"We're hoping that this is a call to everybody to say this species is in decline, and now is our opportunity to help reverse that decline," said one federal scientist.
By Julia Conley
Biodiversity defenders on Tuesday welcomed a "long overdue" move by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service toward protecting the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act—the result, the Center for Biological Diversitysaid, of a lawsuit filed by several groups to safeguard the pollinators and their fragile habitat.
The FWS proposed designating the butterfly as threatened with extinction, four years after monarchs were placed on a waiting list for protection.
"For too long, the monarch butterfly has been waiting in line, hoping for new protections while its population has plummeted. This announcement by the Fish and Wildlife Service gets this iconic flier closer to the protections it needs, and given its staggering drop in numbers, that can't happen soon enough," said Steve Blackledge, senior director of conservation campaigns for Environment America.
Monarch butterflies journey from Mexico each spring to points across the United States east of the Rocky Mountains to pollinate and reproduce. When cooler weather arrives they migrate back to the south for the winter.
But their populations have declined by more than 95% from over 4.5 million in the 1980s, leaving the western monarch with a 99% chance of becoming extinct over the next six decades, according to federal scientists.
The decline has been driven by the widespread use of herbicides like Roundup on milkweed, the monarch's sole food source, as well as the use of neonicotinoid insecticides. Millions of monarchs are also killed by vehicles annually during their migration, and in their winter habitats they face the loss of forests due to logging.
"The monarch butterfly is an iconic North American species and like other such iconic species, including the bald eagle and American peregrine falcon, it too deserves a chance at recovery."
Rising temperatures have also disrupted the monarch's reproduction and migration, with warmer weather tricking them into staying in the north later in the year.
"The species has been declining for a number of years," FWS biologist Kristen Lundh toldThe Washington Post. "We're hoping that this is a call to everybody to say this species is in decline, and now is our opportunity to help reverse that decline."
Western monarchs are down to an estimated 233,394 butterflies, while experts say there are several million eastern monarchs in existence.
"The protections that come with Endangered Species Act listing increase the chance that these precious pollinators will rebound and recover throughout their historic range," said Andrew Carter, director of conservation policy for Defenders of Wildlife. "The monarch butterfly is an iconic North American species and like other such iconic species, including the bald eagle and American peregrine falcon, it too deserves a chance at recovery."
The FWS is also proposing to designate 4,395 acres of the western monarch's overwintering sites as a critical habitat.
If the butterfly's protections are finalized—a process that could be completed by the end of 2025—landowners would be required to get federal approval for development that could harm the monarch.
During his first term, President-elect Donald Trump weakened the Endangered Species Act, limiting the definition of a "critical habitat."
"Today's monarch listing decision is a landmark victory 10 years in the making. It is also a damning precedent, revealing the driving role of pesticides and industrial agriculture in the ongoing extinction crisis," said George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety. "But the job isn't done... The service must do what science and the law require and promptly finalize protection for monarchs."
"A reminder: the U.S. has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy," the 26-year-old accused of assassinating a health insurance CEO reportedly wrote.
By Common Dreams Staff
This is a breaking story… Please check back for possible updates...
A day after Luigi Mangione was arrested and charged as the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein on Tuesday published what he said was the 26-year-old's highly reported on manifesto.
The existence of the handwritten document found on Mangione when he was taken into custody in Pennsylvania on Monday was confirmed by the New York Police Department, and major media outlets have quoted from it, but none had released it in full.
"My queries to The New York Times, CNN, and ABC to explain their rationale for withholding the manifesto, while gladly quoting from it selectively, have not been answered," Klippenstein said on his Substack.
According to Klippenstein—who previously published dossiers on Vice President-elect JD Vance and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the nominee for U.S. secretary of state—Mangione's manifesto reads:
To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has all wed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.
Common Dreams has not independently verified its authenticity.
Klippenstein said on social media that the manifesto he published is "the real one, not the fake one circulating online."
NBC News deputy technology editor Ben Goggin noted that language shared by Klippenstein "matches what NBC has reported here as real."
Earlier on Tuesday, Klippenstein published leaked talking points that UnitedHealthcare reportedly circulated to its employees as the insurance company faces widespread public criticism.
"Under the incoming Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency will likely do even less to mitigate the damage of pesticides, putting even more onus on companies to address the escalating risks," said one climate advocate.
By Eloise Goldsmith
A report released Tuesday from the environmental group Friends of the Earth finds that the U.S. food retail sector's use of pesticides on just four crops—almonds, apples, soy, and corn—could result in over $200 billion worth of financial, climate, and biodiversity risks for the industry between 2024 and 2050. Pollinators, including bees, form a crucial link between pesticide use and these risks.
The report was released in tandem with the group's annual retailer scorecard, which ranks the largest U.S. grocery stores on the "steps they are taking to address the use of toxic pesticides in their supply chains and to support the expansion of organic agriculture and other ecological solutions."
