Monday, December 24, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Global Warnings
Tomgram: Collins and Frantz, Pakistan's Nuclear Wal-Mart in Its Infancy
There they go again. While Somalia burns at one end of "the arc of instability" (as Bush administration officials liked to call a swath of territory from North Africa to the Chinese border in the good old days before they thoroughly destabilized it), at the other end, the Taliban is now considered a "permanent presence" in more than 50% of Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan is in increasing chaos. As if that weren't enough, Bush administration supporters and officials are already starting to plan for, or call for, more of the same when it comes to solving Washington's problems -- that is, militarizing them further. Various possible military interventions in Pakistan are now clearly going on the table. They range from sending A! merican military trainers into Pakistan's tribal areas to train a supposedly pro-government militia force to the mad suggestion that U.S. Special Forces extract Pakistani "nuclear materials and warheads" from that country and somehow ship them to New Mexico in the US of A.
That gem of a proposal, which appeared in a recent New York Times op-ed, is the bizarre stepchild of an American Enterprise Institute/Brookings Institution collaboration from the tag-team of Frederick Kagan and Michael O'Hanlon. As journalist Jim Lobe comments, "I have no doubt that their musings are indeed an indication of what is speeding to the top of the administration's national-security agenda."
The urge to militarize anti-nuclear-proliferation efforts has been at the heart of the Bush administration's post-9/11 planning. The potential for "loose nukes" in Pakistan and the possibility of that country being a "ticking nuclear time bomb" for the proliferation of such weaponry is indeed unnerving. But journalists Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz, who spent four years tracking the most sensational proliferation story in history -- the troubling journey of the "father" of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, A. Q. Khan -- for their just published book, The Nuclear Jihadist, provide a timely reminder of exactly how hopeless a military response to nuclear proliferation really is.
You just can't launch a war against an underground global business, one that, until recently, the Bush administration showed a remarkable lack of interest in pursuing in more peaceful ways in Pakistan, including by questioning Khan himself. Any military "solution" to the Pakistani bomb crisis will undoubtedly prove as hopeless there as elsewhere. In the end, A.Q. Khan's proliferation spree may be the most devastating horror story of the nuclear age. It's also riveting, as Collins and Frantz show us, using private letters that Khan exchanged with a Canadian-Pakistani friend and collaborator. Tom
The Proliferation Game
How the World Helped Pakistan Build Its Bomb
By Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz
Globalization, what a concept. You can get a burger prepared your way practically anywhere in the world. The Nike Swoosh appears at elite athletic venues across the United States and on the skinny frames of t-shirted children playing in the streets of Calcutta. For those interested in buying an American automobile -- a word of warning -- it is not so unusual to find more "American content" in a Japanese car than one built by Detroit's Big Three.
So don't kid yourself about the Pakistani bomb. From burgers to bombs, globalization has had an impact. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal -- as many as 120 weapons -- is no more Pakistani than your television set is Japanese. Or is that American? It was a concept developed in one country and, for the most part, built in another. Its creation was an example of globalization before the term was even coined.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
There they go again. While Somalia burns at one end of "the arc of instability" (as Bush administration officials liked to call a swath of territory from North Africa to the Chinese border in the good old days before they thoroughly destabilized it), at the other end, the Taliban is now considered a "permanent presence" in more than 50% of Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan is in increasing chaos. As if that weren't enough, Bush administration supporters and officials are already starting to plan for, or call for, more of the same when it comes to solving Washington's problems -- that is, militarizing them further. Various possible military interventions in Pakistan are now clearly going on the table. They range from sending A! merican military trainers into Pakistan's tribal areas to train a supposedly pro-government militia force to the mad suggestion that U.S. Special Forces extract Pakistani "nuclear materials and warheads" from that country and somehow ship them to New Mexico in the US of A.
That gem of a proposal, which appeared in a recent New York Times op-ed, is the bizarre stepchild of an American Enterprise Institute/Brookings Institution collaboration from the tag-team of Frederick Kagan and Michael O'Hanlon. As journalist Jim Lobe comments, "I have no doubt that their musings are indeed an indication of what is speeding to the top of the administration's national-security agenda."
