Please invest in Our Daily Planet today, by making a one time or monthly contribution.
We do not charge our readers a subscription fee for our content. We want to continue to grow our readership, particularly among millennials and public servants. Voluntary contributions from readers will help us employ interns and freelance journalists, expand our content, and reach a larger audience.
If you make a contribution of $150 or more, you will become an official “Friend of the Planet” and receive a Friend of the Planet T-shirt or water bottle.
Our Daily Planet is a daily morning email (M-F) to keep you informed of the stories shaping our environment. If these issues matter to you, we’d like to be the best ten minutes of your morning.
At the southernmost tip of South America, ten thousand gallons of diesel fuel spilled into the sea off the coast of Chile’s Patagonia, in one of the most pristine areas of the world. The oil spill originated at a terminal on Guarello Island, which lies approximately 1,700 miles south of Santiago. The Chilean Navy confirmed the spill on Saturday — it was reported by CAP mining, who said in a statement that the spill is now being contained. The spill had spread into the South Pacific Ocean where the Navy is currently working to stem it. Despite the size of the spill — approximately 40,000 liters (10,600 gallons) — as of Sunday, some 15,000 liters have been successfully contained.
Why This Matters: It is a terrible tragedy that this pristine and highly sensitive area that is so important ecologically has been damaged by a spill — because there is no such thing as a total clean up. Oil spills will always occur – they are an unavoidable risk when drilling for oil and gas. The only way to ensure their demise is the elimination of natural gas and oil drilling in the first place. And despite knowing of the disastrous environmental effects of oil spills, the Trump administration is making moves to open almost all of America’s coastal waters to offshore oil and gas drilling – giving companies more than a billion acres off the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic coasts. That is a bad decision and hopefully can be reversed before drilling would actually begin in the ocean.
Teeming With Life: Patagonia is a biodiversity hotspot and an area with limited accessibility. The effects of the spill could be especially devastating here considering the pristine nature of the waters, as well as be much harder to clean up.
Oil spills threaten these communities by blocking light needed by ecosystems through the leftover residue on the waters surface, as well as by releasing toxins in the ocean.
As stated by Greenpeace Chile Director Matías Asun “It is an area of great richness of marine mammals, like whales and dolphins, which could see themselves seriously affected in their habitat given that when coming to the surface to breathe they could meet this layer of oil.”
A new report from the Environmental Justice Foundationexposes the horrific conditions that Ghanain fishermen face on Chinese-owned industrial trawlers. This capture of the country’s fishing industry flies in the face of Ghanian laws that forbid foreign ownership or control of ships flying its flag. It also makes illegal fishing much harder to trace and regulate.
Why This Matters: It’s impossible to have sustainable fisheries when as much as half of the global catch is illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU).
Using underwater robots that can travel more than half a mile down, a research team from the University of California at Santa Barbara recently uncovered new evidence on the ocean floor of thousands of drums full of the notorious pesticide DDT, which has been banned in the U.S. for decades.
Why This Matters: Xia’s top-notch reporting reveals that there could be half a million barrels of DDT on the ocean floor — still contaminating marine life.
An alliance of conservation groups has combined forces to advocate at the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which manages the ocean around Antarctica, in favor of creating at its virtual meeting this year a trio of marine protected areas (MPAs) covering 1.5 million square miles, or 1% of the world’s ocean.
Why this Matters: The Southern Ocean is vital in regulating the world’s climate — its “conveyer belt” of currents keep Antarctica cold while keeping the rest of the world warm.
Subscribe to the email that top lawmakers, renowned scientists, and thousands of concerned citizens turn to each morning for the latest environmental news and analysis.
Want the lastest climate news summarized for you each morning?
Our Daily Planet is your daily dose of the stories shaping our world and the ways that you can take action. From the climate crisis to the protection of biodiversity, if these issues matter to you then please subscribe & stay informed!
Your privacy is Important! We promise never to use your email address to send you spam or advertisements.
