WWW.WOOD WIBE WEB

Wood wide web: Trees' social networks are mapped https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48257315

CHLORPYRIFOS AND NEUROLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN CHILDREN

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/california-seeks-to-ban-chlorpyrifos-containing-pesticides-65850?utm_campaign=TS_DAILY%20NEWSLETTER_2019&utm_source=hs_email

Following the 2017 decision by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not to prohibit the use of pesticides containing an organophosphate known as chlorpyrifos, California’s own EPA has initiated steps toward a statewide ban.

“This pesticide is a neurotoxin,” California Environmental Secretary Jared Blumenfeld tells the Associated Press. Because the federal government has allowed its continued use, California is joining Hawaii, New York, Oregon, Connecticut, and New Jersey, which have all approved bans or have bills under consideration to remove chlorpyrifos from the market, in taking matters into its own hands. The California ban, or cancellation, could take up to two years to go into full effect.

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) “has done what the Trump administration has refused to do: protect children, farmworkers and millions of others from being exposed to this neurotoxic pesticide,” Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, says in a statement, according to The Washington Post. Newsom also proposed some $5.7 million in funding to help the agricultural industry make the switch to safer alternatives.

“This is a historic victory for California’s agricultural communities and for children nationwide,” Miriam Rotkin-Ellman of the Natural Resources Defense Council tells the AP. “The science clearly shows that chlorpyrifos is too dangerous to use in our fields.”

HUMAN SOCIETY IN TROUBLE, BY INCREASED EARTH’S NATURAL LIFE LOSS

Human society under urgent threat from loss of Earth's natural life

Reproduced from The Guardian 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/06/human-society-under-urgent-threat-loss-earth-natural-life-un-report?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Human society is in jeopardy from the accelerating decline of the Earth’s natural life-support systems, the world’s leading scientists have warned, as they announced the results of the most thorough planetary health check ever undertaken.

From coral reefs flickering out beneath the oceans to rainforests desiccating into savannahs, nature is being destroyed at a rate tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10m years, according to the UN global assessment report.

The biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 82%, natural ecosystems have lost about half their area and a million species are at risk of extinction – all largely as a result of human actions, said the study, compiled over three years by more than 450 scientists and diplomats.

Two in five amphibian species are at risk of extinction, as are one-third of reef-forming corals, and close to one-third of other marine species. The picture for insects – which are crucial to plant pollination – is less clear, but conservative estimates suggest at least one in 10 are threatened with extinction and, in some regions, populations have crashed. In economic terms, the losses are jaw-dropping. Pollinator loss has put up to $577bn (£440bn) of crop output at risk, while land degradation has reduced the productivity of 23% of global land.

The knock-on impacts on humankind, including freshwater shortages and climate instability, are already “ominous” and will worsen without drastic remedial action, the authors said.

“The health of the ecosystems on which we and other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide,” said Robert Watson, the chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (Ibpes). “We have lost time. We must act now.”