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This issue of The Earth & I examines communities interconnected through solar grids (see Energy Section). Far beyond these communities lies another “solar community” with star-power like no other: the Universe. The European Space Agency (ESA) launched the satellite Hipparcos in 1989 to accurately measure the positions (and motions) of nearly 120,000 stars. It can also approximate the positions of about a million other stars with less precision. Besides our Sun, there are ten other stars in our neighborhood. The nearest star to our own is 39,900,000,000,000 km (4.22 light years) away. Scientists have named it Proxima Centauri. The farthest away, named Eta Cassiopeiae, is 19 light years away. At Voyager 1’s speed of 17.3 km/s, it would take some 330,700 years to arrive there. The red dwarf star Gliese 581 is about 20 light years from Earth. Its third planet appears to be an example of a possible terrestrial extrasolar planet where conditions are favorable (not too hot or cold) for life as it is on Earth. Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Red clover is a distinctive perennial herb common in Europe and Asia and now naturalized in the Americas. It goes by different names, such as pal-gan keullobeo in Korea, trefle des pres in France, and trifolium pratense in the scientific community. By any name, it is trusted to benefit human, animal, and soil health. Here is how the world sees it. How the world sees red clover In Iraq, red clover is used as an expectorant and to treat asthma and bronchitis. In the US, it’s grown for soil health and used to treat cancer, the skin, and sores. It’s also used to fight cancer in the UK, Spain, Australia and elsewhere. In Spain, it is used for catarrh (mucous backup in the throat). Need a good sedative? People in Eurasia and the US use red clover for that purpose. In the Western Hemisphere, Amerindians use red clover for eye health and for burns. Europeans like to use it for dyspepsia and other digestive complaints. The people of Turkey use red clover—they call it kirmizi yonca—as a tonic or an alternative (an herb used to gradually restore bodily functions) for spasms, scrofula (glandular swelling) and as a sedative. Sources: U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Jimmy Donaldson (YouTuber MrBeast) and Mark Rober (former NASA engineer and YouTuber) partnered up with non-profits Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup for an ambitious goal: raising $30 million by the end of 2021 to remove thirty million pounds of trash from the oceans. MrBeast and Rober began their fundraiser under the name, “#TeamSeas,” as they posted videos on YouTube on October 29, 2021; as of this month, they have garnered total views of more than 55 million and 24 million, respectively. The fundraiser reached its $30 million mark after a $4 million donation from billionaire entrepreneur Austin Russell, filling in the final gap after donations by over six hundred thousand individuals toward the cause. #TeamSeas states that the funds will be split 50/50 to Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup. Ocean Conservancy collaborated with #TeamSeas through its “Fighting for Trash Free Seas®” program, in which volunteers traverse lakes, rivers, and beaches around the world and gather trash. Trash is weighed using Ocean Conservancy’s “Clean Swell®” application. Meanwhile, The Ocean Cleanup collaborated with #TeamSeas through its building, deployment, and operations of its “Interceptor” technology to pick up trash in rivers. Boyan Slat, founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, said, “TeamSeas fits perfectly into our mission to rid the oceans of plastic and we’re honored to be part of this campaign. The donations raised from this campaign will help us implement more Interceptors around the world and curb the flow of riverine plastic into the oceans.” Although thirty million pounds of trash (including plastics) is insignificant compared to the ten million tons (twenty billion pounds) of plastic dumped in the oceans annually as estimated by Ocean Plastics, MrBeast and Rober were able to spread the message of cleaning up our oceans far and wide to their audiences. This will hopefully lead to a higher demand for systemic change to address garbage and plastic at their source.

