CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES-- SPRING 2007

From the Journal of Non-Violent Change compiled by Steve Sacks

The most significant and increasing danger to humanity is environmental degradation, the most critical aspect of which is climate change associated with global warming. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report, in January, showing that changes in the atmosphere, the oceans, glaciers and ice caps show unequivocally that the world is warming and that its is more than 90% certain that human activities are the cause. UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) director Sálvano Briceño stated, "Action is needed to reduce people’s vulnerability to climate-related hazards and the Hyogo Framework provides a blueprint for taking such action now." ISDR, following up on the IPCC report, in February, called on Governments to speed up implementation of a two-year-old Kyoto accord to reduce the risks facing millions of people exposed to climate-caused calamites.

Recent studies show that global warming, and the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that are a major cause of it are having detrimental health effects to human beings as temperatures and carbon dioxide levels rise, and as the increases continue the negative health impacts will become much more severe. Those suffering from plant pollen allergies, and related asthma, face increasing problems with rising temperatures and CO2 levels. The duel increase causes grater plant growth, greatly increasing the output of pollen. A Harvard University study, published in 2006, produced a 55% increase in ragweed pollen (causing hay fever) by raising CO2 levels, while a University of Oklahoma experiment raised ragweed production by 80% by increasing temperature. An experiment at Duke University found that by increasing CO2 levels, Poison Ivy grew 2.5 times faster, producing a more potent version of urushiol, the chemical that causes skin rashes and eruptions in people. Other woody vines, such as honeysuckle, that chokes trees, also grow far more rapidly than plants in general, with the CO2 increases. Insects are also being affected by the temperature changes. Warmer winters, ending or reducing hard freezes in many places, that greatly reduce insect populations, plus longer warm weather seasons when insects proliferate, mean far larger insect populations, causing increased health problems from insects carrying diseases, such as Lyme disease from ticks, while spreading diseases, such as malaria, to new locations, as expanding of warmer areas allows some critical insect populations to live further away from the equator. This also signals greater insect problems for agriculture. Climate change, involving not only warming, but changes in rainfall, is also beginning to have an impact that is increasing rapidly. The U.S. Environmental agency says that U.S. corn crops are likely to decrease markedly, while increasing in the plains area of Canada. Depending on just what the effects of global warming turn out to be, EPA says U.S. soy bean production could either rise as much as 15%, or fall up to 46%. Studies show that as plants grow more rapidly from higher temperatures and C02 levels, a given quantity of a plant has a lower nutritional value. This is a direct problem for people and animals, but may also make herbivorous insects more ravenous, reducing crop production. Minnesota Department of Wildlife Management scientists now believe that the sharp decline in the moose population in the state, from more than 4,000 in 1993, to 237 in 2004 is largely caused by global warming, as the rise in temperatures, 12 degrees F. in the winter, and 4 degrees F. in the summer, over the last 40 years is stressing the moose, making them more susceptible to parasites spread by the deer herds which have expanded greatly as a result of warmer winters. It was reported in February that a mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the United States, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination. Studies of growing tree deaths from bark beetle infestations, which occur with warmer and shorter winters, could destroy 90% of the white bark pine trees in the Rocky Mountain Western U.S. in a matter of years, if warming continues. Two yeas ago, palm beetles moved out of the Middle East into the Mediterranean, where they have been killing thousands of palm trees across southern Europe, Turkey, and elsewhere round that ocean. Because, "Land degradation is the hidden but menacing face of global environmental change, it threatens the security of close to one third of the world’s population," The United Nations University Office in New York (UNU-ONY) held a briefing meeting. In late March, entitled: "Sustainable Land Management for Global Benefits." In January, record draught across Australia, have brought the state of Queensland to begin adding recycled sewage water to its drinking water. Meanwhile, other types of environmental degradation continue, The People’s Daily reported, in January, that construction of dams, over fishing and pollution have made one-third of all fish species in the Yellow River extinct.

It was reported in February, that expansion in India, China and other developing economies of the use of certain refrigerants and other chemicals, that rise in the atmosphere to destroy the ozone layer, is again thinning that layer, and causing the hole in it to grow, increasing life injuring, and at high enough levels, destroying quantities of ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earths surfaces and penetrating its waters. The banning and fazing out of use of such chemicals, until recently, has reduced the hole in the ozone layer and the damage that ultraviolet radiation has been causing to people, animals and plant life, including to ocean plant life, reducing its ability to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen an carbon. Thus, this development, serious in itself, is also increasing global warming.

There is concern that the expansion of the ethanol industry in Brazil, with large sales to the U.S., while increasing Brazilian GDP, will make a few Brazilians very wealthy, with no benefit for the majority of the population, while as the industry expands and more hectares are planted in mono-crop sugarcane, existing problems in rural areas of landlessness, hunger, unemployment, environmental degradation, and agrarian conflicts will be exacerbated. (For more, see Isabella Kenfield, “Brazil's Ethanol Plan Breeds Rural Poverty, Environmental Degradation” at: http://www.americaspolicy.org . In any case, while increased production of ethanol will ease pressure on, and prices for, a supply of oil unable to increase (and soon to decrease) in the face of growing demand (especially by China and other developing nations), it will actually increase global warming (from the additional energy required to grow and process crops into ethanol), while increasing release of some pollutants and reducing others. With the publication of the global warming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, British Education Secretary Alan Johnson placed Global Warming as a top priority in English education. Children are to be taught their responsibilities as consumers, and ways in which they can prevent damaging effects to the climate. Curriculum additions will include: climate change and global warming, children's responsibilities, the impact of recent tsunami and hurricanes, sustainable development and recycling. For full story, visit: www.news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2208256.ece . Warmer than usual winters have affected maple trees, so that they are not producing nearly as much sap, raising fears for the future of the Northeast maple forests and the maple syrup industry.

The preliminary draft of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report for the April meeting in Brussels, Belgium, made pubic in mid-March (See: Associated Press, “Top Scientists Warn of Water Shortages and Disease Linked to Global Warming,” The New York Times, March 12, p. A11), states that the harmful effects of increasing global warming on daily life are already evident, but unless steps are taken immediately to reduce escalating global warming, within twenty years hundreds of millions of people will not have enough drinking water, while tens of millions of people are forced from their homes by rising temperatures and sea levels. In addition, the draft report states that tropical diseases, such as malaria, will spread, and by 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive. At first, longer growing seasons in the Northern regions will make food more plentiful, but by 2080 hundreds of millions of people could face starvation. This draft, for the second in a series of four documents being issued this year, focuses on global warming’s effects. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials.

The draft report offers some hope if nations slow and then reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, but it says what has been happening has not been encouraging. Patricia Romero Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the report’s many co-authors, stated, “Things are happening and happening faster than we expected.” She added, that global warming soon would “affect everyone’s life.” and that “it’s the poor sectors that will be most affected.” The draft states that scientists are highly confident that many current problems, including change in species’ habits and habitats, more acidified oceans, loss of wetlands, bleaching of coral reefs and increases in allergy-inducing pollen, can be attributed to global warming, caused largely by human activity. Among the effects already experienced in North America are “substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disruption from recent climate extremes,” like hurricanes and wildfires. Looking ahead, that hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans who now have water will be short of it in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than a billion people in Asia could face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages could threaten 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people, depending on the level of greenhouse gases that cars and industry spew into the air. Global warming, if unchecked, will bring about worsening conditions, such as malnutrition and diarrhea, resulting in much higher death rates for the world’s poor by 2030. By 2080, 200 million to 600 million people could be hungry because of global warming’s impact. In addition, small glaciers in Europe will disappear, with many of the continent’s large glaciers shrinking sharply by 2050. Half of Europe’s plant species could be endangered or extinct by 2100. The continents suffering the most severe damage are likely to be Africa and Asia, with major harm also coming to small islands and some aspects of ecosystems near the poles. North America, Europe and Australia are predicted to suffer the fewest of the horrendous harmful effects. “In most parts of the world and most segments of populations, lifestyles are likely to change as a result of climate change.” “Net valuations of benefits vs. costs will vary, but they are more likely to be negative if climate change is substantial and rapid, rather than if it is moderate and gradual.” The draft states that many, but not all, of those effects can be prevented, if within a generation the world slows down its emissions of carbon dioxide, and if the level of greenhouse gases sticking around in the atmosphere stabilizes. If that is the case, the report says, “most major impacts on human welfare would be avoided; but some major impacts on ecosystems are likely to occur.” Co-author Terry Root of Stanford University, stated, “We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction” of species. The British Meteorological Office predicted, in January, that 2007 will be the warmest year of record, following from an exceptionally warm el Nino ocean pattern already established in the Pacific

European Union leaders agreed, at meeting in Brussels, March 9, Friday to work to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020, and to a 30% reduction if other nations followed suit. These reductions are considerably beyond what was called for in 35-nation Kyoto Protocol. Reaching the agreement required compromises that would allow some nations, most particularly France, to include expansion of atomic energy production (which some other nations oppose) in their carbon dioxide reduction plans, while most of the East European members, who rely heavily on highly polluting coal for energy, would be permitted to meet more limited reduction targets. The plan will require the EU to increase its renewable energy production from 7% to 20% of all energy used. This will include non-global warming energy such as wind, solar and methane from such sources as land fills (which if not burned, would contribute to global warming, in any case), but also biofuels, such as ethanol, which decrease dependence on shrinking oil reserves, but currently contribute more to global warming than use of petroleum products. The EU plan will be offered as a model to the Group of 8 leading industrial nations, meeting in Germany in June. The European Commission, which drafts legislation for the European Union, will be charged with coming up with individual countries’ targets in coordination with those nations. José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president acknowledged that there would be difficult political and legal wrangling ahead, given that countries would have to approve binding renewable targets set for them by the European Commission. European Union lawyers still have to draw up the detailed rules specifying how the agreement will be enforced, but the bloc’s officials said the ultimate sanction for countries that violated the targets would be prosecution at the European Court of Justice and the imposition of heavy fines. Brittan has already begun drafting regulations and other plans to limit greenhouse gas production. French President Jacques Chirac warned the United States, at the end of January, to sign the Kyoto climate protocol, and follow up agreements, or face a carbon tax, across Europe, on its exports. Some climate change reducing bills are being introduced into the U.S. Congress, but none have yet been acted upon. In March, Democratic members of Congress released documents showing that the Bush White House had edited hundreds of official reports to reduce or remove references to the human role in global warming. The California Utilities Commission, in November, approved regulations barring in state power companies from purchasing electricity from high-polluting sources, including out of state coal burning plants. In Niger, over the last 30 years, the introduction of relatively simple and inexpensive methods, with some assistance from increased rainfall, has allowed poor farmers to roll back the desert with almost 7.4 million new tree covered acres. The lesson is, that relatively small appropriate changes in human behavior can have a huge long-term positive environmental effect.