Protect the public from high-risk research on pathogens at UW-Madison lab

The following was written by Professors Justin Kinney and Richard Ebright, two experts in this area of research. The article appeared in The Wisconsin State Journal on 9/6/23.

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 Laboratory accidents happen. They happen because scientists are human, and humans make mistakes. The overwhelming majority of scientific research is safe, and only a small fraction of laboratory accidents pose risks to the public. But accidents involving potential pandemic pathogens can have catastrophic consequences. Potential pandemic pathogens are viruses and bacteria that, if released, could cause a devastating pandemic. 

A bill before the Wisconsin Legislature, Senate Bill 401, will protect the public from the most significant hazards of research on potential pandemic pathogens -- without having significant costs or adverse impacts. The bill is commonsense legislation that deserves broad-based support. 

SB 401 contains two important provisions. 

The first provision will establish public transparency for research on potential pandemic pathogens. Currently, laboratories doing this research are not required to inform state or local governments about where the research is performed, which pathogens they possess or the potential public health impacts if a pathogen escapes. SB 401 will require these laboratories to provide this information to the state Department of Health Services.

Disclosure of this information is essential. First responders need this information to help them avoid accidental infection when responding to emergencies. Health care providers also need this information to diagnose and prevent the spread of laboratory-acquired infections. This knowledge could make the difference between rapid pathogen containment and an uncontrolled disease outbreak. 

The bill's second provision prohibits "gain of function" research on potential pandemic pathogens. This is research that makes these pathogens even more dangerous than they already are. The bill would ban high-risk research in Wisconsin aimed at preparing for new pathogens The measure targets studies like those by UW-Madison scientist Yoshihiro Kawaoka involving bird flu and ferrets. 

 

Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, recently expressed concerns in a Wisconsin State Journal column that this prohibition would hamper biomedical research. These concerns are unfounded. "Gain of function" research on potential pandemic pathogens constitutes less than 0.01% of biomedical research and is not used for developing vaccines or treatments for disease. 

Based on publicly available information, the bill's second provision will affect just one laboratory in Wisconsin -- a virology lab at UW-Madison led by Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka. This provision is important because the Kawaoka laboratory performs "gain of function" research that poses extreme risks to public health. 

In 2011, the Kawaoka laboratory created genetically engineered avian influenza viruses that can transmit efficiently among mammals. Natural avian influenza viruses can kill up to two-thirds of the humans they infect, but they transmit poorly from person to person. If the genetically engineered avian influenza viruses constructed by the Kawaoka laboratory were to escape, they could cause a pandemic far more devastating than COVID-19. The U.S. federal government has -- for decades -- failed to enact legislation that protects the public from accidents at laboratories that study and genetically engineer potential pandemic pathogens. Shockingly, federal inaction continues despite U.S. intelligence agencies assessing that the COVID-19 pandemic may have been caused by an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, doing exactly this kind of research. 

States must therefore act to protect their residents. By establishing public transparency for high-risk pathogen research, and by prohibiting the highest-risk type of pathogen research, SB 401 will provide urgently needed protections for the residents of Wisconsin. 

Justin Kinney is an associate professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Richard Ebright is a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University in New Jersey. They are co-founders of Biosafety Now: https://biosafetynow.org/

Bits: Dictatorship; Incitement of violence; More incitement

It seems that the intent and meaning of the radical right's Project 2025 is starting to sink in. Good, hope it's not too late. Salon writes:

Trump's plans to become a dictator — denial will not save you

Project 2025 is a strategy that has been developed by right-wing think tanks

Donald Trump is a dictator in waiting. Like other dictators, he is threatening to put his "enemies" in prison – and to do even worse things to them. These are not idle threats or empty acts of ideation: Donald Trump is a violent man who is a proven enemy of democracy and freedom.

These threats of violence against his enemies are part of a much larger pattern of violent and dangerous behavior that is only growing worse as he faces criminal trials and the possibility of going to prison for hundreds of years.

In the most recent example, Donald Trump told Glenn Beck during an interview last week that he is going to put President Biden and other "enemies" in prison when he takes by the White House in 2025.

In a Sunday evening post on his Truth Social disinformation social media platform, Trump was even more explicit with his threats of violence and harm, threatening that he would treat Biden and the other "enemies" like they do in "banana republics":

The Crooked Joe Biden Campaign has thrown so many Indictments and lawsuits against me that Republicans are already thinking about what we are going to do to Biden and the Communists when it's our turn. They have started a whole new Banana Republic way of thinking about political campaigns. So cheap and dirty, but that's where America is right now. Be careful what you wish for!