The urge to militarize anti-nuclear-proliferation efforts has been at the heart of the Bush administration's post-9/11 planning. The potential for "loose nukes" in Pakistan and the possibility of that country being a "ticking nuclear time bomb" for the proliferation of such weaponry is indeed unnerving. But journalists Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz, who spent four years tracking the most sensational proliferation story in history -- the troubling journey of the "father" of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, A. Q. Khan -- for their just published book, The Nuclear Jihadist, provide a timely reminder of exactly how hopeless a military response to nuclear proliferation really is.
You just can't launch a war against an underground global business, one that, until recently, the Bush administration showed a remarkable lack of interest in pursuing in more peaceful ways in Pakistan, including by questioning Khan himself. Any military "solution" to the Pakistani bomb crisis will undoubtedly prove as hopeless there as elsewhere. In the end, A.Q. Khan's proliferation spree may be the most devastating horror story of the nuclear age. It's also riveting, as Collins and Frantz show us, using private letters that Khan exchanged with a Canadian-Pakistani friend and collaborator. Tom
The Proliferation Game
How the World Helped Pakistan Build Its Bomb
By Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz
Globalization, what a concept. You can get a burger prepared your way practically anywhere in the world. The Nike Swoosh appears at elite athletic venues across the United States and on the skinny frames of t-shirted children playing in the streets of Calcutta. For those interested in buying an American automobile -- a word of warning -- it is not so unusual to find more "American content" in a Japanese car than one built by Detroit's Big Three.
So don't kid yourself about the Pakistani bomb. From burgers to bombs, globalization has had an impact. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal -- as many as 120 weapons -- is no more Pakistani than your television set is Japanese. Or is that American? It was a concept developed in one country and, for the most part, built in another. Its creation was an example of globalization before the term was even coined.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Climate Change
http://www.physorg.com/news115309448.html">Environmental exodus from PhysOrg.com
Climate change is the largest environmental change expected this century. It is likely to intensify droughts, storms and floods, which will undoubtedly lead to environmental migrations and potential conflicts in the areas migrated to.
[...]
Thursday, November 22, 2007
"
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Support Tom Engelhardt's site
How Dry We Are
A Question No One Wants to Raise About Drought
By Tom Engelhardt
Georgia's on my mind. Atlanta, Georgia. It's a city in trouble in a state in trouble in a region in trouble. Water trouble. Trouble big enough that the state government's moving fast. Just this week, backed up by a choir singing "Amazing Grace," accompanied by three protestant ministers, and 20 demonstrators from the Atlanta Freethought Society, Georgia's Baptist Governor Sonny Perdue led a crowd of hundreds in prayers for rain. "We've come together here," he said, "simply for one reason and one reason only: To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm." It seems, however, that the Almighty -- He "who can and will make a difference" -- was otherwise occupied and the regional drought continued to threaten Atlanta, a metropolis of 5 million people (and growing fast), with the possibility that it might run out of water in as little as 80 days or as much as a year, if the rains don't come.
Here's a little summary of the situation today:
Water rationing has hit the capital. Car washing and lawn watering are prohibited within city limits. Harvests in the region have dropped by 15-30%. By the end of summer, local reservoirs and dams were holding 5% of their capacity.
Oops, that's not Atlanta, or even the southeastern U.S. That's Ankara, Turkey, hit by a fierce drought and high temperatures that also have had southern and southwestern Europe in their grip.
Sorry, let's try that again. Imagine this scenario:
Over the last decade, 15-20% decreases in precipitation have been recorded. These water losses have been accompanied by record temperatures and increasing wildfires in areas where populations have been growing rapidly. A fierce drought has settled in -- of the hundred-year variety. Lawns can be watered but just for a few hours a day (and only by bucket); four-minute showers are the max allowed. Car washes are gone, though you can clean absolutely essential car windows and mirrors by hand.
Sound familiar? As it happens, that's not the American southeast either; that's a description of what's come to be called "The Big Dry" -- the unprecedented drought that has swept huge parts of Australia, the worst in at least a century on an already notoriously dry continent, but also part of the world's breadbasket, where crops are now failing regularly and farms closing down.
