It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Puffins increase on Farne Islands despite bird flu
Fiona Trott North of England correspondent, BBC News•@bbcfionatrott Puffins are on the red list of Birds of Conservation Concern
A puffin population has been declared "stable" following fears that bird flu might have had a more devastating effect.
The first full count for five years on the Farne Islands off Northumberland has revealed the endangered species has in fact increased by 15% since 2019.
There are now thought to be 50,000 breeding pairs on the site, which is cared for by the National Trust.
Ranger Sophia Jackson said the birds' self-isolating behaviours meant they had "weathered this particular storm".
Sophia Jackson said she was extremely happy with the increase in numbers
Ms Jackson said: "Puffins nest in separate burrows and clean them out.
"In that way, the disease is less likely to spread as fast as it does through the other seabirds, which is why we saw a decline in them."
The National Trust said another interesting finding was that fewer pairs have been recorded on the outer islands.
It is thought puffins may have relocated, after stormy weather forced grey seals to move higher up into their territory, causing some burrows to collapse.
The Farnes, along with neighbouring Coquet Island, are home to the largest puffin colonies in England
All the results will form part of the national Seabird Monitoring Programme and follow six weeks of hard work by the rangers, who were on their hands and knees checking burrows for signs of fresh digging or hatched eggshells.
Earlier this week, five more species of seabird were added to the UK red list of birds at most need of conservation. Puffins were one of five types of bird already on the list.
During the avian flu outbreak in 2022 and 2023, about 10,000 birds on the Farne Islands perished.
More than 900 puffin carcasses were collected but a combination of the Covid pandemic and then bird flu meant conservationists could not get close enough to carry out their full census.
Tom Hendry says "initial figures on other species are concerning"
Ranger Tom Hendry said while puffin numbers are holding up, some cliff nesting birds appear to be struggling.
Initial figures suggest the shag population is down by 75% on the inner islands, but there is some hope.
"To us, it looks like they may have had a productive breeding season," he said.
"So with any luck, next year's count will show that like the puffins, they too have stabilised."
There were fears for the species which only lay one egg a year
Ben McCarthy, head of nature and restoration ecology at the National Trust said long-term monitoring was vital.
"The Farne Islands will be an important bellwether for how they're doing in the face of our changing climate," he said.
Meanwhile, the local rangers said they would make the habitat as welcoming as they can for the puffins next year.
Ms Jackson added: "It's hard work but you're their guardians and you do become attached to them, every single one."
Saturday, February 24, 2024
4 Problems for the Degrowth Movement
Though increasingly influential in activist circles and policy discussions, the degrowth perspective on addressing climate change suffers from serious analytical and political flaws. We need a program of green growth to decarbonize the planet.
Source: Jacobin A barn and wind turbines in rural Illinois. (Wikimedia Commons)
Amid the French protests of May 1968, the idea of degrowth was born under the name décroissance. It quickly gained traction in Parisian Marxist circles with work from the likes of Austrian French philosopher André Gorz and others. When in 1972 the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth, the term décroissance came to the mainstream.
Today décroissance is having another moment, this time under its English moniker, as degrowth enters both policy circles and popular discourse. It is, however, a distraction for left climate movements, one that we can ill afford when the world has such limited time to decarbonize.
Degrowth provides neither empirically grounded, actionable solutions nor a credible theory of social and political change. It suffers from four big problems.
1. Degrowth often confuses correlation for causation and overextrapolates from the past.
The strength of the degrowth movement comes from accurately recounting how wealthy countries developed through the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels and economies coevolved together: coal powered the earliest factories in the Industrial Revolution. Electricity then lit, connected, and expanded cities around the world. Oil and gas knit the post–World War II world economy together.
Economic growth, then, went hand in hand with the growth of emissions. The degrowth movement argues that while switching to green growth may be theoretically possible, sufficiently rapid decarbonization requires degrowth.
The focus on growth, however, may lead to confusing correlation for causation, and at worst distorting our policy priorities. Therefore, an elementary reminder is in order: carbon emissions come from burning carbon — they are CO2 emissions, not GDP emissions. To decarbonize, we need to replace carbon energy sources with clean energy, and repressing growth will not solve the problem of financing electrification and energy-input replacement.
This point may seem obvious, but many people seem to forget it and focus too narrowly on economic growth and GDP (which is of course a controversial indicator of well-being). Growth is contingent upon energy input, but that energy does not need to come from carbon. Those who argue that decoupling emissions from GDP cannot happen fast enough are extrapolating from the historic association of emissions and growth. If historical trends routinely and straightforwardly predicted our economic future, then much of the risk that we know to be endemic to the stock market and the financial sector would not exist, as the past would be a sure guide to what’s coming next.
2. Degrowth doesn’t acknowledge that redistribution can drive growth.
Degrowth requires political suppression of consumption and production. To offset the massive income reductions this would entail for poorer populations, many degrowth experts argue that this decrease in production and consumption should be accompanied by wealth redistribution.
At first glance, that proposal looks reasonable — we can decrease emissions and inequality at the same time. But simultaneously reducing growth and redistributing resources is not so simple. Redistribution to lower income groups or populations who have a higher propensity to spend can actually increase household consumption, which all other things equal may in turn increase emissions.
Redistribution is a worthy goal, but on its own it will not decarbonize the economy. Some nuanced degrowth writing focuses loss prescriptions on wealthier residents within rich countries and rich countries overall. This is sensible, but it ignores the emissions that are likely to come with emerging market economy (EME) development in countries like India. It also ignores the recoil of investment in EMEs that would result from reductions in consumption and growth in wealthy countries, which would tend to bring excess capital back home to the richer countries.
Degrowth advocates might argue that these problems could be addressed through national and global planning regimes, which could (e.g.) restrain households from increasing consumption too much and force capital to invest more in poorer countries. But the kind of state planning required to mitigate emissions and regulate behavior while reducing overall production and consumption would need to be a globally coercive regime, with otherworldly institutional capacities and knowledge. Imagine the surveillance and punishment apparatuses needed to constantly monitor people around the world to enforce production and consumption quotas. Few would voluntarily agree to this system; governments now are not even following through on relatively modest climate accords. Maybe a sacrifice of democratic governance would be worth it, as some have argued. But even if an authoritarian regime of global planning were justified, what social forces would have the capacity to institute one?
To be clear, this isn’t an objection to planning per se. To address the climate crisis, we clearly need a big dose of democratic economic planning that prioritizes ecological goals over profit. But large-scale planning becomes both more technically and morally fraught when it involves forcing most of the world’s population to accept lower living standards.
Historically, industrial transformations have required growth, and relatively lower growth in the context of such transformations has led to horrific casualties (e.g., the Soviet Union’s creation of famine in Ukraine during its industrialization drive in the early 1930s). Lower growth means more trade-offs and losses in a transition, meaning that new capital formation comes at the cost of greater suppression of consumption and thus of living standards.
This is because the new capital needed to transition has to come from somewhere. It can come from reallocating resources from traditional growth sectors (e.g., from agriculture to industry) or from a rising tide of growth that can improve the living standards of the majority. Therefore, a global investment boom is necessary to pay for decarbonization — not a decline in investment, as many degrowth advocates claim.
3. Degrowth adopts unjustified assumptions from orthodox economics.
Degrowth has a lot in common with carbon-tax advocacy. Carbon-tax supporters, like degrowthers, have advocated decreases in consumption as the way to decarbonization.
This approach has not gone well historically. The French government imposed carbon taxes without offering adequate substitutes for citizens (such as affordable electric vehicless or sufficient public transportation options); as a result, living costs increased for lower-income households who spent larger shares of their budgets on energy, and eventually widespread social unrest resulted.
The truth is that a narrow emphasis on reducing consumption is deeply rooted in orthodox economics. An orthodox economics perspective would claim that we must decrease consumption to decrease emissions. This outlook tries to predict the future by holding variables in the present constant. It assumes that resources and worker productivity are always being maximized and also that energy unit costs will not decrease.
