It turns out billionaires like Bill Gates care more about themselves and their money than about maintaining a livable planet for the rest of us.

Are you surprised? I’m not.
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In decades past, as the effects of climate change slowly became undeniable, some people looked to the super-rich for solutions. By the early 2020s, a few billionaires had positioned themselves as masters of climate change policy, taking advantage of their great fortunes to become indispensable to environmentalism.

Now, however, many of those same billionaires are pulling their support at an alarming rate. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the sixth richest man in the world, is the latest among them. Breakthrough Energy — Gates' climate change nonprofit — has locked the doors on its policy and advocacy office, laying off dozens of employees throughout Europe and the US.

Ever since billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump won his second presidential election, tech barons like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and of course Elon Musk have made no bones about shedding their progressive skin and embracing the new administration.

Gates, too, is cozying up to the returning president. In early January, the Microsoft founder spent three hours dining with his fellow billionaire, telling the Wall Street Journal he was "frankly impressed" by Trump's grasp on the issues dear to him.

Though many no doubt feel betrayed by what seems like a sudden rightward turn, billionaires like Gates have always behaved like wolves in sheep's clothing, prioritizing their fortunes above all.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://futurism.com/bill-gates-gives-up-climate-change

SEE ALSO -- “Bill Gates Is Giving Up on Climate Change”
https://gizmodo.com/bill-gates-is-giving-up-on-climate-change-as-trump-drains-the-woke-out-of-washington-2000576270

Climate change not only means warming temperatures. It means a total breakdown in how we've always expected the climate to behave...
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Climate whiplash is hitting major cities around the world, bringing deadly swings between extreme wet and dry weather as the climate crisis intensifies, a report has revealed.

Cities across the world are affected but the data shows some regional trends, with drying hitting Europe, the already-parched Arabian peninsula, and much of the US, while cities in south and south-east Asia are experiencing bigger downpours.

The analysis illustrates the climate chaos being brought to urban areas by human-caused global heating. Too little or too much water is the cause of 90% of climate disasters.

The savage wildfires in Los Angeles in January were an example of a single whiplash event, with a wet period spurring vegetation growth, which then fueled the fires when hot and dry weather followed. Such events are increasing due to human-caused global heating.
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FULL STORY -- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/12/global-weirding-climate-whiplash-hitting-worlds-biggest-cities-study-reveals

Trump Halted an Agent Orange Cleanup. That Puts Hundreds of Thousands at Risk for Poisoning.
—

Diplomats in Vietnam warned Washington that halting USAID’s efforts to clean up the massive deposit of postwar pesticides would be a catastrophe for public health and relations with a key strategic partner in Asia.
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-halted-agent-orange-cleanup-dioxin-vietnam-poison-risk?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

I’ve been posting weekly reminders about Business As Usual every Monday morning for about two years now.

But you know what? I could legitimately have been doing it each week for the past 30 or 40 years! Because that’s how long the ‘elite’ rulers of our society have been fully aware of what they are doing and yet continued pushing non-stop in a destructive rapacious exploitative colonial capitalist frenzy — completely ignoring the science and dooming the rest of us to a disastrous ecological breakdown.

All in the name of profits.
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It's time for another week of BUSINESS AS USUAL, sponsored by Toyota, Comcast, and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

"Keep driving, keep flying, keep shopping, keep buying!
We've got this, everything's fine."

ESO analysis confirms that the INNA industrial megaproject would have a devastating and irreversible impact on the facilities at Paranal Observatory in #Chile.

Light #pollution would increase by at least 35% above ESO's Very Large Telescope, by a minimum of 5% above ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope and by at least 55% above the south site of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory

Air turbulence would also increase, degrading seeing conditions by up to 40%

Vibrations from the project could seriously impair the functioning of the ELT and the VLT Interferometer, which are both extremely sensitive to micro-seismic noise.

Dust during construction is also problematic as it settles on the telescope mirrors and obstructs their view.

Full story here: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2506/

More in the message below. 1/

A rare population of leucistic, or partially white, purple-faced langurs near Sri Lanka’s Sinharaja Forest Reserve has attracted ecotourism interest, even as monkeys in general are perceived by farmers as crop-raiding pests.

Unlike albinism, leucism causes a partial loss of pigmentation, and researchers have documented around 30 white langurs in the area.

