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🛥️ After the Israeli navy intercepted most of the vessels in the largest flotilla yet to attempt to deliver critical humanitarian aid to Gaza, protests broke out in major cities like Rome, Istanbul, Athens, and Buenos Aires, and Italy’s largest union called for a one-day general strike today.
🪖 While Americans are generally concerned about crime, a new poll found that they do not broadly support the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard to police cities like Washington, D.C., and Portland.
❤️🩹 One of the two students injured in the Evergreen High School shooting in Colorado was discharged from the hospital. The 14-year-old boy will continue his recovery at home.
Environment
Photo: Jorge Sáenz/AP
Big trees in the Amazon rainforest are more climate resilient and better at storing carbon than previously believed
A study that shows how the rainforest can draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and sequester it in bark, trunk, branch, and root found something else: despite rising temperatures and strong droughts, the biggest trees in the Amazon are growing larger and more numerous.
Nearly 100 researchers from 60 universities looked at changes in the Amazon over the past 30 years. They found the mean cross-section of tree trunks thickened by 3.3% per decade, and the greatest increase was found in larger trees.
This proves the climate resiliency of these types of tropical rainforests and their effectiveness as a carbon sink — but only if they’re left alone.
What’s the nuance? We need to stop deforestation. The vital role these big trees play in fighting the climate crisis is at risk from fires and land clearance from the expansion of roads and farms, so the Amazon’s climate resiliency “may count for little, unless we can stop the deforestation itself.”
From 2005 to 2023, per capita carbon dioxide emissions from energy consumption decreased in every U.S. state
According to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, from 2005 to 2023, total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the country fell 20% while the population grew by 14% — leading to a 30% decrease in per capita carbon emissions.
While that’s the nationwide average, what’s even better is that per capita emissions also decreased in every state over that same time period.
The primary reason for this nationwide decline was less coal being burned in the electric power sector. Increased electricity generation from natural gas — which releases about half as many carbon emissions per unit of energy as coal — and from carbon-free sources made up for the decrease in coal generation.
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