This Week on Earth: Apr 24-30
Three-eared rabbit on Evanston campus. (Samantha Alvarez/ION)
Evanston, Ill.
Starting on Apr. 25, Northwestern students, staff and faculty gathered on Deering Meadow to protest the ongoing siege on Gaza through a Gaza Solidarity Encampment. They were joined by hundreds of Evanston and Chicago community members.
Founded on principles of divestment, transparency, protection of student civil liberties and inclusivity of Palestinian students, Northwestern organizers planned the encampment to occupy a significant space on campus and raise awareness for Palestine.
Over 37,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, 2023, the start of what UN expert Francesca Albanese calls a “genocide” in Gaza. Since then it was reported by Queen University Mary London that projected emissions from only the first 60 days since October 7 totalled 281,315 tonnes of carbon dioxide, greater than the annual emissions of 20 individual countries.
The desecration of Gaza falls in line with Israel’s greater strategy of ecocide, which could make Gaza uninhabitable for Palestinians.
According to an article by Forensic Architecture, since launching their six month bombing campaign, Israel has destroyed over 40% of Gaza’s farmland, which was sustainably farmed by Palestinians for centuries. In northern Gaza, over 90% of agricultural land was destroyed by constant Israeli attacks.
The same article also points out that Israel has destroyed almost one third of Gaza’s greenhouses, targeted a majority of the city’s water infrastructure and wells and contaminated the surrounding soil, groundwater and seawater with military pollutants.
Illegal West Bank settlers have razed numerous centuries-old Palestinian olive groves, replacing these native trees with invasive pines.
As Indigenous people, Palestinians in Gaza strive to protect and nurture their land, but Israel has denied them the right to environmental stewardship.
Illinois
Two million people in Illinois that live within a half-mile of large online shopping warehouses are being exposed to a disproportionate amount of pollution from delivery trucks. These residents overwhelmingly live in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.
According to a new report from the Environmental Defense Fund, 2,400 leased warehouses were identified throughout Illinois, a 33 percent rise from the previous decade.
As delivery trucks embark to provide fast shipping services across the country, they burn diesel, spewing black carbon and other pollutants––which are known to increase the risk for asthma, preterm births, heart disease and stroke.
The report revealed that Hispanic, Black and low-income people live in proximity to warehouses at rates that are 195%, 137% and 125% more likely, respectively, than would be expected from statewide demographics.
Histories of redlining and housing discrimination have made this environmental injustice possible because they allow for zoning laws that place communities of color near highways, industrial facilities and warehouses, negatively impacting their air quality.
Worldwide
Indigenous advocates at the UN called out the green energy industry as exploitative and inequitable, according to a new report.
Maureen Penjueli, who is Indigenous iTaukei from Fiji, discussed how green technology companies scrape the seafloor for mineral-rich nodules that are central to their products, disproportionately affecting Fiji’s surrounding marine ecosystem.
While many “eco-friendly” corporations parrot themselves as sustainable, Indigenous communities know that they rely on labor exploitation and deep sea, cobalt, nickel, lithium and other harmful mining on Indigenous lands.
Green technology functions under the same extractive logic that has led to the current western-induced climate crisis.
While phasing out fossil fuels is an integral step, Indigenous peoples are “critical guardians of biodiversity” and their traditional ways are aligned with methods of providing sustainable futures for all life on earth.