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The Hill reports about an example of the radical right normalizing political violence:

Huckabee: 2024 will be last election ‘decided by ballots rather 

than bullets’ if Trump loses over legal cases

In the latest episode of his show on TBN, Huckabee argued the legal woes now facing Trump are part of a politically motivated scheme from the Biden administration, an argument touted by many in the former president’s orbit.

'Nuff said.

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An opinion piece in The Hill reports about America's radical right effort to foment and normalize political violence:

Republicans just can’t stop calling for civil war

Ask a MAGA Republican what will happen if former President Donald Trump is convicted in any of his four criminal trials and the answer is almost always the same: civil war.

That answer holds true whether you speak to rank-and-file Republican voters, local elected officials or even former national GOP leaders. It’s also an indication that the right-wing politics of grievance is spiraling dangerously out of control.

Yeah, radical right faux grievance is dangerously out of control.

Bits & a chunk: Social media can reject anti-vaxx crackpottery; A notable 1/6 traitor conviction; Etc.

Ars Technica reports that a prominent COVID anti-vaxx crackpot lost an important lawsuit against YouTube in a lower court. The crackpot wanted to force YouTube to host his malicious (evil) videos that kill people by convincing them to not get vaccinated:

A prominent anti-vaccine activist, Joseph Mercola, yesterday lost a lawsuit attempting to force YouTube to provide access to videos that were removed from the platform after YouTube banned his channels.

Mercola had tried to argue that YouTube owed him more than $75,000 in damages for breaching its own user contract and denying him access to his videos. However, in an order dismissing Mercola's complaint, US magistrate judge Laurel Beeler wrote that according to the contract Mercola signed, YouTube was "under no obligation to host" Mercola's content after terminating his channel in 2021 "for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines by posting medical misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines."

"The court found no breach because 'there is no provision in the Terms of Service that requires YouTube to maintain particular content' or be a 'storage site for users’ content,'" Beeler wrote.  

Mercola claimed that he first became aware that YouTube was planning to ban his channel when The Washington Post published an article about it. He told the Post that he was being censored. In his complaint, he said that within six minutes of the Post's article publishing, he got a message that his channels were banned, effective immediately, for violating YouTube's new policy on vaccine misinformation.

His attempt to appeal YouTube's decision was denied, according to Beeler's order. At that point, YouTube told Mercola that after reviewing his channel "carefully," YouTube "confirmed that it violates our Community Guidelines."

This lawsuit strikes me as reasonably well situated for the radical right to appeal this all the way to the USSC (US Supreme Court). The radical right hates it when demagoguery, lies, malicious content and divisive crackpottery are blocked on major social media sites. They call it cancelling conservatism. In fact, it is fighting demagoguery, malice (evil) and tyranny. The radical right needs access to huge audiences and social media is about the best, cheap way to reach millions of minds that can potentially be poisoned.

The radical right legal argument will be that despite no basis in contract law, crackpots patriots like Mercola have to be allowed to post their poison and lies because (i) big social media like YouTube is so big it constitutes a public utility or public space, and (ii) therefore, free speech of any legal kind cannot be censored in such public spaces.

I do not know if the USSC would take this major step and force a private company to accept poison for public consumption. But, the six Republican radicals that dominate the USSC are probably quite sympathetic to the radical's argument. They understand how important this issue is to the radical right's propaganda campaign. This issue is far bigger that just COVID anti-vaxx crackpottery. This is central to the radical right authoritarians' push to obliterate democracy and replace it with a deeply corrupt, bigoted tyranny. 

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Various news sources are reporting about the sentencing of Enrique Tarrio and some of his treasonous crew. The NYT writes: 

Ex-Leader of Proud Boys Sentenced to 22 Years in Jan. 6 Sedition Case -- The prison term for Enrique Tarrio was the most severe penalty handed down so far to any of the more than 1,100 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack. -- The penalty imposed on Mr. Tarrio at a three-hour hearing in Federal District Court in Washington was the final sentence to be lodged against the five members of the Proud Boys who were tried on seditious conspiracy charges earlier this year. Three other men in the case — Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola — were each sentenced last week to between 10 and 17 years in prison.

Tarrio

Maybe not so proud now?

