#201: How to deconstruct a rainforest

Welcome back, Shit Giver.

Climate change

Can we keep calling it a rainforest if it doesn't get any rain?

The Guardian: “ Rainforests are highly sensitive to changes in rainfall and moisture levels, and fires and prolonged droughts can result in areas losing trees and shifting to a savannah-like mix of woodland and grassland. In the Amazon, such changes were known to be possible but thought to be many decades away.

New research shows that this tipping point could be much closer than previously thought. As much as 40% of the existing Amazon rainforest is now at a point where it could exist as a savannah instead of as rainforest, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.

Any shift from rainforest to savannah would still take decades to take full effect, but once under way the process is hard to reverse.”

⚡️  Take Action: Conservation International is doing work in Amazonia to stop deforestation, including expanding the ever-important Green Zone. Learn about it and throw some bucks their way here.

Clean energy

Banning gas cars is a start. But we need to go all in on equitable micro and public transportation.

Nature Climate Change: “Climate change mitigation strategies are often technology-oriented, and electric vehicles (EVs) are a good example of something believed to be a silver bullet.

Closing the mitigation gap solely with EVs would require more than 350 million on-road EVs (90% of the fleet), half of national electricity demand and excessive amounts of critical materials to be deployed in 2050."”

⚡️  Take Action: great news. The Green New Deal has a radically more equitable and available public transportation sector built right in. Use 5Calls.org to call your Congressperson and Senator and tell them to fight for a GND.

COVID

It's like a game of phone tag except you don't die

CNBC: “ "New York and New Jersey both released Covid-19 alert apps this week, bringing the total to 10 states plus Guam that have published apps using technology from the Apple-Google partnership. Seventy million people, or 21% of the U.S. population, now have access to a Covid-19 app, according to a CNBC analysis using U.S. Census data."

⚡️  Take Action: if you're on an iPhone that has at least iOS 13.7 installed, you can go to Settings--General--Exposure Notifications and turn them on. In order to verify a positive case, you still need an app from your local public health authority, but every little bit helps, fam.

Biology

Well, this bodes well

The Guardian: “Tiny air pollution particles have been revealed in the brain stems of young people and are intimately associated with molecular damage linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

If the groundbreaking discovery is confirmed by future research, it would have worldwide implications because 90% of the global population live with unsafe air. Medical experts are cautious about the findings and said that while the nanoparticles are a likely cause of the damage, whether this leads to disease later in life remains to be seen.

There is already good statistical evidence that higher exposure to air pollution increases rates of neurodegenerative diseases, but the significance of the new study is that it shows a possible physical mechanism by which the damage is done.”

⚡️  Take Action: this just really isn't surprising, if it holds up. Good news: air pollution is one of our most solvable problems. Moms Clean Air Force is working on particulates, smog, methane, and more. Help 'em out.

Food & water

You know what's 300 times worse than carbon dioxide?

Inside Climate News: “Emissions of nitrous oxide, a climate super-pollutant hundreds of times more potent than carbon dioxide, are rising faster than previously thought—at a rate that not only threatens international targets to limit global warming, but is consistent with a worst-case trajectory for climate change, a new study suggests.

The findings, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, underscore the need for strong climate policies that do not focus solely on carbon dioxide, the dominant greenhouse gas.

The study, arguably the most comprehensive assessment of the global nitrogen cycle ever conducted, found that nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions caused by human activities have increased by 30 percent since 1980. Those emissions, more than two-thirds of which come from agriculture, account for nearly half of all nitrous oxide released over the past decade.”

⚡️  Take Action:  holy hell that's bad news. It's the Montreal Protocol to the rescue! What's the Montreal Protocol, you ask? Oh just a thing that successfully banned like 100 other super dangerous things. Read up here.

Where it all comes together

Of course: between 2015 and 2019, top American law firms worked on 10 times as many cases defending a fossil fuel company — as combating climate change.

🔋 Where are all of these electric batteries coming from? Not Venezuela. Venezuela banked it all on oil. And then oil went bye-bye. So goes Venezuela. 🇻🇪

On the other hand, solar-hydro power could...power...40% of the world's electricity. Nutso. ☀️
🇮🇹 Venice has a fancy new sea-wall and for the first time in over a thousand years, it held back the waters. Can it last?

Speaking of heat: hotter days are making it harder to learn, and mostly for Black and Brown kids 📚You know what could help? A National Climate Bank.

We're barreling towards 180 million Americans without water and/or power, during a pandemic, while it turns out our standards for drinking water weren't made for a world where ash is covering the west coast 🚰

🦠 Ahh, context: most of the major diseases/viruses we've been fighting for thousands of years are still around. 🏀 Meanwhile, the NBA defeated COVID -- penned by legendary friend of the pod Brandon Ogbunu.