While it highlights some industry leadership on this issue, the authors of the scorecard say that, on the whole, retailer action to curb the impact of pesticides falls short. The following retailers received an "F" grade from Friends of the Earth: Wakefern, Publix, Dollar General, 7-Eleven Inc., Hy-Vee, Walgreens, H-E-B, BJ's, Amazon, and Wegmans.
Although its owner, Amazon, received an F grade, the grocery store Whole Foods was the only retailer that was given an A grade.
A handful of the companies, including Whole Foods, have made time bound pledges to address pesticide use by requiring fresh produce suppliers to adopt ecological farming methods and to confirm their practices through third-party verifications. Eight companies have created policies that encourage suppliers to reduce the use of "pesticides of concern—including neonicotinoids, organophosphates, and glyphosate—and to shift to least-toxic approaches," according to the scorecard.
Friends of the Earth's report on risks associated with pesticide use explains why scrutiny around retailers' use of pesticides is warranted, and why retailers themselves ought to be motivated to reduce these risks.
For one thing, "under the incoming Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency will likely do even less to mitigate the damage of pesticides, putting even more onus on companies to address the escalating risks," according to Kendra Klein, deputy director of science at Friends of the Earth.
"Food retailers must urgently reduce their use of pesticides and advance organic and other ecologically regenerative approaches. They have the opportunity to lead in the fight against biodiversity collapse and climate change, helping to ensure Americans have continued access to healthy food," she said in a statement.
An estimated one-third of world crops rely on pollination, and a little less than three-fourths of fruit and vegetable crops require pollination from insects and other creatures, according to the report. Pollinators are often studied as an indicator for biodiversity risk and general environmental health—and experts cite pesticides as among the reasons that pollinators are in decline. Research also shows that pesticides poise a threat to healthy soil ecosystems.
According to the report, an estimated one-third of world crops rely on pollination, and a little less than three-fourths of fruit and vegetable crops require pollination from insects and other creatures. Pollinators are often studied as an indicator for biodiversity risk and general environmental health—and experts cite pesticides as among the reasons that pollinators are in decline, per the report. Research also shows that pesticides poise a threat to healthy soil ecosystems, the report states.
The report states that 89% of the almond crop area, 72% of apples, 100% of corn, and 40% of soy receives more than one "lethal dose" of an insecticide that is considered toxic to bees. This "quantification of the risk of pesticides to pollinators" for the four crops "provides the values to conduct the financial analysis in this study."
The document details how the food retail industry's use of pesticides creates direct costs for the industry—for example, the money spent purchasing and applying the pesticides, the CO2 emissions associated with using or producing pesticides, and the impact on crop yields, as well as indirect costs.
When it comes to climate damage costs, the report estimates that U.S. food retailer sales for products that include soy, corn, apples, and almonds will suffer $4.5 billion over the period of 2024-50. Biodiversity risk stemming from using pollinator-harming pesticides on those four crops is valued much higher, at $34.3 billion, over the same time period.
"This is yet one more sign, predicted by scientists, of the consequences of inadequately reducing fossil fuel pollution," said one scientist.
By Julia Conley
Permafrost in the Arctic has stored carbon dioxide for millennia, but the annual Arctic Report Card released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a concerning shift linked to planetary heating and a rising number of wildfires in the icy region: The tundra is now emitting more carbon than it is storing.
The report card revealed that over the last year, the tundra's temperature rose to its second-highest level on record, causing the frozen soil to melt.
The melting of the permafrost activates microbes in the soil which decompose the trapped carbon, causing it to be released into the atmosphere as planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane.
The release of fossil fuels from the permafrost is also being caused by increased Arctic wildfires, which have emitted an average of 207 million tons of carbon per year since 2003.
"Our observations now show that the Arctic tundra, which is experiencing warming and increased wildfire, is now emitting more carbon than it stores, which will worsen climate change impacts," said Rick Spinrad, administrator of NOAA. "This is yet one more sign, predicted by scientists, of the consequences of inadequately reducing fossil fuel pollution."
Sue Natali, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts and one of 97 international scientists who contributed to the Arctic Report Card, told NPR that 1.5 trillion tons of carbon are still being stored in the tundra—suggesting that the continued warming of the permafrost could make it a huge source of planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.
Along with the "Arctic tundra transformation from carbon sink to carbon source," NOAA reported declines in caribou herds and increasing winter precipitation.
The report card showed that the autumn of 2023 and summer of 2024 saw the second- and third-warmest temperatures on record across the Arctic, and a heatwave in August 2024 set an all-time record for daily temperatures in several communities in northern Alaska and Canada.
The last nine years have been the nine warmest on record in the Arctic region.
"Many of the Arctic's vital signs that we track are either setting or flirting with record-high or record-low values nearly every year," said Gerald (J.J.) Frost, a senior scientist with Alaska Biological Research, Inc. and a veteran Arctic Report Card author. "This is an indication that recent extreme years are the result of long-term, persistent changes, and not the result of variability in the climate system."
Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, emphasized that the continuous release of fossil fuel emissions from oil and gas extraction and other pollution has caused the Arctic to warm at a faster rate than the Earth as a whole over the past 11 years.