In fact, on my way along the parched path toward Atlanta, Georgia, I found myself taking any number of drought-stricken detours. There's Moldova. (If you're like me, odds are you don't even know where that small, former Soviet republic falls on a map.) Like much of southern Europe, it experienced baking temperatures this summer, exceptionally low precipitation, sometimes far less than 50% of expected rainfall, failing crops and farms, and spreading wildfires. (The same was true, to one degree or another, of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, and -- with its 100-year record scorching of Biblical proportions -- Greece which lost 10% of its forest cover in a month-long fiery apocalypse, leaving "large tracts of countryside…. at risk of depopulation.")
Or how about Morocco, across the Mediterranean, which experienced 50% less rainfall than normal? Or the Canary Islands, those Spanish vacation spots in the Atlantic Ocean known to millions of visitors for their year-around mild climate which, this summer, morphed into 104 degree days, strong winds, and fierce wildfires. Eighty-six thousand acres were burnt to a crisp, engulfing some of the islands in flames and smoke that drove out thousands of tourists?
Or what about Mexico's Tehuacán Valley, where, thousands of years ago, corn was first domesticated as an agricultural crop. Even today, asking for "un Tehuacán" in a restaurant in Mexico still means getting the best bottled mineral water in the country. Unfortunately, the area hasn't had a good rain since 2003, and the ensuing drought conditions have made subsistence farming next to impossible, sending desperate locals northwards and across the border as illegal immigrants -- some into southern California, itself just swept by monstrous Santa Ana-driven wildfires, fanned by prolonged drought conditions and fed tinder by new communities built deep into the wild lands where the fires gestate. And Tehuacán is but one disaster zone in a growing Mexican catastrophe. As Mike Davis has written, "Abandoned ranchitos and near-ghost towns throughout Coahuila, Chihuahua and Sonora testify to the relentless succession of dry years -- beginning in the 1980s but assuming truly catastrophic intensity in the late 1990s -- that has pushed hundreds of thousands of poor rural people toward the sweatshops of Ciudad Juárez and the barrios of Los Angeles."
According to the How Dry I Am Chart of "livability expert" Bert Sperling, four cities in Southern California, not parched Atlanta, top the national drought ratings: Los Angeles, San Diego, Oxnard, and Riverside. In addition, Pasadena has had the dubious honor, through September, of experiencing its driest year in history.
Resource Wars in the Homeland
"Resource wars" are things that happen elsewhere. We don't usually think of our country as water poor or imagine that "resource wars" might be applied as a description to various state and local governments in the southwest, southeast, or upper Midwest now fighting tooth and nail for previously shared water. And yet, "war" may not be a bad metaphor for what's on the horizon. According to the National Climate Data Center, federal officials have declared 43% of the contiguous U.S. to be in "moderate to extreme drought." Already, Sonny Perdue of Georgia is embroiled in an ever more bitter conflict -- a "water war," as the headlines say -- with the governors of Florida and Alabama, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers, over the flow of water into and out of the Atlanta area.
He's hardly alone. After all, the Southwest is in the grips of what, according to Davis, some climatologists are terming a "'mega-drought,' even the 'worst in 500 years.'" More shockingly, he writes, such conditions may actually represent the region's new "normal weather." The upper Midwest is also in rainfall-shortage mode, with water levels at all the Great Lakes dropping unnervingly. The water level of Lake Superior, for instance, has fallen to the "lowest point on record for this time of year." (Notice, by the way, how many "records" are being set nationally and globally in these drought years; how many places are already beginning to push beyond history, which means beyond any reference point we have.)
And then there's the southeast, 26% of which, according to the National Weather Service, is in a state of "exceptional" drought, its most extreme category, and 78% of which is "drought-affected." We're talking here about a region normally considered rich in water resources setting a bevy of records for dryness. It has been the driest year on record for North Carolina and Tennessee, for instance, while 18 months of blue skies have led Georgia to break every historical record, whether measured by "the percentage of moisture in the soil, the flow rate of rivers, [or] inches of rain."
Atlanta is hardly the only city or town in the region with a dwindling water supply. According to David Bracken of Raleigh's News & Observer, "17 North Carolina water systems, including Raleigh and Durham, have 100 or fewer days of water supply remaining before they reach the dregs." Rock Spring, South Carolina, "has been without water for a month. Farmers are hauling water by pickup truck to keep their cattle alive." The same is true for the tiny town of Orme, Tennessee, where the mayor turns on the water for only three hours a day.