Those are false assumptions: resource utilization, productivity, and energy costs change a great deal. Resource utilization can become more efficient over time; think about how small computers have become since the 1980s thanks to increasingly powerful microchips. Productivity and efficiency constantly vary. Why else would firms share information and techniques with each other in order to improve themselves on those measures? And energy costs can also decrease — look at the recent collapse in the price of solar.
This means that decarbonization through decreased consumption may not be necessary. In fact, carrots (economic gains) have had more political success historically than sticks (economic losses) when implementing climate policies.
Decarbonization will likely require massive investment. By the most sophisticated measures, global decarbonization will cost roughly $4 trillion per annum, and some version of state-led green growth is probably our best route. Such investment on a smaller scale is already increasing the availability of carbon-free substitutes in the United States and China. Degrowthers often focus too much on economic suppression when we need to acknowledge that electrification, energy replacement, and economic justice may require one last economic boom.
4. Degrowth doesn’t have an adequate theory of political transformation.
From the radical social reorganization of the Paris Commune to the policy outcomes that followed the civil rights movement, historians and social scientists have studied the conditions that lead to successful political transformation. To explain movement strengths or weaknesses and predict or evaluate movement successes and failures, many scholars will plug a movement into what they call a “political opportunity structure.” A political opportunity structure has three components: (1) public consciousness, (2) organizational or mobilizing strength, and (3) macro political opportunities.
What is the political opportunity structure of the degrowth movement? Despite academic chatter, the degrowth movement is irrelevant to most people in the world. To get a pulse of public opinion, I compared Google searches of “degrowth” versus “how to get rich.”Google searches for “degrowth” versus “how to get rich.” Note: On y-axis, the value of 100 indicates peak popularity. Explore more here. The recent peak in “how to get rich” searches represents the Netflix release of a show under that name.
Not only do most people prioritize growth and prosperity over addressing climate change (as discussed throughout), but most people also do not know or care about degrowth. The degrowth movement fails in the arena of public consciousness in both opinion and salience.
Things look even more dire when examining other aspects of the movement’s political opportunity structure. There is no major social movement organization or institution centering degrowth in its platform. If such organizations do exist, they have feeble resources and networks, which are key ingredients for movement success. The civil rights movement, for instance, boasted black colleges, churches, and activist organizations (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Congress of Racial Equality) tied together through strong networks and alliances. Degrowth has no natural constituency, and creating it would require a global-scale transformation of political consciousness.
Finally, the macro political conditions to support the movement are not present. There are no political regimes interested in advancing the movement. Not even the European Union, arguably the international bloc most committed to decarbonization right now, is interested in degrowth. At the “Beyond Growth” Conference, European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen stated, “A growth model centered on fossil fuels is simply obsolete” and called for “a different growth model that is sustainable far into the future.” She’s talking about green growth, not degrowth.
Furthermore, studies find again and again that democracies prioritize economic prosperity over real decarbonization. Economic growth can enhance people’s quality of life (barring wars, or the trend of wealth concentration outpacing growth that Thomas Piketty has documented). National governments are legitimized by growth, and when they fail to provide it, there are political consequences.
If economic stagnation often leads to explosions of anger at the status quo in wealthy countries, imagine how emerging market economies will deal with forced degrowth (those countries’ growth rates in the coming years are projected to dwarf those of advanced market economies). It is hard to believe that emerging economies will accept nondevelopment for the sake of climate goals. (No wonder social scientists in BRICS and non-OECD countries favor green growth over degrowth.)
Degrowthers might reasonably retort that proponents of green growth policies also lack the public consciousness, organizational or mobilizing strength, and macro political opportunities to win meaningful change. The difference is that the vast majority of society has an interest in an egalitarian green growth agenda along the lines of the Green New Deal, because they stand to benefit from a massive public investment in green jobs, infrastructure, and public transportation that would raise their standard of living. And organized workers in strategic sectors like electricity and auto have the structural leverage to win key climate demands.
In other words, the broader climate movement has a potential coalition with the interests and capacity to achieve its goals — but it still needs to be organized. That means a green growth program has a plausible potential “political opportunity structure,” unlike degrowth.
What’s at Stake?
Despite degrowth’s unclear prospects of achieving decarbonization and lack of a plausible popular constituency, many smart people have been distracted by it. Instead of trying to convince everyone that we need to fight economic growth, there are more immediate practical problems that those who want a green transition need to attend to. To name a few:Financing emerging market economies. EMEs cannot afford to abandon fossil fuels and fund the green transition with their own balance sheets.
Ending austerity in wealthy countries. Rich countries can afford decarbonization already. But they have been stymied by neoliberal ideologies and policy approaches that have prevented them from using the power of the state and public investment to transform their economies.
Compensating losers in the transition. Households with higher energy costs and workers and regions reliant on carbon-intensive industries will need support, in the form of welfare programs, job training, and so on as economies transition away from fossil fuels. Critical mineral extraction. How can we harvest critical minerals to build green technologies without abusing labor and destroying ecosystems?
Using the power of “the big green state” to achieve a just transition. If private capital is in the driver’s seat for the green transition, there is the danger that public goods could be privatized, key goals could be sacrificed for quick profits, and inequality could worsen. And not all decarbonization is profitable. How do we do green planning to ensure a transition that serves the public rather than private interests?
Addressing geopolitical challenges. Some countries are either apathetic about climate change or have assets that are directly threatened by decarbonization (e.g., petrostates). How do we get them to decarbonize?
These are just a few of the critical problems we face moving forward with decarbonization. Limited time means we must place bets and prioritize solutions to them now. Degrowth may be an appealing idea for morally committed left academics and activists. But it is not a serious path forward for the climate. This work has been made possible by the support of the Puffin Foundation.
Daniel Driscoll is a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Starting fall 2024, he will be an assistant professor in the department of sociology at the University of Virginia.
Sunday, November 19, 2023
Almost half of seabird populations have declined in the UK and Ireland
The Atlantic Puffin is one of the seabirds which has seen a fall in numbers across the different regions, with just a few sites showing an increase in population
Almost half of seabird species in the UK and Ireland have seen a fall in their numbers over the past 20 years, according to a new survey.
The Seabirds Count census, which surveyed birds between 2015 and 2021, provides population estimates for the 25 regularly breeding species found in Britain, Ireland, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
It revealed that 11 of 21 of the species monitored have seen a decline in their population since the last census in 1998-2002.
Five species have remained stable, while another five have an increase in their numbers. Some of these increases have been linked to conservation work to help protect certain species.
The remaining four bird species of the 25 surveyed, now have up to date breeding population estimates, but these can't be compared to previous results because of changes and improvements in survey methods.
What else did the survey show?
Some species like the razorbill have seen an increase in their numbers in some regions
The results of the census also varied across different regions. Scotland has seen the biggest fall in seabird numbers across the different species according to the survey, with 14 of the 20 breeding seabird species in decline.
Eight species in England have seen an increase in numbers, while six have fallen and five have remained stable.
In Wales, 11 species are increasing, while six are declining and Northern Ireland has seen a decline in numbers for four species, while six are stable and seven are increasing.
Seabirds are doing well in the Republic of Ireland, with 15 species increasing and only two declining.
What's causing the fall in the number of some seabird species?
Commercial fishing can impact food sources for seabirds
Although the main reasons for falling populations vary between species and locations, there are some common themes which have led to the fall in some seabirds' numbers.
Predators are a key factor as eggs, chicks and adults can be eaten by other species which either live in the regions, or have come from elsewhere.
Climate change has also had a big impact on some birds. Poor weather conditions are causing nest sites to be swept away and making it more difficult for the birds to search for food and other things they need.
Increased water temperatures have reduced the availability of key food sources like certain types of fish which leads to seabird parents not finding enough food for themselves and their offspring.
The lack of food is also affected by commercial fishing, which involves companies catching fish which they then sell on. This can be a particularly big problem during the important breeding season.
"For decades, our seabird populations have been battered by the impact of humans, from the introduction of predators to islands that destroy nests and chicks, to the increasing effects of climate change that are impacting the availability of their food such as sand eels," said Beccy Speight from the RSPB.