"These combined changes are contributing to worsening wildfires and thawing permafrost to an extent so historic that it caused the Arctic to be a net carbon source after millennia serving as a net carbon storage region," said Ekwurzel. "If this becomes a consistent trend, it will further increase climate change globally."
The Arctic Report Card was released weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office. Trump has pledged to slash climate regulations introduced by the Biden administration and to increase oil and gas production. He has mused that sea-level rise will create "more oceanfront property" and has called the climate crisis a "hoax," while his nominee for energy secretary, Chris Wright, the CEO of the fracking company Liberty Energy, has claimed that climate warming is good for the planet.
"These sobering impacts in the Arctic are one more manifestation of how policymakers in the United States and around the world are continuing to prioritize the profits of fossil fuel polluters over the well-being of people and the planet and putting the goals of the Paris climate agreement in peril," said Ekwurzel. "All countries, but especially wealthy, high-emitting nations, need to drastically reduce heat-trapping emissions at a rapid pace in accord with the latest science and aid in efforts of climate-vulnerable communities to prepare for what's to come and help lower-resourced countries working to decrease emissions too."
"It is totally fair for people to identify private insurers as the key bad actor in our current system," writes Matt Bruenig of the People's Policy Project. "The quicker we nationalize health insurance, the better."
But that response has led some pundits to defend private insurance companies and claim that, in fact, healthcare providers such as hospitals and doctors are the real drivers of outlandish U.S. healthcare costs.
In an analysis published Tuesday, Matt Bruenig of the People's Policy Project argued that defenders of private insurers are relying on "factual misunderstandings and very questionable analysis" and that it is reasonable to conclude that the for-profit insurance system is "actually very bad."
"From a design perspective, the main problem with our private health insurance system is that it is extremely wasteful," Bruenig wrote, estimating based on existing research that excess administrative expenses amount to $528 billion per year—or 1.8% of U.S. gross domestic product.
"All healthcare systems require administration, which costs money, but a private multi-payer system requires massively more than other approaches, especially the single-payer system favored by the American left," Bruenig observed, emphasizing that excess administrative expenses of both the insurance companies and healthcare providers stem from "the multi-payer private health insurance system that we have."
He continued:
To get your head around why this is, think for a second about what happens to every $100 you give to a private insurance company. According to the most exhaustive study on this question in the U.S.—the CBO single-payer study from 2020—the first thing that happens is that $16 of those dollars are taken by the insurance company. From there, the insurer gives the remaining $84 to a hospital to reimburse them for services. That hospital then takesanother $15.96 (19% of its revenue) for administration, meaning that only $68.04 of the original $100 actually goes to providing care.
In a single-payer system, the path of that $100 looks a lot different. Rather than take $16 for insurance administration, the public insurer would only take $1.60. And rather than take $15.96 of the remaining money for hospital administration, the hospital would only take $11.80 (12% of its revenue), meaning that $86.60 of the original $100 actually goes to providing care.
High provider payments, which some analysts have suggested are the key culprit in exorbitant healthcare costs, are also attributable to the nation's for-profit insurance system, Bruenig argued.
"Medicaid and Medicare are able to negotiate much lower rates than private insurance, just as the public health insurer under a single-payer system would be able to. It is only within the private insurance segment of the system that providers have been able to jack up rates to such an extreme extent," he wrote. "Given all of this, I think it is totally fair for people to identify private insurers as the key bad actor in our current system. They are directly responsible for over half a trillion dollars of administrative waste and (at the very least) indirectly responsible for the provider rents that are bleeding Americans dry."
"The quicker we nationalize health insurance," he concluded, "the better."
Bruenig's analysis comports with research showing that a single-payer system such as the Medicare for All program proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and other progressives in Congress could produce massive savings by eliminating bureaucratic costs associated with the private insurance system.
One study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in January 2020 estimated that Medicare for All could save the U.S. more than $600 billion per year in healthcare-related administrative costs.
"The average American is paying more than $2,000 a year for useless bureaucracy," said Dr. David Himmelstein, lead author of the study, said at the time. "That money could be spent for care if we had a Medicare for All program."
Deep-seated anger at the systemic and harmful flaws of the for-profit U.S. insurance system could help explain why the percentage of the public that believes it's the federal government's responsibility to ensure all Americans have healthcare coverage is at its highest level in more than a decade, according to Gallup polling released Monday.
"There's a day of reckoning that is happening right now," former insurance industry executive Wendell Potter, president of the Center for Health and Democracy, said in an MSNBC appearance on Monday. "Whether we're talking about employers, patients, doctors—just about everybody despises health insurance companies in ways that I've never seen before."
Congressional Progressive Caucus leaders are pressing the Democratic Party to offer "a clear alternative and inclusive vision for how we will make life better for the 90% who are struggling in this economy."
By Brett Wilkins
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The solution is obvious and simple, which is why the nation's richest people hate it so much: Scrap the cap and make the wealthy pay a much fairer share in Social Security taxes.
The Middle East resembles a billiard table, in which the movement of one ball is liable to send the others flying off in different directions and in turns bouncing off each other. Which way the balls fly, however, is impossible to predict.
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