Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

The White House is weighing an executive order that would fast-track permitting for deep-sea mining in international waters and let mining companies bypass a United Nations-backed review process, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the deliberations.

If signed, the order would mark U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to tap international deposits of nickel, copper and other critical minerals used widely across the economy after recent efforts in Greenland and Ukraine. Trump earlier this month also invoked emergency powers to boost domestic minerals production.

The International Seabed Authority - created by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the U.S. has not ratified - has for years been considering standards for deep-sea mining in international waters, although it has yet to formalize them due to unresolved differences over acceptable levels of dust, noise and other factors from the practice.

Trump’s deep-sea mining order is likely to stipulate that the U.S. aims to exercise its rights to extract critical minerals on the ocean’s floor and let miners bypass the ISA and seek permitting through the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s mining code. The plans are under discussion and could change before Trump signs the order, the sources said.

https://archive.ph/5w0z0

More than 1,900 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine signed an open letter warning Americans about the “danger” of the Trump administration’s attacks on science. The letter comes amid the administration’s relentless assault on US scientific institutions which has included threats to private universities, federal grant cancelations and ideological funding reviews, mass government layoffs, resignations and censorship.

“We see real danger in this moment,” the letter states. “We hold diverse political beliefs, but we are united as researchers in wanting to protect independent scientific inquiry. We are sending this SOS to sound a clear warning: the nation’s scientific enterprise is being decimated.”

“The administration is slashing funding for scientific agencies, terminating grants to scientists, defunding their laboratories, and hampering international scientific collaboration,” the letter states. “The funding cuts are forcing institutions to pause research (including studies of new disease treatments), dismiss faculty, and stop enrolling graduate students – the pipeline for the next generation’s scientists.”

The letter continued: “The quest for truth – the mission of science – requires that scientists freely explore new questions and report their findings honestly, independent of special interests. The administration is engaging in censorship, destroying this independence. It is using executive orders and financial threats to manipulate which studies are funded or published, how results are reported, and which data and research findings the public can access. The administration is blocking research on topics it finds objectionable, such as climate change, or that yields results it does not like, on topics ranging from vaccine safety to economic trends.”

Scientific institutions have seen major upheaval since the beginning of this Trump administration and there are fears that the cuts are in preparation for privatization.

https://archive.ph/YM3g1

Archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20327401

Archived

We have all been sucked in by those videos circulating online of “My $200 Shein Haul” or “Everything I bought for less than $5 from TEMU Review”, but who actually are the two new giants on the ultra fast fashion scene?

In a world where it seemed the general consensus had shifted towards more environmental and ethical consumption, how have these two brands established a global network reaching 150 countries worldwide, and what is at stake if they continue to grow unchecked?

...

How Are They So Cheap?

• Labour: The general rule is if you are paying an unbelievably low price for a product, the person making it has been paid an unfair wage for their labour. Often this means involvement of forced, child or penal labour and workers are subjected to awful conditions and chemicals. US lawmakers have previously warned of an ‘extremely high risk’ that Temu and Shein were using forced labour – for Shein this would look like as part of their supply chain manufacturing and Temu for offering products on their e-commerce site.

• Materials: Another huge sacrifice Shein and Temu make in a bid to keep prices extremely low yet profits up is with the quality, in particular the materials they use. The low-quality materials used and assemblage of items with little attention to longevity means the products often deteriorate and/or break quickly. But this is good news for Shein and Temu! Throwaway culture is how these platforms thrive, as they rely on our constant need to consume.

• Mode of production: Both Shein and Temy rely on high levels of consumption, to drive high levels of production, with a streamlined mode of production. This requirement for overconsumption is evident in marketing efforts on both brands’ platforms. Users are constantly bombarded with micro-advertisements on social media outlets such as Tiktok and Instagram, and even on their individual apps, there are offers, games and gambling opportunities to keep users addicted to buying.

What Are the real costs?

• Carbon Emissions: It is no secret that the fast fashion industry is one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions, responsible for approximately 10% of all global emissions every year. Global supply chains, manufacturing of textiles, assembling of garments and transportation all add up towards a brands carbon footprint. Shein and Temu, more than ever, prioritize and even encourage throwaway culture (buy, throwing away, buying again) for profit.

• Toxic Chemicals and Pollution: Dying and treating textiles in the fashion industry is a huge contributor to water pollution globally, especially when regulation is poor/poorly enforced by authorities. This affects the quality of water for people locally and also for aquatic life. Furthermore, a recent investigation carried out by authorities in South Korea found carcinogenic substances (promoting the development of cancer) hundreds of times over the legal limit in Shein clothing. Similarly, a European investigation into toys, baby products, electronics and cosmetics sold on Temu that breach European regulation, with one toy tested containing phthalates 240 times above the legal limit. (Phthalates can affect the function of organs and long-term can affect pregnancy, child growth and development and affect reproductive systems in both children and adolescents).

