A biologist with Conservation Fisheries surveys a stretch of Little River near Walland, Tennessee to determine fish viability and identify rare species for transplantation. Thomas Fraser/Hellbender Press

Human activities have imperiled our waterways — along with a third of freshwater fish and other aquatic species

This story was originally published by The Revelator.

If we needed more motivation to save our ailing rivers, it could come with the findings of a recent study that determined the biodiversity crisis is most acute in freshwater ecosystems, which thread the Southern landscape like crucial veins and arteries.

Rivers, lakes and inland wetlands cover 1 percent of the Earth but provide homes for 10 percent of all its species, including one-third of all vertebrates. And many of those species are imperiled — some 27 percent of the nearly 30,000 freshwater species so far assessed by the IUCN Red List. This includes nearly one-third of all freshwater fish.

How did things get so bad? For some species it’s a single action — like building a dam. But for most, it’s a confluence of factors — an accumulation of harm — that builds for years or decades.

VIENNA — Leonore Gewessler, Austria’s energy and climate minister announced that she would take the case to the European Court of Justice if the union’s executive proceeds with plans to include nuclear and natural gas in the EU taxonomy of sustainable finance.

About gas, Gewessler said that it releases unconscionable amounts of greenhouse gases. “Just because something is less bad than coal doesn’t make it good or sustainable.”

Regarding nuclear energy she said it has unpredictably high risks, referring to Chernobyl and Fukushima. She also mentioned as great concerns, the safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel and lack of a global solution for its final storage.

The inordinate burden of energy costs is shown in this slide presented by Tony Reames during a discussion of energy injustice at the University of Tennessee Howard Baker Center.  U.S. Department of Energy

Department of Energy official pushes goals for energy equity in midst of power turmoil

KNOXVILLE — Energy injustice seems abstract until you run extension cords to your neighbor’s house and store their food in your fridge because their power got cut off.

What else are you supposed to do? Maybe start raising hell about the utility inequities faced by poor people that are clearer every day in an energy marketplace scarred by war and inflation and manipulated by global petroleum cartels?

“We’re at a critical moment in our society. Across the globe, we are hearing about energy insecurity, energy, affordability issues, a lack of resources,” said Tony Reames, Department of Energy deputy director of energy justice, a newly created position at DOE.

The snail darter, which caused an epic battle around TVA plans to dam the Tellico River in the 1970s, was recently removed from the Endangered Species List. Jeremy Monroe/Tennessee Aquarium

The little fish that caused a maelstrom over a TVA dam project gets the last laugh

TELLICO — In a win for endangered species protected by federal law, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced this week the fabled snail darter’s recovery and removal from the Federal List of Threatened and Endangered Wildlife. 

Native to the Tennessee River watershed in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee, the fish has long been an Endangered Species Act icon thanks to conservation efforts to save its habitat starting in the 1970s, when the Tennessee Valley Authority proposed construction of a dam on the Little Tennessee River. The snail darter (Percina tanasi) was central in the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, which solidified the scope of the then recently passed ESA. 

Catastrophic damage to the Sanibel Island Causeway is shown in this NOAA overflight after Hurricane Ian absolutely demolished most of Fort Myers Beach, Florida.

Evidence mounts that climate change is creating monster storms as death toll climbs in Ian’s wake

This story was originally published by The Conversation.

FORT MYERS BEACH — When Hurricane Ian hit Florida and killed at least 100 people, it was one of the United States’s most powerful hurricanes on record, and it followed a two-week string of massive, devastating storms around the world.

A few days earlier in the Philippines, Typhoon Noru gave new meaning to rapid intensification when it blew up from a tropical storm with 50 mph winds to a Category 5 monster with 155 mph winds the next day. Hurricane Fiona flooded Puerto Rico, then became Canada’s most intense storm on record. Typhoon Merbok gained strength over a warm Pacific Ocean and tore up over 1,000 miles of the Alaska coast.