"The evidence shows that conservation efforts and smart policies do work, and help increase the resilience of our seabirds to better weather whatever new storm is on the horizon. It is now up to us to protect these amazing birds for future generations."
Tuesday, October 10, 2023
Arctic puffins evolved into a new species 6 generations ago, but they might be less fit to survive, a new study shows
Maiya Focht Updated Mon, October 9, 2023 Puffins beak changes color depending on the time of year.
Annemarie Loof
Scientists analyzed Atlantic puffin genes and found they had been interbreeding in recent history.
They traced the first hybrid puffin back to 1910, after climate change had started to grip the globe.
That suggests that the interbreeding was caused by climate change.
They're small, they're cute, and they're evolving right before our eyes — a hybrid species of Atlantic puffins that formed in the last century was recently discovered by scientists.
The hybrid group formed when two of three subspecies of Atlantic puffins began mating six generations ago, around 1910, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances.
It probably began happening when climate change affected one of the subspecies' habitats, sending them to mingle with another group, the study detailed. Different subspecies of Atlantic puffin look very similar.Annemarie LoofAtlantic puffins' evolution isn't necessarily for the better
The authors also found that all three subspecies of puffin that live around the Atlantic Ocean have been losing genetic diversity over the past century.
This could make them less fit to survive in the future, Oliver Kersten, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oslo who led the research, told Insider.
Decreased genetic diversity can harm sperm quality across a population, decrease birth rates, and make the organisms within a group more susceptible to disease and parasites, according to multiple studies. All of these factors can make a group less resilient to climate change, and more likely to face extinction.
It's important to study the genetic changes happening in puffins right now so we can best plan for how to protect, "such an iconic species," Kersten said. A pair of puffins in the Farne Islands near Northumberland, UK.Evie Easterbrook/Wildlife Photographer of the YearA genetic map for Atlantic puffins
Other species in the Arctic have hybridized, like the beluga whale and polar bear, but this is the first time that scientists have been able to track how an Arctic species' genes have changed over time because of hybridization, Kersten said.
Without genetics, researchers might never know how puffins are changing in response to their unique environment since the different subspecies look very similar, Kersten said.
But genes don't lie. When you compare the genetics of the two subspecies to their new offspring, you get a map of how the hybrid species formed, and how they're currently living. The Atlantic puffin was broken up into three distinct subspecies nearly 40,000 years ago.Annemarie LoofFrom 40,000 years ago to the 20th century
What their analysis found is that the original three subspecies began diverging from one another roughly 40,000 years ago. That likely corresponds to the breakup of an ancient glacier over the Arctic, Kersten told Insider.
The break up of the glacier put the different puffin populations onto different islands around the Atlantic, where they could evolve independently.
One group settled the north of the Arctic (F. a. naumanni), one group landed on the coastlines of what would become the United Kingdom (F. a. grabae), and the other (F. a. arctica), picked the south of the Arctic.
Fast forward to 1910, more than 100 years after the start of the Industrial Revolution, when humans began releasing greenhouse gases into the air at a never-before-seen rate. The scientists found that this is when some of the northern Arctic colonies moved south, meeting at Bear Island (Bjørnøya) in Norway.
Kersten and his colleagues hypothesize that this happened because climate change made the northern habitat unsuitable for puffins. It could've been a disruption to the food chain from overfishing, a change in water temperature, or any number of human-related effects on the Arctic, that made them want to leave.
Studying these animals may help us understand how our actions may be affecting them, Kersten said. He hopes that his work makes people understand that their actions have effects for the Arctic in general, and for the puffin in specific.
Monday, October 02, 2023
At Canada's largest Atlantic puffin colony, chicks are dying of starvation
CBC Sun, October 1, 2023 A puffin pokes its head out of its nest in Elliston. (Submitted by Mark Gray - image credit)
The volunteers who rescue Atlantic puffin chicks — called "pufflings" — knew something was wrong when so few strays from the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula showed up this summer.
The fledglings emerge from their burrow at night to avoid predators, but some are attracted to the lights in the rapidly growing communities on shore. Members of a group called the Puffin Patrol capture the stranded pufflings and release them into the ocean.
"The Puffin Patrol wasn't finding very many birds," said Sabina Wilhelm, a wildlife biologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
"And the birds that were being found were actually very small in body weight."
Some were less than half the normal size for puffins their age.
After searching a sampling of nests on the ecological reserve where Atlantic puffins congregate to breed each spring, Wilhelm and her colleagues discovered that many chicks had perished.
The grim discovery connects the fate of the Atlantic puffin — which is not only the official bird of Newfoundland and Labrador, but a ubiquitous image in the province — with serious problems in ocean ecology, including warming ocean temperatures and a struggling, complex food web. Sabina Wilhelm and her colleagues were alarmed that the Puffin Patrol wasn't seeing very many birds this year, so they went searching for them, finding many birds.
Sabina Wilhelm and her colleagues were alarmed that the Puffin Patrol wasn't seeing very many birds this year, so they went searching for them, finding many birds. (Submitted by Sabina Wilhelm)
'They died of starvation'
Tests ruled out avian flu, which caused a massive die-off of birds in 2022.
"Just based on the the body mass and just picking up the dead chicks, that were just skin and bones, so essentially they died of starvation."
Adult puffins dive for food such as capelin, a forage fish that can make up as much as 50 per cent of their diet, and bring it back to the nest, a burrow in the cliffs.
But when food is scarce the adults feed themselves, and the chick is left to starve.
Another anomaly is that puffins bred later this year, said Wilhelm.
"Normally they start fledging in early August and by the end of August, early September, most of them are gone," she said.
"There seems to have been this mismatch between breeding activity and the fact that capelin kind of disappeared.… Other years there might have still been a lot of capelin in August. That just didn't happen this year."
Warmer ocean temperatures also work against Atlantic puffins, who can dive to a depth of only 50 metres to catch capelin and other forage fish such as sandlance and herring. Wildlife biologist Sabina Wilhelm weighs and measures puffin chicks, or pufflings, who were found dead in their nests, having starved to death because capelin, their main food source, was not available this summer. Many of those gathered for testing were less than half their normal size.
Wildlife biologist Sabina Wilhelm weighs and measures puffin chicks, or pufflings, who were found dead in their nests, having starved to death because capelin, their main food source, was not available this summer. Many of those gathered for testing were less than half their normal size. (Chris O'Neill-Yates/CBC)
"So if the fish are moving downwards into the water column because the waters are warmer, then suddenly … they're not accessible to the puffins anymore because they can't dive that deep," said Wilhelm.
With more than 300,000 nesting pairs breeding at the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, the Atlantic puffin population is robust overall, said Wilhelm.
Because they live well into their 20s, losing their offspring in one year does not spell disaster for the species. But the starvation of so many Atlantic chicks this year is a concern, said Wilhelm.
When tour boat operator Joe O'Brien noticed dead chicks floating on the water, he alerted Wilhelm and her colleagues.
O'Brien, a former fisherman, has been bringing tourists to the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve for 39 summers.
With so many species, from cod to seabirds to whales, relying on capelin for their survival, O'Brien says it's time for a new approach to managing this fishery.
"Should we be harvesting capelin at all?" asked O'Brien.
"Shouldn't that be a sign to to management that we should change our philosophy respecting the ocean?"
A dead Atlantic puffin chick floats in the water off Bird Island in the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, Canada's largest Atlantic puffin colony. Some 300,000 nesting pairs return to the reserve every year to breed.
A dead Atlantic puffin chick floats in the water off Bird Island in the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, Canada's largest Atlantic puffin colony. Some 300,000 nesting pairs return to the reserve every year to breed. (Chris O'Neill-Yates/CBC)
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans categorizes the capelin stock as "critical," yet it allowed a commercial fishery of 14,533 tonnes in 2023 for the second year in a row.
In its capelin management plan, DFO said, "Science shows the fishery's impact on capelin is small compared to predation by other species such as seabirds, cod and other fish."
