Climate Crisis Putting a Billion Children at ‘Extremely High Risk,’ Warns New UN Report | Take Action Tuesday @EarthFoodLife

Life at the extremes: Floods, like this one in Bangladesh in 2019, are becoming more common as extreme weather events linked to climate change increase in frequency and intensity. (Photo credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan/UN Women/Flickr)

Almost half of the world’s children are seriously threatened by the rapidly deteriorating global climate.

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

7 min read

“Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people to give them hope. But I don’t want your hope,” said Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg in 2019. “I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.” Now the famed young eco-warrior and Nobel Peace Prize nominee might get her wish as she, along with other youth activists, has collaborated with UNICEF—a United Nations agency working in more than 190 countries and territories to provide humanitarian and developmental aid to the world’s most disadvantaged children and adolescents—to launch an alarming new report that has found that a billion children across the world are at “extremely high risk” from the impacts of climate change.

Released ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in November in Glasgow, Scotland, and on the third anniversary of Fridays for Future (FFF), the youth-led global climate strike movement founded by Thunberg, “The Climate Crisis Is a Child Rights Crisis”​​ is the first climate report to combine high-resolution geographic maps detailing global environmental and climate impacts with maps that show regions where children are vulnerable due to an array of stressors, including poverty and lack of access to education, health care or clean water. The report introduces the new Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI), a composite index that ranks nations based on children’s exposure to climate shocks, providing the first comprehensive look at how exactly children are affected by the climate crisis, offering a road map for policymakers seeking to prioritize action based on those who are most at risk. Nick Rees, a policy specialist at UNICEF focusing on climate change and economic analysis and one of the report’s authors, told the Guardian that “[i]t essentially [shows] the likelihood of a child’s ability to survive climate change.”

“For the first time, we have a complete picture of where and how children are vulnerable to climate change, and that picture is almost unimaginably dire. Climate and environmental shocks are undermining the complete spectrum of children’s rights, from access to clean air, food and safe water; to education, housing, freedom from exploitation, and even their right to survive. Virtually no child’s life will be unaffected,” said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF’s executive director. “For three years, children have raised their voices around the world to demand action. UNICEF supports their calls for change with an unarguable message—the climate crisis is a child’s rights crisis.”

In addition to finding that approximately 1 billion children—nearly half the world’s child population—live in countries that are at an “extremely high risk” from climate impacts, the report found that almost every single child on the planet has been exposed to at least one climate or environmental stressor, such as air pollution, flooding, heat waves, tropical storms, flooding or drought. Moreover, the report found that 850 million children—approximately one-third of the world’s child population—are exposed to four or more stressors.Specifically, the CCRI found that 1 billion children are “highly exposed” to “exceedingly high levels of air pollution,” 920 million to water scarcity, 820 million to heat waves, 815 million to lead pollution, 600 million to vector-borne diseases, 400 million to tropical storms, 330 million to riverine flooding, and 240 million to coastal flooding.

Future leaders: Thousands of young activists rallied at the seventh annual “Youth for Climate” march in Brussels, Belgium, in February 2019. (Photo credit: The Left/Flickr)

“Children bear the greatest burden of climate change. Not only are they more vulnerable than adults to the extreme weather, toxic hazards and diseases it causes, but the planet is becoming a more dangerous place to live,” write Thunberg and three other youth climate activists with FFF: Adriana Calderón from Mexico, Farzana Faruk Jhumu from Bangladesh and Eric Njuguna from Kenya, in the report’s foreword. “In 1989, virtually every country in the world agreed children have rights to a clean environment to live in, clean air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat. Children also have rights to learn, relax and play. But with their lack of action on climate change, world leaders are failing this promise,” add the four youth activists, all part of the international youth-led Fridays for Future global climate strike movement. “Our futures are being destroyed, our rights violated, and our pleas ignored. Instead of going to school or living in a safe home, children are enduring famine, conflict and deadly diseases due to climate and environmental shocks. These shocks are propelling the world’s youngest, poorest and most vulnerable children further into poverty, making it harder for them to recover the next time a cyclone hits, or a wildfire sparks.”

“One of the reasons I’m a climate activist is because I was born into climate change like so many of us have been,” Mitzi Jonelle Tan, a youth campaigner from the Philippines who also helped launch the UNICEF report, told the Guardian. “I have such vivid memories of doing my homework by the candlelight as typhoons raged outside, wiping out the electricity, and growing up being afraid of drowning in my own bedroom because I would wake up to a flooded room.”

In addition to detailing the climate risks facing the world’s children, the CCRI reveals a worrisome inequity regarding who must ultimately deal with the consequences of climate change. The 33 extremely high-risk countries for children—including the Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau—collectively are responsible for a mere 9 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. This finding supports related research published in a 2020 report produced by Oxfam that found that the richest 1 percent of people are responsible for 15 percent of cumulative emissions—twice as much as the poorest half of the global population. “Climate change is deeply inequitable. While no child is responsible for rising global temperatures, they will pay the highest costs. The children from countries least responsible will suffer most of all,” said Fore.The UNICEF report’s authors connect this climate inequality to COVID-19, saying that the pandemic “has revealed the depth of what can go wrong if we do not listen to science and act rapidly in the face of a global crisis. It has laid bare the inequality that cuts across and within countries—the most vulnerable are often propelled further into poverty due to multiple risk factors, including poor access to vaccines, creating vicious cycles that are difficult to escape.”

Fighting for their future: Activists with the Taiwan Youth Climate Coalition rally on the Global Day of Action during the COP17 UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa, in December 2011. (Photo credit: Julian Koschorke/Speak Your Mind/theverb.org/Flickr)

In order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, global net man-made emissions of carbon dioxide must be nearly halved by 2030, and reach “net zero” by 2050, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body for assessing the current state of the world’s climate science. The main problem is that the world’s nations are not meeting their targets to achieve these goals. In fact, a report released by the IPCC on August 9 found not only that climate change was “unequivocally” caused by human activity, but also that within two decades, rising temperatures will cause the planet to reach a significant turning point in global warming, with average global temperatures predicted to be warmer than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, causing more frequent and intense heat waves, droughts and extreme weather events. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the IPCC’s discouraging findings a “code red for humanity.”

“Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every day. There are no politics to change that,” Thunberg declared in an address to some 10,000 people gathered for a climate demonstration in Helsinki, Finland, in 2018. “There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground, so we can’t save the world by playing by the rules because the rules have to change. Everything needs to change and it has to start today.”

In their report, UNICEF calls on governments and businesses to protect children from the climate crisis not only by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but also by increasing investments in health and hygiene services, education and clean water; providing children with climate education and green skills; including young people in climate negotiations and decision making; and ensuring a “green, low-carbon and inclusive” COVID-19 recovery “so that the capacity of future generations to address and respond to the climate crisis is not compromised.”

In December of 2011, during the COP17 UN climate talks held in Durban, South Africa, activists marched through the streets calling for action in the negotiations. Christiana Figueres, who was at the time the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (where she later oversaw the establishment of the Paris climate agreement in 2015), told the marchers that the children have a single message for climate negotiators: “Do more, do more, do more.” A decade later, with the Earth’s atmosphere heating up at a rate unprecedented in the last two millennia and economists suggesting that the Paris agreement may be doomed to fail, it’s becoming painfully clear that the UN—and the world’s political and business leaders—didn’t do nearly enough.

“There is still time for countries to commit to preventing the worst, including setting the appropriate carbon budgets to meet Paris targets, and ultimately taking the drastic action required to shift the economy away from fossil fuels,” write the UNICEF report youth activists Thunberg, Calderón, Jhumu and Njuguna, who committed to the climate fight, even if it means missing more days at school. “We will strike again and again until decision-makers change the course of humanity… We must acknowledge where we stand, treat climate change like the crisis it is and act with the urgency required to ensure today’s children inherit a liveable planet.”

Take action…

Burning problem: Air pollution can worsen asthma symptoms, and children are particularly at risk. More than 24 million Americans have asthma. Nearly 6 million of them are children. (Photo credit: Neal Wellons/Flickr)

“Nitrogen oxides (NOx) pollution from power plants contributes to harmful particle pollution and smog, and puts children and those with asthma at special risk,” writes Moms Clean Air Force, a coalition of parents working to fight air pollution. “Many power plants either do not have modern pollution controls for NOx installed or are not operating their controls optimally.”

Urge the EPA to ensure that U.S. power plants are not spewing massive pollution unchecked across state lines.

Cause for concern…

Pumping without permits: A pumpjack in the Permian Basin, a large oil and natural gas producing area located in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico. (Photo credit: blake.thornberry/Flickr)

“A new analysis from Earthworks suggests that oil and gas producers in the Permian Basin in Texas, one of the largest oilfields in the world, are routinely emitting carbon dioxide and methane without the correct permits, with offenders including big names like Shell and Exxon,” reports Molly Taft for Earther.

Round of applause…

Poison spray: Approximately 1 billion pounds of conventional pesticides are used in the U.S. every single year. (Photo credit: Oregon Department of Agriculture/Flickr)

“A pesticide that’s been linked to neurological damage in children, including reduced IQ, loss of working memory, and attention deficit disorders, has been banned by the Biden administration following a years-long legal battle,” reports Vanessa Romo for NPR. “Health and labor organizations have been waging a campaign to revoke the use of chlorpyrifos for years. The EPA was considering a ban but under the Trump administration, the agency concluded there wasn’t enough evidence showing the harmful effects of the chemicals on humans and kept it on the market.”

ICYMI…

Trojan tree? An American chestnut hybrid bur. (Photo credit: Photolangelle.org)

“On August 18, 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a petition by researchers at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) seeking federal approval to release their genetically engineered (GE) Darling 58 (D58) American chestnut tree into U.S. forests. Researchers claim the transgenic D58 tree will resist the fungal blight that, coupled with rampant overlogging, decimated the American chestnut population in the early 20th century. In fact, the GE American chestnut is a Trojan horse meant to open the doors to commercial GE trees designed for industrial plantations.”

—EFL contributor Anne Petermann, “USDA May Allow Genetically Modified Trees to Be Released Into the Wild,” Truthout, April 18, 2021

Parting thought…

Daily bread: People queuing to receive bread from Acme Bread in Berkeley, California, during the COVID-19 pandemic in August 2020. (Photo credit: Roger Jones/Flickr)

“My piece of bread only belongs to me when I know that everyone else has a share and that no one starves while I eat.” —Leo Tolstoy

Reynard Loki is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, BillMoyers.com, Counterpunch, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others.

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

How Do We Wake Up to the Living World Around Us and Respectfully Share It With Others?

Into the bush: An important habitat for several butterfly species, Bentley Wood, together with Blackmoor Copse, makes up one of the largest contiguous woodland areas in Wiltshire, England. (Photo credit: Snapdragon1959/Flickr) 

Finding our way back to nature starts with a single breath.

By Baptiste Morizot

5 min read

Editor’s Note: How do we wake up to the living world around us and respectfully share it with others? By following the trails of animals, says philosopher and environmentalist Baptise Morizot in On the Animal Trail (July 2021). Morizot wants us to develop a new relationship to the natural world: to become nature detectives and to follow the footprints of the many wonderful and extraordinary animals with which we share the earth—even wolves, bears, and snow leopards. It is through this kind of ‘philosophical tracking’ that we come to see the world from the animal’s point of view, and importantly, to learn to live in this world from the perspective of another species. Then can we begin to let go of our anthropocentric point of view, and recapture the kind of perspective that our ancestors had. Part philosophical treatise, part memoir, Morizot also recounts his own touching and, at times, heart-pounding encounters with the natural world in his own tracking expeditions across the globe.

