President Joe Biden wants to combat climate change by taking carbon dioxide out of the air and burying it underground. But some environmental activists on the left are working to stop him.
The activists say a focus on carbon capture would give industry political cover to keep polluting instead of reducing emissions, and their argument is gaining traction in communities across the country. They convinced the New Orleans City Council to pass a resolution opposing underground carbon storage last year. Elsewhere in Louisiana, they’re trying to delay the permitting of a pipeline that would carry carbon to storage facilities.
The growing opposition is threatening to delay the full rollout…
GARDEN CITY, Kan. (WIBW) – An angler in Kansas received multiple citations after he attempted to fish in Garden City with a 9 mm.
Game Wardens with TheKansas Department of Wildlife and Parkssay that on Tuesday, May 2, Finney Co. wardens seized a 9 mm handgun that had been used to take fish in Garden City.
KDWP noted that the illegal fisherman received violations for illegal means of taking fish and no fishing license.
As a reminder, Game Wardens said it is illegal to use firearms to catch a fish. They said nonsport fish can only be caught with a fishing pole and line, trotlines, set lines, gigs, crossbows or bow…
In what must be seen as an alarming trend for the White House and theBiden campaignmanagement team for hisre-election bid, President Joe Biden islanguishingin another new poll. Biden is garnering an overall approval rating of just 36 percent – down from 42 percent approval fromthe same survey in February. He has high disapproval ratings, low support for running again, and a dipping number that measures his mental acuity.
TheABC News/Washington Post pollshowed that in a match-up with Donald Trump, Biden was down six points: 44 to 38. When asked about a hypothetical match-up with Florida GovernorRon DeSantis, Biden was behind by five points: 42 to 37. Overall, 56 percent of the people surveyed expressed disapproval of Joe Biden. A noteworthy 58 percent of Democrats in…
Studying population fertility rates and responses to them is like reading the children’s fairy tale Goldilocks: governments generally think their country’s fertility rates are “too high” or “too low” — they’re rarely “just right.”
The ideal remains elusive; yet a new report from the United Nations Population Fund reveals that the majority of the globe’s population now lives under governments with a stated intent to influence individual childbearing.
For decades, the global emphasis was on lowering high fertility rates, and it worked. As recently as the year 2000, women in two-thirds of the world’s countries had five or more children on average, while only 8 percent of countries had total fertility rates under two.
Now, the proportions are reversed: Only 4 percent of countries have fertility rates as high as five, while the total fertility rate is below replacement in 71 percent of the world’s countries. As low fertility has become the norm — and populations are rapidly aging — more governments have switched their policy emphasis to try and incentivize births.
This is a fool’s errand and risks doing more harm than good.
The policies are expensive, and they don’t work. While we know how to lower fertility rates, we don’t really know how to raise them — at least not in a sustained manner. Research shows that the expense of children — housing and childcare, primarily — depresses fertility rates, so governments have offered cash, subsidies and tax breaks in an effort to alleviate that objection to larger families. But these expenditures don’t lead to a sustained fertility increase because expense is never the only reason for deciding whether or not to have a child.
South Korea has spent $210 billion over the last 16 years trying to raise fertility and it keeps hitting record lows — now 0.79 children per woman on average. That money could have gone elsewhere, such as health initiatives or education, for a greater return on investment and to broader social benefit. What policy-makers seem not to think about is that while some of these efforts at making life better for those who are already born might have the byproduct of raising fertility rates, without making life better, the rates certainly won’t go up.
That’s because economic solutions generally don’t question or revise the social structures that pressure fertility lower in the first place. A better approach, and one that could only yield net good, is thinking less about the collective and more about how the individual operates within that collective.
What social structures give people who want to have a second or third child the support they need to realize those desires? Are work practices, like paid leave shared between multiple caregivers, in place to allow for flexible use? Are there quality, affordable and convenient childcare options available starting at early ages for those who need or want to make use of them?
These questions are just a start at recognizing the complex decision making behind childbearing, something that is an individual decision — at least, for now. There are reasons to worry that autonomy over childbearing is being eroded.
Perhaps the most worrisome part of normalizing efforts to increase births as a solution to population aging is that once the norm takes hold, we can’t control how governments pursue it, and the risk of coercion increases.
