Environment

• The centuries-old Pada Yatra is a spiritual pilgrimage on foot that takes devotees through two major national parks in Sri Lanka, originally undertaken by Hindu devotees.
• Over time, it started to attract followers of other faiths, but many now join it as an adventure hike, raising concerns about the erosion of its spiritual essence and environment consciousness.
• Participation in the Pada Yatra has surged, with more than 31,000 pilgrims making the 20-day journey in 2024, and this year, this number was reached within the first seven days, raising serious concerns about increasing numbers and increasing environmental issues.
• Despite waste management efforts, the growing numbers of attendees are contributing to pollution and environmental degradation, like the impacts seen at Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka’s Peak Wilderness, where people leave a trail of environmental destruction.

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A leading UN expert is calling for criminal penalties against those peddling disinformation about the climate crisis and a total ban on fossil fuel industry lobbying and advertising, as part of a radical shake-up to safeguard human rights and curtail planetary catastrophe.

Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change who presents her damning new report to the general assembly in Geneva on Monday, argues that the US, UK, Canada, Australia and other wealthy fossil fuel nations are legally obliged under international law to fully phase out oil, gas and coal by 2030 – and compensate communities for harms caused.

Fracking, oil sands and gas flaring should be banned, as should fossil fuel exploration, subsidies, investments and false tech solutions that will lock in future generations to polluting and increasingly costly oil, gas and coal.

“Despite overwhelming evidence of the interlinked, intergenerational, severe and widespread human rights impacts of the fossil fuel life cycle … these countries have and are still accruing enormous profits from fossil fuels, and are still not taking decisive action,” said Morgera, professor of global environmental law at the University of Strathclyde.

Yes, it's a pipe dream to expect any of this, let alone all of it, but allowing corporations an exclusive microphone moves the needle in the wrong direction.

This is a re-post from the Climate Brink

Environmentalists are suing to stop the flow of 1,4-dioxane into the drinking water supply, which one local water utility found at concentrations 17 times higher than the EPA’s health advisory goal.

On June 27, 2025, Friends of the Everglades and Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Florida Division of Emergency Management and Miami-Dade County regarding a reckless plan for a massive detention center in the heart of the Everglades, known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Friends of the Everglades is represented by Earthjustice and attorneys Scott Hiaasen and Paul Schwiep.

As the lawsuit points out, the plan has gone through no environmental review as required under federal law, and the public has had no opportunity to comment. Despite that, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has plowed ahead with developing the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport — a site that is more than 96% wetlands, surrounded by Big Cypress National Preserve, and critical habitat for the endangered Florida panther and other iconic species.

“This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect,” said Eve Samples, Executive Director of Friends of the Everglades. “Friends of the Everglades was founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 1969 to stop harmful development at this very location. Fifty-six years later, the threat has returned — and it poses another existential threat to the Everglades.”

Full Press Release: https://www.everglades.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/FOE-Alligator-Alcatraz-Press-Release.pdf

• Nepal’s Supreme Court struck down a 2024 law permitting infrastructure in protected areas in January 2025, but the government continues to approve such projects as the full ruling remains unpublished.
• Despite the ruling, the government approved the 57.6 billion rupee ($416 million), 81-kilometer (50.3-mile) Muktinath cable car touted as the world’s longest line, which will pass through the Annapurna Conservation Area, raising concerns about environmental and cultural impacts.
• The government has also signaled interest in opening up protected areas to private investment, including commercial extraction of timber, gravel and stones.

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As conservation groups scramble to motivate advocates in support of public lands, one item in the Trump administration’s budget is the quiet redirection of $387 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund that Trump “permanently” funded at $900 million with his Great American Outdoors Act in 2020.

Slashing the Land and Water Conservation Fund, or LWCF, funding threatens three high-profile and long-planned projects in Colorado, all ranking among the most high priority national conservation efforts listed by LWCF for the coming year.

One of the largest LWCF conservation projects ever considered in Colorado includes a $34 million plan for 2025 to protect the 650-acre Snowmass Falls Ranch outside Snowmass Village.

The Wilderness Land Trust and Pitkin County in 2024 partnered to purchase the 650-acre Snowmass Falls Ranch outside Snowmass Village. The property — a gateway to the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness — was acquired for $34 million by the Pitkin County Open Space Program. The plan calls for transferring the acreage over to the White River National Forest using funds from the LWCF.

The deal marked years of work to protect 614 acres of the 650-acre ranch as wilderness and protect public access across the property to reach one of the state’s most trafficked wilderness areas.

It’s 20.6°F hotter than normal today in Concord, New Hampshire. Nearby, in Montpelier, Vermont, it’s 19.1°F hotter than normal.

Further south, in New York City, it’s 13.6°F hotter than normal. Over in Philly—where I live, pray for me—it’s 13.8°F hotter than normal. It’s 14.2°F hotter than normal in Detroit; 10.9°F hotter than normal in Chicago; and 9.6°F hotter than normal in Washington, D.C.

All of these extreme temperatures were made more likely by climate change—a phenomenon primarily caused by fossil fuels—according to Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index (CSI). The CSI uses peer-reviewed methodology to map out how much climate change influences the temperature on a particular day.

Western Europe in particular is experiencing temperatures up to 28.6°F hotter than normal. That heat was also made up to five times more likely by climate change.

I’m probably not telling most readers anything they don’t already know. When heat-trapping gases are accumulated in the atmosphere, it results in more extreme heat. Duh.

But I’m saying it anyway, because these are the moments when it’s most impactful to communicate the reality of climate change—in the moments when people are personally experiencing it.