• Excessive Demand for Raw Materials and Textile Waste: The world consumes approximately 80 billion new clothing items every year – that is a lot of new clothes! Brands like Shein and Temu rely on this constant consumption to continue to make a profit, however there is only so much resource on Earth, and everything has to go somewhere. Estimates predict Shein alone produces nearly 200,000 new items each day. One of the ways countries have dealt with ultra fast fashion consumption is by shipping textiles overseas. Ghana receives 150,000 tonnes of used clothes dumped every year, with approximately half of these unusable. The clothing is commonly dumped and burnt, polluting local ecosystems with dangerous industrial chemicals, and damaging freshwater sources for local people. This exportation of textile waste is a new wave of ‘clothing colonization’, in which exponential consumption in the ‘Global North’ flows to the ‘Global South’.

...

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20078756

A new study warns that global declines in soil moisture over the 21st century could mark a “permanent” shift in the world’s water cycle.

related: Animal Agriculture Uses Most of Earth's Freshwater

One of the most extended U.S. flood episodes of recent years is on tap to begin late Wednesday, April 3, and stretch into the following weekend. The NWS Weather Prediction Center has issued four consecutive days of moderate flood risk for Wednesday through early Sunday.

The threat of tornadoes, destructive winds, and damaging hail will peak from Wednesday afternoon, April 2, into early Thursday. Then comes the deluge — perhaps a foot or more of rain, adding up to what could be some of the heaviest three- or four-day totals ever recorded in what is normally a moist region notorious for flooding.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20272919

Archived (Wayback Machine)

Climate models have a history of underestimating the cooling effect of aerosol pollution.

Related: Will Brazil’s President Lula wake up to the climate crisis? (commentary)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20232516

Note that climate models have a history of underestimating the cooling effect of aerosol pollution:

Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed? (2025)

More than 3,600 households displaced from their homes alongside the site of an oil pipeline under construction in Uganda have rightfully complained of being inadequately rehoused or compensated, a report published by Haki Defenders Foundation, a Kampala, Uganda-based rights group, and the University of Sheffield in the UK, has found.

The EACOP project is a joint venture between the governments of Uganda and Tanzania with French oil company TotalEnergies, and China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

While the project has been touted by project owners as important for the region’s economy, the Haki Defenders Foundation, led by Executive Director Leah Munokoh, and the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield, say the $5 billion project, has raised significant concerns due to community displacement, environmental damage, and human rights violations.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20228032

The climate denying goverment of Qld have been busily running around dealing with the impacts of climate changed weather ever since they've been elected that's all they've done (TC Albert before this, flooding in FNQ before that)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20203863

The problem with the soft apocalypse is that it is still an apocalypse. It still ends in collapse. We tell ourselves we have time, that the worst is always just ahead, that we will act when we must

Archived

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship global infrastructure program was supposed to help expand Beijing’s global influence.

It did.

But rushed construction and poor planning have led to massive environmental destruction in mostly poor countries.

Some projects have degraded highly sensitive ecosystems and displaced scores of local communities.

Beijing says it’s now “greening” its Belt and Road Initiative. But is it?

[...]

China is deploying low-carbon investments through its $1.3 trillion Belt and Road Initiative. But many of these projects come with risks of their own. Case in point: Two hydroelectric dams in Argentina could flood cultural heritage sites and harm one of the world’s largest glacial icefields.

[...]

In a series of agreements between 2009 and 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping extended Argentina billions of dollars in infrastructure loans and currency swaps—allowing Buenos Aires to exchange Chinese yuan for pesos to meet debt repayment deadlines.

These deals deepened Argentina’s dependence on China, which was aggressively expanding its economic footprint in Latin America. The agreements covered a staggering range of projects: nuclear energy, telecommunications, South America’s largest radio telescope and a Chinese-run space station, over which Beijing secured control for 50 years.

The spending spree, analysts say, was fueled by China’s excess capacity at home, the need to create new markets abroad and geopolitical ambitions. As Chinese policy banks showered nations with generous loans, some recipient governments aligned their votes at the United Nations with Beijing, including a measure to block debate on China’s alleged human rights abuses at home.

[...]

A coalition of nonprofits filed a lawsuit in 2015, questioning the Santa Cruz dams’ environmental impact assessment. A second lawsuit, filed by lawyer Enrique Viale, alleged that the government official who approved the assessment is the same person who earlier served as director of the contractor that prepared it.

That environmental impact statement, which is supposed to analyze all of the ecological risks of the dams, is “full of deficiencies,” said Cristian Fernandez, a lawyer with the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation, one of the nonprofits behind the 2015 lawsuit.

[...]

In March 2016, China Development Bank sent Macri [center-right businessman Mauricio Marci replaced Fernandez de Krichner as president in 2015] a letter, urging him to restart operations. The bank drew Macri’s attention to a “cross default” clause in the loan agreement. Should Argentina cancel the Santa Cruz dams project, China had the right to cancel funding for railway revitalization in Argentina’s northern agricultural region. Losing that funding would undercut the ability to sell more soybeans, corn and beef—Argentina’s top exports and a source of badly needed foreign currency.

