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Climate
A crew rows along the Cuyahoga river at sunset in the Flats section of Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., October 23, 2020.
It was the summer of ’69: Man landed on the moon, the Stonewall riots broke out, and Ohio’s Cuyahoga River burst into flames — igniting the modern environmental movement.
Fifty-five years later, the health of rivers is more topical than ever — from states in the Western US negotiating how to share dwindling water from the Colorado River to the 2024 Paris Olympics. In the French capital, the fate of the triathlon hangs in the balance due to dangerous levels of bacteria present in the Seine despite the government’s $1.55 billion clean-up effort.
Back in 1969, the 100-mile-long Cuyahoga River was a dumping ground for industrial waste in Cleveland, hurting the river and the connecting Lake Erie. The Cuyahoga had caught fire several times before without causing alarm — a polluted river, after all, meant that industry was thriving, the economy was booming, and people had jobs.
But that all changed when Time magazine published an article about the fires. The ensuing public outcry led President Richard Nixon to establish the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, creating a federal bureau to regulate pollution for the first time. That same year, 1,000 students marched to the river for the country’s first Earth Day. Then in 1972, Congress passed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, which are still the bedrock for pollution control in the US.
Thanks to the Cuyahoga River, the nation seems to have awakened to the dangers of industrial pollution.
In 2019, after a half-century of cleanup efforts and pollution limits, the Cuyahoga River was the poster child for the effectiveness of environmental regulations: Fish caught in the river were declared safe to eat, and hiking trails, nature preserves, and the occasional craft brewery sprouted along its banks. But the following year, the river caught fire again due to a fuel tanker crash. It was an accident, but it also served as a reminder that the progress made on water pollution can be rapidly undone.
When Donald Trump campaigned in 2016, he insisted jobs were under attack and the EPA was to blame. Once in office, he rolled back environmental protections, restricted the ability of states to regulate their waters, and eliminated rules preventing coal companies from dumping waste into water sources.
While Joe Biden reversed many of those policies, the about-face between administrations reveals that EPA and environmental policy, pioneered by a Republican president and once dependably bipartisan, have succumbed to America’s polarization plague. Even the EPA is choosing sides. On Tuesday, the union representing EPA employees endorsed Biden’s reelection — its first-ever political endorsement.
As for the agency’s future, that could be decided this month by the Supreme Court. Before they break at the beginning of July, the justices will determine whether to overrule the 1984 Chevron decision giving government agencies, like the EPA, the power to use their expertise to interpret and implement laws. The Supreme Court is expected to at least significantly weaken the doctrine, which would make it far more difficult for the EPA to regulate industries or win when those regulations are challenged in court.
Children play in a city water feature during a heat wave affecting the U.S. Northeast in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. June 19, 2024.
With the arrival of the summer solstice in North America today, more than 70 million Americans are under aheat alert. The current heat wave is the result of a so-called heat dome phenomenon, in which a high-pressure system hovers over the same area for an extended period, trapping warm air underneath.
Climate scientists also warn North Americans to expect another wave of erratic weather events. Wildfires in Southern California and New Mexico have already forced thousands from their homes, Texas faces unusually heavy rain this week, and heavy snow has been forecast in parts of Montana. Tropical storm Alberto, the first of the season, has been bringing heavy rain to the US Gulf Coast, Mexico, and parts of Central America.
All that said, Europe, where temperatures are climbing at twice the global average, is the world’s fastest-warming continent, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
A carcass lies on a grassland in Oendor-Bayan county in central Mongolia, 03/29/2000
Mongolia’s government is scrambling as catastrophic weather is killing animals so quickly that a quarter of the national herd may starve. Thousands of families face destitution after losing nearly all their livestock, which drives 80% of the country’s agricultural output and 11% of GDP.
What’s the problem? A nasty weather phenomenon known as dzud or “disaster,” a combination of dry summers and harsh winter storms that create layers of ice on the ground. Arid conditions leave animals underfed going into winter, and then they can’t crack through the rock-hard ice to forage. The resulting images are heartbreaking: lifeless, emaciated sheep, yaks, camels, and horses stacked high on pickup trucks for disposal.
Dzuds are nothing new, but scientists say climate change has made them more frequent. Six of the last 10 years have seen the dzud phenomenon in Mongolia, and this winter saw the heaviest snowfall since 1975. The government predicts that nearly 15 million animals may die in a country with just 3.3 million people.
What can be done? International aid has been grossly inadequate, with even a modest $5.5 million appeal from the Red Cross in March going 80% unfulfilled. The ancient lifestyles of the steppe may need to change permanently, as overreliance on herding has accelerated desertification, which worsens the dzud. Ulaanbaatar aims to expand the rich minerals sector as a more stable and sustainable economic pillar.Oranges.
4.92: Orange juice futures — which price the fruits on the open market — have hit an all-time high of $4.92 per pound as supply shocks from Brazil and Florida (the two leading exporters) squeeze the harvest for the third year running. Bad weather, the widening spread of a disease called “citrus greening,” and rising consumer demand are to blame for the price spike.
