Confronted by climate breakdown and biodiversity loss, ecologists turn for solutions to one of the world’s most threatened ecosystems – wetlands.

Marshes, bogs, fens, swamps, potholes and sloughs — rising, falling, disappearing, reappearing, in tandem with adjacent streams, rivers, lakes and sea shores. Their waxing and waning is key to their productivity. Wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems on the planet – accounting for up to 15% of terrestrial productivity, and home to a wide array of living creatures.

And wetland soils and sediments are also a huger carbon sink. Over half of the planet’s soil carbon is stored there.

But Earth’s wetlands are under threat. A third have been lost since 1970 – three times faster than forests.

Now, a US Supreme Court ruling places American wetlands in even greater peril.

This past May, in an opinion authored by Samuel Alito, SCOTUS ruled that America’s Clean Water Act extends only to those “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right,” that are “indistinguishable” from those waters,” and that are permanent.

Justice Alito’s ruling flies in the face of wetland science. So say two authorities on wetland function and surface water law. Mažeika Sulliván is a Professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation and Director of the Baruch Institute for Coastal Ecology and Forest Science at Clemson University, in Clemson, South Carolina.

Royal Gardner is a Professor of Law, and Co-Director of the Institute for Biodiversity Law and Policy, at Stetson University, in Tampa Bay Florida.

Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the podcast link at the top of this post, or go here.

Listen to my complete conversation with Mažeika Sullivan and Royal Gardner here:

Back in December 2015, in Paris, the nations of the world resolved to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

But, according to the World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, last summer, Europe was approximately 2.3°C above the pre-industrial average.

As Earth warming concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases continue to rise, scientists have concluded that emission reduction targets will not be achieved simply by cutting emissions of the principal long-lived greenhouse gas, CO2. If net zero emissions are to be achieved, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change says, carbon capture and storage will be essential.

All sorts of ways to do this. The big question is, which ones capture and store carbon permanently, and which ones simply sweep carbon under the rug, destined to escape over decades or centuries.

One way to remove CO2 is to turn it into rock. In Iceland, scientists have been doing just that, pumping air deep down into subterranean magma.

Enhanced weathering is another approach — grinding up basaltic rock, then spreading the powder on farm fields.

Deposition of rock flour from Greenland’s Ilulialik glacier (credit: Minik Rosing)

In Denmark, a group of researcher have turned to rock flour, deposited by Greenland’s Ilulialik glacier into Nuuk fjord. Christiana Dietzen is a researcher at the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen, in Denmark.

Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the podcast link at the top of this post, or go here.

Researcher spread glacial rock flour onto experimental plots in Denmark (credit: Christiana Dietzen)

For those who don’t know a whole lot about global politics and international affairs, Canada is widely seen as a kinder, gentler, more enlightened country than its neighbor to the south – with a young, photogenic leader always talking about human rights, justice and international law.

Yves Engler sees things very differently.

Engler is a Montreal-based writer and political activist. He has published widely in both mainstream and alternative print media, and is the author of a dozen books on Canadian foreign policy. His 2009 work, The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, was short-listed for the Quebec Writers’ Federation Mavis Gallant Prize for Nonfiction.

Yves’ most recent book — Stand on Guard For Whom? — A People’s History of the Canadian Military, was co-published last year by Black Rose Books and Red Publishing.

Courtesy Black Rose Books

Listen to my conversation with Yves Engler in today’s podcast. Click on the podcast link at the top of this post, or go here.

Or listen to our complete conversation here: