"The year 2019 was the most dangerous on record for environmental activists, a new report says. Every day around the world, people stand up to companies exploiting land for profit, felling trees, damming and polluting waterways, displacing ancestral homes and destroying wildlife habitats. Every week, an average of four of these defenders are killed."
"With the Amazon rainforest predicted to be at, or very close to, its disastrous rainforest-to-savanna tipping point, deforestation escalating at a frightening pace, and governments often worsening the problem, the need for action to secure the future of the rainforest has never been more urgent."
"Populations of migratory river fish around the world have plunged by a “catastrophic” 76% since 1970, an analysis has found." "Decline in species such as salmon harms entire ecosystems and livelihoods, say researchers".
"The world is on track to triple the amount of plastic we dump into the ocean in just two decades. But if civic and business leaders get their [act] together to curb the global plastics crisis, we could reduce that rate by 80%, according to two new reports on Thursday."
"Early in 2019, a year before the world shut its borders completely, Jorge A. knew he had to get out of Guatemala. The land was turning against him. For five years, it almost never rained. ... Jorge knew then that if he didn’t get out of Guatemala, his family might die, too."
"Chinese “dark fleets” illegally fished a $440 million haul of the squid species Todarodes pacificus in North Korean waters during 2017 and 2018, according to a study published today in the journal Science Advances."
"Researchers studying one of the most important and vexing topics in climate science — how sensitive the Earth’s climate is to a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — found that warming is extremely unlikely to be on the low end of estimates."
"The burning of natural gas at oil production sites rose last year to its highest level since 2009, per newly released World Bank estimates based on satellite data."
"Climate change threatens to create turmoil in the financial markets, and the Federal Reserve and other regulators must act to avoid an economic disaster, according to a letter sent on Tuesday by a group of large investors."
