That is kind of the thinking, isn't it? "Who gives a fuck about this bird or that fish or the rhino?"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/10/britain-wildlife-crisis-bbc-david-attenborough The truth about Britain’s wildlife crisis is stark: the timid BBC must let David Attenborough tell it loud and clear Geoffrey Lean For years the great presenter was criticised for not speaking out. Now he has his voice, fear and politics can’t get in the way Report: BBC will not broadcast Attenborough episode over fear of rightwing backlash Is there no limit to the timidity of the BBC? Bang in the middle of the row over tweeting by the widely respected Gary Lineker, it now seems to be muzzling the most trusted Briton of them all – David Attenborough. As the Guardian reports today, it has decided not to broadcast the sixth and last programme of the veteran broadcaster’s widely hailed new series on Britain’s wildlife, in which he exposes its dramatic decline, and what has caused it. While the other five episodes of Wild Isles will go out in prime time, amid enormous hype, it will be available only to those who look for it on the BBC’s iPlayer service. Sources say that the programme, already filmed, and entitled Saving Our Wild Isles, is being suppressed for fear of antagonising rightwing groups with “dinosaur ways”. Its showing, even on iPlayer, has already been attacked in the Daily Telegraph for being partly funded by WWF UK and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, two establishment wildlife groups, which it describes as having a “campaigning agenda”. This is not the first time that the BBC has effectively silenced its greatest presenter who – after years of criticism for downplaying the threats to the world’s environment – has over the past decade become one the most outspoken and influential advocates of action to combat the climate crisis and preserve biodiversity. But it is likely to provoke the most outrage. Polls show that more than four of every five Britons believe that the country’s wildlife is under threat and urgent measures are needed to protect and restore it. Well over half lament their own personal experience of declines in insects, birds, mammals and green space. They – and Attenborough – are right. Britain has been officially revealed to be one of the worst countries in the world for the state of its biodiversity, having lost nearly half of it since the industrial revolution. And the government is doing shamefully little to tackle this. As the Guardian reported in January, ministers were accused by their own watchdog – the Office for Environmental Protection – of failing to keep their promises to safeguard the country’s natural environment as its wildlife declined at an “eye-watering rate”. Eye-watering is right. Since the 1970s, the UK’s official State of Nature report revealed, 41% of all Britain’s species have declined, while more than a quarter of its mammals are at risk of extinction. The number of farmland birds has been cut in half over that period. Cop26: David Attenborough urges leaders to 'turn tragedy into triumph’ – video Since the 1950s, more than half of Britain’s native plant species have declined – just a few days ago they were revealed now to be outnumbered by alien species – while hedgehogs have crashed by a staggering 95% and turtle doves by 98%. In all Britain has lost more biodiversity than any other G7 nation, and is in the bottom 10% of all countries worldwide. So what, pray, is so unacceptable about allowing Britain’s most respected figure to present these truths on national television, especially when there is already so much appetite for information about the state of Britain’s wildlife among the vast majority of those who pay its licence fee? And what is so frightful about enabling an expert with more than 70 years of accumulated knowledge about nature to suggest solutions? The real David Attenborough Read more Mind you, this is not the first time that has happened. David Attenborough was long condemned by environmentalists for failing to draw attention to the growing environmental crisis. In part, this was down to his own past reluctance: “I leave advocacy to [David] Bellamy,” he told me during one of our conversations on the issue. But the BBC has also been culpable, partly out of political cowardice, and partly out of greed: a few years back, it feared that if Attenborough mentioned climate change, for example, that would inhibit overseas sales, especially in the US. Back in 2006, an article in the Radio Times gave the game away, after criticism of the failure of his epic Planet Earth to highlight that the species it featured were being endangered. “The series grinds no political axe,” it explained, “as no programme hoping to sell to 100 countries can hope to do.” Miles Barton, a longstanding Attenborough producer, once described the anxiety: “The more preachy you are, the lower the numbers are going to be.” The BBC is no stranger to timidity, of course. Way back in 1992, Michael Grade attacked its “enervating caution”. But this is of a different order. Putting caution above conservation on a crucial issue of such public concern would be a sad new low. Geoffrey Lean is a specialist environment correspondent and author
More info... BBC will not broadcast Attenborough episode over fear of ‘rightwing backlash’ Exclusive: Decision to make episode about natural destruction available only on iPlayer angers programme-makers https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...c-wild-isles-episode-rightwing-backlash-fears
