Tag: environment

Study shows common insecticide is harmful in any amount

A new UC Riverside study shows that a type of insecticide made for commercial plant nurseries is harmful to a typical bee even when applied well below the label rate.

The study was published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Chemically similar to nicotine, neonicotinoids are insecticides that protect against plant-consuming insects like aphids, but seriously harm beneficial insects, like bees. They are widely used by commercial growers.

Much research has focused on their use in food crops like canola, in which they are typically applied at low doses. However, this study is one of the few to examine neonicotinoid application in potted ornamental plants, which can represent more potent, acute sources of exposure to the toxin for bees.

“Neonicotinoids are often used on food crops as a seed treatment,” explained UCR entomologist and lead study author Jacob Cecala. “But they’re usually applied in higher amounts to ornamental plants for aesthetic reasons. The effects are deadly no matter how much the plants are watered.”

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Nearly 1.6 billion disposable masks polluted oceans in 2020, will take 450 years to decompose

Nearly1.6 billion disposable face masks ended up in the earth’s oceans in 2020, out of the roughly 52 billion produced in response to the pandemic, according to a new study.

While governments around the world continue to support mask mandates in public spaces, the impact of disposable masks is only just emerging.

The report, by the Hong Kong-based marine conservation group OceansAsia, title “Masks on the Beach,” also estimated that roughly 5,500 tons of plastic pollution entered the ocean in 2020 from masks.

The figure is equal to 7% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a mass of plastic debris floating in the ocean that is twice the size of Texas.

While a cigarette butt or plastic bag takes 20 years or less to degrade in the ocean, according to Visual Capitalist, a plastic bottle, disposable diaper or a disposable mask takes nearly 450 years to fully break down. 

The majority of disposable masks – like N95 respirators and surgical masks – were produced in China factories, which were reportedly producing 450 million masks per day in April 2020. 

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Biden Nominee Edited Radical Ecoterrorist Newsletter Advocating Violence Against Government Officials

Tracy Stone-Manning, President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), helped edit a radical environmental newsletter that advocated for violent action and sought to further the mission of the extremist group Earth First!, whose members committed acts of ecoterrorism in the 1980s and 1990s.

Stone-Manning testified that she “helped edit” a local Earth First! newsletter called the Wild Rockies Review while she was a graduate student at the University of Montana in Missoula 30 years ago.

Though the editors and contributors of the Wild Rockies Review at that time frequently used pseudonyms or just last names to avoid legal consequences for their writings, multiple issues listed a “Stone” under “Assistance” on their mastheads. Stone-Manning went by “Tracy Stone” before she was married.

One such issue was the “Autumnal Equinox Issue,” labeled Vol. 1, No. 3. Also named under “Assistance” on that issue’s masthead was Stone-Manning’s classmate Bill Haskins, who was one of seven, including Stone-Manning, who were subpoenaed in 1989 over a tree spiking crime.

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Joe Biden’s BLM Nominee Pushed Population Control, Defined American Children as ‘Environmental Hazard’

Tracy Stone-Manning, President Joe Biden’s nominee to be director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), described American children as an “environmental hazard” while advocating for slowing U.S. population growth in her 1992 graduate thesis.

The Daily Caller reported on Stone-Manning’s thesis, titled “Into the Heart of the Beast| A case for environmental advertising,” after which she was awarded a master of science degree in environmental studies. Her thesis, however, amounted to public policy recommendations for the University of Montana described as “environmental education.”

Stone-Manning called for an advertising campaign to lessen procreation among Americans, ostensibly towards “environmental” ends. She produced a sample poster deriding a shirtless child as an “environmental hazard.”

Her political advertisement asked in its header, “Can you spot the environmental hazard in this photo?” It included the following response:

That’s right, it’s the cute baby. Americans believe that overpopulation is only a problem somewhere else in the world. But it’s a problem here too.”

The earth is only so big, and we can tap into it only so often. In America, we tap in often and hard.

We breed more than any other industrialized nation. At the same time, we suck up one-third of the world’s energy.

On average, each of us gobbles the same energy as 3 Japanese, 13 Chinese, and 499 Ethiopians. When we overpopulate, the earth notices it more. Stop at two. It could be the best thing you do for the planet.

Biden’s nominee to head the BLM also composed a script for a 30-second video commercial to discourage American families from having more than “one or two” children. A female voiceover for the advertisement reads, “When we [Americans] have children, the planet feels it more. Do the truly smart thing. Stop at one or two kids.”

Her thesis claimed, “The origin of our abuses is us. If there were fewer of us, we would have less impact.”

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Biden’s $2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Will Hurt the Environment

President Joe Biden’s administration has made the fight against climate change a central part of its $2 trillion infrastructure plan. This legislation, if it ever sees the light of day, would shovel more than $100 billion of subsidies toward boosting the market for electric vehicles, as well as updating the country’s electric grid to make it allegedly more resilient to climate disasters.

All of these “investments” sound well and good on paper, but if you genuinely care about the environment, don’t hold your breath for any real progress. For one thing, Biden’s plan is mostly a giant handout to corporations that are already heavily investing in infrastructure. It’s also a gift to unions, most of which will do nothing to encourage the type of activities the president claims to support, and they’ll make the cost of producing infrastructure more expensive, so we’ll probably see less of it.

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Wow! Such BS Caught on Video: Pete Buttigieg Has Gas-Guzzling Suburban Drop Him Off a Couple Blocks from Work So He Can Ride His Bike in for the Cameras

More liberal BS caught on video.

The media went gaga after news broke that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was riding his bike to work.
What a guy!
What a great example!

Now we know it was all a dog and pony show like everything the Democrats do and say.

Pete Buttigieg used an armored gas-guzzling Suburban to bring a bike within a short distance of the destination. Then he was caught on video unloading the bike and riding in with a security detail in tow, pretending to save energy.

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