2: Better late than never. Rich nations finally met their pledge of earmarking $100 billion in climate finance for developing countries in 2022, two years after the original goal. Although the 20 largest economies are responsible for the vast majority of emissions, poorer nations often suffer bigger climate impacts and have less cash on hand to fund green transitions.
15: Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatrafaces up to 15 years in prison after authorities unexpectedly charged him with insulting the monarchy in an interview from 2015. Thaksin, a populist telecom billionaire, fled into exile after being ousted in a 2006 coup but returned for the first time last year after his party struck up a governing alliance with its former opponents from the military-royalist establishment.
3: The renowned German soccer club Borussia Dortmund has signed a three-year wide-ranging sponsorship agreement with Rheinmetall, a German arms manufacturer that is rapidly increasing its production of artillery shells and other weapons. Far from downplaying the political symbolism of the news, Dortmund President Hans-Joachim Watzke said “security and defense are cornerstones of our democracy … especially today when we see every day how freedom must be defended in Europe.”
Illustration of the Georges Vallerey swimming pool renovated for the Paris Olympic Games on April 30, 2024.
23: American athletes groups are protesting after 23 Chinese swimmers escaped international competition sanctions despite testing positive for a banned heart medication in 2021. The World Anti-Doping Agency has appointed an investigator but says it has no way to appeal the Chinese authorities’ ruling that the specimens were, in fact, mishandled. US athletes say the WADA investigator is compromised and have called for a “truly independent” probe. The 2024 Summer Games begin in late July.
11: The G7 group of wealthy democracies has given itself 11 years to all but stop using coal in their energy systems. A carveout will still exist where emissions are captured. The G7 – which includes Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US – accounts for about a fifth of global emissions, but it does not include China and India, the world’s top two coal polluters.
1 million: Who among us has not, at one time or another, misplaced one million bullets, thousands of grenades, and even a few missiles? No one? Fine, then none of you are from the Colombian military, whose latest inventory shows that all of this kit has gone missing. President Gustavo Petro has blamed corruption for the missing munitions and has ordered a massive crackdown on graft in the armed forces. Expect that to go spicily, as Petro — a former guerilla – has few admirers in an army that fought Marxist rebels for decades.
40 million: Mother Nature is many things to many people — but to Spotify, she is now, officially, an artist. Since mid-April, the music streamer has created playlists of songs that feature nature sounds (rain, thunder, bird chirps, etc), and has been setting royalties for “Nature” that go into an environmental conservation fund started by electronic music icon Brian Eno. The project is projected to raise more than $40 million in the next four years. Nature already has more than 2.6 million monthly listeners, and you can be one of them here.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is received by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the State Guest House.
3: Germany has arrested three German nationals suspected of spying for China. They’re accused of passing along sensitive military intelligence to the Ministry of State Security, China’s powerful spy agency. The timing is awkward, given that Berlin is trying to reset trade relations with Beijing.
2.3: If you’ve had a summer vacation in Europe recently, you may have felt like it was unbearably hot – that’s no coincidence. Europe is the fastest-warming continent on the planet, according to a new report from two leading climate-monitoring organizations. Temperatures there are now 2.3° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, per the latest five-year averages, compared to 1.3° Celsius globally. But Europe’s not alone: The entire planet’s surface temperature is rising.
7 billion: President Joe Biden celebrated Earth Day on Monday by announcing $7 billion in federal grants for solar power projects in residential areas that will power over 900,000 households in low-income and disadvantaged communities and help save $8 billion in energy costs, according to EPA estimates. Biden is promoting his environmental policy as he vies to woo young voters – a crucial voting bloc – at a time when many in this demographic express concern over the economy and outrage over his approach to the war in Gaza.
110,000: Flooding in China’s Guangdong province caused by heavy rains has seen 110,000 people evacuated from their homes. The extreme weather led over a million people in the province to lose power over the weekend. Flooding from relentless rain has also devastated East Africa, affecting over 200,000 in Burundi, one of the world’s poorest countries.
The moon blotted out the sun across much of North America on Monday, but it did not put politics entirely out of mind.
Conservatives on both sides of the border used the occasion to compare their champion to the moon, blotting out the incumbent sun, while incumbents merely marveled at the moment.
In the United States, Donald Trump released an odd ad on his Truth Social network in which his face blotted out the sun. In Canada, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre just posted a photo of the moment, but one of his MPs posted an image showing a smiling Poilievre eclipsing Trudeau.
Meanwhile, Fox News issued a warning that the eclipse might make it easier for migrants to cross into the United States.
Justin Trudeau posted a video of himself taking in the sight from the roof of his office while Joe Biden posted a safety warning, a subtle reminder, perhaps, of the time, in 2017, when Trump gazed directly into an eclipse, which is said to be unwise.Latest
Weird summer weather is back
Mongolians are reeling as their herds starve
Totality fails to eclipse politics