Capelin are caught using a purse seine, which surrounds the fish, corralling them into the net and tightening it, similar to a drawstring, before it's hauled aboard a fishing vessel.
However, the species is a mere fraction of its abundance in the 1980s. As the principal food for cod, capelin overfishing is recognized as one of the key factors in the collapse of northern cod stocks more than three decades ago.
Valued for its eggs, or roe, female capelin is exported to China, the United States, Taiwan and Japan,
In the 2023 season, capelin sold for an average of 16 cents a pound, netting $4.5 million to fishermen in landed value, making it one of the least lucrative fisheries in the province.
"We're destroying them in mass volumes … only taking the females.… That's crazy," said O'Brien. Tour boat operator Joe O'Brien noticed dead puffins floating on the water this summer near the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, 30 kilometres south of St. John's.
Tour boat operator Joe O'Brien noticed dead puffins floating on the water this summer near the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, 30 kilometres south of St. John's. (Chris O'Neill-Yates/CBC)
"Why are we catching one of the main sources of food for just about everything in the water?"
Capelin fishery 'incomprehensible'
Ian Jones, a marine bird biologist at Memorial University, is also concerned about the impact fishing capelin has on the entire ecosystem.
"When I hear these claims that somehow you can keep fishing a forage fish like this … it's incomprehensible to me," he said, adding that the fisheries "arguably don't bring in a whole lot of money."
The effects of fishing a forage species, a rapidly warming ocean due to climate change, increasing amounts of artificial light, seabird hunting and monofilament fishing nets are cumulatively stacked against seabirds' long-term survival, said Jones.
While Atlantic puffins can sustain some mortality because of their abundance, the Leach's storm petrel has seen a decline of about 50 per cent in recent years, said Jones.
"We haven't seen a bird disappearing at this rate since the passenger pigeon," said Jones.
Like the Atlantic puffin, the Leach's storm petrel is also affected by a growing amount of artificial light from communities, boats and offshore oil installations. Wildlife biologists checked some burrows where Atlantic puffins nest and found a large number of pufflings dead in their nest from starvation. Adult puffins will feed themselves first, and the scarcity of capelin, a forage species of fish, meant there was not enough food to take back to the nest to feed their chicks. Capelin make up to 50 per cent of their diet.More
Wildlife biologists checked some burrows where Atlantic puffins nest and found a large number of pufflings dead in their nest from starvation. Adult puffins will feed themselves first, and the scarcity of capelin, a forage species of fish, meant there was not enough food to take back to the nest to feed their chicks. Capelin make up to 50 per cent of their diet. (Chris O'Neill-Yates/CBC)
"These seabirds that have evolved to survive in one of the harshest environments on Earth are faced with this completely disorientating artificial light," said Jones. "They don't successfully get out to sea so they basically strand on land and and die in very large numbers."
'Canary in the coalmine'
The United Nations calls light pollution "a significant and growing threat to wildlife" that contributes to the death of millions of birds globally.
Seabirds that migrate at night and go off course chasing artificial light are at risk of becoming exhausted, being eaten by predators, or colliding with buildings.
The impact of warming ocean temperatures is already being found in other Atlantic puffin populations.
"The worry is, is that these puffins are going to experience the same fate here in Newfoundland that they're experiencing in the Eastern Atlantic," said Jones, "with year after year of no chick surviving, the population begins to crash and then in some areas disappear."
Seabirds are a great indicator of the health of the ecosystem, says Wilhelm, and O'Brien says the puffin is warning us the ocean is under stress from climate change.
"The puffin is acting like the canary in the coal mine."
Thursday, September 28, 2023
Chris Packham joins London protest following devastating UK wildlife report
Bill McLoughlin Thu, 28 September 2023
British wildlife campaigner Chris Packham joined protesters outside the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) on Thursday following the release of a devastating report on the state of UK wildlife.
On Wednesday, the National Trust released its State of Nature report which found that one in six of the 10,000-plus species across the UK risk going extinct.
The report also found the number of species in the UK has fallen by 19 per cent on average since 1970.
“We don’t have time to wait any longer. We need everyone to be involved in nature restoration as it won’t happen overnight,” Packham told Sky News during the protest in Westminster.
“What we’re saying to all the political parties is to take this seriously. We need a healthy environment, it supports us.”
Unless Government support materialised to support the environment, the Springwatch presenter threatened to take to the streets “on several more occasions” before the next election.
The release of the report comes after regulators approved the Rosebank oil field on Tuesday. The Rosebank field, which lies north-west of Shetland and contains up to 350 million barrels of oil, is currently one of the largest untapped discoveries in UK waters.
Ithaca Energy, which has a 20 per cent stake in the project said it would bring in £8.1billion of direct investment, support 1,600 jobs during construction and 450 during its lifetime.
The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) agreed to the new project despite heavy criticism from environmental campaigners.
Commenting on the approval, Packham called the decision “catastrophic” and “abject madness”.
“They keep on about jobs in the oil industry. That’s bad, old business,” he said. “We need bright, new business, which is in renewables. That’s where we need our investment, and we have that capability to do that in the UK.”
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, Tory peer Lord Zac Goldsmith also criticised the decision, saying: “It just trashes the UK’s reputation as a reliable, grown-up member of the global community, it’s done us immeasurable harm.”
He also attacked the delay to net zero policies such as a ban on new petrol and diesel cars announced last week by the Prime Minister, saying the Conservative Party seems to be in “disarray” and that he may not be able to vote for it.
Dan Sherrard-Smith, founder of MyMotherTree.com told the Standard: “UK wildlife is in a dire state. Many of our favourite British species are at risk of extinction including the turtle dove and puffin.
“On current trends, we look at a bleak future with, potentially, only household pets and domestic animals sharing our island. Yet we can halt this decline.
“One action all of us can take is to make sure our money - where we bank and our pension - is invested in areas that promote and restore the biodiversity of the UK. This was once a green and pleasant isle. It can be again.”
Daniel Kaul, from Natucate added: “The UK's wildlife has experienced significant declines due to factors like habitat loss, climate change, and pollution, with many species facing potential extinction.
“If no action is taken, the future will see massive species loss, ecosystem destruction, and economic impacts due to reduced biodiversity. To halt this decline, it's crucial to focus on habitat restoration, conscious conservation, public education, robust environmental policies, and addressing needed changes.”
Dr Nicky Dee, founder of Carbon 13 also said: “It would be a sad 12 days of Christmas without the two turtle doves yet this is one of the birds at risk. While alarming, it is an alert to the greater challenges triggered by climate change. The canary in the coalmine is a good analogy, as nature tells us about the state of the planet and our ability to adapt and cope with climate change.
“Biodiversity is our most effective defence against climate change. And that’s why we have invested in startups such as NatureBound and Kita so we are better able to evaluate this link and ensure money goes into the right places.”
Monday, September 18, 2023
AMERIKAN WAR ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Kansas Librarians Sue After Being Fired Over Autism Display Mistaken for LGBTQ+ Support
Christopher Wiggins Mon, September 18, 2023 Brandy Lancaster and Kari Wheeler
Two Kansas librarians have been fired after conservative officials in their town mistook a multi-colored display as something for Pride and the "LGBTQ agenda."
In June, Kari Wheeler and Brandy Lancaster, librarians at the Sterling Free Public Library in Sterling, a small community in central Kansas, created two displays celebrating and raising awareness about autism and neurodiversity. The displays featured rainbow colors and messages advocating for diversity and understanding, including quotes like “We all think differently” and “In diversity is beauty and strength,” according to the paper.
The displays were part of the nationwide summer reading program themed “All Together Now.”
However, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for Kansas, the displays were misconstrued by a board member as promoting an “LGBTQ agenda,” leading to Wheeler and Lancaster’s termination. The lawsuit alleges that board member Michelle Miller waged an “illegal campaign” to censor the displays based on her misconception, implicating the library’s board, the city, and the mayor in violating the librarians’ rights to free speech.
