What’s New Wednesday 5-30-18: News & Resources for Educators & Solutionaries

Each week find a round-up of selected news and resources related to global ethical issues and positive solutions that you can use in your solutionary teaching/work.

Here’s some recent news worth knowing:

Via Stanford News: A Stanford University study published in Nature has found that limiting global temperatures to a 1.5 degree Celsius increase would “benefit economically” a “large majority of countries.” Conversely, failing to reach global warming limits could “cost the global economy tens of trillions of dollars over the next century.”
Via EcoWatch: A new report by the Environmental Working Group notes that “more than 1,500 drinking water systems across the [US] may be contaminated” with “PFOA and PFOS, and similar fluorine-based chemicals.”
Via Washington Post: A US federal judge has ruled that the Gloucester County school officials in Virginia violated the constitutional rights of a transgender former student by barring him from the boys’ bathroom.
Via BBC: Canada is working to create the “largest protected boreal forest … on the planet.” The plan includes making 1.6 million hectares in Alberta into new or extended parks, and designating a 6.7 million hectare zone as protected from logging or fossil fuel exploration.
Via The Guardian: A new paper in Biodiversity Conservation reports on the “epidemic” use of snares in Southeast Asia, which have led to “empty forests” in which all the medium-to-large animals have been caught and killed by hunters and poachers. In one Cambodian national park rangers removed more than 100,000 snares in just over six years.
Via Pop Up City: Estonia has become the first country in the world to plan to offer free public transport nationwide.
Via AP: US National Football League owners voted to forbid players from sitting or taking a knee during the national anthem, but to allow players to stay in the locker room during the anthem, if they so choose.
Via BBC: Protests in Tamil Nadu, India, that resulted in police killing at least 13 unarmed protesters, have temporarily shut down a copper plant that locals have been protesting for more than 20 years. Residents assert that the plant has “caused significant environmental damage, including air pollution and groundwater contamination.”
Via EcoWatch: Researchers from the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute in Athens have discovered that more than a third of sperm whales found dead in the eastern Mediterranean since 2001 “were killed by plastic debris.” Endangered sperm whales in the region are most often killed by ship traffic, pollution, human density, fishing, and now increases in plastic waste.
Via NY Times: The Wyoming Fish and Game Commission in the US voted unanimously to “allow hunters to shoot as many as 22 grizzlies east of Yellowstone National Park. Federal protections for grizzlies in the Yellowstone area were lifted in 2017.
Via CNN: The US state of Vermont has passed a bill requiring that all single-user bathrooms “in public buildings or places of public accommodation be marked as gender-neutral.”
Via NPR: A study, published in Science Advances, which looked at the impacts of increased carbon dioxide on experimental plots of rice discovered that the CO2 tended to diminish the nutritional value of the rice. The rice exposed to CO2 “lost substantial amounts of protein, zinc, iron and B vitamins per grain.”
Via Washington Post: The WP outlines and analyses some of the recent claims circulating about the US government “losing” nearly 1,500 immigrant children and the separation of children from their parents – and then offers a more accurate clarification of what’s been happening.
Via NPR: A recent Harvard study estimates the deaths in Puerto Rico attributable to Hurricane Maria are around 5,000 people, much more than the “official death toll of 64.”