I read with distress that Africa's forests have gone from being carbon sinks to carbon sources. Researchers found that between 2000 and 2010, tropical forests sequestered carbon, but since then have been releasing more than they capture. Forest loss like this has inspired Brazil to create its TFFF (Tropical Forest Forever Foundation) to combat tree loss, but is it too little, too late?
Also in environmental news, pundits are still trying to put an optimistic spin on COP30. I remain unimpressed. Tronald Dump's administration continues to undermine not only democracy in general, but environmental protections specifically. The Endangered Species Act, a landmark piece of bipartisan legislation, now includes "economic factors" in evaluating listed species and critical habitat. That opens the door egregious abuse by those with the financial resources to basically bribe the system to discount inconvenient endangered species.
And speaking of endangered species, we learned this week that threatened species will have fewer protections than endangered ones. This overturns long-standing policy that treated both the same in terms of protective actions.
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| A likely endangered new species of Aphyllon |
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