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Sorry, this one is complicated but important 

“This is an attempt to describe generally the process of legal reasoning in the field of case law, and in the interpretation of statutes and of the Constitution. It is important that the mechanism of legal reasoning should not be concealed by its pretense. The pretense is that the law is a system of known rules applied by a judge; the pretense has long been under attack. In an important sense legal rules are never clear, and, if a rule had to be clear before it could be imposed, society would be impossible. The mechanism accepts the differences of view and ambiguities of words. It provides for the participation of the community in resolving the ambiguity by providing a forum for the discussion of policy in the gap of ambiguity. On serious controversial questions it makes it possible to take the first step in the direction of what otherwise would be forbidden ends. The mechanism is indispensable to peace in a community.” -- An Introduction to Legal Reasoning, legal scholar and former US Attorney General, Edward H. Levy, 1949

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Radical right Republicans in power treat elections with open contempt: The NYT writes about the poisonous radical right Republican Party intent to impeach a recently elected state Supreme Court judge because she is a Democrat:

Republicans in Wisconsin are coalescing around the prospect of impeaching a newly seated liberal justice on the state’s Supreme Court, whose victory in a costly, high-stakes election this spring swung the court in Democrats’ favor and threatened the G.O.P.’s iron grip on state politics.

The push, just five weeks after Justice Janet Protasiewicz joined the court and before she has heard a single case, serves as a last-ditch effort to stop the new 4-to-3 liberal majority from throwing out Republican-drawn state legislative maps and legalizing abortion in Wisconsin.

For Republicans, the liberal Supreme Court majority serves as an existential danger. If the court, as expected, invalidates Wisconsin’s legislative maps, it would strip Republicans of what now amounts to permanent majorities in the Legislature. But removing a newly elected justice could prompt a backlash in 2024 from Democrats and moderate Republican voters who abandoned the G.O.P. during the Trump years.

At issue for Wisconsin Republicans are Justice Protasiewicz’s stated views on Wisconsin’s legislative maps. In a deliberate strategy to energize and win support from Democratic donors and voters during her campaign this spring, she was unusually blunt about her positions on issues including abortion rights and the state’s maps, which she called “rigged.”

The day after she was seated last month, liberal groups filed a legal challenge to the maps. Republicans immediately demanded that she recuse herself from the case — which would almost certainly cause a 3-to-3 deadlock on the State Supreme Court.

Former Gov. Scott Walker, who remains popular among Wisconsin Republicans, said the Assembly was “obligated” to impeach Justice Protasiewicz if she tried to rule on the maps.  

Justice Protasiewicz has said nothing publicly about the case. She declined to comment, but on Tuesday she released a letter she had received from the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, an independent body that investigates complaints against judges, dismissing complaints that she had violated the state’s judicial code of ethics by stating her “personal views” about abortion and Wisconsin’s legislative maps. 

The NYT article goes on to point out that Republicans control the impeachment process and have the votes to impeach her. The applicable Wisconsin law is messy. The Wisconsin Constitution says that impeachment is intended for “corrupt conduct in office or for the commission of a crime or misdemeanor.” Well, Protasiewicz was not corrupt in office and she has committed no crime or misdemeanor. 

So, on what grounds could she reasonably be impeached? Her only act was to state her opposition to gerrymandered state voting districts and her support of abortion rights during her campaign. The people of Wisconsin were thus informed about two major issues in that state by that candidate. The voters voted her onto the state Supreme Court. 

So, is Protasiewicz conflicted out of ruling on legal challenges to gerrymandering and abortion? She publicly stated her position on both issues and that helped her get elected onto the court. Is that a reason to assert conflicts of interest preclude hearing issues that voters apparently saw the same way the candidate they voted for saw them?

Six quiet liars by omission sit on the USSC and they hate both voting rights and abortions. Despite those massive conflicts of interest, they happily vote their beliefs on such cases. They are as conflicted, but merely silently conflicted. They refused to state their beliefs, or lied during the nomination process. They were confirmed by a US Senate that knew what their positions were, but the nominees (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett) happily pretended otherwise. 

Two wrongs do not make a right. Should a wrong that preserves democracy be relied on, or should Protasiewicz recuse herself and let Wisconsin slide into the tyranny of single party rule? 

