Fall 2007 Post

FOR FALL 2007 ON ZIRAAT ENVIRONMENT WEB PAGE:

FROM THE FALL ISSUE OF NONVIOLENT CHANGE (www.nonviolentchangejournal.org):

WORLD DEVELOPMENTS

With the coming of fall, amidst a variety of ongoing crises, there are a number of important advancements and opportunities for moving to better situations, including concerning climate change, which is gaining increasing international concern. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, in February, that Climate change poses as much danger to the world as war, as he urged the United States to take the lead in the fight against global warming, and prepared to urge strong action against global warming at the then upcoming G8 summit. In May, Ki-moon appointed three well known international figures as climate change envoys, to strengthen global action against global warming. The final draft of the second report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was completed by scientists and officials from more than 100 nations in Bangkok, Thailand, in May, along the lines of the preliminary draft (reported in the winter issue of NCJ). The report called for immediate, substantial action across the world to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels, over the next 25 years. If current trends continue, the current levels, which have risen 70% since 1970, could increase by an additional 90% in that period. The report projected that to return to 2000 global carbon dioxide emission levels by 2030 would require a cost of $50 to $100 a released ton, equivalent to raising the price of gasoline $.25 to $.30 a gallon. It was estimated that carbon dioxide reduction might cause a small reduction in global economic activity, of perhaps 0.1% a year. (At the same time – and not necessarily a contradiction - other experts find that developing alternative energy and conservation technology will create jobs). A UN report. in March, found that poor nations will suffer the greatest injury from global warming, while wealthy nations focus primarily on their own risks (for details, see “Poor Nations Bear Brunt As World Warms, While Rich focus on Own Risks,” The New York Times, pp. 1 and 6).

As recent signs of climate change appear in Brazil, including an unprecedented, severe draught in the Amazon region and the occurrence of a hurricane for the first time in the southern region of Brazil, the government is reconsidering its environmental policy, and for the first time is willing to consider measures in international negotiations that it previously rejected, such as market based programs to curb carbon emissions resulting from massive deforestation in the Amazon. Carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. dropped 1.3% in 2006, over the record 2005 levels, according to preliminary Department of Energy data, released in May. The DOE indicates that the primary reasons for the decline are a moderate winter and high energy prices. A New York Times/CBS poll, published April 27, found that protecting the environment is a high priority for Americans, and in many instances were willing to pay more to improve it. Asked, “When a trade off has to be made which is more important to you, 52% said protecting the environment, 36% said stimulating the economy, and 8% answered both. On which should be a higher energy priority, 68% favored conservation, while 21% chose increasing production. 92% favored and 6% opposed requiring manufacturers to produce more efficient vehicles to reduce fuel consumption. 75% were willing to pay more for electricity if it were generated renewably, and 20% were not. 64% were willing to pay higher gasoline taxes to fund renewable energy research, and 33% were not. In order to reduce dependence on foreign oil, 64% were willing to pay higher gas taxes, and 30% were not. On the other hand, 58% opposed raising gas taxes to reduce consumption, which 38% favored, and 76% opposed a gasoline tax of $2, which 20% favored. On May 31, President Bush, for the first time proposed that “a long term global goal” should be reducing greenhouse gas emission, and called for international negotiations to do that, but gave no details, except that, at least for the time being, each nation should set its own goals – so that there would be no international mandatory limits to greenhouse gas creation. European officials and environmental activists expressed skepticism about Bush’s intentions. Meanwhile, in June, Maine became the third state to pass a law, signed by the governor, to cap carbon dioxide emissions. Maine, which produces 3% of the nation/s CO2, will cap emissions at 5.9 million tons in 2009, and reduce them by 10% by 2019. Congress is currently moving to increase funding for research in renewable energy and methods of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. While there are complaints that some of this funding is “green pork,” a number of promising projects appear likely to gain financing. One of the proposals being considered is producing electric power from coal – which is plentiful (but whose mining is usually quite polluting) - via transforming it into gas, and removing the carbon dioxide, on which the Senate Energy Committee held hearings in April. Among the other research to counter climate change are experiments to greatly increase carbon dioxide absorbing plankton in the ocean, primarily by dissolving large amounts of iron in the sea, which is a plankton nutrient. The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining, in a move intended to increase mining of coal, issued a regulation (subject to 90 day review) that approves, and allows to expand, the previously legally questionable removing of mountain tops to mine coal, long used in the Appalachian Mountains, The main mining limitations in the regulation are vague, and already covered in existing law, requiring mining operations to minimize debris and cause the least environmental damage.

On August 17, temperatures hit an all time record high in Japan (105.6 degrees F. in the western city of Tajimi), as the death toll from the ongoing heat wave in the country reached 13, with almost 900 people hospitalized. Extreme weather in the United States this summer has killed dozens of people. Rescuers were looking for people swept away by flash floods from the remnants of tropical storm Erin, which dropped as much as 11 inches of ran in some locations along the Gulf Coast, August 17. The heat wave in the South and Midwest was blamed for at least 44 deaths, with more expected to be confirmed, as of August 22. At the Browns Ferry nuclear plant, overheated water in the Tenessee River forced the shutdown of on reactor and slow down, with reduced power production, of two others. So far, this is one of the few such cases, but there is concern that the reductions from overheated water may increase. David Lockbaum, a former Browns Ferry engineer, now with the Union of Concerned Scientists, stated, “This is an unforeseen impact of global warming. These plants do not do very well in extremely hot weather.” In late August, several places in the Midwest, including Ohio, suffered the worst flooding in almost a century. The Southeast has been suffering its most severe draught in over a century, seriously reducing crop yields and forcing premature cattle sales in Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee. The financial impact on many farmers has been severe. The heat and draught has increased fires, while low waters have reduced navigation on some rivers, while also limiting some hydroelectric power production. For gardeners, climate change has some benefits, as subtropical plants are becoming viable further into what has been the temperate zone, and also moving to formerly colder areas on their own. But milder winter and longer growing seasons are increasing and spreading insects that attack crops and carry diseases. Some types of beetles have been doing immense damage to trees, including to pine forests (as reported earlier in these pages). In addition, the emerald ash borer, an immigrant to North America from Asia, is destroying the white ash trees used for making baseball bats and may strike out, or seriously shift, that industry. The beetles are blamed for killing 25,000 white ash trees in Maryland, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio in the last five years. Unwanted vegetation - weeds – are also growing faster and spreading, and some intrusive species do especially well with higher carbon dioxide levels. For example, kudzu, the fast growing vine that has choked out whole forests in the south is growing faster, and spreading north. Poison ivy is not only growing faster, but is more potent, while some of the worst allergy causing plants, such as ragweed, are producing more pollen.

Some aspects of climate change are taking place considerably faster than previously believed. Geophysical Research Letters published a finding, in lat April, that Arctic sea ice is melting much faster than previously estimate, as a result of human induced global warming. Melting has increased to the point where it is possible that there will be no floating ice in the summer in the Arctic by sometime between 2050 and the early years of the next century. Measures made regularly every September indicate that the rate of loss of sea ice per decade has increased from 2.5% in 1953 to 7.8% today. The melting is also raising oceans and reducing land area. East Anglia, in Brittan has been losing land the sea from erosion for a century, but the rate of land loss has increased tremendously in the last few years. One farmer’s formerly 23 acre fiield, is now only 3 acres – too small to plant. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report indicates that unless current trends are reversed, by 2080, 60 million people may be flooded out of their homes and jobs. A similar problem is occurring as deserts spread into fertile lands. A United Nations University report, published June 27, warned that the extensive desertification in parts of Africa and Asia, if not checked quickly, could create “an environmental crisis of global proportions,” triggering massive migrations and potential social, economic and political instability.

China, whose rapidly expanding coal powered, and increasingly polluting, economy surpassed the United States as the worlds greatest producer of greenhouse gasses this summer, released its first national strategy on climate change, in June. The plan rejects the imposition of mandatory caps on greenhouse emissions. China is already suffering from a variety of types of pollution – not only global warming increasing emissions – (though it has tried to hide reports of human and environmental losses from ecological degradation, including suppressing reports of statistical models that indicate that perhaps as many as 750,000 people die prematurely each year in China as a result of air and water pollution), and has begun to take steps to improve the situation, including a plan to reduce air and water pollution by 10% by 2010. U.S. Federal District Court Judge Saundra B. Armstrong, in Oakland, CA, ruled, August 21, that the United States government “unlawfully withheld action,” by close to two years, in not publishing a study, required by the Global Climate Change Research Act of 1990, on the impact of global warming, and ordered the government to publish a summary report by March.

Beyond global warming, negative effects of environmental change from pollution and overuse of resources continue. A survey by the Audubon Society of 20 common bird species in the United States shows that in the last 40 years these species have declined by an average of 68%. Bobwhites, for example, have declined from 31 million, 40 years ago, to 5,5 million today, while field sparrows are down from 18 million to 5.8 million. A study by Ransom A. Myers if Dalhouse University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, indicates that over fishing of sharks is likely having the secondary effect of destroying bay scallop fisheries in some parts of the North American eastern seaboard, as several species that feed on scallops, previously kept in check by sharks, have greatly expanded. African Penguin are also in decline, down from 1.5 million in southern Africa a century ago, to about 30,000 in 2001, the numbers have plummeted by almost 60% to around 18,000, the biggest recent cause being a migration of their main food, sardines, further north, whom they cannot follow. Meanwhile, the Zika virus, carried by Mosquitoes, which causes rash, join pain, pink eye and fever in humans – and has no specific cure or preventive vaccine – has been spreading from Uganda and South East Asia, where out breaks are rare, into Micronesia, where there were 42 confirmed, and 65 probable identified cases, a of the beginning of July.

Kelly Hearn, “Peru's Petroleum Play: Amazon Oil and Politics,” Pullitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (http://www.pulitzercenter.org/showproject.cfm?id=32) reports that The hydrocarbon industry is making a major push into the Tropical Andes, with “recent oil and gas finds turning the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains and the adjacent Amazonian lowlands of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia into a hydrocarbon hotspot,” “In Peru and Ecuador, where biodiversity levels peak and activists say Big Oil has penetrated public institutions, the problem is especially acute: Over half of Peru’s pristine rainforests is now zoned for oil and gas, while 80 percent of the Ecuadorian Amazon is on the auction block”. This is very destructive of the environment, causing major harm to indigenous peoples.


FOR INFORMATION ON THE CURRENT WORK OF SOME ORGANIZATIONS ON ISSUES OF PEACE AND JUSTICE, SEE http://www.nonviolentchangejournal.org/

MEDIA NOTES

George Monbiot, Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning is $22 cloth from South End Press: www.southendpress.org.

Writings on the Environment by Mike Tidwell: The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities (195 pp. for $14, paper from Free Press, New York);
“Exporting calamity: Katrinas for everyone; Coming soon to a coast near you.”: An article from: World Watch [HTML] (Digital for $9.95, www.amazon.com).