The Wonders of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Despite historical accounts attesting to its existence, the gardens’ reality remains a mystery, with a lack of Babylonian documentation and archaeological evidence adding to the mystery.
Speculation surrounds the gardens’ demise, with earthquakes emerging as a leading hypothesis. Although this botanical wonder has vanished, the tale endures, a timeless narrative of love and opulence in the heart of the Babylonian Empire.
Amidst the challenges brought on by years of conflict, Iraq’s historic treasures, like Babylon, are gradually receiving attention once more.
The ancient city, once the capital of King Nebuchadnezzar, bears the marks of time, nature, and previous attempts at reconstruction.
The recent efforts to refurbish the museum and replicate the Ishtar Gate are commendable, yet the real challenge lies in preventing further deterioration.
Documentation is the first step in understanding the issues plaguing this monument, where modern masonry stands alongside ancient remnants.
The World Monuments fund secured funds for restoration, aiming to restore Babylon’s former glory.
The contrast between photos from the 1980’s, showing Saddam-era reconstructions, and the original ruins, underscores the need for authenticity.
The problems faced are a blend of man-made and natural, a toxic combination for preservation. Iraq’s cultural heritage extends beyond Babylon, with other historic sites like Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Erbil.
Efforts are underway to restore these treasures, welcoming visitors once again. Thankfully in recent years most of these sites have been made UNESCO World Heritage Site, helping efforts to save them.
The focus remains on preserving the monument’s authenticity and integrity. While the path ahead may be uncertain, these restoration efforts symbolize a renewed hope for Iraq’s rich history.
Ancient History / ABC Flash Point News 2023
The Mysteries & Spectacular Architecture of Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat is a fascinating temple complex in northwestern Cambodia, located in what was once the capital of the ancient Khmer Empire which presided over a vast kingdom in Southeast Asia.
While Buddhists believe that it was built in a night under orders of the god Indra, it actually took decades to create what was originally a Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu in the 12th century.
Covering an area of about 162.6 hectares (about 400 acres), it is said to be the largest religious monument in the world.
Angkor Wat was built over several decades starting in the first half of the 12th century by King Suryavarman II of the Khmer Empire who ruled from 1113 to 1150.
Created to function as a temple complex, mausoleum and political center of his vast empire, its name means city of the temples, with Angkor meaning capital city and Wat meaning temple.
Angkor Wat is one of the largest and most complex religious monuments ever constructed in the history of mankind. The Khmer Empire existed between the 9th and 15th century, but during the 12th century it was at its height and the Angkor civilization was booming.
It was during this period that Angkor Wat temple was built, over a period of approximately 30 years. Inscriptions claim that building Angkor Wat used the manpower of 300,000 workers and 6,000 elephants.
According to archaeologist Charles Higham, Suryavarman wasn’t just a man, but a demigod. In all depictions he appears large and muscular with everyone seated around him.
The Cambodian god-kings of old each strove to better their ancestors’ structures in size, scale, and symmetry, culminating in what is believed to be the world’s largest religious building, stresses Lonely Planet.
Created for the god Vishnu, the Angkor Wat mountain-temple was built to represent the Hindu universe, although by the end of the 12th century it had been converted into a Buddhist temple.
There are five sandstone towers that rise above the temple enclosures, the central tower representing the mythical Mount Meru, the center of the Hindu universe and home of the god Brahma and the Devas, and the surrounding four its smaller peaks.
Architecturally speaking, Angkor Wat is spectacular. The temple is an enormous three level pyramid built on a floating rectangular piece of land surrounded by water.
The Khmer used literate blocks encased in carved sandstone for the construction of the temple and the city wall, while the rest of the structures were made from less durable materials such as wood which explains why they are not visible today.
Angkor War is oriented in a westerly direction, associated with Vishnu and with death, which has led experts to believe that it was built as a mausoleum for Suryavarman II (although he was never actually buried there).
It is said that the temple was constructed mathematically to be in harmony with the universe, and the distances and sizes in Angkor Wat are related to Indian mythology.
In Angkor: Celestial Temples of the Khmer Empire, Eleanor Mannikka suggests that Angkor Wat was also used for astronomical purposes.
The Angkor Wat temple was built surrounded by an enormous moat, measuring about 200-meter-wide (650 ft), which symbolized the ocean surrounding Mount Mera. The scale of this is hard to imagine until you get there.
In fact, the whole complex is a huge rectangle which measures 1.5 km by 1.3 km (0.93 x 0.8 mi), and the temple complex itself can only be reached by crossing a sandstone causeway.
The temple facade awash with intricate bas-relief carvings which line the walls and surfaces.
Designed to be viewed in an anticlockwise direction, these depict deities and other figures from Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, telling the stories of the history and mythology of Cambodia.
They even include scenes from the Hindu Mahabharata and a carving of Emperor Suryavarman II entering the city for the first time.
There are also almost 3,000 nymphs carved throughout the temple, each of which are unique, while at the central tower is a 3.25 m (10.7 ft) statue of Vishnu made out of a single block of sandstone.
Around this statue, visitors will see offerings from pilgrims and young people about to get married.
The Gallery of a Thousand Buddhas, at the central temple, was once home to hundreds of images of the Buddha, but many of these were stolen during the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970’s.
While historians love to tell the story of a lost temple, according to Alison Kyra Carter Angkor Wat was never abandoned, unlike the other monuments within the larger Angkor city.
In fact, History.com stresses that Angkor Wat was important to the Buddhist religion well into the 1800’s, although it did fall into disuse and disrepair.
The Angkor Wat temple is the most famous of the hundreds of temples within the Angkor Archaeological Park, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It is estimated that the city of Angkor was once home to one million people, with a complex irrigation system, paved roads and beautiful buildings; however, within 200 years the Khmer civilization collapsed for no apparent reason.
Without any written records to provide clues, scholars have suggested that an environmental collapse may have played a major role in the Khmer civilization’s disappearance.
After a UNESCO campaign to protect and restore the famed Cambodian ruins, it was taken off the World Heritage in Danger list again in 2004.
Now one of the greatest threats to Angkor is tourism, keeping in mind that before the Covid-19 pandemic, the huge influx of tourists had reached 2.6 million (7,300 per day) in 2018.
Impressive and massive, Angkor Wat and the ancient city that surrounds it, is an intriguing place to visit that questions the prevailing belief that our civilization is more advanced than civilizations that existed in the past.
Located about 6 km (4 mi) from Siem Reap airport, the Angkor Archaeological Park opens from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. The best way to visit is by renting a tuk tuk to take you there and spend the day with you. This will make moving between the different sites more enjoyable.
The best months to visit are December and January, when it is dryer. You can buy 1, 3 and 7 day passes. Visiting the Angkor Wat temple site will take at least three hours, but to really get a feel for the entire city of Angkor can take days.
Although Angkor Wat is no longer an active temple, it’s important to keep in mind that this is a sacred site and visitors should dress modestly, avoiding uncovered knees and upper arms.
Ancient Origins / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
Gaza’s Water for Farmland will be unusable if Israel floods Tunnels with Salt- & Sewage water
According to reports in US media on Tuesday, Israel has pushed ahead with plans to flood Gaza City with seawater in an attempt to destroy the network of tunnels dug beneath the city by Palestinian militant groups.
