Notices by Brendan Jones (brendanjones@fosstodon.org)

Called it. All those articles predicting peak emissions were utter bollocks, there was no way emissions were going to go down this year.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-will-reach-new-high-in-2024-despite-slower-growth/

#climateChange

The rise of Mastodon has made me so much more aware of government services requiring us to use private companies’ systems to communicate with them and access services.

Sitting on a Dutch train just now I was shown on a screen “feeling unsafe in the train? Contact us via WhatsApp”.

What if I don’t use WhatsApp? (I do, but I wish I didn’t have to) I’m forced to share my data with Meta to use it.

Public systems should not require use of private services.

#NS #Netherlands #FOSS #privacy

@cheeaun @Gargron DUDE THIS IS AMAZING AND SO ARE YOU.

I haven’t been this excited about new Mastodon features since I found apps that group notifications.

How do we get this in native Mastodon, like, yesterday?

Even though we needed zero extra reasons to completely ban bottom trawling what with the whole "marine deforestation that causes irreparable harm” thing, this is fairly shocking.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/18/carbon-released-by-bottom-trawling-too-big-to-ignore-says-study #climatechange #fishing

@mastodonroadmap @Gargron are these roadmap items linked to anything more descriptive anywhere, like an issue on GitHub? I’m curious what this ‘follow hashtags’ item is, given we can already follow tags!

If you’re wondering what the actual restoration targets look like, go to https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52022PC0304 and scroll down to “Chapter II RESTORATION TARGETS AND OBLIGATIONS”. It’s all a bit legalese-speak though.

In plainer English, some of the targets are:

1. Reversing the decline of pollinator populations by 2030 and increasing their populations from there on,

(Cont. below…)

Yes! Amazing news! The EU Parliament just voted through the EU Nature Restoration Law, which aims to restore our badly degraded ecosystems. The law will set legally binding targets for nature restoration in member states.

Next stop, writing it into law at a country level.

Suck it European People's Party, suck it European Conservatives. Some of us actually want #biodiversity.

https://www.politico.eu/article/parliament-backs-new-nature-rules-in-blow-to-eu-conservatives/
#EU #nature #naturerestoration

Convince public institutions to broadcast through the fediverse instead of proprietary software with https://fedigov.eu/. There's a proforma letter there that you can send your public reps.

The reasons for public institutions making the change are concise and strong: https://fedigov.eu/#section2_id

Not new, but new to me: an excellent read identifying the problems with the business model of journalism, and practical suggestions of what to do about it in order to restore journalism as a stable, load bearing fourth pillar of democracy.

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/journalism-power-public-good-community-infrastructure.php
#journalism #democracy