GLOBAL WARMING AND WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT
Steve Sachs, Coordinating Editor. Nonviolent Change
From what I have gleaned from teaching environmental and energy policy some years ago, and following developments in environmental research since, it is my understanding that global warming is part of a complex interactive ecological system in which human action, particularly resource use, have a large impact. There is now almost complete scientific agreement that global warming, bringing horrendous climate change, that is already having serious impacts on human life around the planet, is primarily caused by human activity, causing carbon dioxide, methane and other green house gasses to enter the atmosphere, that then trap heat. The relevant direct human action is first the burning of fuels (and other burning) that result in the release of green house gasses, but such gasses are also directly put into the atmosphere by other human acts; and secondarily as a result of the warming that has been occurring because of people increasing green house gas levels in the atmosphere (such as the melting of permafrost in the Arctic releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide, and 14 times more heat increasing methane, and the heating of the oceans which reduces their capacity to absorb green house and other gasses – directly, and from the reduction, which occurs with raising sea water temperatures, of ocean plant life that transforms huge amount of carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon).
Global warming is also increased by human action, such as deforestation, that kills trees and other green plants that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon (used by the plants). Thus global warming can be reduced in several ways: 1) by reduction in the burning of green house gas producing fuels, by increasing fuel use efficiency, reducing fuel burning, and switching to non-green house gas producing sources of energy, including wind power, photovoltaic cells and other direct solar power, wave action, hydro electric power, ocean temperature differential power, atomic energy (which may be to dangerous to use because of possible meltdowns, and the problem of dealing with highly radioactive waste that remains dangerous for as long as 1000,000 years), geothermal energy, using hydrogen and possibly other non-green house gas producing fuels, using as fuels green house gases that would enter the atmosphere without producing energy for human endeavor, if not captured and burned (e.g. capturing and burning methane escaping from landfills), and capturing carbon produced by green house gas producing fuel use; 2) by increasing the number of trees (ending deforestation, and reforesting) and other carbon dioxide transforming plants. 3) increasing the amount of particulate matter in the atmosphere, which blocks incoming sun light, and has a cooling effect. This, however, almost always has major detrimental side effects for human beings, including causing major health problems (to consider only the simplest of the many aspects of putting dust into the air).
As this last method of reducing global warming suggests, there is much more to the ecological problem facing human beings. Human activity causes a great many other impacts on the environment, some of which tend to change the ecological system of the planets, and/or its local and regional subsystems, often negatively from a human perspective, and which in many cases have direct negative effects for human beings, including the production of a wide range of pollutants from simple dust, to toxic chemicals, radiation, and biological hazards. So while global warming is often considered the most obvious current environmental threat for humanity (though some would say that radiation from bombs, accidents and nuclear waste is a greater danger, or that human caused or spread disease is a greater threat), global warming cannot properly be looked at in isolation. It has to be considered as part of a larger set of relationships among human beings (physical, social, economic, political. Etc,) and considering human beings as part of the Earth’s environmental system and subsystems. Indeed, in that context, global warming is only one of the negative side effects of human activity that needs to be considered. For example, destruction of the ozone layer (leading to toxic levels, for many – and at some point virtually all – forms of life) of ultra violate radiation penetrating the atmosphere, as the result of the use of certain chemicals that escape upward and destroy the ozone layer of the upper atmosphere, is again increasing because of the increased use in some developing counties of refrigerants and propellants, whose use has been greatly reduced in the rest of the world.
One aspect of the global warming problem in particular, and of environmental protection generally, is resource use: the finding, processing, transporting, using of resources, and disposing of residual material in that whole process, including all the results (positive, negative and neutral), direct and indirect, of that activity. In the case of energy, the most used source world wide, oil, is approaching the point where demand overwhelms supply, largely because of the huge and growing increases in oil consumption by China and other developing nations. Compounded with interruptions and uncertainties about some major oil production, because of war and political instability, this has spurred the development of biofuel, particularly ethanol, most notably in Brazil and the U.S. While increasing ethanol production has economic, political and security advantages, ethanol production currently increases global warming, and other polluting, because its production requires significantly more energy than does gasoline and other oil product production. (That may change as more effort, money and energy is required to mine oil, whether in pumping steam into no longer free flowing oil wells, or in mining oil from shale and tar sands). Also, despite what some advertising claims, burning ethanol simply produces a different combination of pollutants than does burning gasoline. While it might make sense to have some increase in ethanol use as a bridge to develop non greenhouse gas producing energy, and to include economic and human concerns properly in the process of energy transformation, to overcome global warming and reduce dangerous pollution more generally, it is far better to emphasize non-greenhouse gas producing sources of energy (taking into account the pollution, including greenhouse gas production, and cost of such development – e.g. manufacture of photo voltaic cells is not entirely clean). The politics and public relations of powerful established economic interests, in many cases, resists changes that are beneficial to whole societies and the population of the planet. And that resistance must be overcome, and where possible transformed (as has been happening, as even some oil companies have been moving to “greener” business practices).
