The Thin End

SAN FRANCISCO— Farmworker groups, environmentalists, and health organizations represented by Earthjustice are legally challenging the Environmental Protection Agency for approving the continued use of the deadly pesticide paraquat, which has been linked to Parkinson’s disease. Paraquat is currently banned in 32 countries, including member states of the European Union, where the chemical is manufactured and exported, and China. In July, the US EPA reapproved the pesticide’s registration for another 15 years. “This paraquat registration puts EPA on the wrong side of science, history and the law,” said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a senior attorney at Earthjustice. “With dozens of countries banning paraquat because of its severe health effects, there is no excuse for leaving farmworkers and agricultural communities exposed to extreme risks.” All major agricultural states are hot spots for paraquat use, according to the latest government data. But communities in Kansas, Texas, and southern state...

The Thin End is more often critical of government than supportive.  But we should be supportive when governments make positive moves to protect the environment and combat climate change.  Last month plans to clamp down on illegal deforestation and protect rainforests were published by the United Kingdom government.  They went virtually unheralded in the media.   The publication is part of consultations for a  new law to clean up the UK’s supply chains.  If the government is sincere in its intent, and if they don't let them fall in the pursuit of dodgy trade deals, then they are a bold move that should be welcomed.  As we have repeatedly said on the Thin End, it is world trade that drives the destruction of rainforests.  This move is an acknowledgement of that fact.  How is more important than whether we trade.  Our rainforests are essential to our living planet.  So, what would the UK government's plan do? The proposals would prohib...

Invented around 1908, it fundamentally changed our drinking habits - the teabag.  But it wasn't actually 'invented.' The teabag was an accident rather than design.  A New York tea merchant, John Sullivan, started sending tea to customers in small silken packets for convenience.  Many of his customers, thinking they were intended to be convenient infusions, placed them in their teapot.  The teabag was born.  Sullivan went on to make the bags from gauze, making them more suitable for infusion, and their use swept across the USA.  In 1953, Tetley introduced the teabag to tea drinkers in the United Kingdom, where now they are used in 96% of tea consumption.  So, what are they?  Here the story is both environmentally good and potentially bad. Not all tea bags are made of the same stuff.  Many tea bags are made with added plastic, which is neither biodegradable nor recyclable.  Some types of teabag leak millions of plastic particles ...

Harmful neoplastic agents from cancer therapies are leaching into the environment but do we know enough about what this is doing to wildlife and other humans? Chemotherapeutic drugs, also known as antineoplastic agents, that are prescribed to treat a range of cancer types, enter the aquatic environment via human excretion and wastewater treatment facilities. A review published in  Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry  indicates that very few studies have characterized the effects of antineoplastic agents that are released into aquatic environments. Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide.   With an increasing incidence of cancers in growing and ageing populations, there has been a massive increase in cancer therapeutic drugs.  Agents from these drugs are leaching into the environment through human excretion and wastewater.  Yet, we know little of the consequences on other humans and animal life in general.  So, what do we know ...

It is said that Boris Johnson is 'fuming' because people say they don't trust him.  Whether or not Boris tells the truth, he certainly hides from it. He hides from a lot of things - and has been known to hide in a refrigerator to avoid interviews!  I suppose that is an excellent way to cool down! Well, now the country is flooding, and Boris is nowhere to be seen.  The country is flooding, and the minister responsible says that our flood defences are 'working'.  There's a flood! What is working about that?  Some people are chest high in water in their own homes: what flood defence worked for them? But Boris is nowhere to be seen. For all his blustering tomfoolery, Boris isn't useful in a crisis. Now, there is a good argument that he should keep out of the way.  After all, what could he do wading around in his wellington boots looking silly? Being silly has prevented him from appearing in the past. Remember that dangling fiasco on a high-wire du...

Scientists are increasingly warning that prescription drugs can affect wildlife and ecosystems when they find their way into the environment. In a new Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry study, investigators found that the anxiety and depression drug Escitalopram—at concentrations similar to those measured in the environment—can inhibit fish foraging and eating behaviour. Interestingly, the team noted that the two sexes respond differently to the drug. Specifically, the inhibitory effect of the drug was more pronounced in males than in females. zebrafish “It is disturbing that psychoactive drugs affect vital life processes in aquatic wildlife,” said corresponding author Erik Baatrup, PhD, of Aarhus University, in Denmark. These psychoactive drugs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) have been found in natural waters around the world and have been found to inhibit fish feeding behaviour.  These researchers monitored the effect of escitalopram on zebrafish swim...

We are now losing orangutans at a rate of 25 a day as a result of unsustainable palm oil.  Rang-tan represents all of these orangutans whose home, the Indonesian rainforest, has been destroyed for palm oil plantations by big brands like Unilever, Nestle and Mondeléz (who make Cadbury's). The beauty of our planet Earth depends on life, just as life depends on the beauty of our planet.  We humans can appreciate its breathtaking beauty.  We stand in awe of its mountains and rivers; of its great lakes and its rainforests.   We share our photos on social media, as more of this world has become accessible to us. We have the power to destroy, and the power to protect and nurture it. Nature is our treasure.  Perhaps this is because it needs protecting from us.  We have become its biggest threat. Yet, we rarely take the political decisions necessary to protect it.  Utility always seems to prevail.  We need more food to feed a growing population. ...

