NWT Species at Risk is considering putting polar bears back on the species at risk list under “special concern” for 10-years. The organization is inviting the public to comment on the issue through a survey. NNSL file photo
Northwest Territories residents are being asked whether polar bears should be placed back on the species at risk list under the category of “special concern.”
NWT Spices at Risk is posing the following questions:
-Why should polar bears be relisted as “special concern” to the NWT List of Species at Risk?
-What positive or negative impacts would have on polar bears if they are listed?
-Is there any new or missing information about polar bears not added in the status report? If so, what is it?
The NWT shares an estimated 3,000 polar bears with other jurisdictions. The animals are found in the southern Beaufort Sea, northern Beaufort Sea, and Viscount Melville Sound.
According to NWT Species at Risk, the most serious long-term threat to polar bears in the NWT is climate change from the melting of sea ice.
Melting sea ice affects the habitat of the bear by not having access to prey, areas to sleep and it will increase human-bear interactions.
People can send in their comments to the NWT Species at Risk by completing a survey by Oct. 15.
Norm Phelps, 75, spiritual mentor to the animal rights movement Animals 24-7
Norm is quoted:
“There is no society known to history that did not enslave animals and kill them for food, fabric, labor, transportation, entertainment, religious sacrifice, and/or scientific knowledge.”
“Animal rights is the only social movement in history whose beneficiaries cannot participate in it and whose participants cannot benefit from it.”
For that reason, “The animal rights movement has no access to the indomitably motivated and endlessly renewable resource that has been available to every other social justice movement: the victims themselves. In fact, its membership is drawn entirely from the ranks of the oppressors. Think of the challenge that the abolition movement would have faced if it had had to depend entirely on reformed slave owners for its activists. That is the challenge facing animal rights.”
Dear Friends, Beth Clifton’s art published in Animals 24-7.
Please read this illuminating tribute to Norm Phelps, an icon of the modern Animal Rights Movement. Merritt Clifton, founder-publisher of Animals 24-7, highlights Norm’s enormous contributions to our Movement through his writings, conference presentations, and countless informal discussions (including disputes) about strategies most likely to win support from the majority of people who, Norm said,“believe that their health, happiness, and prosperity depend on the abuse and murder of animals. And they will fight to defend these against what they see as dangerous, hostile attacks by radical fanatics.”
Animals 24-7 recounts Norm’s frustrating engagement with the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, with whom he personally met to discuss compassionate vegetarianism and Mongolian trophy hunting and who, while professing his “deep compassion” for animals, gobbled them up at public events. The Dalai Lama’s hypocrisy led Norm to publish an open letter to him, as quoted in the Animals 24-7 tribute.
Norm told the Dalai Lama, who ate veal roast, stuffed pheasant breast, and chicken soup at a dinner at the Elysee Palace for Nobel Peace Prize laureates, “you refused the vegetarian meal that you had been served with the comment, ‘I’m a Tibetan monk, not a vegetarian.’” Thus, “you lent your public support to some of the most egregious cruelty that our society is capable of. The lack of consistency between your public statements in support of vegetarianism and animal protection on the one hand and your personal behavior on the other is troubling.”
Postscript:
In his book, The Longest Struggle, Norm wrote generously: “Thanks to Karen Davis, chickens and turkeys are now front-and-center on the animal rights agenda.”
I first met Norm and his wife Patti in the 1980s in a van at around 4am taking us to a hunt sabotage in Maryland outside Washington, DC. We remained good friends despite some of our differences on advocacy strategy. We also disagreed on whether plants are sensate in some sense that eludes us. Norm thought no, but I thought/think yes. Norm was a speaker at our very first conference, June 26-27, 1999, here in Machipongo, VA, but unfortunately he had to cancel the invitation to speak at our conference in Columbus, Ohio, do to his illness.
I attended the memorial gathering for Norm that was organized by Compassion Over Killing in their office, in 2014, to honor and remember Norm’s many contributions to the Animal Rights Movement. He was a very kind-hearted person, and his books are a permanent contribution to our movement. He and Patti always supported United Poultry Concerns, for which I will always be grateful.
