truthout

99% of Seabirds Will Have Plastic in Their Guts Within Decades

99% of Seabirds Will Have Plastic in Their Guts Within Decades

By Lorraine Chow The world’s plastic problem may seem vast and incalculable, but its footprint has actually been measured. In a sweeping 2015 study, researchers calculated that 9 billion tons of the material have been made, distributed and disposed in fewer than 70 years. That’s an astonishing figure, but it’s also one that’s hard to […]

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    Why We Need More Women Involved in Creating Environmental Policy

    Why We Need More Women Involved in Creating Environmental Policy

    By Lucy Goodchild van Hilten Three years into the Sustainable Development Goals—17 global goals set by the United Nations—many countries’ policy makers are developing domestic legislation that will help them reach environmental targets, from cutting carbon emissions to improving clean water and sanitation. But when it comes to environmental research and action, weighing the options […]

    Will the Gulf of Mexico Remain a Dumping Ground for Offshore Fracking Waste?

    Will the Gulf of Mexico Remain a Dumping Ground for Offshore Fracking Waste?

    By Mike Ludwig As the Trump administration moves to gut Obama-era clean water protections nationwide, an environmental group is warning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that its draft pollution discharge permit for offshore drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico violates clean water laws because it allows operators to dump fracking chemicals and large […]

    Fukushima Radiation and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

    Fukushima Radiation and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

    By Dahr Jamail Former nuclear industry senior vice president Arnie Gundersen, who managed and coordinated projects at 70 U.S. atomic power plants, is appalled at how the Japanese government is handling the Fukushima nuclear crisis. “The inhumanity of the Japanese government toward the Fukushima disaster refugees is appalling,” Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 45 […]

    18 Signs That Show We’ve Reached the Tipping Point

    18 Signs That Show We’ve Reached the Tipping Point

    By Bruce Melton Our planet’s systems have a tremendous capacity to absorb punishment before they begin to show signs of degradation. Earth’s ecology self-heals like a cut on a finger. It assimilates pollution by chemical, physical and biological means—it changes pollutants into non-hazardous materials and proceeds upon its merry way as if there had been […]