The Thin End considers how growth has become a political mantra and how bad trade pollutes the planet and fuels climate change, and the suggestion that there should be carbon taxes. Subscribe to The Thin End Follow @Ray_Noble1

Bad trade and bad products are killing our planet. We have said this before on The Thin End . There is no better example than that of palm oil. It is used ubiquitously in so many products, and its production is a major factor destroying rainforests and threatening precious species. Demand for palm oil is 'skyrocketing worldwide' . It is used in packaging and in so much of our snack foods, cookies, crackers, chocolate products, instant noodles, cereals, and doughnuts, and the list goes on. Bad for the planet So, why is this so bad for the planet? The oil is extracted from the fruit of the oil palms native to Africa. It is now grown primarily in Indonesia and Malaysia, but is also expanding across Central and West Africa and Latin America. Palm oil production is now one of the world's leading causes of rainforest destruction, and this is impacting adversely some of the world's most culturally and biologically diverse ecosystems. Irreplaceable wildlife spec...

Why is the Paris climate accord significant, and does it matter that President Trump is intent on pulling the US out of the agreement? At the Paris climate conference  in December 2015, 195 countries adopted the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal.  For that reason alone it is a significant step - the world was doing what it should, coming together to tackle man-made climate change.  It was a beacon of hope. Now, the rest of the world looks on in dismay as Trump sets his own course based on the assumption that climate change is a 'hoax' cooked up by America's rivals.  Whilst other countries remain determined to follow through on the agreement,  does it really have legs without the USA? A global action plan The accord is significant, but only as a start. It sets clear targets. The agreement sets out the first 'global action plan' to put the world on track to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well belo...

The G7 met last month in Canada.  Did you notice the big distraction? Or, perhaps I should say distractions.  The world leaders met, and yet failed to consider the most pressing problem of our time - climate change and habitat loss.  Yet,  these are the man-made causes of their problems. Instead,  they were concerned largely with trying to stabilise the status quo on global trade.  To keep things as they are.  The meeting ended in chaos.  The system is broken, but goes on clunking away destroying the planet at each turn of the wheel.  Political wood mouse We thought of writing about the wood mouse again.  The wood mouse was deemed too 'political'  for us to promote in the USA, or at least one major social outlet deemed that this was so for our podcast  Learning from the Wood Mouse .  What we can learn from  Wood Mice is dangerous stuff!  So, we will try not to mention the wood mouse in this article.  ...

So what do we know about intelligence?  In the 1960s behaviourists studied animal behaviour in what they then regarded as 'controlled' laboratory conditions.  Rats were placed in boxes or mazes and their behaviour was measured in terms of 'conditioned responses'.  Rats would be 'conditioned' to press a lever for a food reward.  It made an assumption that learning was either reward or aversion based. Wood Mouse  Apodemus sylvaticus,   physical and social environment This approach appeared more 'scientific' because it was 'controlled'.  It is odd that in one sense it looked at an organism as being conditioned by its environment, and yet ignored its interaction with the environment. You take a rat and put it into a laboratory under controlled conditions.  Other variables could be excluded, or held constant, in large part because the animals had been taken out of their rich physical and social environment.  It assumed that this rich envir...

President Trump is right. There is something wrong with global trade, and with the deals that make them possible. What we need, however, are the right kind of solutions. Solutions that help the producers, the farmer and farm workers, as much as the consumers. Solutions that help the planet heal itself from pollution and loss of habitats. Solutions that lift people out of poverty. Solutions that prevent the 'need' to grow crops destined to destroy lives through narcotics abuse. a new deal on trade We need a new global deal that produces sustainable economies with social and environmental objectives. The G7 scurry around trying to repair a broken system. They are rightly angry that Trump has given up on that system, but neither Trump nor the G7 have the right solutions. So they fight over the entrails of a broken system. The neoliberal view of 'free markets' meeting needs is a myth.  Markets are neither 'free'  nor good at meeting social and  environmental n...

Could the release of carbon from the soil be accelerating global warming and climate change?  The answer from the latest research published in Nature appears to be a resounding 'yes.'  Perhaps it is not surprising given that the soil acts as a significant store of global carbon.  It isn't merely locked in place. Organic processes release it into the atmosphere.  Carbon is a vital ingredient of our living planet and plays a major role in the balance of our ecosystem. All life on earth is 'made' of carbon and carbon circulates. Carbon enters the atmosphere as carbon dioxide from respiration and combustion. It is absorbed by plants to make carbohydrates in photosynthesis using energy from the sun. Animals feed on the plants passing the carbon compounds along the food chain. Most of the carbon they consume is exhaled back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. The animals and plants eventually die, and these dead organisms get eaten by decomposers (microbes a...

Consider this when next you pick up a bar of Cadbury's Fruit and Nut or a Mars bar, conveniently sold cheaply at your supermarket checkout, the amount it costs you is the amount the cocoa picker gets for a whole day's work. In 2014 total global sales of chocolate confectionery reached a staggering $100 billion - an increase of 20 billion from 2012 ( Euromonitor International ). Very little of this money reaches the cocoa farmers and pickers who receive around 1.25 dollars a day for their efforts. They work a whole day for the price of a chocolate bar in the UK or USA. While the profits of multinational chocolate companies have increased since the 1980s, the world market price for cocoa beans has declined by half with the cocoa producers receiving less and less of the massive turnover. Nevertheless, the cost of cocoa can fluctuate in an insecure market affected by weather and harvests. With an increasing demand for chocolate globally most recently chocolate producers h...