More than one billion animals are kept as pets around the world. But bioethicist Jessica Pierce says that might not be great for our furry, feathered and scaly friends. In this story for @time, she discusses the potential harms of pet ownership, including whether it's ok to buy and sell animals and use them for our own gratification, the anguish of captivity, and the climate impacts of pet-keeping. She also posits a new way forward, in which human-animal ties are mutual and freely chosen. It's a very thought-provoking article; tell us in the comments what you think.
@CultureDesk@time Thank you for sharing this. I have been thinking a lot about this lately. I've studied more about Jain and Buddhist philosophy over the years and they present a wider and more nuanced conception of suffering than Western philosophy often does. When combined with environmental ethics, there are deep questions about suffering inherent in so many of our complex systems. Perhaps this will be something the future might condemn us for?
🇳🇴 Inside the Extreme Plan to Refreeze the Arctic | WSJ Future of Everything
“A method normally used to create ice-skating rinks is now coming to the rescue of melting sea ice in the Arctic. Since satellite records began in 1979, summer Arctic sea ice has shrunk by around 13% per decade. Could making more ice be a potential solution to this issue?”
#Video length: eight minutes and eighteen seconds.
Scottish Literature, Borders & the Environmental Imagination
By Julia Ditter
Examining the relationship between #borders & the #environment in #Scottish#literature from the 19th century to the present. For a preview, see Julia Ditter’s article “Reading Scotland’s Borders Through the Environment” – part of the DEBATABLE LANDS issue of THE BOTTLE IMP, May 2022
What's better for the environment: A paper book, or an e-reader? NPR spoke to industry experts about the rise of digital reading, how the publishing industry is reducing waste, and whether using a fossil-fuel-derived plastic e-reader is a better option than a paper book. The short answer, according to professor Mike Berners-Lee (yes, he is his brother): It depends.
"Traditional print publishing comes with a high carbon footprint.
[...]
But digital reading seems to have a considerable eco-advantage over print because it is paperless, so it saves trees, pulping and shipping [...] But digital devices also come with a substantial carbon footprint, predominantly at the manufacturing stage."
Frontlines Stories of Environmental Justice by Nick Meynen, 2019
Every unpacked frontline is one cutting edge of an economic system and political ideology that is destroying life on earth. Revealing our ecosystems to be under a sustained attack, Nick Meynen finds causes for hope in unconventional places.
Hey, neat! Thank you! It's an "imagination engine" - the original mod @Arotrios kbin.social wrote a detailed description here.
I never really fully got my head around it but it seems to be a combination of art, poetry, music, cinema, mythology, etc and a lot of the posts in it bounce off other posts in it.
Today is Earth Day. National Geographic tells the story of the first time the event was held, in 1970. It was the result of outrage at a devastating oil spill in Santa Barbara in Jan. 1969, which killed thousands of birds and stained beaches along California's coast.
"Our overarching finding is that except for very high northern latitudes, ESMs project ongoing and future extreme temperature acceleration beyond background warming levels during the hottest months."
The Anthropocene: 101 Questions and Answers for Understanding the Human Impact on the Global Environment by Billie Lee Turner II, 2022
The Anthropocene is an authoritative reference work for students of geography, the environment and sustainability. Through a series of 101 interconnected questions and answers spanning ten thematic sections, the book provides a comprehensive survey of humankind's impact on the global environment.
"We compare per capita ratios with an approach based on regression, a widely used statistical procedure that eliminates many of the problems with ratios and allows for straightforward data interpretation."
Environmental Pollution Governance and Ecological Remediation Technology ed. by Junwen Zhang et al., 2023
This book provides the advance research results of environmental pollution and governance and covers the main research field of environmental remediation, environmental monitoring, sanitation and so on.
The Buddha's Footprint: An Environmental History of Asia by Johan Elverskog
Buddhism is often understood to be a religion intrinsically concerned with the environment The Dharma, the name given to Buddhist teachings by Buddhists, states that all things are interconnected Therefore, Buddhists are perceived as extending compassion beyond people and animals to include plants and the earth itself out of a concern for the total living environment
"In 2023, the development of El Niño is poised to drive a global upsurge in surface air temperatures (SAT), potentially resulting in unprecedented warming worldwide."
"With stronger freshwater anomalies, our results indicate an increase in the risk of warm, dry European summers and of heat waves and droughts accordingly."
Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles by Jay Owens
This is a book on humanity and Earth and what we’ve done to it. Dust moves from the suburbs of a thirsty Los Angeles to Oklahoma and its Dust Bowl migrants, and the desert Southwest where nuclear testing created radioactive fallout that spread across America.
Global Environmental Institutions 3rd ed by Elizabeth R. DeSombre
Global Environmental Institutions provides the most accessible and succinct overview of the major global institutions attempting to protect the natural environment describing their creation and operation, decision-making processes, interactions with other institutions, and impact.
@1dalm In a non-fiction example, in Amitav Ghosh's "The Great Derangement" the author points out that many of the compontents of fossil fuel consumption like the use of oil and coal are actually much older than we think and were used heavily in places like Burma and China. So the point is that things could have gone differently with different circumstances.
"We show that the drastic increase in the human population at risk of exposure is partly due to historical changes in population density, but that climate change has also been a critical driver behind the heightened risk of WNV circulation in Europe."
What some Lemmy communities that are dead or very low number of new posts that you would like to get more active?
My pick is /c/albumartporn