And then, there's Atlanta, its metropolitan area "watered" mainly by a 1950s man-made reservoir, Lake Lanier, which, in dramatic photos, is turning into baked mud. Already with a population of five million and known for its uncontrolled growth (as well as lack of water planning), the city is expected to house another two million inhabitants by 2030. And yet, depending on which article you read, Atlanta will essentially run out of water by New Year's eve, in 80 days, in 120 days, or, according to the Army Corps of Engineers -- which seems to find this reassuring -- in 375 days, if the drought continues (as it may well do).
Okay, so let's try again:
Across the region, fountains sit "bone dry"; in small towns, "full-soak" baptisms have been stopped; car washes and laundromats are cutting hours or shutting down. Golf courses have resorted to watering only tees and greens. Campfires, stoves, and grills are banned in some national parks. The boats have left Lake Lanier and the metal detectors have arrived.
This is the verdant southeastern United States, which, thanks in part to a developing La Nina effect in the Pacific Ocean, now faces the likelihood of a drier than ever winter. And, to put this in context, keep in mind that 2007 "to date has been the warmest on record for land [and]… the seventh warmest year so far over the oceans, working out to the fourth warmest overall worldwide." Oh, and up in the Arctic sea, the ice pack reached its lowest level this September since satellite measurements were begun in 1979.
And Then?
And then, there's that question which has been nagging at me ever since this story first caught my attention in early October as it headed out of the regional press and slowly made its way toward the top of the nightly TV news and the front-pages of national newspapers; it's the question I've been waiting patiently for some environmental reporter(s) somewhere in the mainstream media to address; the question that seems to me so obvious I find it hard to believe everyone isn't thinking about it; the one you would automatically want to have answered -- or at least gnawed on by thoughtful, expert reporters and knowledgeable pundits. Every day for the last month or more I've waited, as each piece on Atlanta ends at more or less the same point -- with the dire possibility that the city's water will soon be gone -- as though hitting a brick wall.
Not that there hasn't been some fine reportage -- on the extremity of the situation, the overbuilding and overpopulating of the metropolitan region, the utter heedlessness that went with it, and the resource wars that have since engulfed it. Still, I've Googled around, read scores of pieces on the subject, and they all -- even the one whose first paragraph asked, "What if Atlanta's faucets really do go dry?" -- seem to end just where my question begins. It's as if, in each piece, the reporter had reached the edge of some precipice down which no one cares to look, lest we all go over.
Based on the record of the last seven years, we can take it for granted that the Bush administration hasn't the slightest desire to glance down; that no one in FEMA who matters has given the situation the thought it deserves; and that, on this subject, as on so many others, top administration officials are just hoping to make it to January 2009 without too many more scar marks. But, if not the federal government, shouldn't somebody be asking? Shouldn't somebody check out what's actually down there?
So let me ask it this way: And then?
And then what exactly can we expect? If the southeastern drought is already off the charts in Georgia, then, whether it's 80 days or 800 days, isn't there a possibility that Atlanta may one day in the not-so-distant future be without water? And what then?
Okay, they're trucking water into waterless Orme, Tennessee, but the town's mayor, Tony Reames, put the matter well, worrying about Atlanta. "We can survive. We're 145 people but you've got 4.5 million there. What are they going to do?"
What indeed? Has water ever been trucked in to so many people before? And what about industry including, in the case of Atlanta, Coca Cola, which is, after all, a business based on water? What about restaurants that need to wash their plates or doctors in hospitals who need to wash their hands?
Let's face it, with water, you're down to the basics. And if, as some say, we've passed the point not of "peak oil," but of "peak water" (and cheap water) on significant parts of the planet… well, what then?
I mean, I'm hardly an expert on this, but what exactly are we talking about here? Someday in the reasonably near future could Atlanta, or Phoenix, which in winter 2005-2006, went 143 days without a bit of rain, or Las Vegas become a Katrina minus the storm? Are we talking here about a new trail of tears? What exactly would happen to the poor of Atlanta? To Atlanta itself?
Certainly, you've seen the articles about what global warming might do in the future to fragile or low-lying areas of the world. Such pieces usually mention the possibility of enormous migrations of the poor and desperate. But we don't usually think about that in the "homeland." Maybe we should.
