Yellowstone’s glory at 150; a win vs. plastic waste; U.S. truck pollution standards; a clash of the titans over T. rex; Mardi Gras is back
| In today’s newsletter, we toast to Yellowstone National Park’s 150th, bring news of a win against plastic waste, tell you how climate change affects your health, witness a clash of the titans over T. rex … and welcome back Mardi Gras. | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY KATIE ORLINSKY, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION | |
By Robert Kunzig, Executive Editor, Environment
This has been a week in which old and new specters of apocalypse seemed to be fighting for space in our brains. With all eyes on the Ukrainians who are fighting for their country, and on the threat of nuclear war raised by the Russian president, the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change didn’t get the notice it otherwise might have. It was stark, but in its broad outlines also familiar.
“The report is a summary of what we already know,” climate scientist Michael Mann told Kieran Mulvaney for our story. “Dangerous climate change is now upon us, and it is simply a matter of how bad we’re willing to let it get.”
That will take years to find out. Meanwhile, here’s a small, good thing, the climate equivalent of a hot roll fresh from the baker’s oven.
It’s a story from my colleague Sarah Gibbens about how scientists have found a way to help part of the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. Like reefs around the world, the Great Barrier has been hammered by warming waters, which cause mass coral bleaching. As corals die, the reef gets overgrown with a thick, brown seaweed called sargassum, which makes it hard for the next generation of coral larvae to find a home and grow.
But to that at least there’s a solution, albeit an effortful one: It’s called seaweeding.
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“It’s really simple. It’s just like weeding your garden. You just grab it and pull,” says ecologist Hillary Smith, a Nat Geo Explorer. When she and a team of volunteers did that on 12 experimental plots of about 270 square feet each—the size of a decent backyard vegetable garden—they observed a threefold increase in the number of new corals.
“Every year there are more and more coral babies,” Smith told Gibbens. (Pictured above, a cuttlefish among the Great Barrier Reef corals.)
It wouldn’t work on every reef; reefs in the Caribbean, for example, are overgrown with a kind of algae that is much harder to remove. But where it does work, it can buy the reef a little time—time in which we might start reducing the carbon emissions that threaten reefs worldwide.
The IPCC said yesterday the planet is burning, and from the U.S. Supreme Court, a few hours later, came the sound of energetic fiddling, as the justices debated whether the U.S. Clean Air Act does or does not give the EPA the authority to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. Previously the court had ruled, in Massachusetts v. EPA, that it does. But the current court might overrule that and decide that Congress must pass a specific new law if it wants to curtail carbon emissions.
As that political struggle continues, in the U.S. and worldwide, one of the best ways to adapt to climate change, the IPCC said, is by preserving the nature we have: the wetlands and parks, mangroves and coral reefs that buffer us against the tides of change we’ve unleashed. Citizens can help with that—by seaweeding reefs, for example.
In Australia, Earthwatch Institute helped organize volunteers who spent days weeding with Smith on the Great Barrier Reef. “We’re connecting people to the critical issue of our time—climate change,” Earthwatch CEO Fiona Wilson told Gibbens. “Action is the antidote to this almost existential crisis.”
(Pictured at top, the widening Batagaika crater in eastern Siberia, the largest of many across the Arctic. As climate change thaws permafrost, the ground collapses.)
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY ANNIE GRIFFITHS | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHIEU PALEY, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION | | | Endangering human lives: Climate change is taking a toll on our health. So says a major UN report. For the first time, the study details the effects on mental health. Extreme heat, floods, worsening storms, drought, air pollution from wildfires, and vector-borne diseases like West Nile and malaria are tremendous risks, environmental scientist Robert McNeman tells Nat Geo. Low-income individuals and developing nations will shoulder most of the burden if we don’t control carbon commissions, the report says. (Pictured above, a woman fainting from the heat in the desert of western Pakistan.) | | | |
WHAT CAN BE DONE
The IPCC has several recommendations:
— Seattle is looking to increase access to home AC or a community cooling center.
— Weather forecasting systems can help residents plan for extreme weather.
— Prepare first responders to respond to frequent disasters.
— Proactively increase access to health care for all to save lives. | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK FELIX, AFP/GETTY IMAGES | | A dramatic win against plastic waste: For three years, Diane Wilson combed through marshes of the Gulf Coast, collecting plastic pellets (pictured above). She and others gathered what she guesses were 46 million pellets, enough to sue Formosa Plastics, the petrochemical plant responsible for the spills. The retired shrimp boat captain/fisherwoman won. The monumental $50 million settlement serves as a warning to others in the industry that they could face consequences for leaking plastic nurdles into the environment, Beth Gardiner reports.
Subscriber exclusive: We depend on plastic. Why are we drowning in it?
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| We hope you liked today’s Planet Possible newsletter. This was edited and curated by Monica Williams, Heather Kim, and David Beard. Have an idea or a link for us? Write david.beard@natgeo.com. Have a good week ahead! | | | |
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