Voyage confirms plastic pollution

BBC

August 27, 2009

By Judith Burns  Science and environment reporter, BBC News Abandoned fishing gear was among the debris found by scientists Scientists have confirmed that there are millions of tonnes of plastic floating in an area of ocean known as the North Pacific Gyre. The first of two ships on a voyage to study plastic pollution there has recently returned to port. Scientists on board say they found increasing amounts of plastic of all sizes as they travelled into the gyre. They plan to analyse the effects of the waste on marine life and will propose methods to clear it up. The North Pacific Gyre is a slow-moving clockwise vortex where four major ocean currents meet. Little lives there besides phytoplankton. Larger than Texas However the currents have carried millions of tonnes of rubbish into the centre of the gyre, which now covers an area estimated to be larger than the US state of Texas. The two ships from Project Kaisei set off for the gyre from San Francisco more than three weeks ago. The research vessel New Horizon from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography arrived back earlier this week. The second, the tall ship Kaisei, will be back on Monday. The scientists conducted more than 50 surface debris trawls in 17 sites, studying and detailing debris and invasive species. This collection of plastic was pulled from the ocean in just one hour They were shocked by the amount of plastic they found. Project director Doug Woodring said: "One thousand miles from shore with no sign of human life for days, yet our human footprint is now apparent in even one of the most remote places on the planet." Mary Crowley, Project Kaisei co-founder, said: "More than 30 years ago, on my first trip to the North Pacific Gyre I found a few glass ball fishing floats, one net and there were, in four days, perhaps two pieces of floating plastic. "Returning now with Project Kaisei .. the marine debris situation shows a startling change in this same area. In 30 minutes one easily can count up to 400 pieces of plastic on the sea's surface." Tiny pieces of plastic film can be ingested by sea jellies The team found a variety of invertebrates living in the debris, including crabs, sea anemones, barnacles, sponges and algae, sparking fears that the plastic may aid the spread of invasive species. The researchers now plan to carry out extensive laboratory testing and analysis on the pieces of plastic they have collected, looking for toxins such as DDT and PCB. The ultimate aim of the project is to develop sound scientific sampling of marine debris, to assess prototype technologies for removing the waste and to gain insight into how future clean-up programmes might work.

Scientists uncover new ocean threat from plastics

The Independent

August 20, 2009

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Scientists have identified a new source of chemical pollution released by the huge amounts of plastic rubbish found floating in the oceans of the world. A study has found that as plastics break down in the sea they release potentially toxic substances not found in nature and which could affect the growth and development of marine organisms.

Until now it was thought that plastic rubbish is relatively stable chemically and, apart from being unsightly, its principle threat to living creatures came from its ability to choke or strangle any animals that either got caught in it or ingested it thinking it was food.

But the latest research suggests that plastic is also a source of dissolved substances that can easily become widely dispersed in the marine environment. Many of these chemicals are believed to toxic to humans and animals, the scientists said.

The scale of plastic pollution in the sea has only been widely recognised in recent years when sailing yachts reported vast areas of ocean, such as an area estimated to be twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific, that seem to be permanently covered in a layer of floating marine litter caught up in swirling ocean currents or gyres.

Some of the items were found to be many decades old, suggesting that the plastic took a long time to degrade. However, a study by Katsuhiko Saido at Nihon University in Chiba, Japan, has found that plastics degrade relatively quickly in the conditions and temperatures that were designed to simulate the environment of the open ocean.

"Plastics in daily use are generally assumed to be quite stable. We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future," Dr Saido said.

"To date, no studies have been conducted on plastic decomposition at low temperature in the environment owing to the mistaken conception that plastic does not decompose. The present study was conducted to clarify that drift plastic does indeed decompose to give rise to hazardous chemicals in the ocean," he said.

The scientists found that when plastics decompose in the ocean they release a range of chemicals, such as bisphenol A and substances known as polystyrene-based (PS) oligomers, which are not found naturally. Bisphenol A has been implicated in disrupting the hormonal system of animals.

A common form of plastic rubbish is styrofoam, which soon gets crushed into small pieces in the sea. However, it also releases substantial quantities of a toxic substances called styrene monomer, which is known to cause cancer, as well as styrene dimers and trimer, which are suspected of being carcinogenic. The trimer also breaks down into the toxic monomer form.

Findings from the study were released yesterday at the American Chemical Society meeting in Washington. Dr Saido said that samples of seawater collected from the Pacific Ocean were found to be contaminated with up to 150 parts per million of some of these components of plastic decomposition.

"This study clearly shows new micro-pollution by compounds generated by plastic decomposition to be taking place out of sight in the ocean. Thus, marine debris plastics in the ocean will certainly give rise to new sources of global contamination that will persist long into the future," he said.

It is estimated that there could be hundreds of millions of tons of plastic rubbish floating in the world's oceans. In Japan alone, it is calculated that 150,000 tons of plastic is washed up on its shores each year. 

US Drinking Water and Watersheds Widely Contaminated by Hormone Disrupting Pesticide, Atrazine

Organic Consumer

August 21, 2009

• Press Release
  Analysis of Water Data Reveals Broad Contamination Ignored by EPA Monitoring
  Natural Resources Defense Council, Aug 24, 2009
  Straight to the Source
  
  

CHICAGO - August 24 - A widely used pesticide known to impact wildlife development and, potentially, human health has contaminated watersheds and drinking water throughout much of the United States, according to a new report released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Banned by the European Union, atrazine is the most commonly detected pesticide in U.S. waters and is a known endocrine disruptor, which means that it affects human and animal hormones. It has been tied to poor sperm quality in humans and hermaphroditic amphibians.

"Evidence shows Atrazine contamination to be a widespread and dangerous problem that has not been communicated to the people most at risk," said Jennifer Sass, PhD, NRDC Senior Scientist and an author of the report. "U.S. EPA is ignoring some very high concentrations of this pesticide in water that people are drinking and using every day. This exposure could have a considerable impact on reproductive health. Scientific research has tied this chemical to some ghastly impacts on wildlife and raises red flags for possible human impacts."

"People living in contaminated areas need to be made aware -- and the regulators need to get this product off the market," said Sass. 

The report, " Poisoning the Well: How the EPA is Ignoring Atrazine Contamination in Surface and Drinking Water in the Central United States" creates a ground breaking analysis of atrazine pollution by bringing together data from watershed monitoring and drinking water compliance programs for the first time. 

The report reveals that all of the watersheds monitored by EPA and 90% of the drinking water sampled tested positive for atrazine. Contamination was most severe in Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, and Nebraska.  An extensive U.S. Geological Survey study found that approximately 75 percent of stream water and about 40 percent of all groundwater samples from agricultural areas contained atrazine, and according to the New York Times, an estimated 33 million Americans have been exposed to atrazine through their drinking water systems.

