ICYMI: Lupine Internationalists, Shooting Up Cybertrucks, Gorilla Hail & a Mysterious Monolith

Environmental news of the week for busy people

By Paul Rauber

Illustrations by Peter Arkle

March 15, 2024

Illustration by Peter Arkle

A wolf from Italy and a wolf from Poland find each other and start a new life in Germany and the Czech Republic. 

The United Kingdom has more redwood trees than does California. They will need several thousand years to catch up in size, though. 

House Republicans spend $40,000 to replace the official member pins for the 118th Congress because they thought their original green color carried a pro-environmental message

Gorilla hail” the size of baseballs pelts Kansas and Missouri. 

After increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 50 percent, humans are now responsible for a third of atmospheric CO2.

An advanced methane-detecting satellite paid for by the Environmental Defense Fund is launched into orbit aboard a SpaceX rocket.

People are firing guns at their Tesla Cybertrucks to see if they’re as bulletproof as Elon Musk claims.

China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, now leads the world in renewable energy production. 

The Yurok Tribe votes to oppose floating wind turbines off California’s North Coast. The tribe says the turbines will tarnish sacred sites, and says that it has not ceded its sovereign authority over ocean waters adjacent to its territory.

Microplastics may be a new risk factor for cardiovascular disease

Authorities in the Japanese city of Fukuyama are warning people not to approach or touch a stray cat that fell into a vat of toxic hexavalent chromium in a factory and scampered off.

The Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, part of the International Union of Geological Sciences, rejects the “Anthropocene” as a new geological epoch. 

A hiker in the Powys uplands of Wales comes across a mysterious 10-foot shiny silver monolith.

Sound waves thought to be from a 2014 meteor that crashed into the sea north of Papua New Guinea (which led to the recovery of meteor fragments some believed to be of “extraterrestrial technological” origin) turn out to have been vibrations from a truck passing the seismic station.