Gaza’s fragile ecosystem could be permanently damaged by a huge influx of salty seawater like that which Israel is considering pumping into the city, experts said.
Some of the deepest tunnels dug by Hamas and other militant groups could be near groundwater depths, souring the area’s drinking water.
According to the report, the IDF finished assembling five massive seawater pumps north of the Al-Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip in mid-November.
The plan is reportedly to flood the tunnels slowly over several weeks, giving Palestinian fighters and their Israeli captives time to safely evacuate.
The report was unclear about the disposition of the White House toward the plan. The Biden administration has largely supported Israel’s actions in Gaza as self-defense against Hamas, but given rhetorical warning against violating Palestinian human rights.
The warnings have had little effect, though, as nearly 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli army bombing and ground operations since Hamas attacked several Israeli border towns in early October, killing some 1,200 people.
Andrey Frolov, co-chair of Moscow’s Environmental Organizations, told Sputnik on Tuesday that an influx of salty seawater could wreck Gaza’s fragile ecosystem, making it difficult to sustain life there.
When water comes in, it all depends of course, depending on the scale of the disaster. That is, what kind of tunnels are they, where are they laid and what is their size.
Because the first thing that immediately catches your eye is that if the tunnels are shallow, say, two to three meters deep, then this will simply undermine the foundations of buildings.
When moisture enters, the stability of the soil changes, subsidence begins, and accordingly, it will just begin [to collapse]. Israel has already destroyed the entire city, so I think that for them it is not important.
There is information that these tunnels are hundreds of square kilometers in size and go to a depth of up to 80 meters, he noted, adding that it was probably a bit of an exaggeration.
Frolov noted it depends on the waters how the influx of salty seawater would affect the fresh groundwater. Some of the deepest tunnels rumored to have been dug in Gaza could be near the depths of the aquifers.
Because seawater can get into these aquifers it will make them salty. As a result, those wells that were used in Gaza will simply stop working.
The territory was already short on water, Israel supplied water from the Sea of Galilee. If a large amount of sea water is pumped into it, it will simply become unusable.
He noted the salt will also impact agriculture in Gaza, making it so that any kind of farming or maintaining green spaces will simply be impossible. Our nature lives in biocenosis. That is, it is a complex of living beings that adapt to a certain habitat.
If the biocenosis is salted and the living conditions are changed, then some species simply will not be able to live there. And if one, two, three species stop living, then the entire biocenosis crumbles.
Sergei Mukhametov, a senior lecturer at oceanology and chair of the geographical faculty at Lomonosov Moscow State University, told Sputnik that the amount of salt from the operation would be a smaller danger to the population than Israel’s bombing campaign.
I don’t think that anything terrible will happen there. The volumes for the sea and ocean [water] are very small. And sand is not a pollutant in this case.
Yes, there will be salinization [of groundwater] if they fill [the tunnels] with seawater, there will be soil salinization.
Well, it’s more likely that they suffer there because of these monstrous bombings … If we compare the consequences [of bombing] and the environmental ones, the direct impacts are monstrous. And ecology comes second or even in third place.
When it came to the flooding of the tunnels, Mukhametov noted it wasn’t the first time such an operation had been carried out.
When we took Berlin [in 1945], our troops there also broke through the Berlin metro, and the Germans also flooded it in the hope of stopping us, regardless of the civilians who were also hiding there.
Sputnik / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
Yom Kippur War was the First Military Victory for Arabs over Zionist enemy
As soon as the month of October arrives every year, knives rain down on it from every direction to undermine the 1973 war; to turn the victory into defeat.
Sometimes this is done by the Nasserites, out of hatred for Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, at whose hands victory was achieved; and sometimes it’s done by the Arab-Zionist lobby, which has infiltrated the Arab countries and changed their direction.
They no longer see the Zionist state of Israel as a historical enemy of the Arabs against whom we have fought major wars.
Rather, they see it as a close friend in whose arms they threw themselves under the pretext of a warm peace, normalizing their relations with it and signing the Abraham Accords without any shame.
Half a century has passed since the glorious October War, as it is called in Egypt; the October Liberation War, as it is called in Syria; or the Yom Kippur War, as the settler-colonial state calls it.
The names are many, but the result is the same: the war was a turning point in the history of our nation and a critical moment in our struggle against the Zionist enemy, in which we crossed from defeat to victory, and from humiliation to pride.
It was the fourth war between the Arabs and the Zionists after the Palestine War of 1948, the 1956 Suez War, and the Six-Day War of 1967, in which the Arabs were defeated.
The Zionist enemy occupied the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, the Golan Heights in Syria, the West Bank, which was under Jordanian rule, and the Gaza Strip, which was under Egyptian military rule.
The October War came to restore the reputation of the Arab army, as it was the only war in which it was victorious over the Zionist occupation army.
This great victory allowed the brave soldiers of Egypt to cross the Suez Canal, demolish Israel’s Bar-Lev defensive line, and liberate land east of the canal as a first stage to serve as a launching pad for later stages.
They would not have stopped until after the complete liberation of Sinai soil. The Egyptian army was able to cross the Bar-Lev line in six hours, although they claimed it could not be destroyed other than with an atomic bomb.
The Syrian army was also able to enter the Golan Heights and reach the Hula Valley and the Sea of Galilee. The Egyptian and Syrian armies achieved a military miracle since taught in military colleges and institutes around the world.
Our brave soldiers were able to destroy the myth of the invincible Israeli army. This made Israel’s Prime Minister, the Ukraine-born Golda Meir rush to ask US President Richard Nixon for his help because they were losing Israel.
The Egyptians had crossed the canal, and all Israeli forces in the Sinai had been destroyed, wrote Meir in her memoir My Life.
The Syrians had penetrated deep into the Golan Heights… The losses on both fronts were very high, and a fatal question arose: Shall we inform the nation of the extent of the situation?
Moshe Dayan, the Israeli defense minister told the editors-in-chief of the Israeli newspapers of the day, we are now paying a heavy price every day in this war. Every day we are losing dozens of planes, pilots and equipment, and hundreds of tanks.
Some of these tanks fell into the hands of the Egyptians. This is a hefty price for Israel to pay. The Egyptians succeeded in passing through with more tanks and armored vehicles than we have in the Sinai.
The Egyptians have a lot of armored vehicles, and they are strong. We withdrew from the Bar-Lev line because of the severity of the Egyptian attack. The Bar-Lev line is no longer a reality for us, and we do not have the power to expel the Egyptians who destroyed it.
Dayan admitted that it had become clear that Israel was no stronger than the Egyptians. The belief that Israel was militarily superior to the Arabs was ended, and the theory that the Arabs would be defeated in hours if they declared war on Israel was proven wrong.
With Egyptian military superiority in Sinai unable to be confronted, Israel and its supporters had to accept that the occupation state was not the only military force in the Middle East; that there were other facts to be considered.
This was the situation in Sinai at the beginning of the war, and the course of the battles taking place on occupied Egyptian soil, according to the words of the Zionist leaders themselves.