Or maybe, for all I know, if the drought continues, parts of the region will burn to a frizzle first, à la parts of southern California, before they can even experience the complete loss of water? Will we have hundred-year fire records in the South, without a Santa Ana wind in sight? And what then?
Mass Migrations?
Okay, excuse a terrible, even tasteless, sports analogy, but think of this as a major bowl game, and they've sent one of the water boys -- me -- to man the press booth. I mean, please. Why am I the one asking this? Where's the media's first team?
In my own admittedly limited search of the mainstream, I found only one vivid, thoughtful recent piece on this subject: "The Future Is Drying Up," by Jon Gertner, written for the New York Times Magazine. It focused on the southwestern drought and began to explore some of the "and thens," as in this brief passage on Colorado in which Gertner quotes Roger Pulwarty, a "highly regarded climatologist" at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:
"The worst outcome…. would be mass migrations out of the region, along with bitter interstate court battles over the dwindling water supplies. But well before that, if too much water is siphoned from agriculture, farm towns and ranch towns will wither. Meanwhile, Colorado's largest industry, tourism, might collapse if river flows became a trickle during summertime."
Mass migrations, exfiltrations…. Stop a sec and take in that possibility and what exactly it might mean. After all, we do have some small idea, having, in recent years, lost one American city, New Orleans, at least temporarily.
Or consider another "and then" prediction: What if the prolonged drought in the southwest turns out, as Mike Davis wrote in the Nation magazine, to be "on the scale of the medieval catastrophes that contributed to the notorious collapse of the complex Anasazi societies at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde during the twelfth century"?
What if, indeed.
I'm not simply being apocalyptic here. I'm just asking. It's not even that I expect answers. I'd just like to see a crew of folks with the necessary skills explore the "and then" question for the rest of us. Try to connect a few dots, or tell us if they don't connect, or just explain where the dots really are.
As the World Burns
Okay, since I'm griping on the subject, let me toss in another complaint. As this piece has indicated, the southeastern drought, unlike the famed cheese of childhood song, does not exactly stand alone. Such conditions, often involving record or near record temperatures, and record or near record wildfires, can be observed at numerous places across the planet. So why is it that, except at relatively obscure websites, you can hardly find a mainstream piece that mentions more than one drought at a time?
An honorable exception would be a recent Seattle Times column by Neal Peirce that brought together the southwestern and southeastern droughts, as well as the Western "flame zone," where "mega-fires" are increasingly the norm, in the context of global warming, in order to consider our seemingly willful "myopia about the future."
But you'd be hard-pressed to find many pieces in our major newspapers (or on the TV news) that put all (or even a number) of the extreme drought spots on the global map together in order to ask a simple question (even if its answer may prove complex indeed): Do they have anything in common? And if so, what? And if so, what then?
To find even tentative answers to such questions you have to leave the mainstream. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, for example, interviewed paleontologist and author of The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change, Tim Flannery recently on the topic of a "world on fire." Flannery offered the following observation:
"It's not just the Southeast of the United States. Europe has had its great droughts and water shortages. Australia is in the grip of a drought that's almost unbelievable in its ferocity. Again, this is a global picture. We're just getting much less usable water than we did a decade or two or three decades ago. It's a sort of thing again that the climate models are predicting. In terms of the floods, again we see the same thing. You know, a warmer atmosphere is just a more energetic atmosphere. So if you ask me about a single flood event or a single fire event, it's really hard to make the connection, but take the bigger picture and you can see very clearly what's happening."
I know answers to the "and then" question are not easy or necessarily simple. But if drought -- or call it "desertification" -- becomes more widespread, more common in heavily populated parts of the globe already bursting at the seams (and with more people arriving daily), if whole regions no longer have the necessary water, how many trails of tears, how many of those mass migrations or civilizational collapses are possible? How much burning and suffering and misery are we likely to experience? And what then?
These are questions I can't answer; that the Bush administration is guaranteed to be desperately unwilling and unprepared to face; and that, as yet, the media has largely refused to consider in a serious way. And if the media can't face this and begin to connect some dots, why shouldn't Americans be in denial, too?
It's not that no one is thinking about, or doing work on, drought. I know that scientists have been asking the "and then" questions (or perhaps far more relevant ones that I can't even formulate); that somewhere people have been exploring, studying, writing about them. But how am I to find out?