The following excerpt is from On the Animal Trail, by Baptiste Morizot (Polity Books, 2021), and translated by Andrew Brown. This web adaptation was produced by Polity Books in partnership with Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Tomorrow we’ll get a breath of fresh air. What fascinates me about this formulation is how the constraints of language poetically suggest something quite different from what you mean—how the phrase almost makes you hear the element most opposite to, and most complementary to, air, namely the ‘earth’ which the ear can almost hear hidden in the word ‘breath.’

To ‘get a breath of fresh air’ is also to be back on earth, earthly, or ‘terrestrial’ as Bruno Latour puts it. The fresh air that we breathe and that surrounds us, by the ancient miracle of photosynthesis, is the product of the breathing forces of the meadows and forests that we walk through, and which are themselves the gift of the living soils that we tread upon: the breath of fresh air is the metabolic activity of the earth. The atmospheric environment is living in the literal sense: it is the effect of living things and the environment that living beings maintain for themselves, and for us.

To get a breath of fresh air: the earth is disguised in the word ‘breath,’ but still perceptible—and once you are aware of it, you can’t ignore it. And the magic formula then invokes another world where there is no longer any separation between the celestial and the terrestrial, because the open air is the breath of the green earth. There’s no more opposition between the ethereal and the material, no more sky above us to ascend to, for we are already in the sky, which is none other than the earth inasmuch as it is alive—that is, built by the metabolic activity of living things, creating conditions that make our life possible. Getting a breath of fresh air is not about being in nature and far from civilization, because there is nature everywhere (apart from in shopping centers…). Nor does it mean being outside, but rather being everywhere at home on the living territories that are the basis of our subsistence and where each living thing inhabits the woven web of other living things.

Hello, fellow Earthling: A black bear footprint frozen in the snow near Echo Lake, California. (Photo credit: Mark Gunn/Flickr)

To get a breath of fresh air, however, is a bit demanding: urban life as such, disconnected from the circuits that convey biomass to us, disconnected from the elements and other forms of life, makes it very difficult to access fresh air. In the heart of cities, this means tracking migrating birds or practicing the geopolitics of permaculture vegetable gardens on a balcony. It means wondering where this tomato came from so that I can smell the sun and the portion of earth from which it was born, and see that earth with my own eyes. It means activating mutualist alliances with the worms of the worm composter to which we donate the leftovers from our kitchen and the shreds of our hair, so as to see and circulate solar energy in dynamic ecological processes rather than hiding them in lifeless rubbish bins. It’s more difficult, but even in the city you can get a breath of fresh air. With a little eco-sensitive vigilance, the living land reminds us of itself. It’s fascinating to feel how much we are connected to spring, how much it rises up in us, reaching into the very heart of the big cities, something we can see from a thousand little invigorating signs.

Being in the fresh air means simultaneously being enlarged by the living space around us when we take up room within it, and with our feet in the soil, lying on it as on a fantastic animal which bears us, a gigantic animal come back to life, rich in signs, in subtle relationships, a donor environment whose generosity is finally recognized, far removed from the myths that tell us we need to tyrannize the earth if it is to nourish us.

Being in the fresh air means being in the living atmosphere produced by the respiration of plants, since what they reject is what makes us. It means recognizing that the breath of fresh air and the earth are one and the same fabric, immersive, alive, made by living things in which we are caught up, mutually vulnerable—and thus forced into more diplomatic relations.

Being in the fresh air is, at one and the same time, an invigorating opening and a way of finding our way back to the earth.

###

Baptiste Morizot is a philosopher and lecturer at Aix-Marseille University in Marseille, France. He is the author of On the Animal Trail.

Take action…

Little wise ones: Threatened northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) fledglings stick close together on a branch. Earlier this year, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit to reinstate federal protections on the species’ essential habitat covering more than 3.4 million acres of federal old-growth forests. (Photo credit: Tom Kogut/USFS/USFWS Endangered Species/Flickr)

“There isn’t a moment to lose in the global extinction crisis. A species vanishes from the world every hour, and more than a million could be lost in the coming decades,” warns the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit conservation organization headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.

“It’s time for President Biden to declare the wildlife extinction crisis a national emergency. The declaration, under the National Emergencies Act, isn’t just symbolic. It will unlock key presidential powers to stem the loss of animals and plants in the United States and beyond.”

Urge President Biden to declare the wildlife extinction crisis a national emergency.

Letter to the editor…

​​​​Replying to “New UN Climate Report Is ‘Code Red for Humanity,’ but Joining Forces and Using Indigenous Knowledge Could Avert Disaster,” by EFL editor Reynard Loki:

“Good luck. Seems like pissing into the wind.” —Paul Whittaker, Ontario, Canada

Cause for concern…

Just infrastructure? President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. (Photo credit: Whitehouse.gov)

“The provisions [in President Biden’s infrastructure bill]… underscore a misplaced focus on limiting the environmental review and public input process, which threatens to undermine the principles of racial and climate equity that should guide an infrastructure package,” wrote a dozen conservation groups in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). The groups, report Dino Grandoni and Darryl Fears for the Washington Post, argue that the provisions would weaken the National Environmental Policy Act, a landmark environmental law.

Round of applause…

The plastic problem: Food packaging contributes about 5.4 percent of global food system emissions, according to UN data. (Photo credit: ricardo/Flickr)

“Two American manufacturers unveiled a new recipe on Thursday for PFAS and plastics-free packaging for everything from burgers to salads, in a bid to make takeout food more sustainable and safer for consumers,” reports Elizabeth Gribkoff for Environmental Health News. “While the companies—Zume and Solenis—are not the first to design a grease-resistant, PFAS-free food container, this is the first time that manufacturers have open-sourced such packaging technology.”

ICYMI…

The true cost of beef: Emissions from animal products are 10 to 50 times higher than those from plant-based foods. (Photo credit: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals)

“In order to meet the goals of the Paris agreement, global greenhouse gas emissions must be halved by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050. But current national commitments are insufficient, say scientists… To make matters worse, the ongoing expansion of the EU meat and dairy industries threatens to upend the bloc’s climate goals. Between 2007 and 2018, the EU’s meat and dairy production saw a 9.5 percent increase, which, according to Greenpeace, resulted in a 6 percent increase in annual emissions—the same impact as putting 8.4 million new cars on the road.”

