This Week on Earth: March 10-14
Lunar eclipse during the early morning hours of Friday, March 14. (Jonathan Zhao/ION)
United States
In an unprecedented move, the EPA announced on Wednesday that it would roll back more than two dozen environmental policies. The regulations at risk include limits on emissions from vehicles and power plants as well as standards for air quality. The agency called it the "most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history."
"We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more," said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in a news release.
The agency will most definitely face legal challenges in its efforts to dismantle decades of climate and environmental progress. Changing federal regulations is a time-consuming process that the current administration is determined to expedite, according to Jason Rylander, legal director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.
"The intent appears to be to neuter [the] EPA's ability to address climate change and to limit air pollution that affects public health,” he said.
Zeldin’s decision faces immense opposition from both environmental advocacy groups and EPA workers themselves.
“This is not the EPA we have dedicated our careers to. Instead of highlighting the importance of protecting human health and the environment, this administration is highlighting cutting cost in dollar figures while ignoring the human cost,” one staffer told NBC anonymously.
Arctic and Antarctic
The surface area of global sea ice has reached a record low in February, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Every month, the agency publishes changes observed in global surface air and sea temperatures and sea ice cover using data collected from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations around the world.
The area of ice was 8% below the average for the month in the Arctic and 26% below average in the Antarctic.
“The lack of sea ice means darker ocean surfaces, [which decreases] the ability of the Earth to absorb more sunlight, which accelerates the warming,” said Mika Rantanen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
In other words, the melting of sea ice is a self-fulfilling prophecy. This helps explain why the Arctic is heating up four times faster than the rest of the world.
This is also a problem for Western Hudson Bay polar bears, who need the ice to migrate northward to their hunting grounds. Being kept off the ice hurts the polar bears’ ability to survive and have healthy offspring. As a result, their population has almost halved in the last four decades.
"They're just dreaming of ice and being back out there," Geoff York, senior director of research and policy with the conservation group Polar Bears International, told CBS.
Brazil
In a bizarre turn of events, large swathes of the Amazon rainforest are being bulldozed to construct a highway that will facilitate transportation to the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil. Locals, who rely on the forest for their livelihoods and cannot even use the highway themselves due to high walls surrounding it, were angered by the state government’s callous disregard.
Claudio Verequete is a farmer who harvested açaí berries from the affected area for a living. Since being cut off from his primary income source, he has received no compensation.
"Everything was destroyed," he said to the BBC. "We no longer have that income to support our family."
In the meantime, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva touted the climate conference as an opportunity to showcase what the country has done to protect the Amazon. COP30 will take place this November.