Had it not been for the direct intervention of the USA, establishing an air bridge through which a total of 27,895 tonnes of military aid were transported, including aircraft, trucks, tanks and military equipment, Egypt would have recovered all of Sinai, and peace negotiations would not have needed to recover all Egyptian territory occupied by Israel.
The course of the war changed, as did the enemy, and it became a confrontation with America, not the Zionist state.
This prompted Sadat to say, we [could have] achieved complete victory if the USA had not intervened against us in the war. I cannot fight America; I fear for my children.
It was not possible, under any circumstances, for the Zionist generals to accept that the war would end with a crushing defeat for their army.
Their arrogance would not allow that. They were able to push back against the Syrian forces and reoccupy the Golan Heights.
Indeed, they took even more land, with an additional 500 square kilometers in what was known as the Sa’sa’ pocket.
The Israelis were able to open the Deversoir Air Base corridor, cross to the western bank of the canal and besiege Egypt’s Third Field Army and the city of Suez.
However, they failed to make any strategic gains, whether by occupying Ismailia or Suez, destroying the Third Army, or attempting to push the Egyptian forces back. The Deversoir issue is a thorny subject.
The Zionists saw this as a victory, while Sadat saw it as a TV propaganda opportunity and nothing more. Many books and analyses have looked at this matter.
Some saw it as costing Israel a lot financially and putting its army in a dangerous military situation with nothing gained except propaganda to raise morale.
Others saw it as a major blow to the Egyptian army, cancelling out the impressive victories it achieved at the beginning of the war.
Amid all of this ambiguity, knowledge is lost, and the truth is hidden. Nevertheless, the established fact remains that the 6 October War was the first military victory for the Arabs over the Zionist enemy.
Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, is considered the holiest day of the year for people who practice Judaism. The holiday technically spans two calendar days, because the Jewish calendar is lunar. Days are marked sunset to sunset.
This year, it begins at sunset on September 24 and continues until the evening of September 25, 2023. Yom Kippur concludes a 10-day period known as the “Days of Awe” that begins with the Jewish New Year, which is called Rosh Hashanah.
Jews around the world are to face their misdeeds and sins over the year through worship and prayer so that they may atone for their wrongdoings.
With fear and wonder in facing God’s judgment, Jews seek forgiveness. In doing so, people are called to self-reflect on their failings and flaws.
Synagogues hold religious services throughout the day for practicing Jews to come pray introspectively, either asking for forgiveness or expressing regret of sins committed in the past year.
Middle East Monitor / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
Red Cross records revealed about 270.000 people died in Nazi Camps
After officials uncovered inscriptions inside shoes belonging to children sent to Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland during World War II, the history of certain events are changing over time.
According to The Times of Israel, these discoveries were made by museum employees during the course of their efforts to preserve a substantial amount of shoes on display at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland.
In addition to the new discovery, many other historical artifacts have also been found in the process, including letters, newspaper fragments, and banknotes, many of which were used as lining or padding inside the shoes.
Museum officials hope that through additional and more detailed research, they will find out more information about Jews, Roma’s and other minority groups who were locked up at the Polish concentration camp.
The museum staff says that one pair of shoes belonged to Amos Steinberg, who was born in 1938 in Prague and was one of many European Jews jailed between 1941 and 1945 by the Nazi’s.
Steinberg was imprisoned in the Theresienstadt ghetto along with his parents in 1942 before he was taken to Auschwitz.
It was most likely his mother who made sure that her child’s shoe was signed,” Hanna Kubik of the museum’s collections department said in a statement.
The father was deported in another transport. We know that on October 10, 1944, he was transferred from Auschwitz to the Dachau camp. He was liberated in the Kaufering sub-camp.
These people were probably deported to Auschwitz in the spring or summer of 1944 during the extermination of Hungarian Jews. About 230,000 children are estimated to have been imprisoned in Auschwitz
Why would anyone have been: “transferred from Auschwitz” to anywhere? If Auschwitz was to be a death camp, what would be the point? In the early 90’s, it was still being said that more than 4 million people were killed at Auschwitz. That number has now been restated at 1.1 million.
The total number, however, still stands at 6 million. Where did this 3 million who were now not killed at Auschwitz meet their end. Russian documented history revealed that millions of Jews were murdered by Nazi troops in the Soviet Union.
Why did Churchill, De Gaulle and Eisenhower never mention the ‘holocaust’ in over 7,000 pages of their war memoirs… nor even once? And why did the International Red Cross, which visited every labor camp, not mention (even once) the slaughter of people?
Jewish Docs treating German guards, or roof top gas vents that were not there before the war, but appeared after, as aerial photos showed, seemingly put there by the Soviets.
The International Red Cross records that showed that approx 270.000 prisoners died of typhus or malnutrition. That thanks to the brave British pilots who bombed the unarmed food convoys. Is this an anti-Semitic rant. nah, I was born into the invented cult.
Make the lie big, keep it simple, keep repeating it, and eventually, they’ll believe it. I believe humanity by and large has graduated from such simple naivety, or better said brainwashed by Zionist propaganda machines.
Hollywood is run by Jews that came out of Europe. Producers, actors, shows, comedies, name it, its all designed by people that are connected with Zionists living in Israel. The Zionist USA now controls NATO @ Russia’s doorstep.
During WW II, millions of Jewish refugees took on different new names in order to hide their previous identity before traveling all over the world, especially to the USA, where they even got US government subsidies to pay for their lifestyle.
These people are still registered as went missing during the holocaust, causing the overrated death toll in the misguided western history books, used as an excuse to invade Russia and establish the so-called holy land.
Earlier the Zionist Rothschild family, who control most of the world central banks, also supported Napoleon’s failed attempt to capture and occupy Moscow, like Hitler’s Nazi Germany tried to do in the next century.
Now NATO its NATO’s turn to target Russia for another attempt to take away and confiscate the countries huge riches.
But under Putin that chance has totally evaporated. Russian weaponry is far more sophisticated then the ones that the ignorant Western companies provide.
Once Britain’s Prime Minister, then the Foreign Secretary from late 1916, Balfour had pledged Palestinian homeland to other people. They used the so-called WW II holocaust event as a surreal motive to get what they wanted.
That promise was made on November 2, 1917, on behalf of the British government in the form of a letter sent to the leader of the Jewish community in Britain, Walter Rothschild.
At the time, Britain was not even in control of Palestine, which was still part of the Ottoman Empire. But the foundation for the state of Israel was laid, together with all the humanitarian disasters later connected to it, from that moment on.
Back to Europe during WW II, Ford Motors delivered engines for Nazi trucks, while AT&T provided communications for the battle tanks. Also IBM office business programs helped Hitler doing the strict wartime book keeping.
The famous General Rommel of the African Desert Corps, gave his men stimulants like Coca-Cola beverages for his troops to refresh in de scorching desert sun. Hugo Boss designed the SS uniforms for the German troops to looks spic and span, during WW II.
Finally the British-Dutch oil giant, Shell provided the combustion for the Nazi’s to invade the Netherlands. After the Dutch capitulated and the royals fled to Britain, the Luftwaffe still bombed Rotterdam to rubble.