By Malaka Rodrigo
https://news.mongabay.com/2025/03/in-a-land-where-monkeys-are-seen-as-pests-sri-lankas-white-langurs-are-winning-hearts/

Burden of cardiovascular disease caused by extreme heat in Australia projected to more than double by 2050

Hot weather is responsible for an average of almost 50,000 years of healthy life lost to cardiovascular disease every year among people in Australia, according to research published in the European Heart Journal. This equates to around 7.3% of the total burden due to illness and death from cardiovascular disease

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-03-burden-cardiovascular-disease-extreme-australia.html

Industry leaders warn climate change could make NZ homes uninsurable

Survey shows strong public support for increased investment in climate resilience

https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/nz/news/catastrophe/industry-leaders-warn-climate-change-could-make-nz-homes-uninsurable-528668.aspx

Scientists warn that a popular Hawaiian island is sinking 40 times faster than expected and terrible flooding could start wiping out businesses and homes within decades

https://meteo24news.gr/english-edition/scientists-give-chilling-warning-as-they-reveal-hawaii-is-sinking/38596/

#Microplastics are broken down from the vast quantities of waste dumped into the #environment. They #hinder plants from harnessing sunlight to grow in multiple ways, from damaging soils to carrying toxic chemicals. The particles have infiltrated the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/10/microplastics-hinder-plant-photosynthesis-study-finds-threatening-millions-with-starvation

What can you help mend? Excerpt from
"Mending Mittens" by Larry Schug:

"Blessed be those who are forever fixing
the tear between people and the rest of life.
May we all have enough thread,
may our needles be sharp,
may our fingers not throb or go numb."

https://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2013/03/larry-schug-mending-mittens.html

Lots of my Perpetual Journal entries lately seem to be of birds...here’s a Ladder-backed Woodpecker, found in deserts in the SW US. We observe them fairly regularly in our Tucson, AZ yard (we rarely see Red Crossbills though).

ClimateJustice.social is a Mastodon server for climate justice activists and those concerned about global warming and the current environmental crisis:

https://climatejustice.social

You can find out more at https://climatejustice.social/about or contact the admin @PaulaToThePeople

Oil and arms protesters stage sit-in at Barclays Bank in centre of Cambridge

Multiple Cambridge protest groups staged a sit-in at Barclays on St Andrew’s Street to demand an end to the bank’s investments in fossil fuels and financing of weapons used by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza

https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/news/oil-and-arms-protesters-stage-sit-in-at-barclays-bank-in-cen-9408670/

Special shoutout to the repair site iFixit who are now on the Fediverse, you can follow them at:

@iFixit

They provide repair forums and free repair guides for phones, computers, consoles, kitchen equipment, tools, medical devices, cars etc. They also review and tear down new gadgets to see how repairable they are.

Repairing your existing stuff is much, much better for the environment than buying replacements.

Failings with the most basic services in British society, such as water and sewage, have been harming the broader U.K. economy. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/environment/2025/03/15/britain-sewage-contamination/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #environment #uk #fish #fishing #water #oceans #pollution

Then and now…

This is so sad. And I can see no end to the ongoing tragedy...
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Whether they hop around the prairie, dabble in wetlands, flit through forests, or forage along the shore, birds are suffering rapid population declines across the United States.

That’s the finding from the latest State of the Birds report, a status check on the country’s avian life published every few years by a coalition of science and conservation groups. The 2025 report shows that birds across most habitats have suffered major losses since 1970. Grassland and aridland species have been dealt the heaviest blow: both groups lost more than 40% of their total populations over that period.

What’s more, the trends for many habitat groups have gotten worse. Even waterfowl, which had previously been a conservation bright spot amid the alarming declines, have seen their numbers drop since the last edition of the report. Overall, around one-third of U.S. birds, or 229 species, are of high or moderate conservation concern, according to the report — dealing with low population levels, declining trends, or other threats that call for conservation action to step up.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.audubon.org/magazine/sweeping-new-report-shows-us-birds-declining-sharply-across-range-habitats

When was the last time you saw a dove or pigeon?

What if we put solar panels on every roof in the world?
Scientists set out to explore the impact of covering every rooftop on Earth with solar panels.Their research found that swapping traditional energy sources for rooftop solar could actually cool the planet — lowering global temperatures by up to 0.13°C.
#solar #energy #science #environment
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/9.6685258?cmp=rss