"The extent of contamination we found in the data was breathtaking and alarming," said Andrew Wetzler, Director of NRDC's Wildlife Conservation Program and Deputy Director of NRDC's Midwest Program, as well as one of the report's authors. "The EPA found atrazine almost everywhere they looked. I think that the public will find this hard to swallow and I hope it will help force the EPA to address the situation more aggressively."

Click here for the full report, including detailed maps of affected areas and Google Earth applications.

The contamination data in the report was obtained as the result of a legal settlement and Freedom of Information Act requests. " Poisoning the Well" highlights watersheds and municipal water treatment systems most affected by the chemical contamination, offers policy solutions, and describes actions that people can take to protect themselves from exposure to this dangerous chemical in their water.

Atrazine is regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), EPA has determined that an annual average of no more than 3 parts per billion (ppb) of atrazine may be present in drinking water. One of the chief findings of the report was that this reliance on a "running annual average" allows levels of atrazine in drinking water to peak at extremely high concentrations.

Given the pesticide's limited economic value and the fact that safer agricultural methods can be substituted to achieve similar results, NRDC recommends phasing out the use of atrazine, more effective atrazine monitoring, the adoption of farming techniques that can help minimize the use of atrazine to prevent it from running into waterways. The report also underscores the importance of using home filtration systems.

The effects associated with atrazine have been documented extensively. Reproductive effects have been seen in amphibians even at low levels of exposure. Concentrations as low as 0.1 ppb, for example, have been shown to alter the development of sex characteristics in male frogs, resulting in male frogs with female sex characteristics and the presence of eggs in male frog testes. Some scientists are concerned about exposure for children and pregnant women, as small doses could impact development of the brain and reproductive organs. Research has also raised concerns about atrazine's "synergistic" affects, showing potential for the chemical having a multiplier affect to increase toxic affects of other chemical co-contaminants in the environment.

The report includes information on actions people can take to protect themselves from Atrazine and other dangerous contaminants. NRDC recommends that consumers concerned about atrazine contamination in their water use a simple and economical household water filter, such as one that fits on the tap. Consumers should make sure that the filter they choose is certified by NSF International to meet American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Standard 53 for VOC (volatile organic compounds) reduction and therefore capable of significantly reducing many health-related contaminants, including atrazine and other pesticides.

Additionally, NRDC's SimpleSteps Web site includes an online form to allow people to take on a watchdog role by collecting information on how their public water systems are treating these issues. Visit www.simplesteps.org/atrazine for more information.

###

The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has 1.2 million members and online activists, served from offices in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Beijing. 

World's Top 100 Companies Need to Double Emissions Cuts, Study Finds

Solve Climate

August 25, 2009

by Stacy Morford 

The majority of the world's largest companies have set their own greenhouse gas reduction goals, but their targets fall far short of what scientists says it necessary to avoid potentially catastrophic climate change.

In fact, the top global 100 firms as a group are running 39 years behind the schedule recommended by the world's leading climate scientists.

To meet the targets of the International Panel on Climate Change, the companies would have to double their rate of emissions cuts immediately and keep it up, according to new research from the Carbon Disclosure Project.

The CDP study found that the world's 100 biggest companies are on track to reduce their emissions by an average of 1.9% per year right now. That's well below the 3.9% annual reduction they would need to reach the IPCC's recommended cuts of at least 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.

"If we were all to continue on that trajectory, we would not achieve the required reductions until 2089, 39 years too late. The consequences for the climate could be dramatic," the authors write.

Part of the problem is a lack of global standards and long-term international goals. The current goals are voluntary – 73 of the top 100 have disclosed some sort of reduction target, with European companies, facing an emissions trading scheme and EU-wide reduction goal, tending to be the leaders. Still, each corporation has set its own target in its own way. Some look at absolute carbon dioxide equivalent emissions reductions. Others measure carbon intensity. Still other corporations focus on energy efficiency.

IBM, for example, has a 2012 emissions goal of cutting CO2 by 12% from 2005 levels, plus a goal of cutting energy consumption by 3.5% each year. L'Oreal has a goal of cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 2% each year and reducing its energy consumption by 5%. Cisco's goals include a 25% emissions cut from 2007 levels by 2012 and reducing business air travel by 10% from 2006 levels by 2010.

Those voluntary corporate targets are rarely driven by the recommendations of science, the study says. Instead, the CDP found in its surveys and interviews that the market is the driving force.

"As a result, Global 100 targets often fail to deliver the required cuts," the authors write.

The study also found evidence that the Global 100 aren't inclined to take major steps without political leadership.

Only 16% of the companies have greenhouse gas reduction targets that extend beyond 2012, the year the Kyoto Protocol expires. That suggests they're waiting to see what targets and rules arise from the UN meeting at Copenhagen in December.

Whether those new international targets and rules written at Copenhagen end up at a level in line with science remains to be seen.

At an international negotiating session in Bonn earlier this month, Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told reporters that negotiations were moving too slowly and that the promises made by industrialized nations so far are "miles away" from what's needed to meet the IPCC's 2050 goal.

The IPCC calls for industrialized countries to make mid-term emissions cuts of 25% to 45% below 1990 levels by 2020 to keep atmospheric CO2 below 450 ppm. Many scientists and policy experts say that still isn't enough. Even IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri now says he personally supports a goal of 350 ppm.

Yet several industrialized companies are having trouble accepting the 450 ppm mid-term goals. Canada's target is 20 percent below 2006 levels by 2020. In the United States, the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) bill that passed the House calls for 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and it would allow 8 percent to be met by energy efficiency measures.

"Industrialized countries need to show a greater level of ambition in agreeing to meaningful mid-term emission reduction targets," de Boer said.

"A climate deal in Copenhagen this year is an unequivocal requirement to stop climate change from slipping out of control."

There are other effective pressures on companies to cut their carbon emissions, including the increasing pressure placed on companies by their shareholders.

This spring, Idaho Power agreed to set greenhouse gas reduction goals after 52% of its shareholders voted in favor of a resolution asking the company to reduce its emissions. That vote sent "a loud and clear message that investors, in light of impending climate regulation, are no longer asking how much it will cost to reduce carbon, but instead how much money their companies can make doing it," said Lauren McLean, portfolio manager with Trillium Assets Management, which led the IdaCorp shareholder effort along with Calvert Group and As You Sow.

So who are the laggards when it comes to still taking that first step and setting a carbon-reduction target?

The CDP study found carbon-reduction plans in most of the low-emissions sectors, such as health care and the financial industry. All five of the electric utilities in the Global 100 were on board, too.

When it came to the energy sector, including oil and gas, however, only about half of the companies had carbon reduction targets. (see pdf attached below for details on each of the 100 companies' targets and time lines.)

"The level of climate debt is now so high that we are on the verge of a climate crunch, as large in scale as the onset of an ice age – but in the opposite direction," says Chris Tuppen, chief sustainability officer at BT, formerly British Telecom, which worked on the study with CDP.

"We urgently need to reduce the amount we are 'borrowing' (i.e. emitting) every year."