Rewritten after being Removed from Database / ABC Flash Point WW II News 2020.
Pedofielen op Hoge Posities en Aanslagen op de eigen Bevolking
Westerse democratieën vertonen kenmerken van een kakistocratie, een bestuursvorm waarbij het besturen wordt gedaan door de slechtste, minst geschikte of gewetenloze burgers.
Dat stelt wetenschapper Tjeerd Andringa van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
Dit blijkt onder meer uit het feit dat inlichtingendiensten nauwe banden onderhouden met terroristische groepen en pedofielen netwerken.
Andringa merkt op dat presidenten eigenlijk een soort woordvoerders zijn van de werkelijke machthebbers.
Aanslagen op de eigen bevolking ;
In de VS maak je bijvoorbeeld geen kans op het presidentschap zonder brede steun van de diepe staat, de permanente machtsbasis waaraan de Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) een groot deel van de bemensing levert, klinkt het.
Oorlogen op leugens baseren, zoals die tegen Irak, is volgens hem typisch kakistocratie. En ook dat een samenleving zoiets accepteert.
Andringa stelt dat inlichtingendiensten aanslagen faciliteren die worden toegeschreven aan moslims.
Zeker is dat geheime organisaties aanslagen hebben gepleegd op de eigen bevolking bevolking, zegt de universitair hoofddocent. Operatie Gladio is daarvan een duidelijk voorbeeld.
Angst niveau vergroten :
Dat was een geheim netwerk in Europa […] dat gesteund werd door de CIA en de NAVO, en dat in Italië aanslagen heeft gepleegd op de burgerbevolking, vervolgt hij.
Op deze manier probeerde men het angstniveau van de bevolking te vergroten. “Want wat doen mensen als ze bang worden voor aanslagen? Dan richten ze zich voor hun bescherming tot de (r)overheid.
Zo gelooft hij niet in het officiële verhaal rond 9/11. Neem alleen al Gebouw 7, dat niet is geraakt door een vliegtuig, en toch in elkaar is gestort, zegt hij.
Twintig minuten voordat Gebouw 7 in elkaar stortte, vertelde een correspondente van de BBC het al op tv, met nota bene het toen nog fier overeind staande gebouw duidelijk zichtbaar op de achtergrond, voegt hij toe.
Seksfeesten met kinderen :
Volgens de wetenschapper oefenen inlichtingendiensten verder macht uit door mensen op hoge posities te plaatsen die chantabel zijn.
Als je de meest gewetenloze mensen zoekt dan vormen seksfeesten met kinderen een prima selectie mechanisme, aldus Andringa.
Nieuw :
Hij merkt op dat het voor velen nieuw is wat hij schrijft. Dat is omdat ze via de mainstream media niet of nauwelijks met dit soort ideeën in contact komen. Veel mensen willen het ook niet weten.
Mensen die het systeem waar ze deel van uitmaken niet kunnen bekritiseren, kunnen de gedachte niet verdragen dat ze aan een kakistocratie bijdragen, legt hij uit.
Zij houden deze daarmee uiteindelijk in stand, besluit hij. Door het simpelweg niet voor mogelijk te houden dat ze bestuurd worden door de slechtsten.
9 for News 2-19.
Future of Urban Consumption in a Climate Change controlled World
C40 is delighted to publish this pioneering piece of thought leadership, The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World. The report demonstrates that mayors have an even bigger role and opportunity to help avert climate emergency than previously thought.
But to grasp that opportunity, city leaders need to be even more entrepreneurial, creating and shaping markets and engaging in sectors that may not previously have been considered within the domain of city government, and working out how to support their citizens and businesses in achieving a radical, and rapid, shift in consumption patterns.
Cities drive the global economy, and urban decisions have an impact well beyond city
boundaries. In this case, the impact we are considering is the greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions resulting from urban consumption of building materials, food, clothing & textiles,
private transport, electronics & household appliances, as well as private aviation travel.
What is the true scope and scale of urban impacts on the environment? What is the role of mayors and other urban stakeholders in addressing them?
How can we fairly and equitably address consumption-based emissions if many citizens in C40 cities still do not meet their basic needs? Is it possible to avert climate breakdown given that the current rules of the global economy encourage ever-increasing consumption?
The work also shows that there are huge health and cost benefits in doing so. A world with low-impact consumption will be more prosperous and happy than the over-consuming, polluted alternative that we are currently heading for.
C40 recognizes that the full environmental consequences of twenty-first century consumption are only beginning to be understood and that the findings of this report will make uncomfortable reading for many mayors, businesses and citizens.
As a result, C40 cities will need time to develop the partnerships, strategies and actions that can deliver the necessary changes. C40 is committed to supporting that process.
US Cities are leading on tackling climate breakdown by setting ambitious targets and taking impactful action to reduce their local emissions.
This work has mostly focused on transport, buildings, energy and waste, which reduces GHG emissions that are emitted within the city, or production-based emissions. Production based emissions have already peaked in 27 C40 cities.
New information shows that fast-growing urban consumption is a key driver of climate change. When a product or service is bought by an urban consumer in a C40 city, resource
extraction, manufacturing and transportation have already generated emissions along every
link of a global supply chain.
Together these consumption-based emissions add up to a total climate impact that is approximately 60% higher than production-based emissions.
Consumption-based emissions account for the total climate impact accumulated around the world of a good or service, allocated to the place where an end-product is used or consumed. Take a pair of jeans, for example.
Its climate impact includes the GHG emissions that resulted from growing and harvesting the cotton used for the fabric, the CO2e emitted by the factory where it was stitched together, and the emissions from ships, trucks or planes that transported it to the store.
Its impact also includes the emissions from heating, cooling or lighting the store the jeans were bought in and the CO 2e emitted by the end-consumer washing and drying it over its lifetime.
C40’s 94 member cities can therefore influence roughly 10% of global emissions. By contrast, the total production-based emissions of C40 cities in 2017 are estimated to be 2.9 GtCO 2e.
When considering C40 cities’ consumption-based emissions, mayors, businesses and urban residents can influence an approximately 60% larger share of global GHG emissions than previously thought.
Cities and urban consumers have a huge impact on emissions beyond their own borders since 85% of the emissions associated with goods and services consumed in C40 cities are generated outside the city; 60% in their own country and 25% from abroad.
These developments must initiate sweeping decreases in the carbon-intensity of industrial
processes such as the making of steel, cement and petrochemicals.
If cities then develop additional bespoke consumption interventions, for a wider set of diverse goods and service categories that have not been the focus of this report, C40 cities could close their full consumption-based emissions gap by 2050.
The C40 network represents 25% of the global economy, and vast amounts of goods and
services are produced around the world in order to meet consumer demands in C40 cities.
Mayors and city governments are well-positioned to bring together urban residents, businesses, civil society groups and national governments to collaborate on the delivery of transformative climate solutions.
However, this research is evolving. This report is based on the best currently available evidence, but more and better data will become available over time, allowing the goals and approaches to be refined.