—EFL editor Reynard Loki, “Meat and Dairy Industries Threaten to Derail Europe’s Commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement,” All-Creatures, February 16, 2021

Parting thought…

Tranquil tabby. (Photo credit: pelican/Flickr)

“The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.” —Jules Renard

Reynard Loki is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, BillMoyers.com, Counterpunch, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others.

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

Pandemic May Have Left Over 250 Million People With Acute Food Shortages in 2020

The following is an excerpt of an article that was originally published on Truthout.

Click to read the full article online.

As Black and Latinx families experience disproportionate food insecurity, experts warn of famine in dozens of countries.

By Robin Scher

February 23, 2021

Beyond the questions surrounding the availability, effectiveness and safety of a vaccine, the COVID-19 pandemic has led us to question where our food is coming from and whether we will have enough. According to a United Nations World Food Program (WFP) report, COVID-19 might have left up to 265 million people with acute food shortages in 2020. The combined effect of the pandemic as well as the emerging global recession “could, without large-scale coordinated action, disrupt the functioning of food systems,” which would “result in consequences for health and nutrition of a severity and scale unseen for more than half a century,” states another UN report.

In the United States, “food insecurity has doubled overall, and tripled among households with children” due to the pandemic, states a June 2020 report by the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) at Northwestern University, which relied on data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. In a recent interview with CBS News, IPR Director Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach warned that these statistics would likely “continue to hold,” with the numbers indicating particularly dramatic rises in food insecurity among Black and Latinx families. Indeed, families of color are being disproportionately impacted. According to an analysis of new Census data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), 22 percent of Black and 21 percent of Latinx respondents reported not having enough to eat, compared to just 9 percent of white people.

Globally, the effects of COVID-19 on food security are equally, if not more, severe. According to a CBS News report, WFP Director David Beasley told the UN Security Council in April 2020 that the world is on “the brink of a hunger pandemic.” He added, “In a worst-case scenario, we could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries, and in fact, in 10 of these countries we already have more than one million people per country who are on the verge of starvation.”

“The number of chronically hungry people increased by an estimated 130 million last year, to more than 800 million—about eight times the total number of COVID-19 cases to date,” wrote Mark Lowcock, the under-secretary-general and emergency relief coordinator at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and Axel van Trotsenburg, managing director of operations at the World Bank. “Countries affected by conflict and climate change are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity. Empty stomachs can stunt whole generations.”The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) warns that climate change “is likely to diminish continued progress on global food security through production disruptions that lead to local availability limitations and price increases, interrupted transport conduits, and diminished food safety.” The same might be said about the pandemic, which has made it abundantly clear: climate resilience, food security and global health are closely intertwined.

Read the rest at Truthout.

Robin Scher is a writer based in South Africa. He is a graduate of the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University. Find him on Twitter @RobScherHimself.

Photo Credit: neukomment/Flickr

Coronavirus Shows Humanity That It’s Entirely Possible to Avert Climate Disaster

Tiny terror: Coronavirus CG illustration (Image credit: Yuri Samoilo/Flickr)

The global lockdown has given Mother Nature a breath of fresh air.

By Reynard Loki, Independent Media Institute

Amidst all the terrible news about the spreading coronavirus epidemic, a scintillating fact has emerged that can energize the environmental movement: The global slowdown in human activity has given Mother Nature some time to take a much-needed breath of fresh air. Between travel restrictions, reductions in public transport and overall economic activity that generates emissions—such as coal burning, refining oil and producing steel—the climate is getting the kind of rest from destructive human activity it hasn’t gotten since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

The lockdown in China (the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases), for example, has cut the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 100 million metric tons in just two weeks, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief, a UK-based climate policy watchdog. That’s down a quarter from the same two-week period in 2019. Observations made by NASA and European Space Agency pollution monitoring satellites appear to confirm the analysis. They show a sudden and steep decrease in nitrogen dioxide (NO2)—an air pollutant emitted by power plants, factories and vehicles—over China during mid-February when the nation entered a quarantine.

“This is the first time I have seen such a dramatic drop-off over such a wide area for a specific event,” said Fei Liu, an air quality researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Back to nature: The maps above show nitrogen dioxide values across China from January 1-20, 2020 (before the quarantine), and February 10-25 (during the quarantine). (Image credit: European Space Agency via NASA)

While these are significant and sudden reductions and were achieved over a remarkably brief period of time, they are temporary. The long-term effects on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and other atmospheric pollutants are unclear. On one hand, Chinese authorities may try to boost production after the pandemic is over in an attempt to make up for the lost time. On the other hand, the economic impact of the pandemic may suppress the global demand for Chinese goods for months or even years to come.

“Any sustained impact on fossil-fuel use would come from reduced demand, which initial indicators suggest could have a major impact. For example, February car sales are forecast to fall by 30 percent below last year’s already depressed levels,” writes Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. “If consumer demand is reduced—for example, due to unpaid wages during the crisis cascading through the rest of the economy—then industrial output and fossil-fuel use might not recover, even though capacity is available to do so.”

Still, the findings offer climate activists a tantalizing fact: It is technically feasible to achieve big reductions in pollutants that are fueling the climate crisis. All that’s required is a break in economic production and human activity. But while a global pandemic can instigate a break in human activity, the climate crisis hasn’t been able to make a dent in it. Why is that?

For one thing, the coronavirus pandemic has a clear killer: a microorganism. And the global death toll is rising by the hour as the virus jumps from person to person. The climate crisis, on the other hand, doesn’t have a distinct killer. There have been countless deaths tied to all the human activity that is the cause of the climate crisis: heat waves, hurricanes, droughts, and yes, even diseases, like Lyme disease, the normal range of which has spread due to warming climates. And, course, there is the invisible killer that’s not a microorganism: air pollution, which is caused by a number of toxic chemicals, some of which are greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet. But the fatalities associated with climate impacts are many steps removed from the actual causes, which are simply a matter of degree: too many cars and trucks on the roads, too many planes in the sky, too many bulldozers clearing rainforests, too many factories, air conditioners, large-screen televisions, mansions. Ultimately, too many people consuming too many things.