Wheeler, who had taken the role of library director in August 2022, and Lancaster, hired in March as Wheeler’s aide and acting assistant librarian, claimed their initiative was misunderstood as taking a stand on LGBTQ+ issues rather than its intention to support neurodiversity. They said the installation was rooted in inclusivity and referenced a Harvard Medical School article in the suit, emphasizing that neurodiversity recognizes various ways individuals interact with their surroundings, challenging the notion of a singular “right” way of thinking and learning.
Tensions escalated quickly after a temporary library employee misconceived a multicolored infinity symbol representing LGBTQ+ Pride, triggering a series of text exchanges involving Miller. Within hours, Miller communicated her disdain for the display to Wheeler, mentioning the “conservative” nature of the town and her unwillingness to have the library “make political statements.”
Despite the explanation provided by Lancaster regarding the symbol’s representation of neurodiversity and autism, Miller purportedly leveraged her position on the board to rally support for the removal of the display, an action that seemingly disregarded the librarians’ focus on inclusivity and the celebration of differences.
The events culminated in two special board meetings in July, the first of which saw Wheeler and Lancaster providing information on state laws protecting library materials from censorship due to differing viewpoints, according to the Post. The second meeting resulted in the firing of both librarians, with board president Jeremy Stinemetz allegedly stating Wheeler had “lost the confidence of the board to effectively perform her position.”
The concerned board members and Sterling’s City Manager, Craig Crossette, opted not to comment on the ongoing litigation to the paper, maintaining their positions without public explanations regarding the incident.
Nearly ten weeks after their dismissal, Wheeler and Lancaster initiated legal proceedings, defending their right to free speech and opposing what they claimed was a termination anchored in misconception and prejudice. The lawsuit remains pending.
Libraries across the country have been attacked by far-right local residents and political leaders over LGBTQ+ books, Pride displays and the like.
Kansas board that fired librarians also boycotted 4th of July parade over Pride float | Opinion
Dion Lefler Thu, September 14, 2023 Dion Lefler/The Wichita Eagle
The tale of two librarians fired by a homophobic library board in Sterling just escalated.
Now, the board will have to defend its bigotry in court.
Fired librarian Kari Wheeler, her assistant Brandy Lancaster, and other concerned citizens have filed suit against the library board, three of its members, and the city government, claiming that the rights of everyone have been violated by the open, over-the-top and vicious anti-LGBTQ censorship that occurred at the Sterling library three months ago.
And that, friends and neighbors, is a really, really good thing.
And before you jump to the conclusion (as some assuredly will) that this is just me supporting a liberal cause, I can assure you I’d be every bit as infuriated if a Bernie-backing board banned books by Donald Trump.
That’s not how free societies do business. It never has been. It never will be.
And the board of the “Sterling Free Public Library” is very much in need of a reminder that the “free” in the library’s name doesn’t just refer to the cost of checking out a book.
I wrote about this controversy when it first came up, but the lawsuit spells out the details of the lengths this board was willing to go to in their crusade against anything that might be interpreted as not prejudiced enough against LGBTQ individuals.
We already knew about board member Michelle Miller clashing with the librarians, who balked at Miller’s demand that the library ban all displays of rainbows during Pride Month. The rainbows at issue were a collage of a girl in a wheelchair sitting in front of one and the international logo of autism awareness, a rainbow-colored infinity symbol.
And we knew that after Wheeler found a donor to buy the library a complete set of this year’s William Allen White Award children’s books, Miller and other board members pressured her to hide “Flight of the Puffin” in her desk drawer and not check it out to anybody because it contains a non-binary character.
What we didn’t know was that this board’s anti-LGBTQ bigotry extended all the way to dishonoring America by boycotting the town’s Fourth of July celebration.
From the lawsuit: “The Library Board had always supported either the parade or the celebration afterward. Miller and other board members discussed that this year’s Fourth of July parade would include a ‘Pride’ float. That was the only reason anyone suggested that the Library Board not support the parade as it had in the past. After the anti-Pride, anti-LBGT statements, the board voted not to support the Fourth of July parade. No board member challenged the anti-Pride statements as the basis for refusing to support the parade.”
Somehow, that seems more disrespectful to the U.S.A. than some members of the women’s soccer team not singing the Star Spangled Banner or Colin Kaepernick kneeling on a football field, but I’ll leave it to uber-conservative Americans to work out that little bit of cognitive dissonance.
Also, the lawsuit reveals that board minutes were altered from their original form to claim that Wheeler was “combative” with Miller while arguing over the rainbow pictures.
If she was, good for her.
With all the book-banning going on around the country, this is a battle than desperately needs to be fought — and won.
The best thing about this lawsuit is that it includes not only the librarians, but also library patrons claiming their right to read what they want, and to be represented in library displays, is being infringed by the board.
It cuts to the heart of ongoing efforts of fundamentalist extremists to marginalize their fellow human beings and suppress the voices of anyone who dares to disagree with their constrained world view.
“Public libraries are public forums,” the lawsuit says. “When the government that runs them begins to make decisions based on content, that government runs afoul of the First Amendment. Patrons of public libraries have a First Amendment right to information unburdened by the efforts of those in charge of materials and displays to indoctrinate others to their personal viewpoints.”
The fervent hope here is that this lawsuit sends a loud, clear message to local governments throughout the nation that a public library’s not to be used as a tool to advance its controlling members’ personal, political and religious beliefs.
The views of the Sterling Free Library board — repugnant though they may be — should be represented there.
But so should everyone else’s.
Monday, August 21, 2023
Europe's wild bird species are on the brink, but there are ways to bring them back
Almost two out of every five species of wild bird are of conservation concern across Europe, according to an updated and comprehensive assessment of their population status. That means these species are declining and becoming more scarce across the continent. Among the birds of conservation concern are some familiar species, including dunnock, goldcrest and meadow pipit.
The assessment used data collected on 546 bird species to estimate population sizes and trends throughout Europe. Species were then assigned one of five categories depending on their extinction risk, considering whether a species is of global or European conservation concern and whether its distribution is concentrated within Europe.
The number of species that are of conservation concern across the continent is worrying, but sadly not particularly surprising. Many of the species that are declining have been doing so for at least the past three decades—and this study highlights that not much has changed.
Which species are at risk?
Birds around the world are facing a multitude of threats. These include changes both to the climate and how land is used, but also over-exploitation, competition with invasive species and pollution. Habitat destruction and degradation, a key driver of bird population decline, affects 93% of globally threatened species.
Certain bird groups are being hit particularly hard. In the assessment, migratory birds, raptors, waders and duck species were noted as being of high conservation concern.
The recent assessment, along with many others, found that farmland birds are among those of highest concern. In fact, almost 60% of the species in the highest conservation concern category were associated with farmland habitats. These species include many that, in the not-too-distant past, were common.
The gentle coo of the European turtle dove, for example, was once a familiar sound across Europe's countryside. But since 1980, the species has declined by almost 80% across Europe. This decline is even more dire in the UK, where turtle doves have suffered a staggering 98% reduction in their population since the 1970s.
Research reveals that agricultural intensification, including the use of pesticides and inorganic fertilizers, is one of the key drivers of population decline in farmland birds across Europe.
The outlook is equally worrying for Europe's seabirds. Petrels, shearwaters, kittiwakes and—perhaps the most well-loved and recognizable seabird—puffins, are among the species that are noted as being of global conservation concern in the assessment.
Climate change is altering environmental conditions and industrial fishing practices are depleting stocks of the fish that these seabirds rely on. This means that food quality, quantity and availability are all changing, which carries serious consequences for the breeding performance and survival of these top predators.
A lack of prey near puffin colonies in the north-east Atlantic, for example, means adults are being forced to travel further to find food for their chicks. This comes with energy costs for adult puffins and also means that the chicks are fed less often.
The new strain of avian flu that is killing birds worldwide adds further and very urgent threats to this already vulnerable group.
What can be done?
The assessment suggests that current efforts to halt and reverse the loss of Europe's bird species are not sufficient. More and urgent action is needed if we want nature to have a fighting chance. But there are some promising measures that can be implemented both nationally and internationally.