File under: Novel Entities. Scientists warn of ‘phosphogeddon’ as critical fertiliser shortages loom Robin McKie, Science editor The overuse of phosphorus is creating algal blooms such as the one in the Baltic Sea near Stockholm in Sweden. Photograph: TT News Agency/Reuters Excessive use of phosphorus is depleting reserves vital to global food production, while also adding to the climate crisis Our planet faces “phosphogeddon”, scientists have warned. They fear our misuse of phosphorus could lead to deadly shortages of fertilisers that would disrupt global food production. At the same time, phosphate fertiliser washed from fields – together with sewage inputs into rivers, lakes and seas – is giving rise to widespread algal blooms and creating aquatic dead zones that threaten fish stocks. In addition, overuse of the element is increasing releases of methane across the planet, adding to global heating and the climate crisis caused by carbon emissions, researchers have warned. “We have reached a critical turning point,” said Prof Phil Haygarth of Lancaster University. “We might be able to turn back but we have really got to pull ourselves together and be an awful lot smarter in the way we use phosphorus. If we don’t, we face a calamity that we have termed ‘phosphogeddon’.” Phosphorus was discovered in 1669 by the German scientist Hennig Brandt, who isolated it from urine, and it has since been shown to be essential to life. Bones and teeth are largely made of the mineral calcium phosphate – a compound derived from it – while the element also provides DNA with its sugar phosphate backbone. “To put it simply, there is no life on Earth without phosphorus,” exlpained Prof Penny Johnes of Bristol University. The element’s global importance lies in its use to help crop growth. About 50m tonnes of phosphate fertiliser are sold around the world every year, and these supplies play a crucial role in feeding the planet’s 8 billion inhabitants. However, significant deposits of phosphorus are found in only a few countries: Morocco and western Sahara have the largest amount, China the second biggest deposit and Algeria the third. In contrast, reserves in the US are down to 1% of previous levels, while Britain has always had to rely on imports. “Traditional rock phosphate reserves are relatively rare and have become depleted in line with their extraction for fertiliser production,” added Johnes. This growing strain on stocks has raised fears the world will reach “peak phosphorus” in a few years. Supplies will then decline, leaving many nations struggling to obtain enough to feed their people. The prospect concerns many analysts, who worry that a few cartels could soon control most of the world’s supplies and leave the west highly vulnerable to soaring prices. The result would be the phosphate equivalent of the oil crisis of the 1970s. The predicament was once summed up by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov: “Life can multiply until all the phosphorus is gone and then there is an inexorable halt which nothing can prevent.” These dangers were also highlighted last week with the publication in the US of The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance, by the environment writer Dan Egan. The book has yet to be published in the UK but it mirrors concerns recently raised by British scientists. They say we have become profligate in the use of phosphates we put on our fields. Fertiliser washed from them – and discharges of phosphorus-rich effluent – have triggered large-scale contamination of water and created harmful algal blooms. Some of the world’s biggest bodies of freshwater are now afflicted, including Russia’s Lake Baikal, Lake Victoria in Africa and North America’s Lake Erie. Blooms at Erie have led to poisoning of local drinking water in recent years. “Just as they do on land, phosphates help aquatic plants to grow,” said Haygarth, who is the co-author of Phosphorus: Past and Future. “And that is now having calamitous consequences in rivers, lakes and seas.”Choked by blooms, many of these bodies of water have become dead zones, where few creatures survive and which are expanding. One dead zone now forms in the Gulf of Mexico every summer, for example. Such crises also create other environmental problems. “Climate change means we will get more algal blooms per unit of phosphate pollution because of the warmer conditions,” said Prof Bryan Spears of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Midlothian. Phosphate fertiliser 'crisis' threatens world food supply “The problem is that when that algae dies, it can decay to produce methane. So a rise in blooms will mean more methane will be pumped into the atmosphere – and methane is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere. It is a cause for real concern.” Spears led a team, which included Haygarth and Johnes, that wrote a recent report, Our Phosphorus Future, in which they outline the measures needed to head off our impending crisis. These include improving ways to recycle phosphorus and to ensure there is a global shift to healthy diets with low phosphorus footprints. The global spread of the element reveals how profoundly humanity is now shaping the makeup of our planet, added Johnes. “In one case, we dig up ancient carbon deposits of coal, oil and gas, burn them and so pump billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, triggering climate change. “With phosphorus, we are also mining mineral reserves but in this case we are turning them into fertiliser which is washed into rivers and seas where they are triggering algal blooms. In both cases these grand translocations are causing planetary havoc.” https://www.theguardian.com/environ...rn-of-phosphogeddon-fertiliser-shortages-loom
Because botards like you think she said, "will wipe out humanity in five years", when she said, "will wipe out humanity unless we stop..."
