Ignoring Environmental Issues

Over the last few months, we have been forced to suffer through countless reports about e-mail servers, "locker room banter", "a basket of deplorables", rigged elections, groping, presidential temperament, xenophobia and a host of other things that really weren't presidential.  The campaign that almost everyone couldn't wait to be over, finally is.  So it's time we caught up on some notable environmental developments that slid off the slippery slope of perceived unimportance.  While we bickered over the inane, serious topics were ignored, leaving us with unanswered questions.

• Geologists believe injection wells are causing quakes.  The September earthquake in Oklahoma was the strongest in a recent rash of quakes in the region.  Geologists from both academia and the state of Oklahoma see strong evidence that these tremors have been much more frequent because of the amount of oil well drilling and gas fracking wastewater being pumped into the ground. 
• California loses 66 million trees.  Long-term drought, warmer winters (that allow bark beetles to survive in large numbers) and a stubborn fungal disease have conspired to kill tens of millions of trees in California's Sierra Nevada and Northern Coast forests over the last six years.
• Recent report raises alarm about warming oceans.  A report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature detailed the scope of the world's ocean warming, noting that 90 percent of the excess heat produced by greenhouse gasses has been absorbed by the oceans.  Though tempering atmospheric warming, the increasing water temperatures have resulted in melting polar icecaps, rising sea level and coastal flooding.
  
• Honeybees obliterated by poorly planned mosquito eradication effort.  A South Carolina county recently devastated much of its honeybee population (which are also important for pollination) when the county did not notify regional beekeepers of the spraying of a potent pesticide intended to kill Zika-carrying mosquitoes. 
• Ancient Chinese water tunnels drying up.  Water tunnels constructed 2,000 years ago to channel glacial meltwater from the Tianshan Mountains are going dry.  While global warming has shrunk the glaciers that feed the tunnels, scientists believe petroleum drilling and industrial agricultural activities have also sucked water from the Turpan Basin, drying out 1,600 of the tunnels.
  
• Yet another industrial accident kills 14 in China.  Just a year after 165 people died in an explosion in Tianjin, 14 were killed in another industrial accident in a small northern township in late October.  Apprehensive that strict safety regulations might slow economic growth, China experiences at least 50 per cent more workplace deaths per capita than the more stringently regulated United States.
  
• Amidst all this, international actions bring good environmental news.  The Paris Climate Accord reached its 55% ratification goal last month, giving the agreement legal force.  Meanwhile, the United Nations took action to curb the indiscriminate use of antibiotics that has led to a world-wide crisis of antibiotic resistance.  And despite some serious problems that still persist in the poorest parts of the world, the United Nations reports those living in "extreme poverty" is half what it was twenty years ago.
  

We have challenges before us, but most also have solutions.  Our first step is to start paying attention to them again.