[...]

Since 2023, China has invested more than $100 billion in renewable energy projects overseas, even as overall spending under the Belt and Road Initiative has declined in recent years.

Human rights experts and conservationists worry this green iteration of the Belt and Road could mirror the environmental and social damage of earlier projects.

[...]

Kenneth Roth, who led the global watchdog group Human Rights Watch for nearly three decades, said Beijing’s motivations haven’t changed.

“China’s trying to buy loyalty,” he said.

Lacking a democratic mandate at home, the Chinese Communist Party places high value on international legitimacy and is wary of formal condemnations from bodies like the U.N. Human Rights Council, Roth said. In 2019, Pakistan’s then-Prime Minister Imran Khan told Roth that his government’s reluctance to speak out about China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims, which included forced labor, forced sterilizations and re-education camps, was due to fear of economic repercussions. Pakistan, a majority Muslim country, is estimated to be Beijing’s biggest Belt and Road partner. Pakistan was one of several Belt and Road countries that blocked a U.N. rights council debate on the Uyghur issue in 2022.

“China has been trying to use the U.N. to basically dumb down and largely rip up international human rights standards,” Roth said. “It has globalized its censorship very successfully.”

[...]

China’s guardrails around environmentally risky projects are beginning to catch up to lenders like the World Bank, said Rebecca Ray, an economist at Boston University who has written extensively about China’s activity in Latin America.

The difficulty, Ray said, is that many developing countries where China invests have weak environmental ministries and little political will to enforce social protections. China, unlike most development banks and Western governments, doesn’t condition its loans on governance reforms. “China doesn’t care about institution building,” Ray said. “They care about development.”

By 2021, China had environmental and social safeguards in contracts for 57 percent of its infrastructure projects, but only 18 percent showed clear evidence of efforts to reduce environmental and social risks, according to AidData, a university research lab at William & Mary in Virginia.

[...]

[Javier] Milei, a Trump ally and climate-change denier, promised as a candidate to slash Argentina’s bureaucracy and stop all public works projects [work on the Santa Cruz River dams has been on hold since 2023]. To make his point, he waved a chainsaw in the air at rallies and declared in Spanish on social media: “THERE IS NO NEW MONEY!” He also made waves during his campaign by calling Chinese officials “assassins” and promising to avoid deals with “communists.”

In office, however, his stance changed. Among other things, he’s renewed Argentina’s $18 billion currency swap line with China, using some of the funds to meet IMF debt payments. The change in tone, analysts say, is because of the leverage China holds over Buenos Aires.

When Milei took office in 2023, Argentina again faced an economic crisis. That year, Argentina’s inflation broke 200 percent, its lucrative agricultural exports were imperiled by severe drought and Buenos Aires again struggled to meet its debt obligations. **After the International Monetary Fund and private bond holders, China is Buenos Aires’ largest creditor, holding about 13 percent of the nation’s debt. ** “If China calls Argentina’s loans, it will heavily destabilize Argentina’s economy,” said Albe, of the Atlantic Council.

And so, in late February, the same month Milei presented Elon Musk with a chainsaw on stage at a U.S. conservative conference, his administration sent Chinese officials a confidential message.

Argentina, it said, wanted to restart work on one of the dams.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24390129

When the global population does decline sometime this century, it will be the first time since the Black Death, 700 years ago. But this time, it will be driven by human choice -- specifically, the choice of women globally to not have so many children.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said Saturday that between 10,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed following the 7.7 earthquake which struck near Mandalay, in the center of the country, on Friday and was felt in neighboring nations.

As of Saturday morning, the confirmed death toll topped 1,000 on Saturday with 2,376 injured, according to the country's military-led government.

The difficulty of movement around the country which is in the throes of a civil war have raised fears that the number of fatalities could jump significantly.

M U T U A L - A I D

China's glacier area has shrunk by 26% since 1960 due to rapid global warming, with 7,000 small glaciers disappearing completely and glacial retreat intensifying in recent years, official data released in March showed.

...

As the important water towers continue to shrink, less availability of freshwater is expected to contribute to greater competition for water resources, environmental groups have warned. Glacier retreat also poses new disaster risks.

China's glaciers are located mainly in the west and north of the country, in the regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, and the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai.

Data published on March 21 on the website of the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, showed that China's total glacier area was around 46,000 square kilometres, with around 69,000 glaciers in 2020.

This compares to around 59,000 square kilometres and around 46,000 glaciers in China between 1960 and 1980, the study showed.

...

The Tibetan plateau is known as the world's Third Pole for the amount of ice long locked in the high-altitude wilderness.

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The dramatic ice loss, from the Arctic to the Alps, from South America to the Tibetan Plateau, is expected to accelerate as climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, pushes global temperatures higher.

This would likely exacerbate economic, environmental and social problems across the world as sea levels rise and these key water sources dwindle, [a UNESCO report says].