The CDP issued four recommendations with its report:

• Every company should set a greenhouse gas reduction target;
• the target should have a clear baseline and target year;
• the targets should reflect the recommendations of the IPCC;
• and government leaders meeting at Copenhagen must agreed to clear medium and long-term goals to set a framework for business to follow.

 

See also:

Video: How to Regulate Corporations for CO2

Why Cities & CEOs Can't Relax

Hunter Lovins Makes the Business Case for Climate Protection

Businesses Need a Clear Path to Clean Energy, CEOs Tell Obama

Why Businesses (Big and Small) Should Support Climate Action

Attachment	Size
CDP Report-Carbon Chasm.pdf	235.25 KB

State Department Gives Green Light to Canada-U.S. Oil Pipeline

Washington Post

August 21, 2009

By Steven Mufson

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 21, 2009

The State Department has approved the construction of a multibillion-dollar pipeline from Canadian oil sands to refineries in the United States, prompting an outcry from environmental groups opposed to oil sands development.

Extraction of the oil in Alberta has drawn opposition because it scars vast tracts of land and uses large quantities of energy and water. The projects have contributed to a sharp increase in greenhouse gas emissions by Canada, which as a result will not meet its own climate change targets.

"By approving this pipeline, we are committing to another generation of dependence not only on fossil fuels but on the dirtiest, most greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels," said Sarah Burt, an attorney for Earthjustice. "We thought that the Obama administration would walk the walk on this, but it appears that that's not happening."

But the State Department said Houston-based Enbridge's proposed pipeline -- which would extend about 326 miles from the Canadian border near Neche, N.D., to Superior, Wis. -- would promote trade with a friendly neighbor and reduce reliance on oil imports from other nations. Officials added that, within U.S. borders, the line would meet U.S. environmental standards. 

"This will advance a number of strategic interests of the United States, including expanding available supplies of energy, also increasing trade with a stable and reliable ally such as Canada, a positive economic signal during a difficult economic period," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.

Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, who issued the permit Aug. 3, said that concerns about "higher-than-average levels of greenhouse gas emissions associated with oil sands crude" would be "best addressed in the context of the overall set of domestic policies that Canada and the United States will take to address their respective greenhouse gas emissions."

The State Department has permitting authority under executive orders issued in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson and in 2004 by President George W. Bush. The environmental group Earthjustice said it would file suit challenging the permit, arguing among other things that Congress has authority over interstate or international commerce.

Environmental groups also said U.S. refineries would have to deal with high levels of toxic chemicals such as mercury, nickel and lead in petroleum from the oil sands.

Michael Levi, author of a Council on Foreign Relations study of the Canadian oil sands, said the biggest environmental issues were in Canada and did not fall under State Department jurisdiction. "The Obama administration made clear that it's not going to go about its climate policy in a crude, blunt way," he sad. "It understands that it needs to work cooperatively in order to achieve its long-term goals." 

Getting Real About The High Cost of Cheap Food

TIme Magazine

August 20, 2009

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon — circa 2009. (See TIME's photo-essay "From Farm to Fork.")

Horror stories about the food industry have long been with us — ever since 1906, when Upton Sinclair's landmark novel The Jungle told some ugly truths about how America produces its meat. In the century that followed, things got much better, and in some ways much worse. The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans. Those hidden prices are the creeping erosion of our fertile farmland, cages for egg-laying chickens so packed that the birds can't even raise their wings and the scary rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among farm animals. Add to the price tag the acceleration of global warming — our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.

And perhaps worst of all, our food is increasingly bad for us, even dangerous. A series of recalls involving contaminated foods this year — including an outbreak of salmonella from tainted peanuts that killed at least eight people and sickened 600 — has consumers rightly worried about the safety of their meals. A food system — from seed to 7‑Eleven — that generates cheap, filling food at the literal expense of healthier produce is also a principal cause of America's obesity epidemic. At a time when the nation is close to a civil war over health-care reform, obesity adds $147 billion a year to our doctor bills. "The way we farm now is destructive of the soil, the environment and us," says Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). (See pictures of what the world eats.)

Some Americans are heeding such warnings and working to transform the way the country eats — ranchers and farmers who are raising sustainable food in ways that don't bankrupt the earth. Documentaries like the scathing Food Inc. and the work of investigative journalists like Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan are reprising Sinclair's work, awakening a sleeping public to the uncomfortable realities of how we eat. Change is also coming from the very top. First Lady Michelle Obama's White House garden has so far yielded more than 225 lb. of organic produce — and tons of powerful symbolism. But hers is still a losing battle. Despite increasing public awareness, sustainable agriculture, while the fastest-growing sector of the food industry, remains a tiny enterprise: according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), less than 1% of American cropland is farmed organically. Sustainable food is also pricier than conventional food and harder to find. And while large companies like General Mills have opened organic divisions, purists worry that the very definition of sustainability will be co-opted as a result. (See pictures of urban farming around the world.)

But we don't have the luxury of philosophizing about food. With the exhaustion of the soil, the impact of global warming and the inevitably rising price of oil — which will affect everything from fertilizer to supermarket electricity bills — our industrial style of food production will end sooner or later. As the developing world grows richer, hundreds of millions of people will want to shift to the same calorie-heavy, protein-rich diet that has made Americans so unhealthy — demand for meat and poultry worldwide is set to rise 25% by 2015 — but the earth can no longer deliver. Unless Americans radically rethink the way they grow and consume food, they face a future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs — and bland taste. Sustainable food has an élitist reputation, but each of us depends on the soil, animals and plants — and as every farmer knows, if you don't take care of your land, it can't take care of you.

The Downside of Cheap
For all the grumbling you do about your weekly grocery bill, the fact is you've never had it so good, at least in terms of what you pay for every calorie you eat. According to the USDA, Americans spend less than 10% of their incomes on food, down from 18% in 1966. Those savings begin with the remarkable success of one crop: corn. Corn is king on the American farm, with production passing 12 billion bu. annually, up from 4 billion bu. as recently as 1970. When we eat a cheeseburger, a Chicken McNugget, or drink soda, we're eating the corn that grows on vast, monocrop fields in Midwestern states like Iowa.

But cheap food is not free food, and corn comes with hidden costs. The crop is heavily fertilized — both with chemicals like nitrogen and with subsidies from Washington. Over the past decade, the Federal Government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop — at least until corn ethanol skewed the market — artificially low. That's why McDonald's can sell you a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for around $5 — a bargain, given that the meal contains nearly 1,200 calories, more than half the daily recommended requirement for adults. "Taxpayer subsidies basically underwrite cheap grain, and that's what the factory-farming system for meat is entirely dependent on," says Gurian-Sherman. (See the 10 worst fast food meals.)

So what's wrong with cheap food and cheap meat — especially in a world in which more than 1 billion people go hungry? A lot. For one thing, not all food is equally inexpensive; fruits and vegetables don't receive the same price supports as grains. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit. With the backing of the government, farmers are producing more calories — some 500 more per person per day since the 1970s — but too many are unhealthy calories. Given that, it's no surprise we're so fat; it simply costs too much to be thin.