The findings presented in this report constitute the first step of an ongoing process of measurement and prioritization that C40 will lead over the next few years to better understand what cities can do to reduce their consumption-based emissions in line with a 1.5°C scenario.
We have published the evidence, methods and assumptions within an accompanying method report, and welcome suggestions for improvements. An overview of the research approach is shown on the next page.
Two target levels were established for each intervention. The progressive target level is based on research that identifies the threshold of resource efficiency and behavioral change potential, as defined by current technology and progressive changes in consumer
choices.
The clothing and textile industry plays a significant part in the global economy. The industry is undergoing a transformation as growth rates are increasingly driven by expanding markets in rapidly developing nations.
Emissions from clothing and textiles made up 4% of C40 cities consumption-based emissions in 2017. If all C40 cities make the changes set out in table 4, the emissions of the clothing and textiles category could be cut by 47% between 2017 and 2050.
The adoption of ambitious targets would enable a further 19% emissions reduction. It is notable that the impact of reducing the number of new clothing and textile items people buy significantly exceeds the impact of cutting supply chain waste.
In the ambitious scenario, the limited number of items being produced means that there are lower savings to be made through supply chain waste reductions.
Emissions associated with aviation in C40 cities make up 2% of total consumption-based
emissions in 2017.
This may seem relatively marginal compared to other sectors examined in this report, but air travel is one of the most carbon-intensive activities that individuals can personally undertake and the aviation industry is experiencing rapid growth.
If all residents of C40 cities fly less and airlines increase the proportion of sustainable aviation fuel they use as outlined in the progressive target, a cumulative 43% emissions saving can be achieved (Figure 25).
Given the current global disparity in flying, it is important to note that C40 cities can, on average, actually increase flight trips by 43% compared to 2017 levels, if the target is one short-haul flight every two years per person.
However, 46% of C40 cities’ residents would need to reduce the number of trips, compared to their 2017 levels.
The relative contributions of the two consumption interventions are similar, though it should be noted that the adoption of sustainable bio-fuel is dependent on also limiting the number of flights to avoid potentially negative consequences on other systems.
Such as land and water required for producing feed-stocks, and potential competition with other land uses such as food production or the chopping down of the rain forests in Brazil and Africa.
The use of electronics and household appliances has grown substantially over the last few
decades. Emissions from electronics and household appliances in C40 cities made up 3% of total consumption-based emissions in 2017.
By keeping electronic goods and household appliances for longer and optimizing their lifespan, a total emissions reduction of 33% can be achieved by 2050.
In 2017, the total consumption-based emissions associated with the use and manufacturing of private vehicles in C40 cities represented 8% of total emissions.
A third of the emissions from private transport are related to the materials and processes used to make vehicles and motorbikes.
For this consumption category, there is a clear overlap with Deadline 2020 commitments given that reductions in the use of private transport could catalyze a reduction in ownership and vice versa.
In 2017, emissions associated with food were estimated to account for 13% of total consumption based emissions across C40 cities.
Roughly three quarters of these emissions stem from consumption of animal based foods, with the remaining 25% from consumption of plant based foods.
In 2017, C40 cities’ emissions associated with construction and refurbishment of buildings and infrastructure accounted for 0.45 GtCO2e, representing 11% of emissions in that year.
These emissions are not only associated with construction within C40 cities; city residents are also beneficiaries of buildings and infrastructure across their host country, such as public and commercial buildings, railways, bridges, highways, water and sewerage infrastructure.
Emissions from construction of such national infrastructure is included within C40 cities’
consumption-based emissions.
To avoid climate breakdown across the world, including in C40 cities, major industries such as energy generation, transportation, agriculture, construction, electronics, and clothing and textiles, will have to undergo significant structural changes.
Evolving consumer demands will both require new, sustainable products and services, and that existing consumer goods are made in a more resource-efficient and sustainable way.
These changes in consumer demands and production will affect businesses and workers throughout supply chains across the world, leading to a completely new economic takeover.
Expose News.com / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
Göbekli Tepe, the lost Civilization of Anatolia
Göbekli Tepe is the world’s oldest example of monumental architecture; a ‘temple‘ built at the end of the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago.
It was discovered in 1995 CE when, just a short distance from the city of Şanliurfa in Southeast Turkey, a Kurdish shepherd noticed a number of large, embedded stones, stones which had clearly been worked – and which turned out to be the most astonishing discovery.
Anatolia is described variously as a melting pot of civilizations and cultures, a bridge between Asia and Europe, a fusion of East and West, and many other familiar and overused descriptions, all now rather pedestrian but accurate nonetheless.
It is certainly a fact that Anatolia has the unnerving habit of turning up ‘Lost Civilizations’ and ‘Vanished Cultures.’
It is unnerving for two reasons: in the modern age we have covered so much ground, physically and intellectually, that we think we should know everything by now.
It is unnerving because, intrinsically, an entire civilization is a hard thing to lose, especially in a place that is supposed to be a ‘bridge’ and has been tramped across by so many peoples since the very dawn of civilization itself.
But Anatolia still does it. The story of Schliemann’s discovery of Troy in 1870/71 CE had the benefit in Western culture and in the Western literary canon, of being very well known, and its discovery was a revelation and a cause for great popular wonder and excitement.
The discovery and excavation of Boğazkale was another revelatory event if less celebrated by the general public. After all, the Hittites were just bit players in a biblical narrative; not wholly unfamiliar, but more of a footnote.
However, academics and scholars were aware of the fact that there was a significant missing component to ancient Near Eastern history, a lacuna just hinted at by tantalizing discoveries made in the late 19th century CE.
The discovery and excavation of the Hittite capital, locked away in its Central Anatolian mountain vastness, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries CE filled in a huge gap, a gap reduced even further by the translation of the Hittite language by the Czech linguist Hrozny in 1915 CE, and the wealth of documentary evidence that had been turned up during excavations at the Royal Library in Hattusa, and which could now be read.
However, the discovery of Göbekli Tepe was just a massive shock!
And what has emerged since that day in 1995 CE is nothing short of extraordinary; a site of significant size containing first circular ‘enclosures’ and then rectangular ‘rooms’ dominated by remarkable carved and decorated monoliths.
So far, over 25 of these enclosures have been identified and two of the earlier ones have now been fully excavated down to floor level revealing an unknown and never imagined culture that turned the archaeological world on its head.
The most startling thing about this site is its great age and its mathematical blueprint resembling the Cygnus constellation, 1400 light years away from planet Earth.
Going back to the end of the last Ice Age and first constructed around 10,000 BCE, the site is known as Göbekli Tepe (or in Kurdish, Girê Navokê meaning Pot Belly Hill, or more poetically perhaps, the Hill of the Navel).
The monument comes to us from the distant past and from a time when, according to the existing historical narrative, it simply should not have been there. This is monumental architecture on a grand scale, preserved to an extraordinary degree, but silent.
While we can describe the site in minute detail and study its physical attributes with all the tools of modern science, we can only speculate as to the motives of the builders or the culture of the people; all of this was accomplished 6,000 years or more before the invention of writing.
And there is an additional riddle within this enigmatic and haunting place. The great enclosures, after being used for hundreds of years, were simply buried.