SVB Bank is the "first bank killed by climate change." There will be more. Mar 13, 10 min read What (Really) Killed Silicon Valley Bank What Else Implodes on Dying Planets? Financial Systems, And Ours Is Beginning To Image Credit: CNN In a foxhole, everyone turns into a libertarian. It’s sad, but true. Take the example of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. My Twitter feed filled up — fast — with erstwhile leftists and centrists and whatnot literally screaming that there shouldn’t be a bailout. Fair enough, I guess, if the logic “no safety nets for me means no safety nets for anyone!” really makes sense to you. And this is…about as far as America’s commentary on the subject’s gone. It’s followed this tedious, predictable process, which ends in “I don’t have much so nobody deserves anything!!” But is that really the lesson to be drawn here? Is it just about…bailouts…and who deserves them? In fact, there’s a much deeper lesson here, which is that our financial system is completely broken. It is not fit for the future. It is one of the big, big reasons that we are barely surviving the 21st century as democracies and modern societies, and the odds are pretty slim that we eke out even another few decades without hardcore implosion spreading. What do I mean by all that? Well, let’s think about what’s actually happening in the world. Have you heard of a little thing called “climate change”? Sorry, I don’t mean to be facetious. But you see, note how totally divorced from reality the above discussion really is. Let’s try to reframe it. How are we to deal with climate change — whose mega-scale impacts are already here? What really caused the failure of Silicon Valley Bank? Climate change did. Silicon Valley Bank — ironically — is the first bank failure to be induced by climate change. And that should give us all pause. I know, I know, everyone and their mother who are die-hard New York Times fans will be outraged with me for saying that, and it’s tedious, to be honest with you, but more than that, it’s foolish, for you. Let me explain to you precisely why. What caused SVB to fail? Well, it did something shocking (I’m being sarcastic) — it invested in long-dated US government bonds. Sarcastic, because, well, those are the safest assets in the entire economy. Or at least they used to be. Even they turned out to be, well, lethally risky. Why? Because the Fed began to raise interest rates like a maniac. That causes bond prices to fall, at least longer-dated ones, and you don’t need to worry about the math of why. What’s important to understand is the next part. Why did the Fed suddenly begin to raise interest rates? Was it…because…suddenly wages and incomes were skyrocketing? Nope, those are fallingin real terms. The Fed raised interest rates because priceshave been rising. Suddenly, in astronomical ways, in huge, huge amounts. And not just for certain things, but all the basics, from food to energy to water to medicine. And all that stuff rose in price because of what climate change is doing to our economies already. No, not solely. There was a complicating factor here — well, not much of one if you know a little bit about monopoly capitalism. As input prices rose, monopolies jacked up output prices — the prices you pay at the grocery store or shopping mall — even more. Why? Because they could. This was a golden opportunity to profiteer. Right about now, corporate profits are at their highest point ever. Because as climate change sends the price of basics through the roof, of course monopolies who still have control over what’s left of a dying planet’s dwindling resources will profiteer like there’s no tomorrow, since, well, there isn’t. So why bother being fair to anyone, anyways? Now. The reason that the Fed used to give for the explosive way that prices rose was…wait for it..Covid. But Covid is over — certainly not as a public health emergency, but as one that society even bothers to acknowledge anymore. Covid is done with, in the sense of lockdowns, labour shortages, and other assorted big-league, social-scale economic impacts — and yet prices have kept right on rising. Astronomically. Every month. Every day. How much more do you spend for food every month? Any sort of basics, really? The amount just keeps going up and up and up. There is a lesson there. Prices didn’t just begin to rise because of Covid. Sure, Covid played a role, but the fact that prices are still skyrocketing, just into oblivion, tells us that Covid cannot have been the major factor. Instead, this wave of inflation is about climate change. Suddenly, we began to hit the climate’s limits, in very real ways. Only we’re ignoring it, or at least our power centers are. My entire