Karen Davis, PhD, President, United Poultry Concerns
Climate engineering sounds scary. But is coming whether we like it or not, this scientist says
‘The two main types of geoengineering are carbon engineering, which aims to suck carbon out of the atmosphere, and solar engineering, which aims to reflect solar energy away from Earth.’Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters
The realities of climate change are front-page news every day. Temperature records are being smashed. Wildfires are raging. There isno signof
things going back to “normal”. If anything, they will only get worse.
Last year, when the planet was convulsing with the arrival of a pandemic, we pinned our hopes on technology – in the form of an mRNA vaccine – getting us out of our crisis. The vaccine was a technological intervention, injected into the arms of billions of people. Could we (should we?) look…
Tori B. PowellThu, August 26, 2021, 4:42 AM·2 min read
Firefighters tackling the Caldor Fire now have priority over available resources as the blaze has become “the number one fire in the country right now in terms of priorities for values at risk,” according to El Dorado National Forest supervisor Jeff Marsolais. Burning only 11 miles southwest of the Lake Tahoe area, local officials said they worry about the fire’s spread.
“This fire has just simply outpaced us,” Marsolais said Tuesday night at a community briefing. “We emptied the cupboards of resources, and the local fire chiefs of Amador and El Dorado counties sent every resource they could, and no matter how many folks we tried to get on it, it just continued to outpace us.”
As of Wednesday morning, theCaldor Firehas burned 126,182 acres and is only 11% contained, Cal Firereports. The massive blaze…
“Every day we see just the body boxes roll out one after the other and then as soon as we clean the room we get somebody back in there… It’s the worst we’ve ever seen.”
That’s what ICU nurse Clarissa Carson told CBS News’ Janet Shamlian Wednesday at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford, Oregon, where COVID-19 patients have filled the hospital.
“We have patients waiting to get onto life support,” ICU Dr. Somnath Ghosh said. “The turnaround is so rapid, it’s pretty sad.”
Carson said relatives used to be able to stay in rooms to grieve after loved ones passed as long as they wanted. Now, they have to be out in less than an hour so another COVID patient waiting down the hall can get in.
There’s only one ICU bed available in the entire region.
Coronavirus hotspots have been popping up in the South for weeks, but communities in other parts of the country, including the Pacific Northwest, are also suffering amid the latest surge.
Hospitalizations in Oregon hit a record high on Wednesday. ICU beds are at 93% capacity statewide.
Oregon’s governor has deployed National Guard members to 20 hospitals, and many health systems have canceled elective surgeries.
“These patients are on such tremendous levels of life support,” Ghosh told Shamlian. “Once we stop that, they last less than a few minutes.”
Suffering and sorrow are now part of every day.
“I’ve never seen so much death in my career,” ICU manager Kelsea Robinson said. “We’re surrounded by it.”
Robinson said she’s frustrated by vaccine hesitancy.
Wednesdaynight, hundreds protested vaccines outside the hospital. Many said they were hospital staffers.
“Our community is getting ripped apart by the people who don’t believe in the vaccine,” Carson said.
Most of the patients in the intensive care unit Shamlian visited were unvaccinated. Every patient except one was on a ventilator.
According to Carson, the patients are so sick that the odds are against survival.
“The grief is tremendous,” Carson said. “We are used to winning. Us ICU nurses, we’re used to winning and we’re not winning. We’re losing.”
And there will be more loss — what some are calling collateral deaths. Ghosh said they have put off at least 100 heart surgeries over the past two months because there’s no room for those cardiac patients at the hospital, no resources right now.
OMAK — More than two dozen people who attended the Omak Stampede earlier this month have tested positive for COVID-19.
Okanogan County health officials on Wednesday urged anyone who attended the four-day rodeo, which took place Aug. 12-15 in Omak, to watch for COVID-19 symptoms. The caution also applies to people who have been in close contact with someone who attended, the health district said in a news release.
