Environment
INDIVISIBLE Hands Off Rally April 5
Northcentral Wisconsin INDIVISIBLE Fights back!
Saturday, April 5 at noon
Rib Mountain Drive (sidewalk between Michael’s Crafts and Hobby Lobby)
Donald Trump and Elon Musk think this country belongs to them. We are fighting back!
They're taking everything they can get their hands on—our health care, our data, our jobs, our services—and daring the world to stop them. This is a crisis, and the time to act is now.
🚨 On Saturday, April 5th, we're taking to the streets to fight back with a clear message: Hands off! 🚨
This mass ...
Fifty Five Earth Days Later
2025 marks the fifty fifth Earth Day. The local chapter of the Citizen's Climate Lobby and our NAOMI friends invite you to celebrate another Beloved Community Earth Day in Wausau at Westview Terrace Park (1501 Bissell St) at 10 AM on Saturday, April 26th.
Wisconsin and Earth Day go back a long way together. Truth be told, without Wisconsin Earth Day might not even exist. Horrified by a disastrous oil spill off the coast of California in 1969, our own Senator Gaylord Nelson conceived and set in motion the gears that made Earth Day 1970 a phenomenon to be ...
Green Plastic and Cow Burps
This article discusses two environmental topics. Both are examples of how we refuse to do even simple, reasonable things to deal with our garbage or take action on environmental problems. These stories illustrate our propensity to both believe in scientific solutions – technology will save us – while being woefully ignorant of basic science and unwilling to accept the warnings of scientists.
The Myth of Green Plastics
In recent articles I have discussed the environmental problems with plastics and plastic waste. The myth of “green” plastics is more of the ...
WE NEED THE AIR OF THE TREES
This past October I had the opportunity to tour the Menominee Tribal Enterprise sawmill located in Neopit, Wisconsin on the Menominee Indian Reservation. The logs that come into the sawmill are harvested from the 220,000 acre Menominee Forest. They have been harvested in a sustained-yield manner. Since 1854 two and one-half billion board feet of lumber has been cut, that is the equivalent of cutting down all the standing timber on the reservation almost twice over. However, the volume of standing timber now is greater than when they started in 1854. The forest can easily ...
Winter Salt Week January 27, 2025
Using excess salt harms plants and animals, pollutes our water, damages buildings, and corrodes vehicles, roads and bridges. Once you put salt down, it doesn’t go away. Instead, it travels into our lakes, rivers, streams, and wetlands, putting aquatic life at risk and endangering our freshwater resources. Salt also alters the composition of soil, slows plant growth, and weakens the concrete, brick and stone that make up our homes, garages, bridges, and roads.
There is a way to cut down on salt use and keep our roads, parking lots and driveways safe: Use ...
New Analysis Details the Public Health Impacts of Proposed Gas Plants in Wisconsin
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Abby Novinska-Lois
Abby@healthyclimatewi.org
(608) 228-2893
New Analysis Details the Public Health Impacts of Proposed Gas Plants in Wisconsin
The Oak Creek and Paris gas plants would result in $3.6 billion-5.7 billion in health costs and hundreds of premature deaths over their operating lifetime.
Milwaukee, WI – A new analysis released by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Healthy Climate Wisconsin shows that the construction of two new fossil gas power plants would have substantial negative health consequences for ...
Wisconsin Forests at Risk
“I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues. Dr. Seuss in the children's book “The Lorax”
Wisconsin Green Fire recently published a report that speaks for trees and all the other organisms in Wisconsin's forests. “Wisconsin Forests at Risk: Engaging Wisconsinites in Another Century of Forest Conservation” is a warning about the declining health of forests across the state. They say, “Wisconsin’s forests have long enriched our state’s economy and quality of life. Yet, just when we need healthy, diverse, and ...
The Age of Plastics
“Welcome to the Plasticene. If you’re under age 70, it’s possible you’ve lived in the Plasticene for your entire life. It’s a new geologic age some scientists have proposed to mark the near-universal spread of plastic around Earth. Since the 1950s, researchers say, we’ve been living in the Age of Plastics.” Kristen Minogue, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.
Geologists have divided the 4.5 billion years of earth's history into a geologic time scale. These divisions, or “geochronologic units,” include eons, eras, periods, epochs and ages. We ...
The Myth of Recycling Plastic
“The idea that recycling can solve the problem of plastic waste has always been a fraud, and it's always been a way for the industry to sell more plastic,” Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity.
As I wrote about recently, the use of plastic has increased enormously, creating a huge worldwide problem with plastic trash (“The age of plastics,” December 19, 2024). Much of this plastic is for single use products like packaging and shopping bags. Recycling is suppose to mitigate these problems. But for many reasons, recycling plastic simply ...