — The strike of garbage collectors can be felt in many cities across France, but it is particularly impressive in the capital, Paris. After just one week, the streets have been invaded by mountains of trash, already estimated at more than 5,000 tonnes.

On some sidewalks, barricades of trash in torn-open bags have piled up above head height. In narrow alleys, the smell is unbearable. Rats are already enjoying an unexpected feast. As we know from Albert Camus’ The Plague, this is not a good sign.

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Confronting Climate Change And The Taliban In Afghanistan

Amid a severe drought, Afghan scientists are asking the international community to engage with the brutal regime.

This past December, a fleet of colorful swan-shaped boats lined the muddy banks of Qargha Lake, a reservoir on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan. The boats’ owner, 50-year-old Shah Maqsoud Habibi, said his business has vanished, along with much of the lake, a once popular weekend destination for war weary Afghans.

Over the past few years, a series of droughts have gripped the country, causing reservoirs and other water bodies to dry up. “If there is no water, there is no business for me, and without work, I cannot feed my family,” said Habibi.

Local residents share similar concerns. “I have lived here for 16 years, and this is the first time I am seeing the lake empty,” said 21-year-old Rashid Samim. For two years, he hasn’t been able to properly water his apple and cherry orchards or his modest potato farm, leading to smaller yields.

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This Argentine Couple Turned A Road Trip Into A Way Of Life, 20 Years And Counting

After years of exploring the continent in a van, a couple from Buenos Aires asks: Should they ever go back to "normal" life?

BUENOS AIRES — Patricia Fehr and Germán de Córdova, a young Argentine couple, began exploring the American continent by van in 2003. They set out from San Nicolás de los Arroyos, near Buenos Aires, with plans to drive from southern Argentina to northern Alaska in a year.

That year turned into five years, and now, with Patricia, 48, and Germán, 56, they're still at it, currently in Mexico.
This modern Odyssey was driven in part by the couple's love of photography and their fascination with indigenous American cultures. Their trip has become an educational adventure for themselves and their now 14-year-old daughter, who has grown up her entire young life on the road.

The couple describe themselves as digital nomads and freelancers, and specifically amunches, which means traveler in Mapuche, an indigenous language in what is now Chile and Argentina. Their daughter is named Inti, which means sun in the indigenous Quechua language.

More than once, they told Clarín, they have parked their "house on wheels" near settlements where, they say, they "faced the problem of communication and were struck by the marginal status ... of people who were the original settlers and guardians of woods and rivers."

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Future
Tyler J. Kelley

Irrational Nuclear Fears Are The Real Risk — Just Look At Ukraine And Climate Change

Greener than renewables, safer than oil and gas, nuclear power is deeply misunderstood — to the detriment to humans and our planet.

-OpEd-

When Russian forces attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, back in March, many watched on in horror.

“By the grace of God, the world narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe last night,” said the United States ambassador to the United Nations the next morning. When power was cut to Chernobyl five days later, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister tweeted that its reserve diesel generators only had a 48-hour capacity and that radiation leaks were “imminent.” And several months later, in an August video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the ongoing occupation of Zaporizhzhia, claiming that “every minute the Russian troops stay at the nuclear power plant is a risk of a global radiation disaster.”

None of these statements were accurate.

Commentators, either through ignorance or willful denial, misunderstood the layers of redundant safety systems built into nuclear plants like Zaporizhzhia. If power from the grid was cut, generators would turn on; if primary coolant was lost, a secondary system would kick in.

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Green
Ginevra Falciani

A Week Of Record Oil Profits — Here Comes The Greenwashing!

The oil and gas sector is counting its billions, and preaching renewables. The math doesn't compute.

-Analysis-

PARIS — It’s been a gigantic week for the “Big Five.” Texas-based Exxon kicked things off, announcing a record $55.7 billion in annual profit. Fellow American oil giant Chevron followed, with $36.5 billion, UK multinational Shell was next with $39.9 billion, joined by London-based BP at $27.7 billion in gains, and to finish the week off in France with TotalEnergies posting its own all-time record net profits of $36.2 billion.

After the industry crisis during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, demand has returned to growth; and the war in Ukraine sparked an energy crisis that has pushed up prices leading to a staggering rise in earnings. The toasts in the corporate board rooms, however, come with the spotlight shining on the oil and gas sector like never before.

The Big Five today stand at the intersection of two of society’s deepest problems: wealth disparity and climate change.

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Geopolitics
Ali Yaycıoğlu

The Earthquake Will Change Turkey’s Future — And Could Tip Its Election

A reflection of what the Feb. 6 earthquake exposes deep problems in Turkish public life over the past two decades, and what we can expect in the coming months and years.