Let’s say COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, ends up killing seven million people this year. That figure would probably shock most people. But that is the same number of people who die from air pollution—every single year. As Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, writes, “Black carbon, methane, and nitrogen oxides are powerful drivers of global warming, and, along with other air pollutants such as carbon monoxide and ozone, they are responsible for over seven million deaths each year, about one in eight worldwide.”

And that’s just air pollution. Heat exposure, coastal flooding and diseases like malaria and dengue—all increased by climate change—could cause approximately 250,000 deaths annually between 2030 and 2050, according to the World Health Organization. A study led by Oxford University forecast that by 2050, climate-related reductions in food availability (primarily fruits and vegetables) will cause an additional 529,000 adult deaths worldwide.

Sadly, no one knows these statistics, because—tragically for all the people who might be saved, and for the planet—the mainstream news media barely covers the climate. The figures are shocking. Major network news programs devoted barely four hours to the climate crisis over the entirety of 2019, according to a recent study by Media Matters. That amounts to a paltry 0.7 percent of overall evening broadcasts and the Sunday morning news shows.

Clearly, we cannot rely on the media. And we can’t rely on world leaders, either. According to a recent report by a panel of world-class scientists, “The Truth Behind the Paris Agreement Climate Pledges,” the majority of the carbon emission reduction pledges for 2030 that 184 countries made under the international accord aren’t nearly enough to prevent global warming from exceeding 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, which is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The authors further note that some nations won’t even meet their pledges, and some of the biggest polluters will even increase their emissions.

It’s up to you and me, and every single individual who wants a healthy planet for ourselves, our children and future generations. And environmental activists should use this moment in history to help people understand that we can, we should and we must make changes to our behavior, our lifestyles, and our consumption habits.

Across the globe, the coronavirus pandemic has changed daily human life in ways small (like the length of time we wash our hands) and big (like how we work and play). It also demonstrates one salient fact: Our everyday activities impact so many things—not just our own personal health, but the health of our local communities and even the entire planet. Coronavirus is a killer, but it can also be a teacher. Let’s learn all of its lessons.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Reynard Loki is a senior writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s “Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016.” His work has been published by Truthout, Salon, BillMoyers.com, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others.

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and nature/animal rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

Earth | Food | Life: Covering the Climate Crisis and Our Broken Food System

Earth | Food | Life (EFL), a project of the Independent Media Institute (IMI), produces and publishes reports on climate change threats, provocative animal rights essays, and insights on the frontlines of the food revolution that is sweeping America—increasingly organic, increasingly sustainable, increasingly humane. In the past six months alone, EFL has worked with more than 30 authors—including IMI writing fellows, freelance reporters, consumer advocates, frontline activists and experts across several fields—to bring dozens of exclusive articles to readers across the globe.

In recent months, EFL has held both the Trump administration and the corporate sector accountable for malfeasance, unethical decision-making and promoting profit over public health, the environment and the rights and welfare of animals. EFL editor Reynard Loki recently talked to Emmy Award-winning director of “Gasland” Josh Fox about his new performance project, “The Truth Has Changed,” which reveals how big data and big oil are fueling climate denial and the right-wing misinformation campaign to get Trump reelected in 2020. Trump’s White House was also in the crosshairs of Elliott Negin, who denounced the administration’s sustained and repeated attacks on science, while Adam Kolton condemned Trump’s reckless push to drill in the Arctic.

Our broken food system also remains a central focus of Earth | Food | Life. David Coman-Hidy, Tia Schwab, Priya Sawhney and Taylor Ford each unveiled different aspects of the animal cruelty inherent in factory farms, while also spotlighting deceptive corporate practices that keep consumers in the dark, and Elizabeth Henderson uncovered the financial plight of small family farms facing the powerful forces of food sector consolidation, including unfair food pricing. Laurel Sutherlin, Michael Green and Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner explored various ubiquitous—and legal—substances in our food system, some of which, like PFAS, are toxic to humans, and others, like palm oil, which threaten biodiversity and endangered wildlife through rampant—and sometimes illegal—deforestation.

In 2020, EFL will continue to produce hard-hitting reports, exposés and op-eds to reveal how both the public and private sectors have been working to undermine advancements and protections in animal rights, food safety, and the environment. In addition, EFL will continue to produce weekly “Take Action Tuesday” newsletters, which give readers easy ways to have their voices heard through petitions, consumer pledges and letters to state and federal legislators.

About Earth | Food | Life:

Edited by Reynard Loki, Earth | Food | Life explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and animal/nature rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters, and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. Earth | Food | Life emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

To learn more, visit Earth | Food | Life on the web, on Twitter, or email EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected].

Take Action Tuesday: Speak up for Children, Communities of Color, Rainforests and Gray Wolves

Food for thought: One in five children live in poverty, and they rely on school lunches to meet some or all of their nutritional needs. (Photo credit: National Institutes of Health)

S.E. Smith, Truthout: More than 12 million children in the U.S. experience food insecurity — and that doesn’t just mean they don’t always know when their next meal is. The backpack program, which is often administered through a food bank that partners with a school, is just one tactic being used by advocacy groups and schools to combat hunger and poverty.
>>>Fight child hunger this winter by supporting a backpack program.

Rainforest Rescue: Policymakers and industries in more than 20 countries have signed on to a “Biofuture Platform” that would use biofuels, bioplastics and biomaterials as an alternative to fossil fuels. The consequences for land, food production, ecosystems and human rights would be dire.
>>>Urge governments to reject the misguided Biofuture Platform and embrace real solutions such as reducing consumption, protecting ecosystems and promoting agroecology instead.

