In early 2017, not long after President Donald J. Trump moved into the White House, his chief advisor, Steve Bannon, said that the administration’s aim was the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” A charitable listener might have heard a run-of-the-mill libertarian goal, to downsize the bloated government in order to make room for
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is one of the world’s worst and largest polluters, despite its claims to the contrary. Beijing’s bottomless demand for energy resources race on regardless of environmental impacts or the suffering inflicted on its own people. The entire world suffers alongside the Chinese people, and every nation must
Living organisms respond both to current and previous environments, which can have important consequences on population dynamics. However, there is little experimental evidence based on long-term field studies of the effects of previous environments on the performance of individuals. We tested the hypothesis that trees that establish under different environmental conditions perform differently
A first-of-its-kind study in California has laid bare the staggering scale of pollution from plastic microfibers in synthetic clothing – one of the most widespread, yet largely invisible, forms of plastic waste. The report, whose findings were revealed exclusively by the Guardian, found that in 2019 an estimated 4,000 metric tons – or
Sweden has committed to supporting the efforts of developing countries on emission reductions, climate adaptation, capacity-building and technology transfer. Since 2014, the Government has more than tripled its climate aid to developing countries. Climate financing in 2019 was 20 per cent higher than in 2018. In total, Swedish climate financing in 2019 amounted
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a worldwide disruption. Most people have never witnessed such a global threat, and the world’s leaders have not dealt with a crisis of this magnitude; moreover, Research & Innovation (R&I) teams have little time to invent new pharmaceutical therapies. Nations are trying to implement controlling strategies for avoiding
As recently as 2008 the platform of the Republican Party mentioned climate change 13 times. The GOP acknowledged that the Earth’s warming was caused by human activity, and a commitment was made to reducing the nation’s long-term use of fossil fuels. By the end of President Barack Obama’s first term, however, the GOP
Elections have consequences. Some of those consequences affect our health and that of the biosphere, the thin, living shell covering Earth. Those impacts increased after our last presidential election. The next election will likely cause even more impacts. Early this year, President Donald Trump claimed “nobody could have predicted something like (COVID-19).” Yet
A newly published study is warning that there will be 53 trillion metric tons of plastic pollution in the world’s rivers, lakes, and oceans by 2030. The research, published in Science, found that humanity is on track to put 53 million megatons (the equivalent 53 trillion tons) into the world’s waterways, even if
Over years, mammal, fish, bird, reptile, and amphibian species declined an average of 68 per cent. Latin American and Caribbean populations have seen the sharpest drop, with an average decline of 94 per cent, as well as freshwater species worldwide, which has shrunk by 84 per cent. Wildlife declines are happening here too,