COVID-19 symptoms to watch for include fever, scratchy throat, headache, cough, diarrhea, chills, loss of taste or sense of smell and body aches, nausea or vomiting, or shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.ADVERTISEMENThttps://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.476.0_en.html#goog_598363251https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.476.0_en.html#goog_1903306212Volume 0%
If someone who attended the event has symptoms, the health district asks that they get tested and self-quarantine until test results are confirmed as negative.
Cases identified, as of Wednesday, are residents of Okanogan and Skagit counties and the Colville Reservation, according to the news release. Officials said that they are aware of one Okanogan County resident hospitalized due to COVID-19 who is fully vaccinated.
Okanogan County Public Health is working with the Colville Federated Tribes Health and Human Services and other county public health partners to identify other cases in people who may have attended the event.
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Alien hunters have to date focused largely on Earthlike planets — a reasonable place to start, given that our rocky, water-covered world is the only one we know of that hosts life. But the universe teems with a huge diversity of planets, some of which may be habitable despite being decidedly un-Earthlike.
In the new study, researchers identify one such class of alien worlds — “Hycean” planets, which are up to 2.5 times larger than Earth and feature huge oceans of liquid water beneath hydrogen-rich atmospheres. Hycean planets appear to be incredibly abundant throughout the Milky Way galaxy, and they could host microbial life similar to the “extremophiles” that thrive in some of Earth’s harshest environments, study team members said.
“Hycean planets open a whole new avenue in our search for life elsewhere,” lead author Nikku Madhusudhan, of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge in England, said in a statement.
Hycean worlds are similar in size to rocky “super-Earths” and gassy “mini-Neptunes,” two of the most common types of exoplanet in the galaxy. But the Hyceans are distinct, with densities between those of super-Earths and mini-Neptunes, according to the new study, which was published online Wednesday (Aug. 25) in The Astrophysical Journal.
The Hyceans are also a diverse lot. Some orbit so close to their stars that they’re tidally locked, with one scorching-hot dayside and one eternally dark nightside. And some orbit very far away, receiving very little stellar radiation. But life could exist even on such extreme Hyceans, the researchers stress — for example, in the nightside waters of tidally locked worlds.
“It’s exciting that habitable conditions could exist on planets so different from Earth,” study co-author Anjali Piette, also from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, said in the same statement.
In addition, Hyceans appear to be good places to search for potential biosignature gases such as oxygen and methane.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating two salmonella outbreaks that are tied to Italian meats like salami and prosciutto that are often used for charcuterie boards.Richard Drew/AP
You might want to wait before making your next charcuterie board.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is investigating two salmonella outbreaks in 17 states that are linked to Italian meats like “salami, prosciutto, and other meats that can often be found in antipasto or charcuterie assortments.”
There is an active investigation underway, but no recalls have been announced.
As of Tuesday, 36 people had fallen ill and 12 were hospitalized, the CDC said. The numbers could be higher, though, because many who have salmonella symptoms don’t seek medical care. It also takes three to four weeks to figure out whether a sick person is part of the outbreak.
Epidemiologists are working to determine whether the two outbreaks are from the same source. In speaking to those who fell ill and were able to provide information, several varieties of meats such as salami, prosciutto, coppa and soppressata were reported.
The CDC is recommending that those at high risk for getting salmonella “heat Italian-style meats to an internal temperature of 165°F or until steaming hot before eating.”
Limiting population growth appears simply too hot to handle for many who are concerned about climate change, global warming, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. Whether it’s in Washington, D.C., Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi, Paris, Tokyo, or the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, limiting population growth is not part of climate change negotiations.
With the world now approaching 8 billion human inhabitants, limiting the demographic growth of nations is not only ignored, but many countries continue to push for the interminable growth of their populations.
The latest landmark report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a devastating future for the world. Recently the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced that climate change is a “code red for humanity” and the alarm bells, which have been ringing for years, are deafening.