Ju-Hyun Park, 350.org: In 2014, after years of grassroots organizing, Governor Andrew Cuomo bowed to public pressure and banned fracking in the state of New York. But that hasn’t stopped the progress of a massive new fracked gas infrastructure project — the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline, which would stretch along the floor of New York Harbor for 23 miles, passing by Staten Island, Coney Island, just 4 miles south of the Rockaways. There’s no new demand for the gas that this pipeline would carry, and it endangers coastal communities, most of which are low-income communities of color.
>>>Tell Governor Cuomo to stop the Williams Pipeline.

Kevin Mathews, Care2: The House of Representatives passed a bill to remove protections from the gray wolf in the U.S, which would allow hunters and landowners to shoot the wolves at whim. Before these protections were instituted, the gray wolf was nearly wiped out entirely in the same way. The measures taken have helped the wolves to rebound to over 5,000, which is still way under what the population used to be. Although they may not be considered “endangered” anymore, reviving hunting is a recipe for decimating the population all over again.
>>>Urge Senate Energy & Natural Resources Chair Lisa Murkowski and the U.S. Senate to reject this bill .

Patagonia: Tasmania’s takayna/Tarkine is a 495,000-hectare region in northwestern Tasmania and one of the last undisturbed tracts of ancient rainforest in the world. The area is a crucial habitat for sixty of Tasmania’s rare and endangered species including the Tasmanian giant freshwater crayfish, the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle and the iconic Tasmanian devil. Despite its immense ecological and cultural value, it remains unprotected and at the mercy of destructive extraction industries, including logging and mining.
>>>Urge Tasmanian State Premier Will Hodgman to nominate takayna/Tarkine for World Heritage protection to protect it from extractive industries.

The Hunger Site: The fast fashion industry promotes cheaply made products that are “in style” for a single season, and then pushes out the next style as fast as the first. It is the second greatest pollution-causing industry on the planet and a huge exploiter of women and children.
>>>Tell the CEOs of Zara, H&M and Forever 21 to stop exploiting people and harming the planet by buying low-quality goods from unethical suppliers.

PETA: Since 2017, Johns Hopkins University experimenter Shreesh Mysore has received more than $800,000 in tax-funded grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to conduct cruel and useless tests on barn owls, in which he restrains the birds, cuts into their skulls and inserts electrodes into their brains — even though the evidence is overwhelming that data from experiments on animals can’t be reliably applied to humans.
>>>Urge NIH not to squander taxpayer dollars on Mysore’s cruel and worthless experiments and instead to redirect funds to modern, superior, non-animal research methods.

Parting thought…

“It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.” —John Locke

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and animal/nature rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

Take Action Tuesday: Speak Up for Safe Drinking Water, Laboratory Dogs and the Arctic Refuge

Drinking water
Dangerous waters: More than 70 million pounds of the pesticide atrazine — which has been linked to serious health effects like hormone disruption, shorter pregnancy and even cancer — are dumped on American farmland each year.

 

 

Olga Naidenko and Sydney Evans, Environmental Working Group: Seasonal spikes of atrazine, a weed killer that disrupts hormones and harms the developing fetus, contaminate the drinking water of millions of Americans at potentially hazardous levels as run-off from corn-growing areas finds its way into source waters and reservoirs. In 2016, California state scientists listed atrazine, simazine and related chemicals as substances known to cause reproductive toxicity. The European Union completely phased out atrazine in 2003 because of its potential to contaminate drinking water sources. Yet in the U.S., the EPA continues to allow the pollution of drinking water with atrazine and similar weed killers.
>>>Tell the EPA to ban atrazine and protect America’s drinking water.

Priyvrat Gadhvi, Change.org: The single biggest reason for poaching of tigers, rhinos, elephants, several reptiles and a host of other mammalian species is to feed the huge demand for their body parts for use in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) — one of the greatest threats to wildlife globally. TCM uses a range of wildlife parts and claims to cure a host of ailments, using therapies which have no basis in science, but the World Health Organization is about to endorse TCM in its annual medical compendium.
>>>Tell the World Health Organization: Don’t endorse any TCM product that uses ingredients made from wildlife parts.

Alka Chandna, Ph.D., PETA: Experimenters at Colorado State University trap American crows, American robins, and house sparrows in the wild; infect them with West Nile virus; watch as they develop painful and debilitating symptoms from the viral infection; and kill them. These experiments don’t help birds or humans — but our tax dollars have bankrolled this cruelty for years.
>>>Urge CSU to end these cruel, deadly experiments.

Adam Kolton, Alaska Wilderness League: New members-elect of Congress from across the country have already committed to protecting the Arctic Refuge by signing Alaska Wilderness Action’s Pledge for the Refuge. They will join more than one hundred current members who have committed to protect the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling, so we’re on the right track.
>>>Urge the newly elected House to quickly begin restoring protections for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Care2: Chickens raised for meat in factory farms spend their miserable lives crammed into sheds where they can barely move before they’re hung upside down and stunned — although some birds remain fully conscious — and their throats are slit. Because of this cruelty, Burger King, Jack in the Box, Subway and nearly 90 other companies have promised to stop using chickens from factory farms — but not fast-food giant McDonald’s, which sold 490 million pounds of the birds in one year alone.
>>>Urge McDonald’s to switch to more humanely raised chickens.

Causes: Dow Chemicals is attempting to expand its use of a bee-killing pesticide, despite federal regulations that have repeatedly tried to reign in the dangerous chemical. Earlier this month, Dow Chemicals submitted an application to the EPA to receive a waiver that would allow them to massively expand their use of sulfoxaflor, an insecticide that is detrimental to bee populations.
>>Urge EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler to deny Dow’s request.

White Coat Waste Project: An investigation by White Coat Waste Project revealed that more than 1,100 beagles, hounds and mixed-breed dogs — even puppies — are subjected to secretive, wasteful and cruel experiments inside government laboratories each year. Most agencies including the VA, DOD, FDA and CDC do not reveal details of how our taxpayer dollars are being used for experiments on dogs, but on one of the few projects for which spending data is available, NIH experimenters have used nearly $6 million of taxpayers’ money since 2011 to give dogs heart attacks.
>>>Urge Congress to end this cruel, wasteful government spending on flawed research.

