National Park Rangers Fight Back Against Layoffs—Who Will Defend the Wild Now?
The world is burning, freezing, flooding, and occasionally being pelted by cars-turned-space-rocks, but fear not—our leaders are taking bold action, mainly by cutting funding and laying off scientists. With environmental crises multiplying faster than AI-generated stock predictions, let’s take a moment to appreciate the chaotic symphony of our times.
Scientists have confirmed that Mars’ red hue might be linked to a once-habitable past, but here on Earth, Greenland’s sled dogs are slipping through puddles that used to be ice. Meanwhile, the UK is experiencing the delightful paradox of getting colder thanks to global warming, a twist so ironic it could melt even the most cynical climate scientist’s heart—if only funding for climate science hadn’t been slashed.
Speaking of melting, Blue Ghost, a private lunar lander, just touched down on the moon carrying equipment for NASA, presumably to help humans escape Earth once we’ve completely trashed it. Meanwhile, a newly discovered asteroid has turned out to be—wait for it—a Tesla Roadster, meaning the cosmos is now officially cluttered with Elon Musk’s discarded toys. NASA assures us that asteroid 2024 YR4 no longer poses a threat to Earth, but another one might hit in 2032. Mark your calendars for potential doomsday, or at least for another billionaire to offer a subscription-based solution.
Back home, beavers have been given the green light for release in England, a rare win for nature—though it remains unclear whether they will be expected to pay congestion charges. Not so lucky are mother orca and son, still lost in the Mediterranean, where they apparently “don’t belong.” In more cheerful extinction news, Venezuela’s opposition leader is celebrating Trump’s cancellation of oil licenses, paving the way for even more drilling and destruction. Birds and narwhals continue to breathe in dangerous plastics, but at least drone footage confirms the latter are having a great time poking things with their tusks.
The U.S. solar and battery market is headed for a record year, thanks in part to cheap Chinese panels flooding the market, while clean tech investments boom in deeply Republican territories. Meanwhile, Dominion Energy has secured state approval for a liquified natural gas storage facility in Virginia, because if we’re going to keep the heating on while the windows are open in NYC winters, we need all the gas we can get. Over in Florida, a legal battle rages over a proposal to build a road with radioactive waste, proving that when it comes to infrastructure, we are all just one bad decision away from becoming our own science experiment.
While scientists are making groundbreaking discoveries—like linking a gene to the emergence of spoken language (which, if we’re lucky, will help politicians communicate actual climate policies)—others are being shown the door. NOAA firings are sparking fears of long-term damage to weather forecasting, Colorado Democrats are calling for investigations, and Trump’s EPA is diligently working to delete any record that greenhouse gases are harmful. Meanwhile, in California, the snowpack is vanishing, the wildfires are worsening, and lawmakers are still debating whether to expedite rules that could’ve helped.
Despite all this, some people still insist on fighting for the planet. Park rangers are battling Australians digging for rare earth minerals in the Mojave, Vermont is desperately clinging to its climate ambitions, and Wyoming tribes are pushing back against the state’s plan to ship their water elsewhere. Across the globe, nations have salvaged a last-minute funding deal to reverse wildlife decline, and coral restoration efforts are getting smarter with new ‘omics strategies.
As we hurtle toward an uncertain future, at least we can count on some things: billionaires launching trash into space, politicians denying science, and the occasional fossilized vomit discovery to remind us just how long the Earth has been surviving without us. Cheers to another year of innovative destruction!
Chatty Geppetto’s log for March 5, 2025:
- 60 news headlines pulled from 15 different news sources via RSS on March 3, 2025. Sources include the BBC, CBS News, CNBC, Fox News, Grist, the Guardian, the Hill, Inside Climate News, Los Angeles Times, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the New York Times, NPR, Politico, Science Daily, and Yale Environment 360.
- 6 ChatGPT queries; estimated 13.2 g CO2e produced
- 21 MidJourney queries; estimated 39.9 g CO2e produced
- 10 hours to create the mixed media drawing; estimated 18,330 g CO2e produced. This drawing was created on vellum-surfaced Bristol paper with a painted gouache base and layered with hand-drawn pen and ink hatching.
- 3 hours to scan the original drawing and assemble and publish the digital post; estimated 93.75 g CO2e produced
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