Professor Luc Montagnier, an eminent French virologist who received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, died on February 8, 2022, at the age of 89 in Paris. Sharing the award with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Harald sur Hausen, he was lauded as a co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the agent that causes AIDS. The discovery was made in the early 1980s at the Pasteur Institute, where he had founded and directed the Viral Oncology Unit. As a leading advocate for the prevention and treatment of AIDS, in the 1990s he co-founded and led the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention. In recent years, he extended his research objectives to the infectious origins of several chronic diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, autism, and Lyme disease. Based on his research and that of others, he took controversial positions on several fronts, such as his view that water carries a certain type of “memory,” and vaccines can be harmful because of the aluminum adjuvant added to them. He postulated that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 had accidentally escaped from a virology lab in Wuhan, China. He cautioned against the use of vaccines against this virus, believing that the vaccines may trigger the production of new variants of the virus. Prof. Montagnier was passionate about environmental issues that related to human health. He was particularly concerned about bacteria, viruses and parasites, stating in 2020 at the 26th International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS): “Some kind of intelligence exists in parasites, as they try to use every weakness in our immune system. A recent example of this is the fact that some soil bacteria—bacteria that are normally associated with the roots of the plants we cultivate—have learned to change their host and infect animals and humans.” He lamented that this serious global issue was being “ignored completely” because the invisible, silent invasion “is detectable only by molecular techniques.” Montagnier went on to say that humanity, being “at the top” of the “biological and cultural evolution,” has a responsibility, particularly since “human activities are now a menace to our own environment, with effects on all living things.” To maintain our position at the top of the natural world, he advised recalling that “we are really fragile, and we are to be in harmony with nature.” He concluded that “what we take from nature, we should donate back to nature” and urged a return to Hippocrates’ admonition to “first do no harm.” [1] References [1] Montagnier, Luc. “Opening Remarks,” “Concluding Remarks.” ICUS XXVI. Resolving Environmental Threats for the Benefit of Humanity — Proceedings. Washington, DC: Hyo Jeong International Foundation for the Unity of Sciences (HJIFUS), 2020.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals come with a heavy price tag for developing nations. According to recent data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, it is a burden that they cannot afford. The OECD reports that developing nations face a shortfall of about $4.2 trillion if they want to keep on track with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. If just 1.1% of the total assets held by banks, institutional investors, and/or asset managers were reallocated into ventures that support meeting the SDGs for developing nations, that would be sufficient to fill the financing gap. A partnership of UN initiatives has come up with an investor’s tool that it hopes will lure investment capital into ventures that support the SDGs. The tool is called the SDG Investor Platform and it was jointly created by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) allied with the UN Secretary-General’s Global Investors for Sustainable Development (GISD) Alliance. SDG Investor Maps—created by UNDP’s SDG Finance initiative SDG Impact—leverage UNDP’s presence in more than 170 countries and territories, providing private sector investors with access to national-level market intelligence, including insights on the local investment landscape and investor connections. The tool will allow investors to boost their profits and impact sustainability with a single investment. So far, it has identified over 200 promising investment opportunities in 14 countries that cover sectors ranging from food and beverage to healthcare and infrastructure. The future development of SDG Investor Maps is expected to include all continents. “UNDP’s new SDG Investor Platform provides the critical data, insights and tools that investors need to drive new levels of capital toward the Sustainable Development Goals,” said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. “In doing so, it will also help countries to unlock critical financing that is now needed to build forward better from the COVID-19 pandemic—ultimately advancing the well-being of both people and planet.” This article is based on the following press release by the UNDP: https://www.undp.org/press-releases/undp-and-gisd-alliance-launch-sdg-investor-platform-unlock-trillions-sdg-aligned

Drought has become a serious issue in America’s West. Not only are the region’s temperatures steadily rising and its annual rainfall totals falling, but dry periods between rains have become longer and annual rainfall is less predictable, according to a study published jointly by the US government’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the University of Arizona. ARS research hydrologist Dr. Joel Biederman reported that annual rainfall totals across the West have declined by an average of four inches in the past five decades, with the longest dry spell in each year increasing from twenty to thirty-two days. “The greatest changes in drought length have taken place in the desert Southwest. The average dry period between storms in the 1970s was about 30 days; now that has grown to 45 days,” Dr. Biederman said. The growing fluctuations in drought and rain patterns are the study’s most significant finding, he said. “Consistency of rainfall, or the lack of it, is often more important than the total amount of rain when it comes to forage (dry and green fodder) continuing to grow for livestock and wildlife, for dryland farmers to produce crops, and for the mitigation of wildfire risks,” Dr. Biederman said. The rate of change also appears to be accelerating, with greater parts of the West showing longer drought intervals after the year 2000 when compared to previous years. “For regions such as the desert Southwest, where changes clearly indicate a trend toward longer, more erratic droughts, research is urgently needed to help mitigate detrimental impacts on ecosystem carbon uptake, forage availability, wildfire activity, and water availability for people,” said co-senior author Dr. William K. Smith of the University of Arizona. This article is based on the following bulletin released by ARS: https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDAARS/bulletins/2cb6d8b