ISTANBUL — We are in great agony. The southern provinces of Turkey have suffered incalculable devastation with two major earthquakes in the Province of Kahramanmaraş.

Thousands of our siblings, children and grandparents, from Adana to Diyarbakır, Malatya to Hatay, met their final fate under wrecked buildings, awaiting to be dug out from the rubble and be buried with love and respect.

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Ideas
Héctor Abad Faciolince

A Writer's Advice For How To Read The Words Of Politics

Colombia's reformist president has promised to tackle endemic violence, economic exclusion, pollution and corruption in the country. So what's new with a politician's promises?

-Essay-

BOGOTÁ — Don't concentrate on his words, I was once advised, but look at what he's doing. I heard the words so long ago I cannot recall who said them. The point is, what's the use of a husband who vows never to beat his wife in January and leaves her with a bruised face in February?

Words are a strange thing, and in literal terms, we must distrust their meaning. As I never hit anyone, I have never declared that I wouldn't. It never occurred to me to say it. Strangely, there is more power and truth in a simple declaration like "I love her" than in the more emphatic "I love her so much." A verbal addition here just shrinks the "sense" of love.

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Ideas
Rohan Banerjee*

Joshimath, The Sinking Indian City Has Also Become A Hotbed Of Government Censorship

The Indian authorities' decision to hide factual reports on the land subsidence in Joshimath only furthers a sense of paranoia.

MUMBAI — Midway through the movie Don’t Look Up (2021), the outspoken PhD candidate Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) is bundled into a car, a bag over her head. The White House, we are told, wants her “off the grid”. She is taken to a warehouse – the sort of place where CIA and FBI agents seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in Hollywood movies – and charged with violating national security secrets.

The Hobson’s choice offered to her is to either face prosecution or suspend “all public media appearances and incendiary language relating to Comet Dibiasky”, an interstellar object on a collision course with earth. Exasperated, she acquiesces to the gag order.

Don’t Look Upis a satirical take on the collective apathy towards climate change; only, the slow burn of fossil fuel is replaced by the more imminent threat of a comet crashing into our planet. As a couple of scientists try to warn humanity about its potential extinction, they discover a media, an administration, and indeed, a society that is not just unwilling to face the truth but would even deny it.

This premise and the caricatured characters border on the farcical, with plot devices designed to produce absurd scenarios that would be inconceivable in the real world we inhabit. After all, would any government dealing with a natural disaster, issue an edict prohibiting researchers and scientists from talking about the event? Surely not. Right?

On January 11, the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), one of the centers of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), issued a preliminary report on the land subsidence issue occurring in Joshimath, the mountainside city in the Himalayas.

The word ‘subsidence’ entered the public lexicon at the turn of the year as disturbing images of cracked roads and tilted buildings began to emanate from Joshimath.

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Green
Apophia Agiresaasi

As Air Quality Worsens, Kampala Citizens Find It Difficult to Breathe

Kampala’s air quality is much worse than globally accepted standards, but several interventions are being instituted to avert its effects.

KAMPALA, UGANDA — There’s something in Kampala’s air. Philomena Nabweru Rwabukuku’s body could tell even before she went to see a doctor. The retired teacher and her children used to get frequent asthma attacks, especially after they had been up and about in the city where there were many vehicles. It was worse when they lived in Naluvule, a densely populated Kampala suburb where traffic is dense.

“We were in and out of hospital most of the time. [The] attacks would occur like twice a week,” Nabweru says.

Her doctors blamed the air in Kampala, which is nine times more polluted than the World Health Organization’s recommended limit, according to a 2022 WHO report. By comparison, Bangladesh, the country with the world’s worst air pollution, is 13 times the recommended limit.

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eyes on the U.S.
Alex Hurst

Eyes On U.S. — When African Leaders Go To Washington, China Is In The Room

-Analysis-

Some 100 of the most important political eyes in Africa aren’t turned towards the U.S. this week — they’re in the U.S. For the first time in eight years, the White House is hosting 49 African heads of state and leaders of government (and the Senegalese head of the African Union) for a U.S.-Africa summit. Not invited: any nation that has recently undergone a military putsch, or otherwise not in good standing with the African Union, like Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Sudan.

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eyes on the U.S.
Alex Hurst

Eyes On U.S. — How White House Climate Action Could Spark A Global Trade War

-Analysis-

When the U.S. Congress passed the Biden administration’s landmark "green" spending bill in August, environmentalists around the world saw it as a very strong — and long overdue — step in the right direction on climate change.

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