field, economics? LOL, it barely even talks about it. Let’s think about it together. Was it a mere coincidence that, for example, harvests were off by double digits from Europe to California to Africa — and prices rose across the world, for food? Was it a coincidence that rivers began to run dry, from the Colorado to the Rhone, and prices began to rise for everything made from, LOL, water, from chemicals to energy? Just another coincidence that megaweather struck, which raised risk premia for everyone from farmers to shippers to people living in suddenly precarious places like shorelines — and hey, look at that, prices rose? If you think that was a coincidence, congratulations, you’re an honorary member of the Fed. An honorary New York Times columnist. Good job! To the rest of us, obviously none of this was a coincidence. The sudden arrival of the mega-scale impacts of climate change — from megafires to rivers running dry to worldwide crop failures — and a tsunami of inflation hitting the entire world. There was a causal link here, history will say. What have I been saying all year? I’ve been saying, over and over again, that raising interest rates this far, this fast, was going to have calamitous consequences. Because it doesn’t solve the problem. It only makes it worse. I think I’ve written that a dozen times or more. How so? Well, if your rivers are running dry and your crops failing, is raising interest rates going to…till a field? Turn the soil back from ash into soil? Is it going to turn cracked earth back into roaring rivers? Well, of course not. It only makes the problem worse, because now you’ve added a layer of risk that doesn’t need to be there. You’re making people pay even more on the debt they’re taking on, in an accelerating way, because prices are rising far, far faster than incomes. You are making it harder to invest, because now every dollar that could be invested is riskier, in a systemic way. And that systemic risk is going to come due one day. And it did. In the form of Silicon Valley Bank failing. There’s a lot of noise — a lot — out there about it. It’s hard to decipher, but the story here is actually pretty simple. Silicon Valley Bank invested, again, in long-term government bonds, which are the safest assets in the economy. Now, sure, we can fault SVB for not “hedging” that bet, but that’s almost besides the point. Risk was multiplying, because interest rates were hammered upwards, again and again, and that risk was going to have to cause something to fail, sometime, soon. If it wasn’t SVB, it would’ve just been someone else. You know who else is failing because of that risk? You are. How are your finances doing lately? Because what raising interest rates — in this context, supply shocks, hitting our planet’s limits — does is create even more risk. And now it’s on your shoulders. Now it’s not just prices of basics that are rising, but the price you have to pay for debt, interest. And all that is leaving the average household absolutely wrecked. This is why everyone turns into a libertarian in this particular foxhole, because of course, they need a bailout, too. But you know who really needs a bailout? The planet does. How do solve — really solve — the problem of history’s greatest supply shock? As in, we are now living on a planet that cannot supply us the level of abundance we became accustomed to, and what it can supply will only dwindle, year by year, until, at last, all that’s left is authoritarians and fascists fighting one another over what little is left? We solve that problem by investment. Like never before. Investment is the opposite of raising interest rates. Raising interest rates makes interest, well, more expensive. It reduces investment. In a situation like this? The planet can’t supply us water, food, medicine, energy anymore — or if it can, only in a way that destroys it, and us, even faster? There’s only one way out of that, and that’s investment, on a scale never before seen in human history. Our GDP as a world is about $90 trillion, give or take. We invest at a rate of 20%. That’s about $20 trillion. We need to invest at a rate of about 50%. That’s $45 trillion. The gap is $25 trillion. We need to more than double what we invest, or we don’t have a future. Or this is the future, lunatics and fanatics seducing the rest of us with hate, telling us that the way out of this mess is to prevent the grabbing hands of those dirty people from having what we, the pure and true, deserve, because when resources dwindle, do you know what happens? Always happens? Fascism wins. Until it burns everything down. Look around the world. Tell me a place right now where fascism isn’t winning. In America? It’s making startling advances, just tearing