In recent decades, there has been a focus on protecting sites for important bird populations. Natura 2000, for example, are designated areas within the EU that contain rare habitats and important breeding and resting sites. Currently, 18% of the EU's land surface area is designated as a Natura 2000 site, and the aim is to create a network of connected protected sites right across the continent.
Evidence on the effectiveness of protected areas is clear: when implemented appropriately, they work. Globally, the number of species is 10.6% higher within protected areas compared with unprotected areas.
But protecting existing habitats is not enough to reverse declines alone. Habitats need to be restored.
A compelling case emerges from Hungary's Hortobágy National Park, where areas of cropland have been converted into restored grassland. Over a three-year period after grassland restoration, the abundance and diversity of farmland bird species increased by 35% and 40% respectively.
We also need to consider the way we produce our food and fuel. Enforcing legislation on what kinds of chemicals, and how much of them, we use to control agricultural pests and diseases is crucial.
In 2018, EU member states banned the use of certain neonicotinoids (a class of insecticide) after mounting evidence of their widespread impact on insects—an important source of food for birds.
This is a promising start, but it will only be effective if implemented widely and not reversed. Unfortunately, the UK government has authorized the emergency application of neonicotinoids in each of the past three years.
There are ways to stop Europe's bird species from disappearing. We just need to make sure these ideas are put into action widely and in the right way.
“Sustainable” condenser tumble dryers create hundreds of tonnes of waterborne microfiber pollution
A new study has revealed that drying laundry using a condenser tumble dryer leads to hundreds of tonnes of potentially harmful microfibers being released into waterways and oceans across the UK and Europe.
IMAGE: EXAMINING MICROFIBERS COLLECTED ON THE DRYER LINT FILTERview more
CREDIT: PROCTER & GAMBLE
A new study has revealed that drying laundry using a condenser tumble dryer leads to hundreds of tonnes of potentially harmful microfibers being released into waterways and oceans across the UK and Europe.
Researchers from Northumbria University, worked in partnership with scientists at consumer goods giant Procter and Gamble on the study, which is published today (24 May) in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
The team found that while condenser dryers may reduce the volume of airborne microfibers being released compared to vented dryers, they are still a significant contributor of waterborne microfiber pollution, with more than 600 tonnes of microfibers being poured down household drains.
Both types of tumble dryer produce microfiber pollution. Although recent studies have suggested that moving from vented tumble dryers to condenser dryers could reduce airborne microfiber pollution, their impact on waterborne microfiber pollution has been unknown until now.
While condenser dryers collect moisture from wet clothes into a container, rather than exhausting microfibers into the air as vented dryers do, the researchers found that condenser dryers in the UK and Europe still produce more than 7,200 tonnes of microfiber annually.
Although 91% of this is collected in the lint filter, which many consumers dispose of in their household waste, the remaining microfibers – a massive 641 tonnes, equivalent to the weight of more than 100 adult male African elephants – are collected in the condenser and poured down the drain. This makes condenser tumble dryers significant sources of microfiber water pollution.
However, some appliance manufacturers suggest that consumers should clean their lint filters under a tap. If consumers follow this guidance, it could lead to ten times more tonnes of microfibers entering our waterways. This means that the drying process is causing more waterborne microfiber pollution than the washing process.
To evaluate the environmental impact of condenser dryers, Professor John Dean, from Northumbria University’s Department of Applied Sciences, worked alongside researchers at Procter & Gamble to test loads of new, clean garments as well as dirty laundry sourced from volunteers in Newcastle upon Tyne. They collected and analysed microfibers from several components of each type of dryer.
“We have for the first time focused on microfiber release from vented and condenser dryers using real consumer laundry loads,” said Professor Dean, an expert in analytical science and environmental pollutants.
“It was found that most microfibers released from dryers is collected in the lint filter, thereby preventing release into the environment. However, when you realise that some manufacturers then recommend regular washing of the lint filter under a running tap, this contributes directly to an increase of waterborne microfibre pollution.
“After considering the environmental impact of current domestic household practices, a simple remedy is proffered. Instead of washing the lint filter under the tap after use in the tumble dryer, simply clean the filter either by hand, a light brush, cloth, or vacuum cleaner, and dispose of the collected fibres, as dry waste, in household waste. This simple and effective procedure can reduce microfibre release from tumble dryers and contribute to the protection of the global natural water environment.”
While extensive research has been carried out into the quantities of microfibers released down the drain by washing machines, historically, less has been understood about the release from tumble dryers.
However, in recent years, the spotlight has shifted from the washing machine to the tumble dryer because fibers also become released from textiles during the drying process.
The team is now urging the appliance industry, its trade associations, and legislators to recognise that all types of tumble dryer can be significant contributors to the problem of environmental microfiber pollution.
The researchers say that efforts are needed to mitigate this issue through revised usage instructions and improved appliance design.
Current plans to introduce microfiber filtration systems into washing machines are expected to reduce the environmental impact of that stage in the laundering process. This study suggests that similar approaches to tumble dryers is a logical next step.
Dr Neil Lant, a Research Fellow at P&G and their leading scientist on this study, added: “The contribution of washing machines to aquatic microfiber pollution has now been extensively studied and filtration technology is now being integrated into those appliances to mitigate the issue.
“Our recent work in collaboration with Northumbria University has recognised, for the first time, that the most important tumble dryer types used in Europe – condenser and heat pump – can also be significant contributors to aquatic microfiber pollution, especially if users wash lint filters in a sink.
“We do over 7 billion dryer loads in the UK and EU each year, with condenser dryers generating 7,200 tonnes of microfibre. We can prevent around 90% of that from causing water pollution by cleaning lint filters into household waste, but to deal with the rest we’ll need to redesign the air filtration systems in all types of dryers.”
Procter & Gamble has been working with analytical and forensic fibre science experts at Northumbria University for over six years to improve our understanding of microfibre release during washing and drying.
Fibers lost during the wear and care of textiles may pose a risk to the environment and human health when released into air and water. A study published in PLOS ONE by Neil J. Lant at Procter & Gamble, Newcastle Innovation Center, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom and colleagues suggests that while condenser dryers may reduce airborne microfibers compared to vented dryers, they are a significant contributor of waterborne microfiber pollution.
Recent studies have suggested that transitioning from vented tumble dryers to condenser dryers with no exhaust outlet could reduce airborne microfiber pollution. However, their impact on waterborne microfiber pollution is unknown. To evaluate the environmental impact of condenser dryers, researchers tested loads of new, clean garments as well as dirty laundry sourced from volunteers in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. They collected and analyzed microfibers from several components of each type of dryer.
The researchers found that both dryer types produced microfiber pollution, including water pollution from rinsing lint traps in the sink. While condenser dryers are ventless and do not exhaust microfibers into the air, the lint filter, condenser, and condensed water are all significant sources of microfiber water pollution.
Future research is needed, however, to replicate the study using a larger sample size, as well as to explore strategies to sequester, dispose of, or eliminate laundry-based microfiber pollution.
According to the authors, “The appliance industry, its trade associations and legislators should recognize that all types of tumble dryer can be significant contributors to the problem of environmental microfiber pollution and begin efforts to mitigate this issue through revised usage instructions and improved appliance design. Current plans to introduce microfiber filtration systems into washing machines are expected to reduce the environmental impact of that stage in the laundering process, suggesting that reapplication of similar approaches to tumble dryers is a logical next step”.
Neil Lant, of Procter & Gamble, adds: “Our recent work in collaboration with Northumbria University has recognized, for the first time, that the most important tumble dryer types used in Europe (condenser and heat pump) can also be significant contributors to aquatic microfiber pollution, especially if users wash lint filters in a sink. We do over 2 billion dryer loads in the UK each year, generating around 2,000 tonnes of microfibre. We can prevent around 90% of that from causing water pollution by cleaning lint filters into household waste, but to deal with the rest we’ll need to redesign the air filtration systems in all types of dryers.