The rest of the site continued to be used with smaller, more modest structures built on the mound created by the burial of the original monuments.
And then, after a period of use as a site for gathering and a place of ritual that may have lasted for 2,500 years, the place was simply abandoned.
World History Organization / ABC Flash Point News 2022.
Baltic Herring population threatened by Warming Sea Temperatures
Over the decades, the Baltic Sea, nestling between the industrialized countries of Northern Europe, has become one of the most polluted marine ecosystems on the planet.
Finns have been fishing for herring for generations, but new reduced EU quotas are threatening the traditional livelihoods of coastal communities. Herring accounts for around 80% of Finland’s annual fish catches.
Even at the age of 84, Holger Sjögren nimbly untangles the knots in his fishing net, which he then drags down into the murky depths of the Baltic Sea. As the Baltic becomes less saline, large saltwater species such as cod are suffering more and more.
The fifth generation of a fishing family, Sjögren has been fishing for herring off the coast of Kotka, a town in south-east Finland, for five decades.
In the harbor, dozens of loyal customers wait impatiently for him to return to buy the day’s catch on board the boat. This bucolic, traditional trade is in danger of becoming rarer.
In October, the European Union decided to slash by 43% the herring quotas authorized in these waters in 2024. Many people are afraid they’ll have to throw in the towel, says Holger Sjögren.
With fish populations plummeting since the 1970’s, Baltic herring could suffer the same fate as many other species that have almost disappeared from the region.
The Baltic is characterized by shallow waters, making it particularly vulnerable to climate change. Its surface area is comparable to that of the Black Sea, but in terms of volume, the Black Sea contains up to 20 times more water.
Rising temperatures and falling salinity – itself due to increased rainfall and reduced inflow of water from the Atlantic Ocean – are threatening many species that are struggling to adapt.
The more the Baltic Sea becomes a lake, the more harmful the situation will be for marine species, explains Jukka Pönni, a researcher at the Finnish Natural Resources Institute (LUKE).
In the 1980’s, the cod population reached record levels, but it has collapsed in the space of a few decades, to such an extent that the European Union has had to impose an emergency ban on its fishing in 2020.
The Atlantic sturgeon, once abundant, has also disappeared due to pollution and the obstruction of its migratory rivers.
While some advocate major reductions in fishing quotas to preserve the remaining populations, others disagree. Even a total ban would not have helped (to preserve) the population. In fact, it would have had the opposite effect.
According to the researcher, it is the climate and environmental damage that are threatening the species more than fishing. With the collapse of Baltic cod, herring have been deprived of their biggest natural predator.
Without fishermen, populations could become too dense and the growth of individuals would be reduced for lack of sufficient food. Matti Ovaska, head of fisheries at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), rejects this argument.
If intensive fishing continues at this rate, herring populations are likely to decline, paving the way for other species such as sprat to take over and prevent the herring from recovering, he says. Fishing will have to be reduced, says WWF’s Ovaska.
The threat to herring, highly prized by Finns who eat it with all kinds of sauces, is worrying consumers. I eat herring every week, Markku Karjalainen told AFP from the market square in the center of Helsinki, which was teeming with people on an autumn weekday.
From fermented herring with onions and bay leaves to smoked herring, silakka has been an important part of the Nordic culinary tradition for centuries.
But with more and more restrictions in place, there’s a risk that fishing could come to a halt for good. No one will invest in this sector any more. Not that Holger Sjögren will give up his nets.
The European fisheries policy dictated by Brussels should be completely overhauled, insists the octogenarian, and the tradition of the fishermen should be respected.
Green Euro News / ABC Flash Point Blog 2023.
Wilddlife USA in danger as Species are waiting for Protection
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been exceedingly slow to protect species. A 2016 study found that species waited a median of 12 years to receive safeguards. In total, at least 47 species have gone extinct waiting for protection.
Several of the species in today’s announcement went extinct during a delay in the listing process, including the Guam broad-bill, little Mariana fruit bat, and the southern acorn-shell, stirrup-shell and upland comb-shell mussels.
We are at risk of losing hundreds more species because of a lack of urgency. The Endangered Species Act is the most powerful tool we have to end extinction, but the sad reality is that listing still comes too late for most species.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service badly needs to reform its process for protecting species to avoid further extinctions, and it needs the funding to do so. We can’t let bureaucratic delays cause more extinctions.
Nine months into his term, President Biden has yet to nominate a director for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/endangered.fennecfox-0acc4c4f76474c68a83ee907c92aef11.jpg?resize=696%2C461&ssl=1)
Biden did request more than a $60 million increase for endangered species — the largest increase requested for the program in history — but the House Appropriations Committee undercut the president’s budget request by $17 million.
A 2016 study found that Congress only provides approximately 3.5% of the funding that the Service’s own scientists estimate is needed to recover species. Roughly 1 in 4 species receives less than $10,000 a year toward recovery.
Instead the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed today to remove 22 animals and a plant from the endangered species list because of extinction. They join the list of 650 U.S. species that have likely been lost to extinction.
Species being proposed for de-listing include the ivory-billed woodpecker, Bachman’s warbler, Scioto mad-tom, San Marcos gambusia, eight species of Southeastern freshwater mussels, eight birds and a flower from Hawaii, and a bird and bat from Guam.
Two bills moving through Congress would increase protection and funding for endangered species. The Extinction Crisis Emergency Act would direct President Biden to declare the global wildlife extinction crisis a national emergency.
The Extinction Prevention Act (H.R. 3396) would create four grant programs that would provide $5 million per year to fund crucial conservation work for each of the most critically imperiled species in the USA, including butterflies, freshwater mussels, desert fish and Hawaiian plants.
The legislation would spur action across the entire federal government to stem the loss of animals and plants in the United States and around the world.
Extinction is not inevitable. It is a political choice. Saving species isn’t rocket science. As a country we need to stand up and say we aren’t going to lose any more species to extinction.
Bachman’s warbler was a small yellow and black songbird that once bred in swampy thickets in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee and overwintered in Cuba, where it was seen for the last time in 1988. It was lost to habitat destruction and collection.
Bridled white-eye: A green, yellow and white tropical lowland forest bird from Guam that was 4 inches long, with a prominent ring around its eye. It became extinct because of predation from the invasive brown tree snake.
Ivory-billed woodpecker: The third largest woodpecker in the world, the ivory-billed woodpecker once flew in old-growth forests in 13 states, including Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
It declined because of logging and collection, and the last verified sighting was in 1944 despite extensive searches.
Little Mariana fruit bat: Also known as a flying fox, the little Mariana fruit bat lived on Guam and foraged on tropical fruits.
It was last seen in 1968 and went extinct because of habitat loss from agriculture and military activity, brown tree snake predator and over-harvesting for use as food. It had a 2-foot wingspan, gold on the sides of its neck and yellowish-brown fur on the top of its head.
The San Marcos gambusia was a 1-inch-long fish that ate small invertebrates and gave birth to live young instead of laying eggs like many species of fish.
It lived in clear spring water from the headwaters of the San Marcos River in Texas.