up rights in a blitzkrieg. Britain, LOL, turned so ugly that it’s top sportscaster had to throw his hands up disgust and walk away. Europe’s confronted with fascist parties in multiple nations rising to power. India, China, Russia, on and on it goes. Look around the world, and understand that this is not a drill, and it isn’t a game. We are on our last legs as a civilization. Now let’s come back to SVB. The irony is the example it became. What is — was — SVB’s role in the economy? Innovation. The bank that was there to support and nurture innovation — and to be fair, it did quite a good job of that for many decades — failed. Why? Because we finally hit a problem that we can’t innovate our way around, at least not in the old way. Climate change. You see, when I say we need the greatest wave of investment in human history, that means something institutionally, too. It means we need a very different financial system to do it. Even if our innovation focused banks invest in the safest assets in the economy today — they still fail. Precisely because this financial system is not fit for the future. Why not? Well, we need one that can invest on generational timescales, not just mayfly ones. We need one that factors in global scale impacts, not just profits to a few “shareholders” who are all dudes calling themselves “hedge fund managers” and gambling with Daddy’s Money. And we need one that can actually push the boundaries of “innovation” beyond just…apps…digital stuff. My dude, the planet is dying. What are you going to eat, the Metaverse? We need a financial system that can do everything from invest in replacements for things as simple but toxic as plastics, to funding bringing ecosystems back to life, to creating clean energy infrastructure that lasts another millennium, if not century, to manufacturing stuff in clean ways, to agriculture that isn’t causing a mass extinction of life on the planet. This one isn’t it. Do you really think that a financial system of for-profit “investment banks” is ever going to do any of that, let alone all of it? That system’s job is profit, right now, more of it, at any price, not…the survival of democracy and civilization on a dying planet. So what does that system look like? Well, the World Bank should be reformed along those lines. So should the IMF. Every nation should have a Public Investment Bank to reinvent its energy grid, choose a position in manufacturing, develop an economy of the future, and create the jobs and industries that we need, instead of the failing ones that go on dwindling year by year. We need “stock markets,” too, in which the only measure of value isn’t just profitability, but purpose, whether or not you actually, I don’t know, planted a goddamned tree, versus just killed off another million beings for a few pennies more today. This system isn’t going to cut it. We need to reinvent it, from top to bottom. The irony is that Silicon Valley Bank teaches us that lesson — we need to innovate on this level, an institutional, systemic one, or else, well this is the future. SVB is the first bank climate change killed. But it’s going to be far from the last. Every year, more and more will go bust, because, well, you know what else is going to happen as a result of everyone taking on more debt to afford the basics, since real incomes are falling? That’s right, those debts, a whole lot of them, are going to go bad, too — and bang, there goes another bank. And then another one. This isn’t an anomaly, it’s a theme, a beginning, a transformation that isn’t happening, and so…implosion does, instead. I don’t know if all that makes sense. Honestly? I tire of writing about it some days. Not for you, gentle readers. I know that you are thoughtful and caring people, and sharing these thoughts with you is my reason for writing them at all. But I think, too, about the way my own field — economics and finance — rejects these ideas, these warnings to give, and will, even now. Oh well, I guess they’re right. The planet can totally die, and everything, especially the banking system, will be just fine. You know the “don’t worry! We’ll all be super-beings living immortally in computers on Mars” excuse of the techno-geeks? This is the economists version of that: denial. No, on a dying planet, things aren’t going to be fine. Not democracy, which becomes fascism, not economies, which becomes impoverished, not society, which tears itself apart, and certainly least of all, banks, which are going to go on crashing and burning, now, more and more, like embers falling from a burning sky. Because what do we all do, in the end, at the end of the world? Run. Umair March 2023 https://eand.co/what-really-killed-silicon-valley-bank-9f271644ef2c