And in addition to droughts, floods, hurricanes, heatwaves, water scarcity, wildfires, air pollution and other climate-induced changes, the hottest month for the planet in 142 years of recorded measurement was July 2021. Nevertheless, governments and others continue to maintain a solid green light for the growth of their populations.
Some have made the claim that the climate emergency is a result of an increase in greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and not population growth. However, a universal agreement exists that birds, fish, insects, other wildlife, and plant life on the planet are not responsible for burning fossil fuels and increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
Logically then, it seems reasonable to conclude, as the IPCC has done, that human populations are responsible for burning fossil fuels and the increases in greenhouse gas emissions. It also seems reasonable to conclude that while certainly not the entire solution, limiting the growth of populations would make it easier to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, cut greenhouse gas emissions and address other environmental concerns.
Despite widespread recognition that humans are “unequivocally” to blame for climate change, limiting the growth of populations is largely taboo and, with few exceptions, remains off the table during negotiations of climate change, global warming, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss.
In 1988, when the IPCC, James Hanson and others warned the world about greenhouse emissions, climate change, rising sea levels and biodiversity threats, the world population was 5 billion. Today, approximately a generation later, the world population has reached nearly 8 billion. Also over that period, the populations of today’s top three contributors to greenhouse emissions, China, the United States and India, increased by 27, 35 and 66 percent, respectively.
In both developed and developing countries continue to adopt policies, establish measures, and promote messages encouraging the growth of their populations. Most aim to raise low birth rates, but also, in some cases, increase immigration levels.
For example, China, with a population of 1.4 billion and a fertility rate of 1.3 births per woman, recently introduced a three-child policy with supporting measures directed at raising the country’s birth rate and avoiding population slowdowns. In addition to China, more than 50 countries have policies to increase their fertility rates, including Australia, France, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, and Turkey.
The United States, with a population of 333 million and a fertility rate of 1.6 births per woman, is proposing policies to facilitate child-rearing as well as increasing immigration to the levels of the recent past, approximately 1.1 million per year. With limited future immigration, the size of America’s population is projected to remain largely stabilized over the next 40 years. A stabilized U.S. population would make it far easier to deal with climate change and other critical environmental concerns.
In addition, African countries are expected to contribute 60 percent of world population growth over the next three decades, with a dozen of them projected to have their populations double by midcentury, including Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia and Tanzania. Increased national efforts and international assistance, in such areas as education, employment, nutrition, health, gender equality and family planning, will be needed to expedite the demographic transition from high to low death and birth rates in sub-Saharan African countries.
It is important to recognize that continued population growth is basically a Ponzi scheme. It is a demographic pyramid strategy for interminable population growth that benefits some people at the expense of human wellbeing and sustainability. Prominent among the factors behind Ponzi demography are the three Ps: profits, power and politics.
Profits from population growth largely benefit businesses and the wealthy while the many costs of demographic growth are socialized and passed on to the public. Power, governments and others believe, is derived in part from expanding, larger and youthful populations. Politics lead to partisan calls from political and other leaders for more of us and fewer of others for voting power, leadership authority, ethnic preeminence, sociocultural dominance and economic gain.
Certainly, the findings and recommendations of the IPCC, the Paris Agreement, the International Energy Agency and others need to be seriously considered by governments and the public when dealing with climate change, global warming, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss.
Some of the measures to address those issues include eliminating fossil fuels, shifting to renewables and low-emissions energy, a carbon tax, restoring ecosystems, switching to mostly plant-based diets and adjusting economic growth to reflect the true environmental costs of goods and services. To those measures, limiting the growth of human populations should be added.
The United States, China and India, which together contribute 50 percent of global greenhouse emissions, could provide leadership and be exemplary models for countries worldwide by moving away from the continued growth of their populations.
Simply stated, while not the entire solution, stabilized and declining national populations across the entire planet will make it far easier for countries to reduce the burning of fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions as well more effectively address environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, natural resource depletion, and pollution.
Joseph Chamie is an international consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Births, Deaths, Migrations and Other Important Population Matters.”