Twenty years ago, nearly all of the world’s aging countries were democracies. Now, a quarter of those countries with a median age over 35 years — the world’s oldest countries — are not free. Defining low fertility as a “problem” and offering government policy as a “solution” opens the door for whomever is in charge to define and pursue their definition of whatever their demographic ideal is. We have seen plenty of examples of coercive policies to lower fertility rates, like China’s One Child Policy, but coercion can force change in the opposite direction as well.
Too often, governments consider “making more people” as the primary solution to population aging and depopulation and neglect those already born. In many societies, however, large groups of people are left behind. According to the World Bank, just 23 percent of Indian women perform paid work, and much of that is in the informal economy, putting them at risk of greater poverty in old age. Among the OECD, only 15.5 percent of those over 65 years old still work, on average. Given that there are 131 million people just between the ages of 65 and 74 in high-income countries, this is a tremendously untapped resource.
Policies to try and raise fertility are not nearly as politically unpalatable as raising pensionable ages, and they seem much more straightforward than trying to decrease inequalities in education or health disparities, so governments keep pursuing them. But unless we first accept that low fertility and population aging are here to stay, we will keep wasting money on this elusive goal — and our rights may be under fire as a result.
Jennifer D. Sciubba is the author of “8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death, and Migration Shape Our World” and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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Biodiversity protection makes it possible to maintain rural livelihoods and promote the resilience of ecosystems.
On Monday, Peter Njoroge, the head of the Ornithology Section and senior research scientist at the National Museums of Kenya, stressed that protecting natural habitats for migratory birds will unleash a range of ecological, health and economic benefits.
Kenya is a major corridor for migratory bird species escaping from winter in Europe and Asia and heading to the warmer tropical regions where they forage for food in important biodiversity areas such as wetlands, forests and wildlife sanctuaries.
This African country hosts about 200 migratory bird species native to Europe, Asia and other parts of Africa from September to April, adding that their presence is a boon to tourism.
Migratory birds are part of Kenya’s cultural heritage and are crucial in pest control, helping clean up urban waste, and limiting the spread of disease-causing pathogens.
Migratory birds inhabiting Kenya’s diverse ecological zones like savannah grasslands, coastal mangroves, the Rift Valley and mountainous landscapes include Eurasian water birds, flamingos, eagles, cranes and storks, said Njoroge.
This scientists noted that despite their enormous contribution to ecosystems’ health, migratory birds continue to face multiple threats including climate change, habitat destruction and loss, pollution and poaching.
Rapid urbanization, energy infrastructure, and poisoning by herders and farmers threaten the survival of migratory birds in Kenya, to the detriment of eco-tourism.
“Transmission lines are a major threat to migratory birds amid regular electrocution. Some communities are also poisoning them for food or during retaliatory attacks,” Njoroge said, stressing that the population of migratory birds in the country has been on the decline amid climate change.
He cited an action plan at the draft stage geared toward enhanced protection of flamingos and cranes, stressing that the government has also developed regulations that spell out penalties for poaching or poisoning of these migratory bird species.
World Migratory Bird Day seeks to highlight the critical ecosystem services while rallying the international community to act on threats facing these iconic species.
FILE – A man sunbathes on a hot spring day in Madrid, Spain, on April 18, 2023. Drought-stricken Spain says last month was the hottest and driest April since records began in 1961. The State Meteorological Agency, said Monday May 8, 2023 the average daily temperature in April was 14.9 degrees Celsius (58.8 Fahrenheit), that is 3 degrees Celsius above the average. (AP Photo/Paul White, File)
MADRID (AP) — Drought-stricken Spain says last month was the hottest and driest April since records began in 1961.
The State Meteorological Agency, known by the Spanish acronym AEMET, said Monday the average daily temperature in April was 14.9 degrees Celsius (58.8 Fahrenheit), that is 3 degrees Celsius above the average.
AEMET said average maximum temperatures during the month were up by 4.7 Celsius.
Rainfall was a fifth of what would normally be expected in the month, making it…
Missouri’s spring turkey hunting season concluded Sunday. In four months, local archers will again be seeking gobblers for what they hope is a robust fall season.
Neighboring Kansas won’t have that luxury.
The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parksrecently announced that its fall season will be canceled on account of a dwindling turkey population, the firsttime Kansas has canceled a season in the modern turkey-restoration era.