One of the ways of reducing green house gas emition, and major pollution, as well as scarce resource use, is to reduce automobile use, which is one of the major and fastest growing sources of pollution, including greenhouse gases. Increasing public transportation, including high speed trains between cities, will help this, and incentives and encouragement to use such transportation will further help (reduced fares, etc.). A problem in the U.S. is that automotive and truck use is governmentally subsidized, while rail roads are not. Increasing automobile efficiency, introducing electric and highbred vehicles – which can be supported by subsidies and other incentives, while penalizing (e.g. taxes) greenhouse gas producing emitions, especially by highly innefficient engines. Encouraging, rewarding use of bicycles and walking can also reduce vehicle use. Careful urban, land use and traffic planning by governments, business and NGOs can also be a major vehicle for reducing vehicle use, and resulting pollution.
Production of power for electricity, manufacturing, etc., can also be switched from higher to lower polluting – particularly of greenhouse gases – while machines, devices, equipment, appliances, etc. can be made more energy efficient, and such use encopuraged/subsidiesed/advertised. Providing public information about the problem and what people can do about it, with specific information about helpful products and actions, can be a major help in all aspects of dealing with environmental-human protection.
A major aspect of reducing greenhouse gas emition and other pollution and environmental degradation is the development of new and improvement of old technology, methods, energy sources, etc. A great deal of investment needs to be made in this area (and some of that is happening) with the support of public and private funding.
Almost all of the aspects of the problem can be better met with increased intra and inter organization, and interpersonal, collaboration and efficiency. Government and private organizations and persons can play an important facilitating and communicating roll here (such as planning locations of facilities for shorter trvavel/shipping, coordination of research, sharing of information, timing of work shifts to avoid traffic jams, etc).
A critical aspect of protecting human life, economy, health, etc. by protecting the environment is in a variety of public policies at every level of government, from direct regulation (which should be smart regulation - as set out in Reinventing Government), subsidies, encouragements, penalties, planning, voluntary planning – encouraging collaboration/coordination, smart seeding of research and production of better products (e.g. the government ordering large numbers of a better product to bring the price down), spreading information, encouraging environmentally friendly activity, etc. To achieve this requires political action, including public expression (hence the need of public and private public education), by individuals, groups, corporations, and government entities.
Green business policies and actions are also an extremely important aspect of meeting environmental threats, including global warming. Government policy can encourage this, as must public caring about the issues and demand for green business activity. Education of business leaders and personnel is also critical. Understanding that moving in a greener direction can create jobs (some very well respected analysis shows clearly that moving to protect the environment will produce far more jobs and business opportunities than it creates, though some vested interests do, and will continue to, resist that proposition). Already quite a number of firms, and in some areas chambers of commerce, see that their future is dependent on protecting the environment, while others now want to seem that they are acting in a green way (investigative reporting and environmental group research needs to expose false green claims, encouraging real green action). Professional organizations can play an important part by developing, publicizing, encouraging, and at times enforcing a green ethic.
These are a few of the many interrelated aspects, briefly presented, of meeting the massive environmental threat we human beings are bringing down on ourselves. In proceeding to take protective action, it is important to see that all the aspects of the problems involved are interrelated, and to analyze them and act upon them holistically, and so far as possible (with out co-opting oneself) work collaboratively.
Included in the links here are excerpts on environmental, and particularly global warming developments, pulled from recent issues of Nonviolent Change, on the web at: www.nonviolentchangejournal.org
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
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.
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.
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.
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.