Of course, all of us can wander the Internet; we can visit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has just set up a new website to help encourage drought coverage; we can drop in at blogs like RealClimate.org and ClimateProgress.org, which make a habit of keeping up with, or ahead of, such stories; or even, for instance, the Georgia Drought website of the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; or we can keep an eye on a new organization of journalists (well covered recently on the NPR show "On the Media"), Circle of Blue, who are planning to concentrate on water issues. But, believe me, even when you get to some of these sites, you may find yourself in an unknown landscape with no obvious water holes in view and no guides to lead you there.
In the meantime, there may be no trail of tears out of Atlanta; there may even be rain in the city's near future for all any of us know; but it's clear enough that, globally and possibly nationally, tragedy awaits. It's time to call in the first team to ask some questions.
Honestly, I don't demand answers. Just a little investigation, some thought, and a glimpse or two over that precipice as the world turns.... and bakes and burns.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
Copyright 2007 Tom Engelhardt
A Question No One Wants to Raise About Drought
By Tom Engelhardt
Georgia's on my mind. Atlanta, Georgia. It's a city in trouble in a state in trouble in a region in trouble. Water trouble. Trouble big enough that the state government's moving fast. Just this week, backed up by a choir singing "Amazing Grace," accompanied by three protestant ministers, and 20 demonstrators from the Atlanta Freethought Society, Georgia's Baptist Governor Sonny Perdue led a crowd of hundreds in prayers for rain. "We've come together here," he said, "simply for one reason and one reason only: To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm." It seems, however, that the Almighty -- He "who can and will make a difference" -- was otherwise occupied and the regional drought continued to threaten Atlanta, a metropolis of 5 million people (and growing fast), with the possibility that it might run out of water in as little as 80 days or as much as a year, if the rains don't come.
Here's a little summary of the situation today:
Water rationing has hit the capital. Car washing and lawn watering are prohibited within city limits. Harvests in the region have dropped by 15-30%. By the end of summer, local reservoirs and dams were holding 5% of their capacity.
Oops, that's not Atlanta, or even the southeastern U.S. That's Ankara, Turkey, hit by a fierce drought and high temperatures that also have had southern and southwestern Europe in their grip.
Sorry, let's try that again. Imagine this scenario:
Over the last decade, 15-20% decreases in precipitation have been recorded. These water losses have been accompanied by record temperatures and increasing wildfires in areas where populations have been growing rapidly. A fierce drought has settled in -- of the hundred-year variety. Lawns can be watered but just for a few hours a day (and only by bucket); four-minute showers are the max allowed. Car washes are gone, though you can clean absolutely essential car windows and mirrors by hand.
Sound familiar? As it happens, that's not the American southeast either; that's a description of what's come to be called "The Big Dry" -- the unprecedented drought that has swept huge parts of Australia, the worst in at least a century on an already notoriously dry continent, but also part of the world's breadbasket, where crops are now failing regularly and farms closing down.
In fact, on my way along the parched path toward Atlanta, Georgia, I found myself taking any number of drought-stricken detours. There's Moldova. (If you're like me, odds are you don't even know where that small, former Soviet republic falls on a map.) Like much of southern Europe, it experienced baking temperatures this summer, exceptionally low precipitation, sometimes far less than 50% of expected rainfall, failing crops and farms, and spreading wildfires. (The same was true, to one degree or another, of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, and -- with its 100-year record scorching of Biblical proportions -- Greece which lost 10% of its forest cover in a month-long fiery apocalypse, leaving "large tracts of countryside…. at risk of depopulation.")
Or how about Morocco, across the Mediterranean, which experienced 50% less rainfall than normal? Or the Canary Islands, those Spanish vacation spots in the Atlantic Ocean known to millions of visitors for their year-around mild climate which, this summer, morphed into 104 degree days, strong winds, and fierce wildfires. Eighty-six thousand acres were burnt to a crisp, engulfing some of the islands in flames and smoke that drove out thousands of tourists?