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• EcoWatch article
• report cited

The new standards will reduce amounts of 12 toxic or cancer-linked pollutants in Alabama waterways, according to clean water advocacy groups that petitioned for the changes.

• The Liberia-flagged vessel MSC ELSA 3, carrying 640 containers, including 13 with hazardous cargo, along with almost 85 metric tons of diesel and 367 metric tons of furnace oil, sank off of Kerala, in southern India, on May 25.
• Just 10 days after the sinking of MSC ELSA 3, Sri Lanka’s northern coast recorded significant plastic pollution with the costal belt being contaminated with bags full of plastic nurdles, making the island nation brace for more pollution as strong monsoonal winds contribute to increased pollution.
• The incident has revived painful memories of 2021 when Sri Lanka experienced its worst maritime disaster, the X-Press Pearl incident, which caused massive coastal pollution on the island’s western coast and parts of the south and northwest, with the island nation still fighting for adequate compensation.
• Meanwhile, another ship, MV Wan Hai 503, carrying 2,128 metric tons of fuel and hazardous cargo, also caught fire on June 7, off the south Indian coast of Kerala, which is still ablaze and is expected to cause further pollution along Sri Lanka’s northern coast.

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• As climate treaty delegates gather in Bonn this week ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, later this year, the world needs to confront a truth usually omitted from such negotiations: the climate crisis is not just a political failure, but the result of unchecked corporate power.
• In this commentary, Ecuadorian lawyer, activist and Goldman Environmental Prize winner Pablo Fajardo — who led one of the world’s largest legal battles against Chevron for its toxic legacy in the Amazon — argues that the climate crisis cannot be solved without confronting the corporate power structures driving it.
• Despite a $9.5 billion ruling against Chevron, the company has used international arbitration as a weapon to evade responsibility, highlighting how international commercial courts and legal loopholes protect companies like them: “At COP30 and beyond, if we are serious about climate justice, we must confront the machinery of impunity and fight united for system change and a future where justice is not the privilege of the powerful, but the right of all.”
• This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23426630

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23410145

• Más de 50 investigadores de siete países dan cuenta de la paulatina degradación de la Antártida: microplásticos en el agua, derretimiento del hielo y pérdida de salinidad del océano austral.
• Dada la conexión que existe entre la Antártida y la Amazonía, los científicos no descartan que en el hielo existan rastros de los incendios forestales.
• La situación es preocupante puesto que la Antártida, aunque remota, tiene una dinámica de conexión constante con el resto del planeta.
• Los cambios que ocurren en ella influyen en la regulación del clima global.

archivado (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23409897

• An expedition by more than 50 researchers from seven countries has documented the gradual degradation of Antarctica: microplastics in the water, melting ice, and declining salinity in the Southern Ocean.
• The team found microplastics in both glacial ice and seawater.
• They also noted that atmospheric “rivers” are sending ash-laden air from Amazon forest fires to Antarctica, hastening the melting of snow and ice there.
• The accelerated melting means more freshwater is rushing into the Southern Ocean, reducing the salinity level and affecting the phytoplankton that form the basis of the marine food chain.

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Atmospheric rivers, while vital for replenishing water on the U.S. West Coast, are also the leading cause of floods though storm size alone doesn't dictate their danger. A groundbreaking study analyzing over 43,000 storms across four decades found that pre-existing soil moisture is a critical factor, with flood peaks multiplying when the ground is already saturated.

• While oil prospects in the Amazon north shore attract international attention, the offer of exploration blocks around Indigenous territories goes unnoticed in Mato Grosso state.
• Brazil will auction 21 blocks in the Parecis Basin, an area with dense Indigenous activity, yet none of these communities have been consulted, as leaders struggle to handle existing threats such as ranchers and miners.
• Impacts on Indigenous territories include the influx of workers and machinery during research and the risk of toxic gas emissions and water pollution if projects move forward.
• The rainforest is the most promising frontier for the oil industry, with one-fifth of the world’s newly discovered reserves from 2022-24.

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• Across Latin America, banks have failed to integrate sustainability regulations into lending, bond issuance and financial advisory services, according to a WWF sustainable finance assessment.
• WWF examined the policies of 22 banks across Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, and found that the countries’ financial sectors had largely failed to implement protections against nature-related risks, such as deforestation and biodiversity loss.
• Only six of the 22 banks have policies that acknowledge the “societal and economic risks” associated with environmental degradation, and just two of them have made net-zero carbon emission commitments for their lending portfolios.

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23272945

We have all heard the time-worn cliche, “There is NO Planet B.”

Our message is the opposite. We believe that we are now living in an extraordinary time at the tipping point between two distinct worlds.

Planet A is the world we were all educated into — a system built on extraction, domination, deception and denial. It’s a world where 90% of American adults have been miseducated into believing that protein is ONLY found in animal foods. It is a world where forests are clear-cut for animal agriculture, oceans are emptied for profit, and mothers are separated from their babies in the name of food to satisfy nutritional needs that do not exist. It’s a world overheating, unraveling and collapsing under the weight of its own violence.

Our message is that you don’t have to stay in that dystopian world of Planet A.

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23272762

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23270625

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• Three companies are suing the Indonesian government to be allowed to mine for nickel in the Raja Ampat archipelago, a marine biodiversity hotspot, Greenpeace has revealed.
• The finding comes after the government’s recent revocation of four other mining permits in the area, following a public outcry over environmental damage and potential zoning violations.
• At the same time, the government is also encouraging the development of a nickel processing plant nearby, raising concerns this could fuel pressure to reopen canceled mines to supply the smelter.
• Greenpeace has called for a total mining ban across Raja Ampat and for an end to the smelter project to ensure the conservation of the archipelago’s unique ecosystems and biodiversity.

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