Care2: After the announcement of the approval of a third bat cull since 2015, the scientific community is extremely alarmed. In 2018, the Mauritian government plans to kill 20 percent of the current population: 13,000 out of 65,000. 38,000 bats were officially killed in the past two years — and this does not count the undocumented killing carried out by the public. Now, the population is weaker and less resilient to natural calamities — the two previous cullings resulted in the species being uplisted to Endangered in 2018.
>>>Urge the government of Mauritius to stop the planned cull.

One Green Planet: While many of us will attend family gatherings this Thanksgiving, let’s not forget about the awesomeness that is Friendsgiving. For those who don’t know, Friendsgiving is a relatively new holiday celebration (the term first emerged in 2007) and has become a much-anticipated part of many of our lives.
>>>Check out 15 budget-friendly vegan dishes to bring to Friendsgiving.

Parting thought…

“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.” ―Arthur Schopenhauer

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and animal/nature rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

Take Action Tuesday: Speak Up for Animals, Sustainable Food and Small-Scale Farmers

Robin
Egypt is definitely not for the birds: Robins are among the many species of birds that will be captured and killed along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast during their winter migration.

 

 

Reinhard Behrend, Rainforest Rescue: The 14th UN Biodiversity Conference will take place in Egypt in late November. Ironically, while the delegations gather in a luxury resort in Sharm El Sheikh, millions of migratory birds from Europe, on their journey to their winter quarters in Africa, will face a gauntlet of nets, snares, glue traps and loudspeakers playing bird calls that stretches 700 km along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. Some of the captured birds are sold alive, but most are plucked and frozen. Songbirds such as robins and nightingales, as well as turtledoves, quail and wild ducks end up on the plates of “gourmets” in dubious restaurants. Some birds of prey such as falcons are sold alive to wealthy “bird lovers” in the Gulf States for their private aviaries.
>>>Tell the Egyptian government to put an end to this heinous crime against nature.

John Gilroy, The Pew Charitable Trusts: Bears Ears National Monument was designated in 2016 to safeguard one of the most significant cultural areas in the United States and to honor tribal nations that have ancestral and contemporary connections to the region. On Dec. 4, 2017, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation significantly reducing the size of the monument and breaking it up into two units. Now the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has drafted land use plans for the new smaller monument, despite active litigation regarding the action to reduce the monument.
>>>Urge BLM to protect Bears Ears’ important cultural, scientific and historic resources.

Real Meals Campaign: Instead of siding with Big Food corporations like Tyson, food service companies like Aramark, Sodexo and Compass Group should support small-scale producers, disenfranchised farmers and fishers and sustainable suppliers to help create a more just and sustainable food system.
>>>Urge Aramark, Sodexo and Compass Group to purchase at least 25 percent of the food they sell on US college campuses from sources that are local, community-based, fair, ecologically sound and humane.

PETA: An eyewitness investigation of Hemopet, a canine blood bank in California, found approximately 200 greyhounds bred for and discarded by the racing industry, kept in tiny crates and barren kennels for about 23 hours out of every day so their blood could be repeatedly taken and sold. Some of these inhumane blood banks even masquerade as dog rescues.
>>>Tell the National Greyhound Association to bar its members’ dogs from being held captive in blood banks.

Center for Biological Diversity: Horrible news out of Washington state: Wildlife officials have just issued death warrants for two more wolf packs. Last week, the state authorized the killing of wolves from the Smackout pack and approved taking out the mother and remaining pup from the Togo pack. In September a helicopter sniper gunned down the sole adult male wolf of the Togo pack, pictured above. He was the father of two pups and left behind his mate to fend for them on her own. Now Washington is gunning for her. And since 2012 the state has killed 21 state-endangered wolves—17 of which were killed for the same rancher. Killing wolves is not just cruel and inhumane. It also leads to more conflicts, breaks up wolf families and reduces social tolerance for wolves.
>>>Urge Governor Jay Inslee to bring an immediate halt to the senseless wolf killing.

Environmental Working Group: Bees are dying at alarming rates worldwide—and because bees are responsible for roughly one in every three bites of food we eat, we’re all in trouble. A decade of research has made it clear that neonicotinoid pesticides are highly toxic to bees and are at least partially responsible for the pollinators dying in record numbers. Earlier this year, the EPA finally confirmed this troubling fact. The agency even concluded the benefits of one of the most common uses of neonic treatments, as a coating on soy and corn seed, are questionable for farmers.
>>>Tell the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to require farmers to use these pesticides only when they can prove they need them.

Lacey Kohlmoos, Change.org: There are so many cruelty-free ways to enjoy the world, but Fodor’s, the world’s largest publisher of English language travel and tourism information, has shamelessly decided to promote attractions that exploit and hurt elephants. Elephants don’t do tricks because they “enjoy showing off their skills,” as Fodor’s claims. They do them because they will be hurt if they don’t. The only way to teach wild elephants to paint, play instruments, roll logs and carry people on their back is by torturing them into submission using bullhooks and other cruel methods. This is well-documented, and yet Fodor’s doesn’t mention a thing about this abuse on their website or in their books.
>>>Tell Fodor’s to follow the lead of Lonely Planet by making a commitment to stop promoting elephant rides and shows on their website and in their books.

PETA: Marmosets, which comprise 22 species of New World monkeys, live high up in the canopies of rainforests in social groups composed of up to three generations of family members. They’re highly vocal, communicating with each other in complex, high-pitched calls that convey information about a wide range of emotions and situations. The National Institutes of Health (NIH)—the largest funder of animal experimentation worldwide—announced that it’s planning to launch “funding opportunities to support centralized infrastructure” for research on these intelligent and curious animals.
>>>Tell NIH to scrap plans to expand the use of marmosets in laboratory experiments and redirect funds to modern, non-animal research methods.