John Dean, of Northumbria University, adds: “By working collaboratively with the Procter & Gamble Newcastle Innovation Centre’s Dr. Neil Lant, and his colleagues, we have for the first time focused on microfibre release from vented and condenser dryers using real consumer laundry loads. It was found that the vast majority of microfibres released from dryers is collected in the lint filter, thereby preventing release into the environment. You realise that some manufacturers, however, then recommend regular washing of the lint filter under a running tap, which contributes directly to an increase of waterborne microfibre pollution. After considering the environmental impact of current domestic household practices, a simple remedy is proffered. Instead of washing the lint filter under the tap after use in the tumble dryer, simply clean the filter either by hand, a light brush, cloth, or vacuum cleaner, and dispose of the collected fibres, as dry waste, in household waste. This simple and effective procedure can reduce microfibre release from tumble dryers and contribute to the protection of the global natural water environment.”
Citation: Cummins AM, Malekpour AK, Smith AJ, Lonsdale S, Dean JR, Lant NJ (2023) Impact of vented and condenser tumble dryers on waterborne and airborne microfiber pollution. PLoS ONE 18(5): e0285548. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285548
Author Countries: UK
Funding: The study was entirely funded by the following three sources: The Worshipful Company of Launderers provided a grant to AMC through the Master (2022) of that institution and its Education Committee. No grant number was provided. The Worshipful Company of Launderers had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. https://www.launderers.co.uk/. Northumbria University funded the study through employment of JRD and SL, and provision of consumables. Only the co-authors affiliated to this institution were involved in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, and preparation of the manuscript. https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/. Procter & Gamble Technical Centres Ltd provided funding in the form of salaries for NJL, AKM and AJS and purchase of appliances and related laboratory consumables. In addition to NJL, AKM and AJS, another member of Procter & Gamble staff contributed to the study as described in the acknowledgements but only these individuals were involved in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, and preparation of the manuscript. Procter & Gamble management gave approval to publish, but this process did not influence the text of the manuscript. https://www.pg.com/.
Impact of vented and condenser tumble dryers on waterborne and airborne microfiber pollution
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
24-May-2023
COI STATEMENT
I have read the journal’s policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: NJL, AKM and AJS are employed by Procter & Gamble Technical Centres Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Procter & Gamble Company. Procter & Gamble is a manufacturer of fabric care products such as laundry detergents, fabric conditioners and dryer sheets. This does not alter our adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
Not so biodegradable: new study finds bio-based plastic and plastic-blend textiles do not biodegrade in the ocean
First-of-its-kind experiment off Scripps Pier finds only natural fibers degrade in the marine environment; plastic fabrics remain intact one year later
IMAGE: CAGE DESIGN USED FOR THE SEA SURFACE EXPERIMENT THAT TOOK PLACE OFF THE ELLEN BROWNING SCRIPPS MEMORIAL PIER AT UC SAN DIEGO'S SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY IN 2019.view more
CREDIT: SARAH-JEANNE ROYER
Plastic pollution is seemingly omnipresent in society, and while plastic bags, cups, and bottles may first come to mind, plastics are also increasingly used to make clothing, rugs, and other textiles.
A new study from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, published May 24 in the journal PLOS One, for the first time tracked the ability of natural, synthetic, and blended fabrics to biodegrade directly in the ocean.
Lead author Sarah-Jeanne Royer conducted an experiment off the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier and found that natural and wood-based cellulose fabrics degraded within a month. Synthetic textiles, including so-called compostable plastic materials like polylactic acid (PLA), and the synthetic portions of textile blends, showed no signs of degradation even after more than a year submerged in the ocean.
“This study shows the need for standardizing tests to see if materials promoted as compostable or biodegradable actually do biodegrade in a natural environment,” said Royer, who performed the research while a postdoctoral scholar in the Dimitri Deheyn laboratory at Scripps Oceanography. Royer currently remains affiliated with Scripps Oceanography as a visiting scholar from Hawaiʻi Pacific University. “What might biodegrade in an industrial setting does not necessarily biodegrade in the natural environment and can end up as marine and environmental pollutants.”
Startling images of landfills stacked with mountains of thrown away clothing in Chile and Kenya show the global ramifications of fast fashion. An estimated 62 percent of textiles— 68 million tons — are now made from plastic fibers and plastic blends, which can persist in the environment for decades to centuries. Synthetic textiles also create plastic pollution from microfibers shedding during regular wearing and washing. Most washing machines are not designed to filter for microfibers, that then end up in wastewater, and ultimately the ocean.
Bio-based plastics made from renewable natural resources such as cornstarch or sugar cane have been marketed as a potential solution to the plastic problem. PLA is one such polymer in the bio-based plastics market, often labeled as biodegradable and compostable. The team chose this textile for the study given its extensive use as a replacement for oil-based materials.
For the experiment, ten different types of fabrics were used including wood-based cellulose (known commercially as Lyocell, Modal, and Viscose); natural cellulose (organic virgin cotton and non-organic virgin cotton); bio-based plastic (PLA); oil-based plastic (polyethylene terephthalate and polypropylene), and fabric blends of Lyocell mixed with polyester and polypropylene. All these are commonly used in the textile industry. Polyethylene terephthalate is a type of polyester often marketed as a recycled textile. Polypropylene is used in textiles, carpets, geotextiles, packaging materials, and disposable medical textiles such as masks.
The textile samples were placed in flow-through containers deployed both at the sea surface and at the seafloor approximately 10 meters (32 feet) deep. Samples were examined every seven days with images taken, and small pieces removed from duplicate samples for further examination in the lab. This included scanning electron microscopy to examine the fibers at high resolution, and Raman spectroscopy to gain information about the chemical composition and molecular structure of the fibers. The samples were then submerged again, in a process that lasted for 231 days at the sea surface and 196 days at the seafloor.
After the conclusion of the Scripps Pier experiment, the samples were moved to the Experimental Aquarium at Scripps Oceanography, where samples were exposed to controlled conditions of flowing seawater. While the natural, cellulose-based textiles repeatedly disintegrated in 30-35 days, the oil-based and bio-based materials showed no sign of disintegration even after a total of 428 days.
“The natural, cellulose-based materials would disintegrate in about one month, so we would exchange for a new sample after the old one disintegrated,” said Royer. “The natural samples were replicated five times, while the plastic samples remained the same for more than a year.”
Examining the samples via electron microscopy allowed Scripps marine biologist Dimitri Deheyn, senior author of the study, to measure the size and structure of each fiber. The natural fibers became thinner with time, while the diameter of the plastic fibers remained the same showing no sign of biodegradation. Study co-author Francesco Greco performed the Raman spectroscopy analysis at the Department of Geology of Northwest University, China, looking at the structural-chemical degradation of the fibers. Greco, now at the Weizmann Institute of Science, found significant changes in the chemical fingerprint of the cellulose-based materials, while bio- and oil-based plastics remained unchanged.
Fiber blends, which interweave natural fiber strands with bio- or oil-based plastic strands, are often promoted as a more sustainable alternative to textiles made entirely from synthetic plastics. This study showed, however, that only the natural part of the fiber degraded, with the plastic portion of the blend remaining intact.
Additionally, the same type of fabrics were tested in a closed-system bioreactor by an independent company, which replicates a marine environment in an enclosed, indoor system. The bioreactor allowed measurements of the percent of carbon dioxide produced by microbial activity using the fabrics as nutrients, which was thus used as a proxy for measuring biodegradability. The cellulose-based materials showed complete biodegradation within 28 days, whereas the oil-based and bio-based fibers did not show any sign of biodegradation.
Study authors note that the bio-based polylactic plastic, marketed as an ecologically promising material, and the oil-based polyethylene terephthalate and polypropylene, represent an important source of human-caused pollution, and the fate of how these materials act in a natural environment should be further explored.
"This comparative study highlights how crucial our language is around plastics,” said Deheyn. “Indeed, a bioplastic like PLA, commonly assumed to be biodegradable in the environment because it contains the prefix ‘bio,’ is actually nothing like that."