Our expanding girth is just one consequence of mainstream farming. Another is chemicals. No one doubts the power of chemical fertilizer to pull more crop from a field. American farmers now produce an astounding 153 bu. of corn per acre, up from 118 as recently as 1990. But the quantity of that fertilizer is flat-out scary: more than 10 million tons for corn alone — and nearly 23 million for all crops. When runoff from the fields of the Midwest reaches the Gulf of Mexico, it contributes to what's known as a dead zone, a seasonal, approximately 6,000-sq.-mi. area that has almost no oxygen and therefore almost no sea life. Because of the dead zone, the $2.8 billion Gulf of Mexico fishing industry loses 212,000 metric tons of seafood a year, and around the world, there are nearly 400 similar dead zones. Even as we produce more high-fat, high-calorie foods, we destroy one of our leanest and healthiest sources of protein. (See nine kid foods to avoid.)

The food industry's degradation of animal life, of course, isn't limited to fish. Though we might still like to imagine our food being raised by Old MacDonald, chances are your burger or your sausage came from what are called concentrated-animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which are every bit as industrial as they sound. In CAFOs, large numbers of animals — 1,000 or more in the case of cattle and tens of thousands for chicken and pigs — are kept in close, concentrated conditions and fattened up for slaughter as fast as possible, contributing to efficiencies of scale and thus lower prices. But animals aren't widgets with legs. They're living creatures, and there are consequences to packing them in prison-like conditions. For instance: Where does all that manure go?

Pound for pound, a pig produces approximately four times the amount of waste a human does, and what factory farms do with that mess gets comparatively little oversight. Most hog waste is disposed of in open-air lagoons, which can overflow in heavy rain and contaminate nearby streams and rivers. "This creek that we used to wade in, that creek that our parents could drink out of, our kids can't even play in anymore," says Jayne Clampitt, a farmer in Independence, Iowa, who lives near a number of hog farms.

To stay alive and grow in such conditions, farm animals need pharmaceutical help, which can have further damaging consequences for humans. Overuse of antibiotics on farm animals leads, inevitably, to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the same bugs that infect animals can infect us too. The UCS estimates that about 70% of antimicrobial drugs used in America are given not to people but to animals, which means we're breeding more of those deadly organisms every day. The Institute of Medicine estimated in 1998 that antibiotic resistance cost the public-health system $4 billion to $5 billion a year — a figure that's almost certainly higher now. "I don't think CAFOs would be able to function as they do now without the widespread use of antibiotics," says Robert Martin, who was the executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.

The livestock industry argues that estimates of antibiotics in food production are significantly overblown. Resistance "is the result of human use and not related to veterinary use," according to Kristina Butts, the manager of legislative affairs for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. But with wonder drugs losing their effectiveness, it makes sense to preserve them for as long as we can, and that means limiting them to human use as much as possible. "These antibiotics are not given to sick animals," says Representative Louise Slaughter, who is sponsoring a bill to limit antibiotic use on farms. "It's a preventive measure because they are kept in pretty unspeakable conditions."

Such a measure would get at a symptom of the problem but not at the source. Just as the burning of fossil fuels that is causing global warming requires more than a tweaking of mileage standards, the manifold problems of our food system require a comprehensive solution. "There should be a recognition that what we are doing is unsustainable," says Martin. And yet, still we must eat. So what can we do? (See pictures of an apartment outfitted for goat-milking.)

Getting It Right
If a factory farm is hell for an animal, then Bill Niman's seaside ranch in Bolinas, Calif., an hour north of San Francisco, must be heaven. The property's cliffside view over the Pacific Ocean is worth millions, but the black Angus cattle that Niman and his wife Nicolette Hahn Niman raise keep their eyes on the ground, chewing contentedly on the pasture. Grass — and a trail of hay that Niman spreads from his truck periodically — is all the animals will eat during the nearly three years they'll spend on the ranch. That all-natural, noncorn diet — along with the intensive, individual care that the Nimans provide their animals — produces beef that many connoisseurs consider to be among the best in the world. But for Niman, there is more at stake than just a good steak. He believes that his way of raising farm animals — in the open air, with no chemicals or drugs and with maximum care — is the only truly sustainable method and could be a model for a better food system. "What we need in this country is a completely different way of raising animals for food," says Hahn Niman, a former attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice. "This needs to be done in the right way."

The Nimans like to call what they do "beyond organic," and there are some signs that consumers are beginning to catch up. This November, California voters approved a ballot proposition that guarantees farm animals enough space to lie down, stand up and turn around. Worldwide, organic food — a sometimes slippery term but on the whole a practice more sustainable than conventional food — is worth more than $46 billion. That's still a small slice of the overall food pie, but it's growing, even in a global recession. "There is more pent-up demand for organic than there is production," says Bill Wolf, a co-founder of the organic-food consultancy Wolf DiMatteo and Associates. (Watch TIME's video "The New Frugality: The Organic Gardener.")

So what will it take for sustainable food production to spread? It's clear that scaling up must begin with a sort of scaling down — a distributed system of many local or regional food producers as opposed to just a few massive ones. Since 1935, consolidation and industrialization have seen the number of U.S. farms decline from 6.8 million to fewer than 2 million — with the average farmer now feeding 129 Americans, compared with 19 people in 1940.

It's that very efficiency that's led to the problems and is in turn spurring a backlash, reflected not just in the growth of farmers' markets or the growing involvement of big corporations in organics but also in the local-food movement, in which restaurants and large catering services buy from suppliers in their areas, thereby improving freshness, supporting small-scale agriculture and reducing the so-called food miles between field and plate. That in turn slashes transportation costs and reduces the industry's carbon footprint.

A transition to more sustainable, smaller-scale production methods could even be possible without a loss in overall yield, as one survey from the University of Michigan suggested, but it would require far more farmworkers than we have today. With unemployment approaching double digits — and things especially grim in impoverished rural areas that have seen populations collapse over the past several decades — that's hardly a bad thing. Work in a CAFO is monotonous and soul-killing, while too many ordinary farmers struggle to make ends meet even as the rest of us pay less for food. Farmers aren't the enemy — and they deserve real help. We've transformed the essential human profession — growing food — into an industry like any other. "We're hurting for job creation, and industrial food has pushed people off the farm," says Hahn Niman. "We need to make farming real employment, because if you do it right, it's enjoyable work." 

One model for how the new paradigm could work is Niman Ranch, a larger operation that Bill Niman founded in the 1990s, before he left in 2007. (By his own admission, he's a better farmer than he is a businessman.) The company has knitted together hundreds of small-scale farmers into a network that sells all-natural pork, beef and lamb to retailers and restaurants. In doing so, it leverages economies of scale while letting the farmers take proper care of their land and animals. "We like to think of ourselves as a force for a local-farming community, not as a large corporation," says Jeff Swain, Niman Ranch's CEO.

