Statistic of the decade: The massive deforestation of the Amazon Liberty Vittert 8.4 million soccer fields of land deforested in the Amazon over the past decade. That’s 24,000 square miles, or about 10.3 million American football fields.This statistic, while giving only a snapshot of the issue, provides insight into the dramatic change to this landscape […]
Life’s catastrophe: An Angry Editorial
Ian Whyte, CACOR member expresses grave concern. The human enterprise is eradicating non-human life on Earth. The WWF’s Living Planet Report 2016 reveals that, worldwide, wildlife populations declined by 58% between 1970 (itself too late for a proper base year) and 2012, with the expectation that this decline will reach 67% by 2020 (WWF, 2016). In Canada, my home, the situation is similar: […]
What, Me Worry? Humans Are Blind to Imminent Environmental Collapse
Remember the 40 to 60 million bison that used to roam the great plains of North America? They — along with the millions of deer, pronghorns, wolves and lesser beasts that once animated prairie ecosystems — have been “competitively displaced,” their habitats taken over by a much greater biomass of humans, cattle, pigs and sheep. And not […]
Wanted: shuttered coal plants to turn into giant batteries
In the last two years, 135 coal power plants in the US have shut down. Dozens more are due to be decommissioned. To Curtis VanWalleghem, CEO of the Canadian company Hydrostor, that sounds like a lot of batteries. Abandoned coal plants give Hydrostor cheap access to the industrial infrastructure, transmission lines, and water sources it […]
world wildlife collapsing
World wildlife falls by 58% in 40 years The Living Planet assessment, by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and WWF, suggests that if the trend continues that decline could reach two-thirds among vertebrates by 2020. The figures suggest that animals living in lakes, rivers and wetlands are suffering the biggest losses. Human activity, including […]