Given these results, Royer and the team hope consumers will become more aware of the power of their own choices
“Consumers who are concerned about microfiber plastic pollution should be mindful of the materials they are buying,” said Royer. “We should all aim to buy fewer garments, opt for high-quality, cellulose-based materials like cotton, merino or wool that will last longer, or look to more circular and sustainable options that repurpose items like clothing swaps and Buy Nothing groups.”
The study was funded by the Biomimicry for Emerging Science and Technology (BEST) Initiative from the Deheyn lab with contributions from Lenzing, The Walter Munk Foundation for the Oceans, and Preserve Calavera. The Raman analysis was supported by the Young Thousand Talents Plan of China.
In addition to Royer, Deheyn and Greco, Michaela Kogler from Lenzing is a co-author of the study.
Deployment of the sea surface experiment that took place off the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2019.
CREDIT
Dimitri Deheyn
Figure 1 graphic showing disintegration time in days for five selected types of material exposed to coastal waters at the Ellen Browning Scripps Memorial Pier located at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.
CREDIT
Royer, et al.
JOURNAL
PLoS ONE
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Experimental study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Not applicable
ARTICLE TITLE
Not so biodegradable: polylactic acid and cellulose/plastic blend textiles lack fast biodegradation in marine waters
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
24-May-2023
A popular compostable plastic doesn’t break down in the ocean
“Biodegradable” is a misleading term for plastic substitutes that require heat to break down or industrial compositing conditions
A widely used compostable plastic persists unchanged in marine environments for at least 14 months, according to a new study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sarah-Jeanne Royer and colleagues from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. The study highlights the distinction between textile materials that can be composted in a controlled, industrial setting (PLA), and the ones that can undergo biodegradation in natural environments (cellulose-based textiles).
The accumulation and persistence of oil-based plastic waste in the ocean is one of the major ecological problems facing marine life. Macroscopic plastic items, such as discarded water bottles, that enter the ocean may persist for decades in their original form; even when they break up into microscopic pieces, called microplastics, they are not biodegraded, but instead remain undigestible pollutants that permeate the oceans.
In recent years, substitutes have been developed to replace oil-based plastics, with the intention of both reducing fossil fuel use in creating plastic goods, and providing a more environmentally benign waste product when the item is discarded, through composting.
One of the most popular substitutes is polylactic acid (PLA), a polymer of lactic acid derived from fermentation of sugars and starches. PLA will break down back into lactic acid at the high temperatures found in very large compost piles; however, it does not do so reliably or quickly in colder conditions.
To examine the fate of PLA in a natural marine environment, the authors submerged samples of PLA, along with samples of oil-based materials, cellulose-based materials, and blend of cellulose-based and oil-based materials, in cages in the coastal waters off La Jolla, California. Samples were examined weekly for evidence of disintegration and returned to the ocean after a few hours.
The authors found that the cellulose-based material degraded quickly, in less than one month. Laboratory chemical analysis confirmed that the cellulose had been largely broken down by biological processes through CO2 production, not simple mechanical wear. In contrast, neither the oil-based plastic, the blend, nor the PLA showed signs of degradation throughout the 14 months of the experiment.
“Our results indicate that compostability does not imply environmental degradation,” Royer said. “Referring to compostable plastics as biodegradable plastics is misleading as it may convey the perception of a material that degrades in the environment. PLA-based plastics must be composted in appropriately controlled facilities in order to achieve their potential as compostable substitutes for oil-based plastics.”
The authors also add: “This work represents one of the few pioneer studies addressing the comparability between the biodegradability of different material types (natural to fully synthetic and bio-based materials) in natural environmental conditions and controlled closed systems. This study shows the need for standardizing tests to see if materials promoted as compostable or biodegradable such as PLA actually do biodegrade in a natural environment. In this case, consumers who are concerned about microfiber plastic pollution should be informed, knowledgeable and mindful of the materials they are buying.”
Citation: Royer S-J, Greco F, Kogler M, Deheyn DD (2023) Not so biodegradable: Polylactic acid and cellulose/plastic blend textiles lack fast biodegradation in marine waters. PLoS ONE 18(5): e0284681. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0284681
Author Countries: USA, Israel
Funding: This work is being supported by the Deheyn lab BEST Initiative (Biomimicry for Emerging Science and Technology Initiative), which is a platform for facilitating the interaction between academia and industry for fundamental research on nature-inspired solutions." The funders can contribute to brainstorming about the study design to address specific questions, but have no role in data collection and analysis, and decision to publish. The funders can sometimes (if requested) be involved in brainstorming about interpretation of data outcome, which inherently can contribute to some extent to the preparation of the manuscript. Otherwise, the funders have no role in directing the publication with regards to its presentation, data content and conclusion. As a courtesy and if requested, drafts of the publications can be shared with the funders to show progress in the publishing process. For the Raman analyses, financial support was provided to FG from the Young Thousand Talents Plan of China (Grant Number 41720104002) and the funders in this case had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
IMAGE: CORY´S SHEARWATERS FORAGING SOUTH OF THE ISLAND OF PICO, AZORES ARCHIPELAGO, PORTUGAL. CREDIT: CHRISTOPHER PHAM / PUFFIN CENDRÉ À LA RECHERCHE DE NOURRITURE AU SUD DE L’ÎLE DE PICO, DANS L’ARCHIPEL DES AÇORES, AU PORTUGAL. PHOTO : CHRISTOPHER PHAMview more
CREDIT: CHRISTOPHER PHAM
Scientists have been worried about the potential harms of microplastics for years. These small plastic particles less than 5 mm in length have been found everywhere because of plastic pollution – from the Earth’s deep oceans to remote regions in Antarctica, and even the seafood we eat. But, are microplastics really harmful?
An international team of scientists, including researchers from McGill University, have found evidence that microplastics in the digestive tract of seabirds altered the microbiome of the gut – increasing the presence of pathogens and antibiotic-resistant microbes, while decreasing the beneficial bacteria found in the intestines.
“Our findings reflect the circumstances of animals in the wild. Since humans also uptake microplastics from the environment and through food, this study should act as a warning for us," say the authors.
“The gut microbiome encompasses all the microbes in the gastrointestinal tract, which help control the digestion of food, immune system, central nervous system, and other bodily processes. It’s a key indicator of health and well-being," says Julia Baak, co-author of the study and a PhD Candidate in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill University.
To gain a better understanding of how species are affected by diets chronically contaminated with microplastics, the scientists examined the gut microbiome of two seabird species, the northern fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) and the Cory's shearwater (Calonectris borealis) that live mainly on the high seas and feed on marine mollusks, crustaceans, and fish.
“Until now there was little research on whether the amounts of microplastics present in the natural environment have a negative impact on the gut microbial health of affected species,” says Gloria Fackelmann, who conducted the study as part of her doctoral thesis at the Institute of Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Genomics at Ulm University in Germany.
In studying the seabirds, the researchers discovered that microplastic ingestion changed the microbial communities throughout the gastrointestinal tract of both seabird species. “The more microplastics found in the gut, the fewer commensal bacteria could be detected. Commensal bacteria supply their host with essential nutrients and help defend the host against opportunistic pathogens. Disturbances can impair many health-related processes and may lead to diseases in the host,” says Fackelmann.
According to the researchers, most studies exploring the impact of microplastics on the microbiome are done in labs using very high concentrations of microplastics. “By studying animals in the wild, our research shows that changes in the microbiome can occur at lower concentrations that are already present in the natural environment,” says Fackelmann.
Northern fulmars attend their nest on the eroding rock face of Prince Leopold Island, Nunavut. Credit: Mark Mallory / Les fulmars boréaux surveillent leur nid sur une paroi rocheuse érodée de l’île Prince Léopold, au Nunavut.
Photo : Mark Mallory
Northern fulmars in Arctic Canada return to their colonies in early May, often when nests are still snow-covered, and go through ritualized pair-bonding with their lifelong mates. Credit: Mark Mallory / Les fulmars boréaux de l’Arctique canadien retournent dans leurs colonies au début de mai, quand les nids sont souvent encore couverts de neige, et se livrent à un rituel de couple avec leur partenaire de vie.