Last seen in 1983, its extinction is due to water overuse that depleted groundwater and spring flow.
The Scioto madtom was a small catfish found only in Big Darby Creek in Ohio. It was listed as endangered in 1975 but was last seen in 1957. It was lost because of silt accumulation from dams and runoff.
The eight freshwater mussels proposed for de-listing include the flat pig-toe, green-blossom pearly mussel, southern acorn-shell, stirrup-shell, tubercles-blossom pearly mussel, turgid-blossom pearly mussel, upland comb-shell and yellow-blossom pearly mussel.
Freshwater mollusks are the most endangered group of organisms in the United States, with 36 mussels and more than 70 freshwater snails already lost.
Global Research California / ABC Flash Point News 2021.
Forever chemicals are sprayed onto Fields and Food in Pesticides
A new report exposes the ‘urgent’ threat of forever chemicals in pesticides, as it calls for tighter EU regulation. Dozens of substances used in pesticides in Europe are ‘forever chemicals’, a new investigation reveals.
The stable door is slowly closing on PFAS – man-made per- or poly-fluorinated alkyl substances which persist in the environment for an incredibly long time.
The EU is set to restrict their use and phase them out with a review of its REACH regulation that governs chemicals. It is part of a promised ‘great detox’ on dangerous substances.
But this won’t apply to pesticides – and that’s a big problem, according to the NGO’s Générations Futures and Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Europe.
It is shocking to find that PFAS, with their long-lasting environmental impacts, are intentionally sprayed on fields and food, says Angeliki Lysimachou, head of science and policy at PAN Europe. Given all the identified risks, their use should stop immediately.
A new joint report from the two NGO’s has found that 37 active substances currently approved for use in pesticides are PFAS. That equates to 12% of all approved synthetic substances.
PFAS are a growing cause for public concern. Recent research has revealed shocking findings – such as the news that rainwater almost everywhere on Earth has unsafe levels of forever chemicals.
This pollution has many potential sources, from chemical manufacturing plants to firefighting foams. Pesticides, however, appear to have gone under the radar.
Many people are unaware that active ingredients in pesticides can be PFAS where they are used to keep them effective for longer.
The investigation dug deep into their use in France, where it found that 30 active substances currently authorized for use in pesticides were PFAS. The sales of these substances have more than tripled since 2008, reaching 2,332 tonnes in 2021.
Analyzing authorization documents for the 10 best-selling pesticides containing PFAS, the researchers found that the vast majority of these chemicals stick around in the environment.
Flufenacet and Diflufenican from Bayer are the top-selling substances, says PAN Europe, with German data from the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) suggesting the same dramatic growth in Germany.
There are concerns that they are contaminating groundwater in France.
The NGO’s are also sounding the alarm about possible ‘cocktail effects’ of mixing chemicals, which they claim are not being assessed – even though marketed products sometimes contain several different PFAS.
The EU is planning to restrict the use of so called forever chemicals in Europe, but PFAS pesticides have been excluded from the scope of this restriction.
The main argument is that these substances are already covered and sufficiently regulated under the Pesticides Regulation, the NGO’s say.
According to this regulation, pesticides authorised in the EU should cause no adverse effects to humans and no unacceptable effects on the environment. Despite this, the report reveals that harmful pesticides continue to get approved for use in the production of food.
It is urgent to ban this source of PFAS pollution. These pesticides should be included in the PFAS restriction currently being prepared at European level, argues Salomé Roynel, policy officer at PAN Europe.
That will take time, so we immediately need a better implementation of the pesticide regulation. We propose to apply the precautionary principle required by law and ban all PFAS pesticides now.
The aim is to stop people and the environment being exposed to these forever pollutants. There should be no exception for pesticides, adds Pauline Cervan, toxicologist and project leader of Générations Futures.
Green Euro News / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
Drowning in Plastic on Christmas Island
Located in the Indian Ocean, 2600 km north-west of Perth and 350 km from Indonesia, the remote Australian Territory of Christmas Island is home to an extraordinary range of flora, fauna, rare birds and land crabs.
The extinct volcano, rimmed by a narrow tropical reef, rises dramatically out of the sea to a height of 361 m and plunges to depths of more than 2 km just a couple of hundred meters from shore, creating some of the largest sub-surface drop-offs in the world and attracting a huge diversity of marine life.
Its landscape is covered with tropical rain-forest and the rugged limestone karst terrain supports ecosystems and species of international conservation and scientific significance.
Unfortunately, due to the island’s location and surrounding currents, it also draws tonnes of plastic from neighboring countries, predominantly, to its eastern shores.
And on this shoreline sits Dolly Beach, known by the locals as Robinson Crusoe beach, which looks like something out of a Hollywood movie.
Only accessible via a 2 km walk through thick jungle, it’s an isolated, coconut-fringed paradise, speckled with shimmering rock-pools, a freshwater stream and a sky full of soaring sea birds.
Working my way through the fallen coconuts, I hit the sand to discover a devastating amount of plastic. Here on Christmas Island, we are impacted greatly by pollution and plastic, says Christmas Island Parks Australia Manager, Kerrie Bennison.
It’s an ongoing burden for the island and a huge threat to our wildlife. We lie in the current lines of some of the world’s worst evidence of marine debris.
On Dolly Beach, green turtles come ashore year-round to nest and when I begin to crack open a freshly fallen coconut, a dozen robber crabs, the world’s largest land crustacean (growing up to 1m across) lumber out of the jungle to greet me – like a scene from Jurassic Park.
I’m drawn to the beach’s rockpools, where colourful fish swim beneath the ocean foam. Devastatingly, their flashing forms are overshadowed by floating straws and polystyrene.
Next I spot a moray eel, lunging past a plastic water bottle to snatch some scuttling crabs. It’s confronting, to say the least, seeing these island residents trying to survive amid the debris.
Marine debris is one of the biggest environmental issues facing our planet, having devastating impacts on our ecosystems.
We know that plastic lying on the beach heats the temperature of the sand, which impacts the crabs and turtles that live there. A baby turtle hatchling will change its sex according to the temperature of the sand.
A team of workers from the Tangaroa Blue Foundation (TBF), a not-for-profit Australian charity focused on the removal and prevention of marine debris, is on the beach at the time of my visit.
TBF has been working in this space for more than 18 years and is instrumental in providing data on marine debris.
It’s this evidence that’s needed to create changes at local, state, national and international levels through the Australian Marine Debris Initiative (AMDI) Database.
Laden with bags of collected rubbish, which is strung onto poles for the 2km trek to parked vehicles, WA project coordinator, Casey Woodward, and her crew, have collected some astounding data.
In order to collect a meaningful dataset, our team set out a 16sq.m quadrant on both Dolly and nearby Greta beaches, to quantify and categorize items typically found on any given day.
On Greta we counted 3811 items within that area, giving a debris density of 238 items per square meter. On Dolly, 1091 items were counted within 16sq.m, giving a debris density of 68 items per square meter.
The debris included several hundred pieces of polystyrene, hard plastic remnants, single-use plastic straws, foreign plastic bottles and rubber remnants.