Kansas wildlife officials hope that cutting the fall season for the foreseeable future will help boost the population, which recently hit a 15-year low. Fall turkey season hunting participation in Kansas has also been reportedly low.
Kansas also imposed a one-turkey bag limit for the spring of 2024, similar to neighboring states Oklahoma and Nebraska, which also imposed stricter bag limits due to declining turkey populations.
Turkey population declines in the Great Plains states…
(Bloomberg) — Asia remains in the grip of a blistering heat wave, chiming with predictions from climate scientists that 2023 could be the world’s hottest year.
In an ominous sign ahead of the northern hemisphere summer, an emerging El Nino weather pattern is pushing the mercury to unprecedented levels in southern parts of the continent.
Vietnam reported its highest ever temperature of 44.2C over the weekend, triggering power shortage…
A number of the carcasses of the fin whales shot by explosive harpoons during hunts in Iceland last year were examined by the organisation, which found that almost 40% struggled for approximately 11 and a half minutes before they died, while two took more than an hour. A quarter of the fin whales, the second-largest mammal on Earth after the blue whale, considered “vulnerable” globally by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, had to be harpooned a second time. Only 59% died instantly.
The report, described as alarming by Iceland’s minister of food agriculture and fisheries, found the killing of some whales had taken too long. The provisions of the animal welfare act on hunting had not been violated, it found, due to the “best known” methods used by the hunt. But it questioned whether hunting large whales could meet animal welfare objectives and referred its finding to an expert animal welfare council to decide.
Animal welfare campaigners described the findings as intolerable and unacceptable and called on the Icelandic government to halt all whale hunts.
Svandís Svavarsdóttir, Iceland’s minister of food, agriculture and fisheries, said: “This alarming report underscores the need for a discussion in Iceland about the values we want to be known for. I believe that industries incapable of guaranteeing animal welfare should be considered part of our past rather than our future. This report, along with the expert council on animal welfare’s findings, will serve as essential background material for making decisions about the future of whaling post 2023.”
Iceland is one of the few countries that hunts whales commercially, along with Norway and Japan, despite a ban on commercial whaling that has been in place since 1986 under the international whaling commission.
However, Svavarsdóttir said last year that the country planned to end whaling from 2024 as demand dwindled. Last August, the ministry issued a regulation requiring the food and veterinary authority (MAST) to carry out regular inspections of whaling hunts, in order to promote animal welfare.
Patrick Ramage, senior director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), said: “Whatever their views on whaling, both Icelanders and the international community will be horrified by these findings. No animal – however it is killed – should suffer for such a long time. Whales are sentient, intelligent and complex creatures that suffer both physically and psychologically during this traumatic massacre.”
“There is no humane way to kill a whale at sea. This new evidence underscores how outdated this practice is. It has to end immediately – no one in Iceland is dependent on this meat.”
In Iceland, 148 whales were killed in 2022. The hunting of 58 whales was filmed and analysed by experts on behalf of the food and veterinary authority. It showed, of the 36 whales shot more than once, five whales were shot three times and four whales were shot four times. One whale with a harpoon in its back was chased for five hours without success.
Árni Finnsson, the chair of the Iceland Nature Conservation Association, said: “This killing is inhumane; it has to stop. There is no economic benefit for Iceland and it undermines the country’s record as a pro-conservation nation.”
Danny Groves, a spokesperson for Whale and Dolphin Conservation, said: “We’ve known for a long time that time to death in these hunts can take 20-25 minutes. It will be an agonising death because these are sentient beings. They will experience great pain.
“You’re using a grenade-tipped harpoon from a moving ship to a moving target. This wouldn’t be allowed in a slaughterhouse in the UK.”
There will be no jail time for the Ontario County man who accidentally shot and killed his hunting partner on Thanksgiving Day 2021.
TheFinger Lakes Times reports62-year-old Kevin Hudson was sentenced this week to 300 hours of community service and five years probation for the shooting that occurred near Cross Road in Phelps that killed 28-year-old Zachary Barse, of Gorham.
Barse was tracking a deer he had shot when Hudson, who was in a tree stand, fired at movement in an area of thick brush near a creek thinking it was the wounded game. Barse was struck in the upper body by a single round and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Hudson pleaded guilty to a felony charge of criminally negligent homicide.
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