Other examples include the Mexican-fast-food chain Chipotle, which now sources its pork from Niman Ranch and gets its other meats and much of its beans from natural and organic sources. It's part of a commitment that Chipotle founder Steve Ells made years ago, not just because sustainable ingredients were better for the planet but because they tasted better too — a philosophy he calls Food with Integrity. It's not cheap for Chipotle — food makes up more than 32% of its costs, the highest in the fast-food industry. But to Ells, the taste more than compensates, and Chipotle's higher prices haven't stopped the company's rapid growth, from 16 stores in 1998 to over 900 today. "We put a lot of energy into finding farmers who are committed to raising better food," says Ells. (See pictures of the effects of global warming.)

Bon Appétit Management Company, a caterer based in Palo Alto, Calif., takes that commitment even further. The company sources as much of its produce as possible from within 150 miles of its kitchens and gets its meat from farmers who eschew antibiotics. Bon Appétit also tries to influence its customers' habits by nudging them toward greener choices. That includes campaigns to reduce food waste, in part by encouraging servers at its kitchens to offer smaller, more manageable portions. (The USDA estimates that Americans throw out 14% of the food we buy, which means that much of our record-breaking harvests ends up in the garbage.) And Bon Appétit supports a low-carbon diet, one that uses less meat and dairy, since both have a greater carbon footprint than fruit, vegetables and grain. The success of the overall operation demonstrates that sustainable food can work at an institutional scale bigger than an élite restaurant, a small market or a gourmet's kitchen — provided customers support it. "Ultimately it's going to be consumer demand that will cause change, not Washington," says Fedele Bauccio, Bon Appétit's co-founder. (See pictures of two farms in Nebraska.)

How willing are consumers to rethink the way they shop for — and eat — food? For most people, price will remain the biggest obstacle. Organic food continues to cost on average several times more than its conventional counterparts, and no one goes to farmers' markets for bargains. But not all costs can be measured by a price tag. Once you factor in crop subsidies, ecological damage and what we pay in health-care bills after our fatty, sugary diet makes us sick, conventionally produced food looks a lot pricier.

What we really need to do is something Americans have never done well, and that's to quit thinking big. We already eat four times as much meat and dairy as the rest of the world, and there's not a nutritionist on the planet who would argue that 24‑oz. steaks and mounds of buttery mashed potatoes are what any person needs to stay alive. "The idea is that healthy and good-tasting food should be available to everyone," says Hahn Niman. "The food system should be geared toward that."

Whether that happens will ultimately come down to all of us, since we have the chance to choose better food three times a day (or more often, if we're particularly hungry). It's true that most of us would prefer not to think too much about where our food comes from or what it's doing to the planet — after all, as Chipotle's Ells points out, eating is not exactly a "heady intellectual event." But if there's one difference between industrial agriculture and the emerging alternative, it's that very thing: consciousness. Niman takes care with each of his cattle, just as an organic farmer takes care of his produce and smart shoppers take care with what they put in their shopping cart and on the family dinner table. The industrial food system fills us up but leaves us empty — it's based on selective forgetting. But what we eat — how it's raised and how it gets to us — has consequences that can't be ignored any longer. 

The fallacy of climate activism

Grist

August 23, 2009

In the 20 years since we climate activists began our work in earnest, the state of the climate has become dramatically worse, and the change is accelerating—this despite all of our best efforts.  Clearly something is deeply wrong with this picture.  What is it that we do not yet know?  What do we have to think and do differently to arrive at urgently different outcomes?^[1]

The answers lie not with science, but with culture.

Climate activists are obsessed with greenhouse-gas emissions and concentrations.  Since global climate disruption is an effect of greenhouse gases, and a disastrous one, this is understandable.  But it is also a mistake.

Such is the fallacy of climate activism^[2]: We insist that global warming is merely a consequence of greenhouse-gas emissions. Since it is not, we fail to tell the truth to the public.

I think that there are two serious errors in our perspectives on greenhouse gases:

Global Warming as Symptom

The first error is our failure to understand that greenhouse gases are not a cause but a symptom, and addressing the symptom will do little but leave us with a devil's sack full of many other symptoms, possibly somewhat less rapidly lethal but lethal nonetheless.

The root cause, the source of the symptoms, is 300 years of our relentlessly exploitative, extractive, and exponentially growing technoculture, against the background of ten millennia of hierarchical and colonial civilizations.^[3] This should be no news flash, but the seductive promise of endless growth has grasped all of us civilized folk by the collective throat, led us to expand our population in numbers beyond all reason and to commit genocide of indigenous cultures and destruction of other life on Earth.

To be sure, global climate disruption is the No. 1 symptom.  But if planetary warming were to vanish tomorrow, we would still be left with ample catastrophic potential to extinguish many life forms in fairly short order: deforestation; desertification; poisoning of soil, water, air; habitat destruction; overfishing and general decimation of oceans; nuclear waste, depleted uranium, and nuclear weaponry—to name just a few.  (While these symptoms exist independently, many are intensified by global warming.)

We will not change course by addressing each of these as separate issues; we have to address root cultural cause.

Beyond Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The second error is our stubborn unwillingness to understand that the battle against greenhouse-gas emissions, as we have currently framed it, is over.

It is absolutely over and we have lost.

We have to say so.

There are three primary components of escalating greenhouse-gas concentrations that are out of our control:

Thirty-Year Lag

The first is that generally speaking the effects we are seeing today, as dire as they are, are the result of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide in the range of only 330 parts per million (ppm), not the result of today's concentrations of almost 390 ppm.  This is primarily a consequence of the vast inertial mass of the oceans, which absorb temperature and carbon dioxide and create a roughly 30-year lag between greenhouse-gas emissions and their effects.  We are currently seeing the effects of greenhouse gases emitted before 1980.

Just as the scientific community hadn't realized how rapidly and extensively geophysical and biological systems would respond to increases in atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations, we currently have only a rough idea of what that 60 ppm already emitted will mean, even if we stopped our emissions today.  But we do know, with virtual certainty, that it will be full of unpleasant surprises.

Positive Feedback Loops

The second out-of-control component is positive (amplifying) feedback loops.  The odd thing about positive feedbacks is that they are often ignored in assessing the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions.  Our understanding of them is limited and our ability to insert them into an equation is rudimentary.  Our inability to grasp them, however, in no way mitigates their effects, which are as real as worldwide violent weather.

It is now clear that several phenomena are self-sustaining, amplifying cycles; for example, melting ice and glaciers, melting tundra and other methane sources, and increasing ocean saturation with carbon dioxide, which leads to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.  These feedbacks will continue even if we reduce our human emissions to zero—and all of our squiggly lightbulbs, Priuses, wind turbines, Waxman-Markeys, and Copenhagens won't make one bit of difference.  Not that we shouldn't stop all greenhouse-gas emissions immediately—of course we should—but that's only a necessity, not nearly a sufficient response.