More people were displaced by conflict and crisis in 2020 than at any other time in recorded history. Sometimes they fled across borders as refugees, but many had to relocate within their own borders. The numbers of the internally displaced are staggering: The number of people fleeing their homes and staying within their nation’s borders doubled during the last 25 years from about 27 to 55 million. During the same period, the average amount of time this group spent displaced increased to 17 years. Providing basic services and covering lost incomes for the internally displacement cost the world over $20 billion in 2020. Most of the internally displaced in 2020 fled violence or armed conflict. Low and middle-income countries host nearly all internally displaced people and bear most of the financial burden. Disasters, climate change, a degraded environment and extreme weather events are increasingly driving people from their homes. In Bangladesh alone, those displaced by climate change could reach 13.3 million by 2050. The countries with the largest populations of internally displaced people are Syria (6.5 million) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (5.2 million). – Source: UNDP

Obesity is on the rise and it can carry serious health consequences with it. Worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. Obesity and being overweight are linked to more deaths worldwide than being underweight. Globally, more people are obese than underweight—except for parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Here are some facts on the epidemic: In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight. 650 million of them were obese. 39% of adults were overweight in 2016, and 13% of adults were obese. Most people live in countries where obesity and being overweight kills more people than being underweight. 39 million children under 5 years of age were overweight or obese in 2020. More than 340 million children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 were overweight or obese in 2016. In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight. Of these over 650 million adults were obese. In 2016, 39% of adults (39% of men and 40% of women) were overweight. About 13% of the world’s adult population (11% of men and 15% of women) were obese in 2016. In Africa, the number of overweight children under 5 has increased by nearly 24% percent since 2000. Almost half of the children under 5 who were overweight or obese in 2019 lived in Asia. – Source: WHO

We are all concerned about greenhouse gases. But what are they? And where do they come from? Here are the Big Four and their percentage of total greenhouse gas emissions: Carbon dioxide (CO2):The primary source is fossil fuel 65%), but it also comes from forestry and other land use, (11%) Methane (CH4): Agriculture, waste management, energy use, and the burning of biomass contribute to CH4 emissions, (16 %) Nitrous oxide (N2O): Agriculture, such as fertilizer application, is the primary source of N2O emissions. Fossil fuel combustion is also a source of N2O, (6%) Fluorinated gases (F-gases): Industry, refrigeration, and the use of certain consumer products contribute to F-gases emissions, which include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), (2%) What sectors are cranking out greenhouse gases? Percentages, please! Electricity and Heat Production (25%): Burning coal, natural gas, and oil for electricity and heat is the number one source of global greenhouse gas emissions. Industry (21%): Emissions from industry primarily involve burning fossil fuels at facilities for energy. This includes emissions from chemical, metallurgical, and mineral transformation processes and emissions from waste management activities. Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (24%): Deforestation and agriculture (cultivation of crops and livestock) are the major emitters in this sector. The above estimate does not include the CO2 that ecosystems remove from the atmosphere by sequestering carbon, which offset approximately 20% of emissions from this sector.[2] Transportation (14%): The emissions from this sector primarily involve fossil fuels burned for major types of transportation. Most (95%) of the world's transportation energy comes from petroleum-based fuels, mostly gasoline and diesel. Buildings (6%): Onsite energy generation and burning fuels for heat in buildings or cooking in homes are the emitters in this sector. (Note: Emissions from electricity use in buildings are excluded here.) Other Energy (10%): This source of emissions involves all emissions from the Energy sector not directly associated with electricity or heat production, such as fuel extraction and refining. – Source: Report from EPA data