It’s not unusual to collect a tonne of marine debris from Greta Beach in one day and together with the community we have achieved this on several of our visits.
Unfortunately, during times in the year where the currents and winds are the strongest, the beach does not stay clean for long and will be covered in plastic, fishing gear and polystyrene at the next tide change.
The Indian Ocean Territories [comprised of Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and located 2600 km from Perth] experience the highest marine debris densities in Western Australia and 99% of the rubbish is from foreign sources.
Waste management in developing countries is often non-existent with plastic and rubbish thrown into upstream waterways to be flushed into the ocean during monsoons.
Strong ocean currents and winds allow these objects to travel great distances and be washed ashore on remote islands, like Christmas Island.
To address the issue it’s imperative that marine debris is approached from a global perspective, with all countries and organizations working collaboratively to tackle plastic at every stage.
This needs to start from design and production, through to recycling and end-of-life options based on true circular economy principles.
We are hopeful that the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Global Plastic Treaty, due to be introduced in 2024, will start to address these issues at the scale needed to have a real impact.
At the entrance to Dolly Beach, the Shire of Christmas Island provides bags for visitors to take to the beach to help bring out a load of rubbish. I witness many people doing this – their small way to help while holidaying here.
An ‘Island Care’ sign tells me that plastics are now found inside animals throughout the ocean food chain from mussels, to fish, to sea turtles to whales.
Plastics that have killed marine life can kill again when the animal decomposes and the plastic re-enters the environment.
Research has found that 39 per cent of debris is polystyrene and fishing buoys, 31% plastic food packaging, drink bottles and other plastics, and 26 per cent rubber thongs and remnants.
On Dolly Beach I collect well over 100 thongs within a few meters from where I’m standing.
Christmas Island is an internationally renowned seabird rookery with around 80,000 seabirds nesting on the island each year, including the world’s rarest booby, the Abbott’s booby, and the Christmas Island frigate-bird.
The island has been described as one of the wonders of the natural world. Devastatingly, however, I witness bird nests lined with plastic, robber crabs crawling over empty water bottles, and a hermit crab that has taken a plastic cap as a home instead of a natural seashell.
As the sun sets and a full moon rises, four turtles leave tracks in the sand as they make their way up the beach. They flick debris aside while digging a body pit and chamber in which to lay their eggs.
On the water’s edge, the moonlight illuminates broken pieces of polystyrene washing in with each wave – countless glowing-white warning beacons. Somehow, we need to turn off this tide of plastic at the source. If we don’t, what future is there for all of us?
Australian Geographic / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
EU sacrificing Animal Welfare to tackle the Cost of living Crisis
Long-awaited EU animal welfare proposals are falling through without an official explanation. Some reports suspect that economic objectives are at play.
A raft of highly-anticipated EU animal welfare proposals are overdue, and it seems that the European Commission will fall short on its commitments for the long-promised legislative reforms.
Brussels appears to be handling the matter discreetly behind closed doors, following leaks that revealed the proposals could be scrapped in an effort to tackle the high food prices and inflation gripping the continent.
Animal welfare organizations have accused policy makers of a U-turn and seem to be at loss in understanding what is happening after the Commission committed to ‘End the Cage Age’ years ago.
The End the Cage Age was a citizens’ initiative, signed by almost 1.4 million people in 2020. It prompted the Commission to commit to proposing legislation to phase out the use of cage systems for animals such as hens, rabbits and ducks by the end of 2023.
The legislative framework was also meant to include a stop to the practice of slaughtering day-old chicks, and the sale and production of fur, as well as shortening the transport of live animals.
But, as the moment of truth approached, news reports began to cast doubts about the fate of the legislation. The topic was also missing from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s State of The Union speech.
This was seen as an opportunity for the president to sum up what her administration had left to do before the European elections next year. This didn’t escape the attention of animal welfare NGO’s.
Euronews reached out to the European Commission but received no response as of this article’s publication.
Finally, at a hearing in the European Parliament, European Commission Executive Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič, nominated to oversee the European Green Deal, raised many eyebrows when he couldn’t commit to a deadline of the animal welfare proposals in question.
The vice-president, however, kept repeating that the animal welfare proposals remain a priority for the upcoming months. Compassion in World Farming said that the Commission slaps democracy in the face, and signals GAME OVER for EU animal welfare revolution.
The Commission’s U-turn regarding the much-touted animal welfare reform is a failure for democracy and the European project, said Olga Kikou, European Affairs Manager at Compassion in World Farming.
The European Commission has yet to communicate any clear reasons why it has abandoned the proposals, but media reports suggest that there are fears that the animal welfare amendments could fuel food inflation further.
The Financial Times (FT) reported on a draft impact assessment by the Commission, that showed how farmers’ costs could surge by an average of 15%, potentially leading to higher consumer prices and an increase in imports.
Improving the housing of broiler chickens could add one cent to the price of an egg, according to the draft assessment.
The EU farmer’s group Copa-Cogeca said it was in favor of many of the suggested changes as long as they came with financial aid and as long as imported meat had the same standards as that in Europe.
Despite these fears, while still high, food inflation has actually started slowing down in recent months, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office.
Furthermore, the proposals would take years to be signed into the statute books and put into practice, making the current food inflation an even less significant factor.
The director shared his suspicion that scrapping the plans may be all about optics in the light of the European Commission’s efforts to secure the new EU-Mercosur trade deal involving Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, before the end of this year.
In April, 2023 a leaked impact assessment showed that the trading partners most affected by the higher standards were expected to be Brazil and Thailand in the case of poultry meat, and Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay in the case of beef.
Moran said the European Commission thinks it would be incredibly dangerous for the legislative package to come to light during the course of the talks, as it could jeopardize a deal if South American imports were required to meet the same high standards.
Moran added that to his knowledge, the originally planned proposals were ready to move to the inter-service consultation stage, to then be ultimately published within weeks. He said he cannot understand why, at this stage, they cannot be released to the public.
A proposal is only a proposal. […] We’re asking them simply to put these texts in the public domain in front of MEP’s, in front of member states.
They could then be amended. They can be changed. But at least discussions like this should happen in daylight in a democracy. I don’t believe that they should be happening behind closed doors.
The director called attention to the pressing issues that the proposals were supposed to address, such as ending piglet castration, preventing the separation of calves from their mothers right after birth.
And stopping chickens from growing at such rates that essentially they can’t stand up because they can’t their legs can’t support their own weight.
The European Food Safety Authority notes that farmed animals’ welfare is directly connected to the safety of the food chain, and that the relationship between animal welfare, animal health, and food-borne diseases is tight, with stress factors and poor welfare leading to increased susceptibility to transmissible diseases among animals and food chain.
It’s worth remembering that there is no serious concern about food safety in the European Union as the bloc has the highest standards of animal welfare in the world already.
While acknowledging that the EU is a leader in many respects, Moran emphasized that other parts of the world better regulate certain aspects of animal welfare, such as banning live exports, even if their overall welfare regulation pales in comparison to Europe’s.
If we want the EU to continue to be the world’s leader in animal welfare, we need these proposals now.
Euro Green News / ABC Flash Point News 2023.
Crickey Amigu di Natura 