We need to find the courage to say so.

Non-Linearity

The third component is non-linearity, which means that the effects of rising temperature and atmospheric carbon concentrations may change suddenly and unpredictably.  While we may assume linearity for natural phenomena because linearity is much easier to assess and to predict, many changes in nature are non-linear, often abruptly so.  A common example is the behavior of water. The changes of state of water—solid, liquid, gas—happen abruptly.  It freezes suddenly at 0°C, not at 1°, and it turns to steam at 100°, not at 99°.  If we were to limit our experience of water to the range of 1° to 99°, we would never know of the existence of ice or steam.

This is where we stand in relationship to many aspects of the global climate. We don't know where the tipping points—effectively the changes of state—are for such events as the irreversible melting of glaciers, release of trapped methane from tundras and seabeds, carbon saturation of the oceans.  Difficult to pin down, tipping points may be long past, or just around the corner.  As leading climatologist Jim Hansen has written, "Present knowledge does not permit accurate specification of the dangerous level of human-made GHGs. However, it is much lower than has commonly been assumed. If we have not already passed the dangerous level, the energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within several decades."^[4]

Evidence of non-linearity is strong, not only from the stunning acceleration of climate change in just the past couple of years, but from the wild behavior of the climate over millions of years, which sometimes changed dramatically within periods as short as a decade.

The most expert scientific investigators have been blindsided by the velocity and extent of recent developments, and the climate models have likewise proved far more conservative than nature itself.  Given that scientists have underestimated impacts of even small changes in global temperature, it is understandably difficult to elicit an appropriate public and governmental response.

Beyond the Box

We climate activists have to tread on uncertain ground and rapidly move beyond our current unpleasant but comfortable parts-per-million box.  Here are some things we need to say, over and over again, everywhere, in a thousand different ways:

Bitter climate truths are fundamentally bitter cultural truths.  Endless growth is an impossibility in the physical world, always—but always—ending in overshot and collapse.  Collapse: with a bang or a whimper, most likely both.  We are already witnessing it, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

Because of this civilization's obsession with growth, its demise is 100 percent predictable.  We simply cannot go on living this way. Our version of life on earth has come to an end.

Moreover, there are no "free market" or "economic" solutions.  And since corporations must have physically impossible endless growth in order to survive, corporate social responsibility is a myth.  The only socially responsible act that corporations can take is to dissolve.

We can't bargain with the forces of nature, trading slightly less harmful trinkets for a fantasied reprieve.  Geophysical processes care not one whit for our politics, our economics, our evening meals, our theologies, our love for our children, our plaintive cries of innocence and error.

We can either try to plan the transition, even at this late hour, or the physical forces of the world will do it for us—indeed, they already are.  As Alfred Crosby stated in his remarkable book, Ecological Imperialism, mother nature's ministrations are never gentle.^[5]

Telling the Truth

If we climate activists don't tell the truth as well as we know it—which we have been loathe to do because we ourselves are frightened to speak the words—the public will not respond, notwithstanding all our protestations of urgency.

And contrary to current mainstream climate-activist opinion, contrary to all the pointless "focus groups," contrary to the endless speculation on "correct framing," the only way to tell the truth is to tell it.  All of it, no matter how terrifying it may be.^[6]

It is offensive and condescending for activists to assume that people can't handle the truth without environmentalists finding a way to make it more palatable.  The public is concerned, we vaguely know that something is desperately wrong, and we want to know more so we can try to figure out what to do.  The response to An Inconvenient Truth, as tame as that film was in retrospect, should have made it clear that we want to know the truth.

And finally, denial requires a great deal of energy, is emotionally exhausting, fraught with conflict and confusion.  Pretending we can save our current way of life derails us and sends us in directions that lead us astray.  The sooner we embrace the truth, the sooner we can begin the real work.

Let's just tell it.

Stating the Problem

After we tell the truth, then what can we do?  Is it hopeless?  Perhaps.  But before we can have the slightest chance of meaningful action, having told the truth, we have to face the climate reality, fully and unflinchingly.  If we base our planning on false premises—such as the oft-stated stutter that reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions will forestall "the worst effects of global warming"—we can only come up with false solutions.  "Solutions" that will make us feel better as we tumble toward the end, but will make no ultimate difference whatsoever.

Furthermore, we can and must pose the problem without necessarily providing the "solutions."^[7] I can't tell you how many climate activists have scolded me, "You can't state a problem like that without providing some solutions."  If we accept that premise, all of scientific inquiry as well as many other kinds of problem-solving would come to a screeching halt.  The whole point of stating a problem is to clarify questions, confusions, and unknowns, so that the problem statement can be mulled, chewed, and clarified to lead to some meaningful answers, even though the answers may seem to be out of reach.

Some of our most important thinking happens while developing the problem statement, and the better the problem statement the richer our responses.  That's why framing the global warming problem as greenhouse-gas concentrations has proved to be such a dead end.

Here is the problem statement as it is beginning to unfold for me.  We are all a part of struggling to develop this thinking together:

We must leave behind 10,000 years of civilization; this may be the hardest collective task we've ever faced.  It has given us the intoxicating power to create planetary changes in 200 years that under natural cycles require hundreds of thousands or millions of years—but none of the wisdom necessary to keep this Pandora's Box tightly shut.  We have to discover and re-discover other ways of living on earth.

We love our cars, our electricity, our iPods, our theme parks, our bananas, our Nikes, and our nukes, but we behave as if we understand nothing of the land and water and air that gives us life.  It is past time to think and act differently.

If we live at all, we will have to figure out how to live locally and sustainably.  Living locally means we are able get everything we need within walking (or animal riding) distance. We may eventually figure out sustainable ways of moving beyond those small circles to bring things home, but our track record isn't good and we'd better think it through very carefully.

Likewise, any technology has to be locally based, using local resources and accessible tools, renewable and non-toxic.  We have much re-thinking to do, and re-learning from our hunter-gatherer forebears who managed to survive for a couple of hundred thousand years in ways that we with our civilized blinders we can barely imagine or understand.^[8]

Living sustainably means, in Derrick Jensen's elegantly simple definition, that whatever we do, we can do it indefinitely.^[9] We cannot use up anything more or faster than nature provides, we don't poison the air, water, or soil, and we respect the web of life of which we are an intricate part.  We are not separate from nature, or above it, or in any way qualified to supervise it.^[10] The evidence is ample and overwhelming; all we have to do is be brave enough to look.

How do we survive in a world that will probably turn—is already turning, for many humans and non-humans alike—into a living hell? How do we even grow or gather food or find clean water or stay warm or cool while assaulted by biblical floods, storms, rising seas, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, snow, and hail?

It is crystal clear that we cannot leave it to the technophiliacs.  It is human technology coupled with our inability to comprehend, predict, and prevent unintended consequences that have brought us global catastrophe, culminating in climate disruption, in the first place.  Desperate hopes notwithstanding, there are no high-tech solutions here, only wishful thinking—the tools that got us into this mess are incapable of getting us out.^[11]

All that being said, we needn't discard all that we've learned, far from it.^[12] But we must use our knowledge with great discretion, and lock much of it away as so much nuclear weaponry and waste.

Time is running very short, but the forgiveness of this little blue orb in a vast lonely universe will continue to astonish and nourish us—if we only give it the chance.

Our obligation as activists, the first step, the essence, is to part the cultural veil at long last, and to tell the truth.

—-

Endnotes:

[1] Many thanks to Richard Grossman, who posed that question fifteen years ago with respect to corporate domination of governance and culture when he founded the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD). He understood that we must take the time to stop and penetrate beyond the obvious if we are to think outside of the cultural prescriptions that constrain our ability to act differently.  Many thanks as well to Ross Gelbspan, a courageous and ground-breaking journalist, who early on investigated the forces driving the fossil fuel machine and has been sounding the alarm for almost two decades.  See his excellent article, "Beyond the Point of No Return," December 2007, which inspired many of the ideas in this piece.

[2] I would like to express deep gratitude to John A. Livingston, pioneer environmentalist, preservationist, teacher and writer.  In 1981 he wrote "The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation," which inspired the title of this piece.  The fallacy that Livingston was referring to is well-described in the foreword by Graeme Gibson:  "The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, as a statement of belief, is one of the fiercest and most uncompromising of John Livingston's convictions.  Had he entitled it 'The Failure of Wildlife Conservation,' we might have tried again—without having to think too much about it.  But he didn't. ... As a result of the word fallacy, we are confronted with an insistence that we rethink everything."  From The John A. Livingston Reader, McClelland & Stewart, 2007, pp. xiv-xv. So it is, with the fallacy of climate activism, that we must rethink everything.

[3] Endless (exponential) growth is an impossibility in a finite physical system (planet earth), and we have a wealth of examples of overshoot and collapse, non-human and human, all of which are fully predictable.  Our cultural inability to grasp such an obvious reality is a primary obstacle to progress in addressing climate change and its root cause.  Indigenous cultures tend to have much better understandings of these things.  See Herman E. Daly and Kenneth N. Townsend, "Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem," from Valuing The Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics, MIT Press, 1993, p. 267 ff.  For a wide-ranging discussion of the demise of civilizations, see Jared Diamond, Collapse, Viking, 2005.

[4] James Hansen et al.(2007), "Climate change and trace gases," Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A 365: 1925–1954 (2007).

[5] Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 - 1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 92.  The actual quote, referring to population, is, "Mother nature always comes to the rescue of a society stricken with the problems of overpopulation, and her ministrations are never gentle."

[6] A word here about the skeptics, with whom we are also obsessed:  Forget about them. They may appear to have control of the public discussion, but they are babbling into the abyss.  Our enemy is us.  By our own unwillingness to face the profound implications of climate change—that we have to reject civilization as currently conceived and come up with something completely different—we are doing far more damage to the cause of preserving life on earth than the deniers could ever do.

[7] "One of the more peculiar traits of our society is its assumption—its insistence—on solutions.  Just as there are reasons for all things, so there are solutions for all things.  Always there are ultimate answers; there is no problem that is not amenable to logical reduction.  This, as we have seen earlier, in spite of such bewildering enterprises as ecology. I have no 'solution' to the wildlife preservation problem [read 'global warming problem'].  There may not be one.  But given the somewhat shaky assumption that one exists, I sense that I can at least feel the direction."  John A. Livingston, The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation, p. 151.

[8] Our culturally skewed and defensive view of pre-hierarchical societies, seeing only lives that were "nasty, brutish and short" struggling to survive in "nature, red in tooth and claw," has distorted earlier human experience beyond recognition.  See, for example, Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade, Harper & Rowe, 1987; and Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, Tavistock Publications, Ltd. (London), 1974.

[9] Jensen is one of our most passionate and incisive cultural critics and environmental writers.  His words are, "For an action to be sustainable, you must be able to perform it indefinitely.  This means that the action must either help or at the very least not materially harm the landbase.  If an action materially harms the landbase, it cannot be performed indefinitely ..."  From Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay, What We Leave Behind, p. 56.

[10] Although, as I indicate in footnote 12 in a brief discussion of holistic management of grasslands, we can and must repair enough of the damage so that the infinitely complex self-organizing systems of nature—the systems that gave life to all living creatures—can begin anew.

[11] For example, consider hare-brained schemes from very smart scientists, some of whom know that the schemes are hare-brained but in their desperation see no other way.  A recent article in Rolling Stone, "Can Dr. Evil Save The World?," has an interesting overview of the geo-engineering debate. The bottom line seems to be that we currently are able to do and think anything except changing the way we live, and risking the existence of life on earth is simply a chance we have to take (although 100 percent odds of failure is hardly a bet one should want to take, assuming there are any rational moments left).  See also Ross Gelbspan's article, "Beyond the Point of No Return," footnote 1.

[12] Glimmers of hope lie in the remarkable restorative powers of the earth.  One such phenomenon is ancient pre-history but new to us.  That is the relationship between grazers and grasslands.  Whereas conventional grasslands management destroys soils and diversity, nature's way sequesters vast amounts of carbon in soils, with photosynthesizing plants as intermediators along with fungi, micro-organisms, insects, animals and birds—and creates productive and healthy land that, unlike forests, can bind carbon for thousands of years.  We have the potential to remove gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gas concentrations by many parts per million with proper land management.  Beyond grasslands, the planet's power of regeneration, despite our assaults, remains extraordinary.  See the Holistic Management International website.

Another example is the dramatic restoration of denuded rainforest in Borneo after only six years:  "Planting finishes this year [2008], but already [Willie] Smits [the Indonesian forestry expert who led the replanting] and his team from the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation charity claim the forest is 'mature', with trees up to 35 metres high. Cloud cover has increased by 12 per cent, rainfall by a quarter, and temperatures have dropped 3-5°C, helping people and wildlife to thrive, says Smits. Nine species of primate have also returned, including the threatened orangutans. 'If you walk there now, 116 bird species have found a place to live, there are more than 30 types of mammal, insects are there. The whole system is coming to life. I knew what I was trying to do, but the force of nature has totally surprised me. ... The place became the scene of an ecological miracle, a fairytale come true,' says Smits, who has written a book about the project."

How Much Water Are You Really Using?

Matter Network
August 21, 2009

In the press release, titled "Wealthy world at woes from water risk elsewhere", the WWF examined Germany's "water footprint". They showed that only about half of the water Germany uses actually comes from Germany. Germany's water comes from all over the world. "The water embedded in coffee, soy and beef imports makes Brazil Germany's largest water trading partner, followed by the Ivory Coast (cocoa, coffee, bananas and cotton), neighbours France and the Netherlands, the US and Indonesia (oilseeds, coffee, coconuts, cotton and cocoa)." In addition to the above, significant amounts of their "virtual water" comes from Argentina, India, Ghana, Nigeria, and from Mediterranean countries that are becoming drier and drier — Spain, Italy and Turkey.