African Wildlife Foundation: Wildlife criminals are driving Africa’s wildlife to extinction. But the RAWR Act can help put an end to the multi-billion dollar wildlife trafficking industry. The act authorizes the US State Department to use rewards for any information leading to the capture and conviction of wildlife criminals. The bill has passed in the House of Representatives and is now before the Senate.
>>>Urge your senator to vote yes on the RAWR act.

Gina Florio, Hello Giggles: Eating tasty, nutritious food doesn’t necessarily mean we’re also eating sustainably. It’s just as important to ask about the sustainability of our eating habits as it is to wonder whether we’re maintaining a balanced diet. Our planet is suffering from the inflated animal agriculture industry, and we’re becoming more dependent on foreign soil for produce than ever before. We need to all take a time-out and ask ourselves how we can do our part to cook and eat in a way that will slow down the deterioration of the planet, rather than speed it up.
>>>Check out these 8 easy ways to eat more sustainably.

Parting thought…

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” — George Bernard Shaw

Earth | Food | Life (EFL) explores the critical and often interconnected issues facing the climate/environment, food/agriculture and animal/nature rights, and champions action; specifically, how responsible citizens, voters and consumers can help put society on an ethical path of sustainability that respects the rights of all species who call this planet home. EFL emphasizes the idea that everything is connected, so every decision matters.

Click here to support the work of EFL and the Independent Media Institute.

Questions, comments, suggestions, submissions? Contact EFL editor Reynard Loki at [email protected]. Follow EFL on Twitter @EarthFoodLife.

The EPA Can’t Do Its Job Until There’s a Revolutionary Restructuring

EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. (credit: Coolcaesar/Wikipedia)

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt may have resigned in shame, but the agency still needs to be fixed.

The following op-ed is by Jonathan Latham, Ph.D., co-founder and executive director of the Bioscience Resource Project, and was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Insitute.

The Environmental Protection Agency has never been an institution whose primary allegiance was to the public interest. How do I know this? I have the agency’s own words for it. In late 2017 my organization, the Bioscience Resource Project, along with the Center for Media and Democracy, made available a vast trove of documents called the Poison Papers. These documents are two and a half tons of internal minutes, correspondence, reports, unsealed court documents, and more from the chemical industry and its regulators. Many of them originate from the EPA and date back to its inception in 1970.

The papers show many things, but one of them is that the agency has repeatedly overlooked strong evidence that independent chemical toxicity testing was fraudulent. EPA has known that laboratories skewed results in favor of applicants’ products. Sometimes, the agency has actively covered up such fraud.

EPA’s internal procedures for evaluating chemical safety were no better. Staff “cut and pasted” industry text into their reviews, failed to share evidence with external reviewers, and told applicants that products would be approved before applications had been fully evaluated. The agency also adopted reviewing procedures that make it highly unlikely that hazardous products would be identified as such. For example, data evidencing carcinogenic activity in test animals were repeatedly subjected to review and re-review until ways, as one employee wrote, “calculated to impress the uninitiated and the gullible” were found to disregard them. Meanwhile, evidence of non-carcinogenic toxicity was simply ignored. The situation was so bad in its Office of Pesticides that one EPA official accused his superior of having “downright contempt for the health of the American people.”

Having studied the documents as well as the agency itself, I would like to offer a diagnosis and propose some solutions. The inappropriate activities described in the documents are highly noteworthy on several counts. One is that they span a long time period; second, they occur across much of the agency; third, they are extremely diverse, spanning numerous procedural and scientific aspects; and fourth, they are spread across many complicit individuals. In other words, these derelictions do not demonstrate local branches gone rogue nor specific corrupted individuals, nor even specific situations. Rather, they reflect a deep conflict at the agency that is vastly more powerful than its written mandate to protect the public.

To understand why, it is necessary to get inside the head of the EPA. Imagine that zealous action on the part of EPA to protect human health from chemical toxicity or corporate malfeasance will engender strong feedback from the affected corporation, its lobbyists, and its other friends in Washington. The affected parties and its powerful friends will appeal to the president at whose “pleasure” the chief administrator of EPA serves. If that administrator does not have the president’s support for strong action, which he or she likely does not, then the best possible outcome for that agency—to avoid it suffering a damaging and embarrassing public humiliation—is for that evidence to never come to light. It should either be lost or buried, preferably as early in the evaluation process as possible.

This is the primary—unwritten—rule that has guided EPA from the beginning. The rule, known to every agency official, is that every finding of toxicity or corporate malfeasance is an institutional problem. The inevitable result is an institutional culture that regards findings of chemical toxicity as mistakes and aberrations.

The following represent some simple suggestions that, taking the above into account, would vastly improve the effectiveness of the Environmental Protection Agency.

First, divide EPA into two agencies. One half should be responsible for lawmaking and the other for enforcement. This removes what is at present a confusion of responsibilities in which the rule makers at EPA are incentivized to create loopholes so that no successful prosecutions will occur and result in conflicts such as described above.

Secondly, the leaders of each of these separate agencies should be responsible to Congress and not, as EPA’s chief administrator is now, to the president. The reason is that presently EPA can enforce environmental laws only if the president agrees. Under such circumstances the agency can never be a better environmental and health advocate than the person in the White House. With Donald Trump in charge of the White House the danger of this should be immediately clear.

The third proposal is to protect and reward whistleblowers. Whistleblowers are potential assets to society. They are individuals courageous enough and independent enough to bring the misdeeds of colleagues and other officials to public attention. Supposing they can prove that the performance of their colleagues is truly inappropriate or illegal, then whistleblowers should be positively rewarded, which at present they are not.

Public health and the environment need effective and independent advocates, for the sake of the climate, the oceans, and communities. These changes can make EPA into an agency that truly advocates for them, rather than one that merely pretends to act in their interest.

Jonathan R. Latham, PhD, is the co-founder and executive director of the Bioscience Resource Project, director of the Poison Papers Project, and editor of the Independent Science News website. He holds a master’s degree in crop genetics and a Ph.D. in virology.