Is the pretense of judicial neutrality just a mirage that should be dropped? If it was dropped, potential judges could speak their minds and let congress or state voters decide on federal or state judges. This is the kind of problem that arises when one major political party, the radical right Republican Party, has gone from pluralist pro-democracy to corrupt, bigoted authoritarianism. There is little or no common ground or basis for compromise. There's certainly no good will in it. 

Problems like this have been forced on us by America's radical right. If we decide wrong, we could lose our democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. The stakes really are that high. The GOP really is pro-tyranny.

News flash (in the pants): USSC decides to hear case on whether the 14th A bars Trump from office

John Castro

(for real?)

Newsweek reports:

The legal debate about whether or not former President Donald Trump should be allowed to appear on the 2024 ballot has made its way before the Supreme Court.

The court distributed John Castro v. Donald Trump to the justices for conference on Wednesday ahead of the upcoming term, which will begin on October 2. Conference is to take place on September 26 and the case is expected to be decided on or before October 9.

Castro, a tax attorney running for the Republican nomination next year, sent his petition to the Supreme Court last month, asking the justices to answer whether political candidates can challenge the eligibility of another candidate of the same party running for the same nomination "based on a political competitive injury in the form a diminution of votes."

The lawsuit is seeking to argue that Trump should not be allowed to run for the White House based on section three of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies individuals from holding public office if they have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the United States. While Trump has not been charged with insurrection, Castro is pointing to Trump's role in the January 6 Capitol riot.

This is strange. If the USSC (US Supreme Court) wanted to punt they could have denied standing and just tossed the case out. A lower court has already done that, arguing the people who filed that lawsuit were not damaged by Trump running again. 

This case is different because Castro is running for president and he argues tangible damages will be in the form of votes lost to Trump if he is allowed to run for president. That damages argument just might be enough to force the court to hear the case instead of punting on it and running away as is probably the case.

Dang, this one could be an actual game changer, assuming this is for real (not a hoax I just fell for).

Naturally, Trump is on the attack against 14th Amendment challenges:

"Like Election Interference, it is just another 'trick' being used by the Radical Left Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, to again steal an Election that their candidate, the WORST, MOST INCOMPETENT, & MOST CORRUPT President in U.S. history, is incapable of winning in a Free and Fair Election. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

Those darned Radical Left Communists, Marxists, and Fascists are up to no good again. Unleash the KRAKEN!

Bits: Thoughts on the radical right; The radical right's Project 2025

For a while, the ARRRP (authoritarian radical right Republican Party) has been open about its hostility to democracy and civil liberties. When the MSM, pundits and others call the ARRRP conservative, I often try to point out (when I can) that America's political right isn't conservative any more. It has become radical, corrupt and authoritarian. It usually rejects and denies inconvenient fact, true truth and sound reasoning. It is clearly opposed to democracy, the rule of law, and civil liberties. That the MSM continues to refer to the ARRRP as conservative constitutes a major failing.

At time passes, I see a slow trickle of others starting to see what I have been seeing since some time in  2017. This change in mindset by the radical right is not new, but in the past it was always denied or downplayed into something allegedly benign and pro-democracy. In the last year or two, the denials from ARRRP propagandists and elites are weakening in view of how obviously false denying this truth is. We know what the ARRRP degenerated into and the radical right knows we know it. More people are starting to say that Emperor is butt naked. So instead of calling the US a democracy, the radical right movement is starting to say the US is a constitutional republic or something else so that the concept of voting can be neutered and killed by the authoritarians who want to establish a corrupt tyranny of some sort.

This video at ~17:48 - 20:07 makes the same argument I am making, the ARRRP is not democratic or conservative. It is radical, authoritarian and anti-democratic.

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America's radical right is locked onto Trump winning the election in 2024 and then sending in hoards of authoritarian extremists to dismantle the federal government and turn it into a vast corruption machine to serve elites and their interests. Project 2025 is right out in the open. Salon writes:

“Dark” right-wing network recruits MAGA “army” to replace 

50K federal workers Trump plans to purge

“Project 2025 is extremists' newest plan to set fire to our democracy,” watchdog group warns

A network of conservative groups is gearing up for the potential reelection of Donald Trump, actively enlisting an "army" of Americans to come to Washington with a mission to disassemble the federal government and substitute it with a vision that aligns more closely with their own beliefs and ideas, according to The Associated Press.

