Edmund Rice International- Care of Earth

Source: 4 Ways to Be a Real Youth Activist – EcoWatch

Source: Fight Against Environmental Racism Finally Gets Its Moment | Time

Source: Horseshoe crab blood is key to making a COVID-19 vaccine—but the ecosystem may suffer.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/07/covid-vaccine-needs-horseshoe-crab-blood/

CARRIE ARNOLD in National Geographic

PUBLISHED JULY 2, 2020

Each spring, guided by the full moon, hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs clamber onto beaches across the U.S. mid-Atlantic to lay their eggs. For hungry birds, it’s a cornucopia. For drug companies, it’s a crucial resource for making human medicines safe.

That’s because these animals’ milky-blue blood provides the only known natural source of limulus amebocyte lysate, a substance that detects a contaminant called endotoxin. If even tiny amounts of endotoxin—a type of bacterial toxin—make their way into vaccines, injectable drugs, or other sterile pharmaceuticals such as artificial knees and hips, the results can be deadly.

“All pharmaceutical companies around the world rely on these crabs. When you think about it, your mind is boggled by the reliance that we have on this primitive creature,” says Barbara Brummer, state director for The Nature Conservancy in New Jersey.

Every year, pharmaceutical companies round up half a million Atlantic horseshoe crabs, bleed them, and return them to the ocean— after which many will die. This practice, combined with overharvesting of the crabs for fishing bait, has caused a decline in the species in the region in the past few decades.

Source: Daily Newsletter

From Bill McKibben

Duke Energy and Dominion Energy—enormous Southeast utilities—announced on July 5, that they were scrapping plans for the Atlantic Coast natural-gas pipeline, despite having invested $3.4 billion in the project. They’d actually won a big Supreme Court ruling just weeks earlier, giving them the right to lay the pipeline beneath the Appalachian Trail—but that, executives from the two companies said in a joint statement, wasn’t going to be enough. “This announcement reflects the increasing legal uncertainty that overhangs large-scale energy and industrial infrastructure development in the United States. Until these issues are resolved, the ability to satisfy the country’s energy needs will be significantly challenged.” Translation: they were evidently rattled by a court order earlier this spring in the granddaddy of all pipeline battles; a Montana federal court ruled in April that the Trump Administration couldn’t simply waive environmental laws to help the backers of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline may have had Supreme Court permission to traverse the Appalachian Trail, but the companies must have realized that they were going to face litigation at every stream crossing along the route.

On Monday, July 6, 2020, came the news that a federal court had ruled in favor of the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes, who have been fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. In this case, the pipeline has already been built, and is carrying oil. Stunningly, the court said that Energy Transfer, the company that developed the pipeline, has to shut it down and drain the crude within the next thirty days—an unprecedented blow. Read More Here.

Source: The plan meant to unite Biden and Bernie voters on climate is finally here | Grist

Source: It’s Been an Awful Week for the Fossil-Fuel Industry | The New Yorker

Source: Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts of CO2 from air | Greenhouse gas emissions | The Guardian

Source: Is This the End of Oil and Gas Pipelines? – The New York Times

Source: Air Conditioners Contribute to ‘Energy Poverty,’ New Study Finds – EcoWatch

Source: Wake Up Time | Center for Humans & Nature