Some of cancer’s many triggers are carcinogens in the environment. Knowing the facts can help reduce the risk. Cancer arises from the transformation of normal cells into malignant tumors. These changes can result from interaction with three categories of external agents, including: Physical carcinogens, such as ultraviolet and ionizing radiation; Chemical carcinogens, such as asbestos, components of tobacco smoke, aflatoxin (a food contaminant), and arsenic (a drinking water contaminant); and Biological carcinogens, such as infections from certain viruses, bacteria, or parasites Of the nearly 10 million deaths from cancer in 2020; the most common (in terms of new cases of cancer) were: Breast (2.26 million cases); Lung (2.21 million cases); Colon and rectum (1.93 million cases); Prostate (1.41 million cases); Skin (non-melanoma) (1.20 million cases); and Stomach (1.09 million cases). The most common causes of cancer death in 2020 were: Lung (1.80 million deaths); Colon and rectum (935,000 deaths); Liver (830,000 deaths); Stomach (769,000 deaths); and Between 30 and 50% of all cancers can currently be prevented by avoiding risk factors. Cancer risk can be reduced by: Avoiding tobacco use; Eating a healthy diet, including fruit and vegetables; Avoiding alcohol abuse; Avoiding ultraviolet radiation (mostly from exposure to the sun); Limiting exposure (as far as is possible) to ionizing radiation from occupational or medical diagnostic imaging) Reducing exposure to outdoor air pollution and indoor air pollution, including radon. –Source: WHO

Agricultural runoff generally refers to what leaves a farmer’s field when it rains, as opposed to what stays there. When more nutrients can stay in the field, we avoid harmful outcomes such as eutrophication—algae blooms in water systems that are fed by nitrogen and phosphorous runoff from fertilizers. Here is some US agricultural data to help you size up the situation: About 300 million acres of land are used for crop farming in the US. US conservation practices implemented from 2003 to 2006 lowered edge-of-field nitrogen losses by 3.8 billion lbs annually and edge-of-field phosphorus losses by 584 million pounds annually. That’s nearly enough per year to fill 21,000 train cars stretching 237 miles. That’s an annual nitrogen fertilizer savings worth $927 million when held in field. One Ohio farmer who uses cover crops and no-till practices reports soil losses of under 100 pounds per year. In the Chesapeake Bay region in the mid-Atlantic US, conservation practices used by farmers in 2011 reduced nitrogen and phosphorus farm runoff to rivers and streams by 44% and 75%, respectively. Cropland conservation across the US’s Western Lake Erie basin in 2012 reduced farm runoff of phosphorus and nitrogen into Lake Erie by 41% and 17%, respectively. About 46% of US rivers and streams have excess nutrients, and 21% of US lakes have high levels of algal growth. Nearly 21% of US coastal waters have high nutrient levels. – Source: US Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency

Known as “sea cows,” manatees are a protected species of mammals that live in warm waters. Related to the elephant, they come with some surprising data: Manatees are large ocean mammals, averaging 10 feet in length and a weight of 1,200 pounds. There are three manatee species worldwide – West Indian, West African, and Amazonian. The two major threats to manatees are loss of habitat and collisions with boats and ships. Ocean temperatures below 68 degrees can kill manatees. Manatees spend eight hours per day feeding. They eat about 10% to 15% of their body weight each day. Manatees can hold their breath underwater for up to 20 minutes. On average, manatees surface every three to five minutes to breathe. Manatees swim along at an average speed of 3–5 miles per hour. The intestines of these non-carnivorous mammals can be up to 150 feet long. Manatees are one of the only animals that continuously replace their teeth throughout their lives. They have four sets of six to eight molars. When front molars wear down, they fall out and the molars behind them move into place. — Source: US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration