CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES, WINTER 2007

NCJ Winter 2007:

In the face of falling public and private budgets, world wide, for developing alternative energy that does not increase global warming, UN Secretary General Kofi Annon, in November, deplored a ‘frightening lack of leadership’ in combating global warming. The U.N, weather agency reported, in November, that heat trapping carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide reached record levels in the atmosphere (for at least the last 100,000 years), and that there is no sign that their levels are leveling off. New York Times interviews, in November, of more than 50 energy scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs found consensus that unless their was a far more aggressive, world wide, search for nonpolluting energy sources and systems, the world was likely to face dangerous warming and strife as nations with growing energy demands compete for increasingly inadequate resources. A British government report, released in November, calls for doubling of funding across the globe for developing low carbon emitting technology, to limit global warming which otherwise will create low lying flooding and shortage of drinking water that will create 200 million refugees (which many scientists believe is a conservative figure – see the Fall 2006 issue of NCJ). In November, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States signed an agreement to invest $12.8 billion in the development of a nuclear fusion reactor, in the hopes of making available safe, clean and inexhaustible energy. The UN program to replace fossil fuels with-bio energy, such as fuel from sugar cane or sun flower seeds, moved ahead, in September, with the inauguration of the Secretariat of the Global Bioenergy Partnership. However, while this development will reduce certain (while increasing or leaving unchanged other) pollution, be of economic benefit to many rural poor people, and will reduce demand for increasingly scarce oil and gas, it will do nothing to combat global warming.

Economic growth in China, including increases of industrial fuel burning, conventional power generation and automobile ownership and use, now seems likely to see China surpass the U.S. in releasing Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere by 2009, a decade earlier than previously predicted, according to the International Energy Agency. The agency stated, in November, that in the next quarter century China, India and other developing countries not covered by the Kyoto global warming agreement are anticipated to produce the majority of greenhouse gasses.

A decade long satellite study of the oceans, published in December, shows that as oceans warm phytoplankton decline. Phytoplankton are a major converter of carbon dioxide into oxygen (and carbon) – hence their decline increases global warming, and are the bottom level of the ocean food chain, so that their decline reduces the amount of other marine life, including fish. Without taking into account the negative impact of global warming caused phytoplankton decline, a study published in Science, November 3, found that if world wide fishing continues at its present rate, an increasing number of fish species will vanish, marine ecosystems will unravel, and there will be a global collapse of all fished species, perhaps as soon as mid century. Studies of the Dry Valleys of Antarctica by the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University, made public in November, indicate that alarming change is occurring to the ecosystem in the valleys with the decline of a critical worm. Overgrazing in China is stripping arable land, causing deserts to grow and sending dust as far as the Pacific coast of North America.

The World Health Organization stated, in September, that without considerable investment the world will fail to meet its goal of cutting in half the number of people without access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.

NCJ Fall 2006:

Russell Mokhiber, editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter (http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com) and the Multinational Monitor (http://www.multinationalmonitor.org) and Robert Weissman reported in July that statistics from recently published Vital Signs 2006-2007 from the Washington, World Watch Institute and The Least Developed Countries Report 2006, issued by the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), show that neoliberal globalization has been creating huge imbalances in natural resource systems that threaten the stability of nations and the health of the global economy, while the relatively higher rate of economic growth in the 50 Least Developed Countries (LDCs), is "not translating into poverty reduction and improved human well-being." 10 findings from each of the books in turn support these statements. 1. Global oil consumption in 2004 was 3.7 billion tons, about eight times more than in 1950. Coal consumption was two-and-a-half times more than 1950, and natural gas more than 15 times greater. 2. 2005 was the warmest year ever recorded on Earth. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide reached 379.6 parts per million for 2005. 3. Thanks largely to Hurricane Katrina, weather-related disasters caused more than $200 billion in damage, nearly double the previous record. Three of the 10 strongest hurricanes ever recorded occurred in 2005. 4. More money was spent on advertising in 2005 than ever before -- $570 billion, about half of which was spent in the United States. The global figure is 11 times more than was spent in 1950, measured in constant dollars. 5. More than 37 million people have died from AIDS over the last two decades. 6. The world's governments spent more than a trillion dollars on the military in 2004, the highest figure since the end of the Cold War. 7. An estimated 20% of the world's coral reefs have been effectively destroyed. 8. 12% of all bird species are threatened. 9. A billion people worldwide live in slums. 10. More than 300 million people worldwide are obese. U.S. obesity levels have doubled since 1990, to about 40%. Chinese levels have doubled during the same period, now standing at 7%. 11. Per capita, for every 100 researchers and scientists doing R&D in rich countries, there are only two in LDCs. 12. In 2004, LDCs had a combined trade deficit of $6.5 billion. Exclude the oil exporters, and the combined deficit was $18.6 billion – more than 50% of the size of non-oil-exporting LDCs' exports. 13. LDCs imported $7.6 billion in food in 2003, while exporting only $2.2 billion worth of food. 14. The average years of schooling in LDCs is three years. 15. About one-in-five high-skill workers in LDCs (defined as some college or technical school education) was working in a rich country in 2000. 16. Thanks to International Monetary Fund and World Bank structural adjustment programs, governments in LDCs are only half the proportional size of rich country governments, with LDCs devoting only 3.5% of their national economy (GDP) to state administrative services. 17. Between 1991 and 2004, only 20 U.S. patents were granted to citizens from LDCs, compared with 14,824 from other developing countries, and 1.8 million to citizens of rich countries. 18. Labor productivity in LDCs is one-ninety-fourth the level of rich countries. 19. There are 3% the number of phone lines per person in LDCs as in rich countries. 20. LDC energy consumption is 1.6% the level of rich countries. On the positive side, malnourishment is declining quickly in about a third of LDCs, while infant mortality is at a record low --although gains are coming very slowly in the poorest countries, while only four LDCs are on target to meet the Millennium Development Goal target of reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds by 2015. Bicycle production is rising rapidly, with 101 million bikes manufactured in 2003 (the latest year for which data is available), nearing record levels. Global production of photovoltaic cells -- which generate electricity from sunlight -- increased 45% in 2005, with current levels six times the amount produced in 2000. Mokhiber and Weissman say, that, “Overall, however, there's no way to look at the data in these two books and conclude anything but that the current way of doing things is not working”. For more see the article at: http://www.lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2006/000251.html


A recent study shows that some of the effects of global warming are self-increasing. As permafrost melts in artic areas, methane (which molecule for molecule is 23 times more heat trapping than carbon dioxide) and carbon dioxide are released into the air. It now turns out that the release of methane from melting permafrost in Siberia is five times greater than previously calculated, and could cause a devastating increase in warming. In this writers view, an excellent, concise and clear presentation of the problem of human influence on global warming, and what to do about it, is Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. One aspect of the problem that the film does not develop, is the concern that if even a sizable portion of the Greenland ice cap (which has been showing signs of becoming less stable) falls into the Atlantic Ocean, it is likely to bring about the release of very large quantities of methane from the ocean bottom. Should that ice cap, or half of one glacier in Antarctica that is becoming less stable, fall into the ocean, it would raise sea level by 20’, which would have catastrophic effects for low lying areas around the world. Meanwhile. Recent studies show that, contrary to previous projections that saw Antarctica as gaining ice from increased snow fall coming with global warming, Antarctica is now losing 36 cubic miles of ice a year, significantly increasing sea level. Around the North Pole, the Artic Ice Pack declined for the second straight winter – a smaller ice pack increasing global warming by reducing reflection of sun light back into space, and providing more open water that absorbs sun light and heat. A shift toward mild winters and dry summers in British Columbia, now 4 degrees warmer over the past century, have increased infestations of lodge pole pine trees by bark beetles to over 33,000 square miles, and the Canadian Forest Service Predicts that 80% of the province’s pines will be dead in 7 years. Last year 4 million acres of spruce were killed on Alaska’s Kanai Peninsula because of global warming. A study released in June by the National Academies confirms a 1999 report that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere are higher now than they have been in 1000 years. The new study had minor differences with the previous one on some details, but upheld its major findings about global warming. In South East Asia, tropical forests are being cut down rapidly, in some cases being replaced by palm oil production, because of increasing demand for the wood, and investment to cut it, from China. This is increasing carbon dioxide levels, and hence global warming, because trees turn carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in May, called for ‘decisive action’ to protect the world from increasing ecological degradation, citing the extinction or threatened extinction of 2,300 species, and the loss of agricultural output estimated to cost more than $42 billion a year from drylands degradation, including from desertification. Most of the agricultural loss is taking place in the poorest countries, escalating poverty, in opposition to the Millennium Development Goals. A UN conference, in May, called for more countries to ratify the UN agreement to reverse the decline in ocean fish species from overfishing, in order to curb illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing that continue to lower ocean fish stocks. A UN study, published in August, found that the need for usable water, world wide, could double in 50 years. With 2 billion people already living in areas where water is scarce, the report stated that there was a need to find ways of reducing water use, including finding ways to grow more food with less water. The UN Children’s fund, in May, reported that one forth of children in developing countries are under weight, many to a life threatening degree, contributing to 5.6 million child deaths a year. The UN High commissioner on Refugees, reported this summer, that while the number of refugees around the world has dropped to a 25 year low, the percentage of protracted refugees, those caught indefinitely in subsistence living situations, has risen and they now numbers 33 million.