Mighty Earth Foundation, Climate Change Upping Baseball Homeruns by 50 per year! The Climate Daily 50/100 Reforestation Campaign

THE MIGHTY EARTH FOUNDATION

Founded in 2016, by Glenn Hurowitz, Mighty Earth is a global advocacy organization working to defend a living planet. Its goal is to protect half of Earth for Nature and secure a climate that allows life to flourish. How? Here’s an example: In 2016, Mighty Earth, Rainforest Rescue and several Indonesian and Korean NGOs (non-governmental organizations) were signatories to a letter highlighting Korindo’s rampant deforestation in its huge palm oil operations in Papua, Indonesia. Korindo’s operations span the globe, ranging from timber, paper, rubber, and palm oil to renewable energy. The letters were sent to Kenertec’s major wind tower customers in Germany. 

In 2017 Mighty Earth submitted a complaint to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a global sustainable forestry certification body, regarding Korindo’s clearing of more than 30,000 hectares of Indonesian rainforests in Papua. The FSC launched an investigation. In 2019 Korindo’s legal firm, threatened the FSC, which was investigating Korindo’s violations of its policies, based on Mighty Earth’s 2017 complaint. The investigation found that Korindo had destroyed more than 30,000 hectares of forest (equivalent to 42,000 football fields) in the previous five years and committed violations of Indigenous peoples’ traditional and human rights, in contravention of FSC standards.

The investigation estimated that Korindo had ‘deprived indigenous communities in Indonesia’s Papua province of $300 million by underpaying for the timber harvested from their lands. In late 2021, the FSC expelled Korindo based on its failure to cooperate with the FSC and agree on a process to address the impacts of its forestry and palm oil operations.

On February 21, 2023 Kenertec and Rainforest Rescue agreed to settle the dispute, based upon the German court’s proposal. The judge declared that Korindo could not sue CIP for statements made in the letter signed by Mighty Earth. Why does Mighty Earth matter to us? Because its team has achieved transformative change by persuading leading industries to dramatically reduce deforestation and  climate pollution throughout their global supply chains in palm oil, rubber, cocoa, and animal feed, while improving livelihoods for Indigenous and local communities across the tropics.

DEEPER DIVE: Mighty Earth, Korindo, Forest Stewardship Council, Palm Oil Deforestation

STUDY SHOWS CLIMATE CHANGE UPPING THE BASEBALL HOMERUN ANTE BY 50 PER YEAR!

What do you do when you’re a scientist at the American Ivy League university, Dartmouth? You study whether the increase in home runs by Major League baseball players since 2010 is the result of climate change. An excerpt from the study’s abstract: “Home runs in baseball—fair balls hit out of the field of play—have risen since 1980, driving strategic shifts in gameplay. Myriad factors likely account for these trends, with some speculating that global warming has contributed via a reduction in ballpark air density. Here we use observations from 100,000 Major League Baseball games and 220,000 individual batted balls to show that higher temperatures substantially increase home runs.”  

How’d they do it? They isolated human-caused warming with climate models, finding that >500 home runs since 2010 are attributable to historical warming. Furthermore, the study predicts that several hundred additional home runs per season are projected due to future warming. Study co-author Justin Mankin, a Dartmouth climate scientist said, “Global warming is juicing home runs in Major League Baseball.” How is climate change puttin’ up big numbers like steroids did back in the ‘90s? It’s basic physics.

When air heats up, molecules move faster and away from each other, making the air less dense. Baseballs launched off a bat go farther through thinner air because there’s less resistance to slow the ball. Just a little bit farther can mean the difference between a fly out and a homer. What does that mean for MLB? It means making adaptations such as building domes on stadiums or shifting day games to night games to reduce the temperature’s effects on America’s pastime. 

Why does this study matter to us? Global warming is going to reshape so many of the things that we care about in so many pernicious and subtle ways. And the fact that we’ll get to go to fewer baseball games played in open air is not a civilization-ending crisis, but it is another sign of the way that we have reshaped our lives due to our greenhouse gas emissions.

DEEPER DIVE: KCRA, Baseball Savant, AMS Journal

THE CLIMATE DAILY LAUNCHES ITS 50/100 REFORESTATION CAMPAIGN

Remember how in January we at The Climate Daily launched our first ever Climate Champions Massive Tree Reforestation campaign? Well in honor of upcoming Earth Day 2023, we’re launching The Climate Champions 50/100 campaign! What’s a climate champion, you ask? A climate champion proves that a small group of people can make a massive impact on the planet in a short amount of time. How? Our company, The Climate, is partnering with over 30 international tree-planting organizations–ALONG WITH our climate champions– to re-plant, and regrow forests all over the world, by planting ten thousand trees at a time. Why? Because science says the best way to combat climate change is to restore nature. And the fastest way to restore nature is to plant and grow a trillion trees, and the fastest way to plant and grow a trillion trees is to replant and regrow forests. The fastest way to do that is to plant ten thousand trees at a time, 

And the fastest and most fun way to plant ten thousand trees at a time is to fundraise with friends, climate champions. So, we’re looking for folks to donate $50 or $100 one time, to help us plant 10,000 trees at a time, in one of seven regions around the planet. (Which our tree planting partners will do. They’re the tree-planting professionals.)

Please visit champions.theclimate.org/climate hyphen champions/50or100. Click on the donate button and join our team of climate champions today. Again, visit champions.theclimate.org/climate hyphen champions/50or100. Click on the donate button and join our team of climate champions today. And if you want to start your own team of climate champions, reach out to us at info@34.203.12.8. Well help you put together your own small group of climate champions to make a massive impact on the planet in a short amount of time.

(Planting 10 thousand trees–a 20-acre forest!) Wouldn’t it be great to be the change you want to see in the world? Go to champions.theclimate.org/climate hyphen champions/50or100and become part of something special. Become a climate champion.  Thank you!!

DEEPER DIVE: 50/100 Campaign, Trillion Tree Project