Organized by the Heritage Foundation, the sweeping new initiative called Project 2025, offers a policy agenda, transition plan, a playbook for the first 180 days and a personnel database for the next GOP president to access from the very beginning to take control, reform, and eliminate what Republicans criticize as the "deep state" bureaucracy. Their plan includes the possibility of firing as many as 50,000 federal employees.

Democracy experts view Project 2025 as an authoritarian attempt to seize power by filling the federal government, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, with unwavering Trump supporters, which could potentially erode the country's system of checks and balances.  

“The irony of course is that in the name of 'draining the swamp', it creates opportunities to make the federal government actually quite corrupt and turn the country into a more authoritarian kind of government,” Matt Dallek, a professor at George Washington's Graduate School of Political Management, who studies the American right, told Salon.

Salon asserts incorrectly that unwavering Trump supporters, which could potentially erode the country's system of checks and balances. Unwavering Trump supporters in the federal government absolutely will erode the country's system of checks and balances. We have already see the massive damage that four years of Trump in office caused. There is no reason whatsoever to think the next four will not be a lot worse. 

As usual, the mainstream media continues to completely fail to see the massive authoritarian threat in front of its eyes. 

This is just another garden variety warning from Germaine about what America's deeply corrupt, radical right authoritarians intend to do once they get back in power.

Qs: How can the MSM still be so shockingly blind? Is it stupidity? Ignorance? Sympathy for corrupt authoritarianism?, Subversion by corporate ownership and the profit motive? Some combination of all of that? Or, is this nothing to be concerned about because it's just a mole hill?

The recruitment page for Project 2025

Looking for utterly corrupt, Trump loyalist authoritarians

-- other qualifications, if any, are secondary

The policy agenda:

1. Assemble an army of radical extremists

2. Start deconstructing the administrative 

state on Day One

News bits: Climate change damage watch; Radioactive feral pigs; GOP rot watch; Human pollution watch

A WaPo article discusses the retreat of major insurance companies from exposure to global warming-related disasters:

In the aftermath of extreme weather events, major insurers are increasingly no longer offering coverage that homeowners in areas vulnerable to those disasters need most.

At least five large U.S. property insurers — including Allstate, American Family, Nationwide, Erie Insurance Group and Berkshire Hathaway — have told regulators that extreme weather patterns caused by climate change have led them to stop writing coverages in some regions, exclude protections from various weather events and raise monthly premiums and deductibles.

Insurance providers are also more willing to drop existing policies in some locales as they become more vulnerable to natural disasters. Most home insurance coverages are annual terms, so providers are not bound to them for more than one year.

In its response to the regulators’ survey, Nationwide said it no longer underwrites coverage for “properties within a certain distance to the coastline” because of hurricane potential.

It's not clear what the impacts of this will be. As capitalists withdraw, competent government can step in. If government does it competently, it can potentially undercut the private sector. Maybe that's a good thing because there is reason to believe that the capitalists take too much for what they deliver. This is an opportunity to set the public and private sectors against each other to see who can provide  the best at the lowest cost. 

Of course, the foregoing assumes competence in government. The last thing the authoritarian radical right Republican Party wants to see is competent governance. That undercuts their entire platform of hate of government due to its alleged incompetence. These days that is often or usually significantly associated with GOP sabotage of government operations. Time will tell how this fascinating story plays out.

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Foreground: Pig snout

Elsewhere: Other stuff

The WaPo reports that scientists have finally figured out why feral pigs in Germany and Austria are so tasty but highly radioactive:

On April 26, 1986, the infamous explosion at a Chernobyl nuclear power plant unleashed large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere, an event that contaminated wildlife across country lines. The radiation levels seen in animals as a result has decreased in recent years — with the exception of one animal: the wild boar.

For years, scientists questioned why levels of a radioactive isotope known as cesium-137 have remained surprisingly high in wild boars rooting around Germany and Austria, while decreasing in other deer and roe deer. In a new study released last week, a team of researchers finally solved this “wild boar paradox.” They uncovered that the main radioactive source is not the Chernobyl accident but nuclear weapons testing from the 1960s.  

In the new research, Steinhauser and his colleagues took a step back and reinvestigated the amount and origin of cesium in wild boars. Working with hunters collecting wild boar meat across southern Germany, they measured cesium levels with a gamma-ray detector.

Radioactive cesium results from both nuclear weapons explosion and nuclear energy production. The element comes in different isotopic composition, cesium-135 and cesium-137, depending on the source. By analyzing the ratio of these amounts, the researchers can pinpoint the source of the radiation. From previous literature, the team knew a higher ratio of cesium-137 indicated a nuclear weapons explosion but a lower ratio is linked with nuclear reactors.

