Reynard Loki is a co-founder of the Observatory, where he is the environment and animal rights editor.
Reynard Loki is a co-founder of the Observatory, where he is the environment and animal rights editor. He is also a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor of Earth • Food • Life.
He is a co-founder of the Cat Museum of New York City, where he serves as the board’s vice president, and also serves on the board of the Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association. He is also a wildlife rescuer with New York City Pigeon Rescue Central and NYC Bird Alliance.
There is growing evidence that our addiction to cell phones could be impacting brain functionality and be the cause of stress, anxiety, insomnia, and a lack of attention and focus.
A 2017 report found that human beings are not the only living things to be affected by society’s increasing dependence on wireless technology. Mammals, birds, insects, and even plants are likely being harmed by the electromagnetic radiation (EMR) emanating from Wi-Fi, cell phone towers, broadcast transmitters, and power lines, according to an analysis of 97 peer-reviewed studies conducted by EKLIPSE, a biodiversity and ecosystem project funded by the European Union.
Signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970 with the intention of reducing and controlling air pollution nationwide, the Clean Air Act is the nation’s primary federal air quality law, giving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to regulate air emissions from sources that are either stationary (e.g., power plants) or mobile (e.g., vehicles).
On June 30, the Supreme Court limited that authority with its controversial ruling in the case of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, dealing a heavy blow to President Joe Biden’s climate agenda. At the center of the case is Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, which establishes mechanisms that the EPA can use in order to control emissions of air pollutants from stationary sources like power plants
The impact of agriculture on climate change is significant. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the agriculture sector is responsible for 10 percent of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, after transportation (29 percent), electricity production (25 percent), industry (23 percent), and commercial and residential usage (13 percent). However, according to Peter Lehner, managing attorney for EarthJustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, the EPA estimate is “almost certainly significantly quite low.”
Lehner argues that most analyses exclude five unique sources of emissions from the farming sector: soil carbon (carbon released during the disturbance of soil), lost sequestration (carbon that would still be sequestered in the ground had that land not been converted into farmland), input footprints (carbon footprint for products used in agriculture, like the manufacturing of fertilizer), difficult measurements (it is harder to measure the carbon emissions of biological systems like agriculture than it is to measure the emissions of other industries that are not biological, like transportation), and potent gases (like methane and nitrous oxide).
After more than two weeks of negotiations during the United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, diplomats from almost 200 nations finally agreed on two major points: ramp up the fight against climate change and help at-risk countries prepare. Specifically, governments agreed to meet again next in 2022 with more robust plans to slash carbon dioxide emissions by 45 percent by 2030, significantly reduce emissions of methane (which has even more global warming potential than CO2), and nearly double the aid to poor countries to help them mitigate the effects of climate change. Notably, nations agreed to initiate reductions in coal-fired power and to begin slashing government subsidies on other fossil fuels, representing the first time a COP text mentioned coal and fossil fuels.
On August 30th, 2021, President Joe Biden committed the federal government to help Louisiana and Mississippi recover from Hurricane Ida’s devastation for “as long as it takes for you to recover.” With several federal agencies working on the massive recovery effort, the president added during the virtual briefing at the White House that “it’s in moments like these that we can certainly see the power of government to respond to the needs of the people.”
The devastating hurricane has killed more than 60 people, left more than 1 million people without power, and could cost more than $50 billion in damages.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was quick to make the connection between the national emergency of Hurricane Ida, and climate change. “Global warming is upon us,” he said. “When you get two record rainfalls in a week (in New York City), it’s not just coincidence. When you get all the changes that we have seen in weather, that’s not a coincidence… It’s going to get worse and worse and worse, unless we do something about it.”
“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 “it essentially [shows] the likelihood of a child’s ability to survive climate change.”
In one of the Trump administration’s final insults to science and the natural world, the endangered gray wolf in all lower 48 states was taken off the Endangered Species list on January 4, going against experts who say the species has not yet recovered and still requires federal protection.
Thankfully, on his first day in the White House, President Joe Biden ordered a broad review of his predecessor’s destructive anti-wildlife policies, including Trump’s decision to take Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections away from gray wolves in the lower 48 states—protections they have had since 1973, which have helped them return to parts of their former range. But just one week after Biden’s order, on January 28, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) asserted in a brief, three-paragraph letter to conservation groups that the Trump administration’s decision to delist the gray wolf was valid.
On May 16, 2019, hundreds of Indigenous peoples traveled from different regions of the Ecuadorian Amazon to the capital city of Quito to demand respect for the April 26 historic court ruling, in which the Waorani people of Ecuador successfully defended half a million acres of Indigenous territory in the Amazon rainforest from oil drilling. Coming after two weeks of deliberations, the landmark decision by the three-judge panel of the Pastaza Provincial Court immediately and indefinitely suspended plans to auction around 180,000 hectares of Indigenous Waorani territory to oil companies. It represents a major setback for the Ecuadorian government.
The total land area that the ruling protects, at least for now, is much larger even than the land that was up for auction. According to Amazon Frontlines, a nonprofit advocacy group that assisted the Waorani’s legal case, “The verdict also disrupts the contemplated auctioning of 16 oil blocks that cover over 7 million acres of Indigenous territory by providing an invaluable legal precedent for other Indigenous nations across the Ecuadorian Amazon.”
Women are disproportionately impacted by disasters, but they are rarely included in disaster and resilience planning. That must change.
Advancing a gendered disaster analysis will help to eliminate two incorrect assumptions in traditional emergency management thinking: one, that non-governmental forms of social organization, many of which are led by women, such as families and community-based groups, are ineffectual in crisis situations; and two, that during disasters women are passive victims.
Investing in an environmentally responsible way doesn’t necessarily mean a trade-off in performance.
Analyzing the performance of more than 10,000 mutual funds over the past seven years, a Morgan Stanley Institute analysis found that sustainable equity funds met or exceeded median returns of traditional equity funds during 64 percent of the time periods examined.
Preparing for a sustainable urban future won't just help the global environment—from supporting biodiversity and public health to reducing carbon emissions and pollution—it also makes economic sense.
By reducing sprawl and creating cities that are more connected, more compact and served by efficient and easily accessible mass public transport, $3.4 trillion can be saved worldwide over a 15-year span.
When it comes to connecting the environmental and business sides of sustainability, ultimately it's a numbers game
Contributing author. Print. Four-volume, 1440-page academic reference encyclopedia edited by Robert Warren Howarth (Cornell University); illustrates the biology, geography, history, and ecological importance of biomes and ecosystems around the world.
WKPN's Scott Harris, host of the radio show "Counterpoint" talks to Reynard Loki, who discusses his 2022 article, “Kids Are Really Worried About the Climate Crisis,” and the IPCC report that concluded that the window to avert catastrophic climate change is quickly closing.
Reynard Loki, Editor/Environmental Reporter-Independent Media, joined Thom Hartmann to discuss the Indigenous fight against oil development in the Amazon rainforest.
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The facts are clear and they are shocking: Factory farming is unhealthy for consumers, dangerous for workers, and devastating for the environment, and it is the largest cause of animal cruelty in the history of mankind.
In the United States alone, nearly 10 billion land animals are raised on factory farms and killed in slaughterhouses every single year, accounting for 99 percent of farmed animals in the nation. These animals are subjected to physical, psychological, and emotional cruelty on a constant basis, living in extreme confinement where they experience fear and pain daily until they are killed for their meat.
The normal lifespan of a chicken is five to eight years. But on a factory farm, they live just 47 days before they are sent to slaughter.