With climate change potentially (probably) drying up many areas of the world, it is not just sufficient to live in one of the places where that doesn't accur. Many of our goods and needs also come from the water resources in other countries. Martin Geiger, Head of Freshwater at WWF-Germany, says: "Germany is a relatively water rich country but its reliance on water sourced from some of the drier areas of the world still makes it very vulnerable to the degradation of river catchments and groundwater supplies and water related impacts of climate change elsewhere."

Dr Stuart Orr, WWF International water policy officer, says: "National water footprints are underlining just how dependant the developed world is on water from areas where water management is relatively poor. It therefore pays for wealthy nations to support the protection and better management of the river basins and aquifers of the developing world."

Germany has taken a lead on international water issues by signing on to the UN Watercourses Convention. However, not enough other countries have signed on to make the convention come into effect yet. Flavia Loures, leading a WWF-initiated global campaign to get the convention brought into effect by 2011, says: "Other major economies would do well to follow Germany's example in signing up to the UN Watercourses Convention to provide a global framework for minimising the risks of disruption to the water supplies they depend on."

If we're using the water, we're responsible for protecting and conserving it as well. Hopefully, other countries will sign on to the UN Watercourses Convention soon.

This article was reproduced with the kind permission of Matter Network.

Global warming set to intensify August heat, Climate Central study finds

Grist 

August 19, 2009

Climate Central's analysis found that New York City will see a three-fold increase in the number of 90-degree-plus days in August by midcentury.Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / Grist

By some measures, the Chicago and New York of tomorrow are likely to be hotter than the Atlanta of today—at least in August.

Climate Central's analysis of projected midcentury August temperatures for 21 major American cities, under a fairly conservative warming scenario, suggests some startling changes ahead.  Today, the only cities on the list where more than half of the days in an average August exceed 95° F are Phoenix and Dallas; by the 2050s, Houston, Sacramento, Tampa Bay, and Orlando could join them.  Today, seven cities break 90° F on at least half of the days of a typical August; by the 2050s, they could be joined by Atlanta, Denver, Indianapolis, Miami, and Philadelphia.  By midcentury, a dozen cities could average more than one day over 100° F per August, where today only three share that dubious distinction. (See below for a list of detailed results for all cities analyzed.)

These patterns match a broad finding in climate research that what seems to be a small amount of general global warming could have a large effect on weather extremes—including extreme heat events, which are forecast to become more frequent, more intense, and longer lasting (see U.S. Climate Change Science Program report).

Extreme weather and climate events can cause significant damages, and heat waves are considered public health emergencies. Hot temperatures contribute to increased emergency-room visits and hospital admissions for cardiovascular disease, and can cause heat stroke and other life-threatening conditions.

Events such as the Chicago heat wave of 1995 and the 2003 European heat wave [PDF], which killed an estimated 40,000 people, have proven especially deadly to vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and persons with respiratory illnesses.

Climate Central used established scientific methods (more detail on the next page) to take results averaged from 12 major global climate models and apply them to 21 American cities.  The resulting projections should be taken not as concrete predictions but rather as best guesses within a range of uncertainty.  However, all 12 models used are unanimous in projecting more hot days by the middle of the century than we have today.  For its projections, Climate Central used a moderate-high scenario of greenhouse-gas emissions.  The scenario and resulting projections of risk currently appear to be conservative, since global emissions have exceeded the scenario in recent years.

Find out more and watch city-specific videos at Climate Central.

	AVERAGE NUMBER OF DAYS EACH AUGUST OVER …
	90°F		95°F		100°F
CITY	1980'S & 1990'S	PROJECTION: 2050'S	1980'S & 1990'S	PROJECTION: 2050'S	1980'S & 1990'S	PROJECTION: 2050'S
ATLANTA	11	25	2	14	0	3
BOSTON	3	8	0	3	0	0
CHICAGO	4	14	1	6	0	2
CLEVELAND	2	10	0	3	0	0
DALLAS	26	29	19	26	10	19
DENVER	7	22	1	12	0	3
DETROIT	2	14	0	5	0	1
HOUSTON	23	29	6	20	1	4
INDIANAPOLIS	5	18	1	8	0	2
LOS ANGELES	6	14	2	6	1	2
MIAMI	17	30	0	11	0	0
MINNEAPOLIS	2	8	0	3	0	1
NEW YORK	4	12	1	4	0	1
ORLANDO	19	29	1	18	0	1
PHILADELPHIA	6	20	1	9	0	2
PHOENIX	31	31	30	31	27	30
SACRAMENTO	20	26	12	20	7	12
SAN FRANCISCO	0	1	0	0	0	0
SEATTLE	1	5	0	1	0	0
TAMPA BAY	22	30	2	22	0	2
WASHINGTON, DC	10	19	3	10	0	3

Analysis methods

Climate Central's analysis is based on recent data from weather stations, regional-scale outputs from climate projection models, and a common technique for deducing best-guess local climate projections from regional ones.  In its essence, this method involves calculating differences between current and future global climate model simulations, and applying them to observed climate data from the same vicinity.

Climate Central first identified weather stations closest to each city on the list, and then found the nearest regional location with model projections available.

For current patterns, Climate Central looked at August daily high temperatures at each weather station for 1981-2000, counting the total days exceeding 90°, 95° or 100° F over those 20 years, dividing by 20, and rounding off.  The answers for each city were the average number of days reaching above each temperature in one August during the 1980s or 1990s—roughly today's climate.  (Any given August might have many more or fewer hot days.)

For future projections, Climate Central averaged outputs from 12 major climate models at the available regional location nearest to each city for 2046-2064, and for 1981-2000 (simulated values, not actual ones).  We then calculated changes in the 20-year average monthly maximum temperature between these simulated future and current climates, and added the differences to the actual 1981-2000 weather station data from each city (already described).

This last step created new, simulated data for each city for 20 Augusts in the middle of this century.  We then applied the same method that we used with actual 1981-2000 temperatures to estimate the average number of days over each temperature threshold in this future scenario.

The resulting projections give long-term averages, not predictions for any individual year; actual outcomes will vary significantly from year to year due to the natural variability of climate.  Furthermore, because the modeling and methods used involve uncertainty, the projections should be taken as best guesses within a range of uncertainty.  True long-term averages will likely prove somewhat higher or lower than the projections here.  However, all twelve models are unanimous in projecting increased hot days from the present by the middle of the century.

All model outputs used were based on a medium-high greenhouse gas emissions scenario called "A1B" by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions this decade have exceeded the A1B scenario thus far.  This makes the projections here conservative, matching a future in which emissions are reduced compared to the current trend.

The techniques and general climate projections used are well established in the scientific literature (for example, see here and here).