Baby radioactive pigs rooting around for food

(aw, they're so cute)

The article goes on to point out that Chernobyl is still relevant, but nuclear blasts from the 1960s surprised the scientists. One potential problem is that hot cesium from Chernobyl could still increase in wild mushrooms, which wild piggies love to scarf down. That could make glow-in-the-dark hogs* even brighter.

* Just kidding. Don't get excited. They don't glow in the dark.

Germaine's usual Sunday morning rasher 

of crispy bacon for a hearty breakfast

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In Texas, radical right authoritarians are mounting a ferocious propaganda campaign to save the state's shockingly corrupt former attorney general Ken Paxton from being removed from office. The fight is at the core of what the radical elites want to see in a new kind of GOP. Specifically, what they want to see is more far more corruption, more aggression and a lot less social tolerance and democracy. The NYT reports:

With television ads and text messages, direct mail and billboards, supporters of the embattled Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, have embarked on an escalating campaign of political pressure, backed by hard-right billionaires, aimed at trying to sway the outcome of Mr. Paxton’s upcoming impeachment trial.

But the effort to save Mr. Paxton, who is seen by many hard-core conservatives as their legal standard-bearer, is also the latest proxy in the broader fight over the future direction of the party, both in Texas and nationally.

It has drawn in a range of conservative figures on both sides, with Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, and Karl Rove, the political consultant to former President George W. Bush, arguing in support of the impeachment process, and Steve Bannon, the former Trump political adviser, lampooning it as a Democrat-inspired witch hunt.

“We want the entire MAGA movement to understand that what’s going on in Texas is not just about Texas,” Mr. Bannon told his podcast audience this month.

Steve Bannon's method of fighting for tyranny and kleptocracy is simple but effective: Flood the zone with shit! Or as Vox put it a few years back: “Flood the zone with shit”: How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy -- The impeachment trial didn’t change any minds. Here’s why.

This is the ghastly face of the MAGA wing of the modern radical right Republican Party. An arrogant, corrupt criminal like Ken Paxton is seen as the GOP's legal standard bearer by authoritarian billionaire elites. 

Meanwhile, a small group of loyal Republican foot soldiers in Florida protested at Disney -- they hate LGBQT people and etc.

Not protesting in support of Joe Biden or 

pluralist democracy 

"This is just the beginning"

VOTE MAGA!!

(Oh goody, I can't wait to have a self-righteous

Nazi freak shove a gun barrel up my 

nostril and demand loyalty or die)

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It's time to face the unpleasant reality. Humans, in their collective greed, arrogance, ignorance and shocking stupidity are toxic pollution. A WaPo article makes the point nicely (free article, not behind a paywall):

Invasive species are costing the world more than $423 billion a year

Invasive pests are wreaking havoc across the planet, destroying crops, disseminating pathogens, depleting fish people rely on for food and driving native plants and animals toward extinction, according to a major report backed by the United Nations.

The landmark assessment found more than 3,500 harmful invasive species cost society more than $423 billion a year, a tally only expected to grow as the modern age of global trade and travel continues to supercharge the spread of plants and animals across continents like never before.

“One of the things that we stress that really is the tremendous threat this does pose to — and I know this is going to sound grandiose — but to human civilization,” said Peter Stoett, an Ontario Tech University professor who helped lead a group of about seven dozen experts in writing the report.

The spread of plants and animals between continents is one of the main causes of Earth’s ongoing biodiversity crisis, an extinction event on par with the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Invasive species are playing a role in 60 percent of extinctions, according to the report.

The lovely, innocent South American water hyacinth:

A free-floating plant that grows so quickly that it can cover entire ponds and lakes, leaving a matted mess that impedes boat traffic and fishing. In some cases, the plants suck up so much water that they render lakes dry and leave communities without drinking water. The report deemed the water hyacinth, which is popping up everywhere from Africa to Australia, the most widespread invasive plant on Earth.

In addition to invasive species, the other four key drivers of extinction are climate change, habitat destruction, pollution and direct exploitation of species, with a million plants and animals at risk of vanishing for good.

Global warming is poised to make the problem of invasive pests worse by enabling animals such as tropical fire ants to march north into higher latitudes.

Well now, that's sobering. 😨