Or what about Mexico's Tehuacán Valley, where, thousands of years ago, corn was first domesticated as an agricultural crop. Even today, asking for "un Tehuacán" in a restaurant in Mexico still means getting the best bottled mineral water in the country. Unfortunately, the area hasn't had a good rain since 2003, and the ensuing drought conditions have made subsistence farming next to impossible, sending desperate locals northwards and across the border as illegal immigrants -- some into southern California, itself just swept by monstrous Santa Ana-driven wildfires, fanned by prolonged drought conditions and fed tinder by new communities built deep into the wild lands where the fires gestate. And Tehuacán is but one disaster zone in a growing Mexican catastrophe. As Mike Davis has written, "Abandoned ranchitos and near-ghost towns throughout Coahuila, Chihuahua and Sonora testify to the relentless succession of dry years -- beginning in the 1980s but assuming truly catastrophic intensity in the late 1990s -- that has pushed hundreds of thousands of poor rural people toward the sweatshops of Ciudad Juárez and the barrios of Los Angeles."
According to the How Dry I Am Chart of "livability expert" Bert Sperling, four cities in Southern California, not parched Atlanta, top the national drought ratings: Los Angeles, San Diego, Oxnard, and Riverside. In addition, Pasadena has had the dubious honor, through September, of experiencing its driest year in history.
Resource Wars in the Homeland
"Resource wars" are things that happen elsewhere. We don't usually think of our country as water poor or imagine that "resource wars" might be applied as a description to various state and local governments in the southwest, southeast, or upper Midwest now fighting tooth and nail for previously shared water. And yet, "war" may not be a bad metaphor for what's on the horizon. According to the National Climate Data Center, federal officials have declared 43% of the contiguous U.S. to be in "moderate to extreme drought." Already, Sonny Perdue of Georgia is embroiled in an ever more bitter conflict -- a "water war," as the headlines say -- with the governors of Florida and Alabama, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers, over the flow of water into and out of the Atlanta area.
He's hardly alone. After all, the Southwest is in the grips of what, according to Davis, some climatologists are terming a "'mega-drought,' even the 'worst in 500 years.'" More shockingly, he writes, such conditions may actually represent the region's new "normal weather." The upper Midwest is also in rainfall-shortage mode, with water levels at all the Great Lakes dropping unnervingly. The water level of Lake Superior, for instance, has fallen to the "lowest point on record for this time of year." (Notice, by the way, how many "records" are being set nationally and globally in these drought years; how many places are already beginning to push beyond history, which means beyond any reference point we have.)
And then there's the southeast, 26% of which, according to the National Weather Service, is in a state of "exceptional" drought, its most extreme category, and 78% of which is "drought-affected." We're talking here about a region normally considered rich in water resources setting a bevy of records for dryness. It has been the driest year on record for North Carolina and Tennessee, for instance, while 18 months of blue skies have led Georgia to break every historical record, whether measured by "the percentage of moisture in the soil, the flow rate of rivers, [or] inches of rain."
Atlanta is hardly the only city or town in the region with a dwindling water supply. According to David Bracken of Raleigh's News & Observer, "17 North Carolina water systems, including Raleigh and Durham, have 100 or fewer days of water supply remaining before they reach the dregs." Rock Spring, South Carolina, "has been without water for a month. Farmers are hauling water by pickup truck to keep their cattle alive." The same is true for the tiny town of Orme, Tennessee, where the mayor turns on the water for only three hours a day.
And then, there's Atlanta, its metropolitan area "watered" mainly by a 1950s man-made reservoir, Lake Lanier, which, in dramatic photos, is turning into baked mud. Already with a population of five million and known for its uncontrolled growth (as well as lack of water planning), the city is expected to house another two million inhabitants by 2030. And yet, depending on which article you read, Atlanta will essentially run out of water by New Year's eve, in 80 days, in 120 days, or, according to the Army Corps of Engineers -- which seems to find this reassuring -- in 375 days, if the drought continues (as it may well do).
Okay, so let's try again:
Across the region, fountains sit "bone dry"; in small towns, "full-soak" baptisms have been stopped; car washes and laundromats are cutting hours or shutting down. Golf courses have resorted to watering only tees and greens. Campfires, stoves, and grills are banned in some national parks. The boats have left Lake Lanier and the metal detectors have arrived.
This is the verdant southeastern United States, which, thanks in part to a developing La Nina effect in the Pacific Ocean, now faces the likelihood of a drier than ever winter. And, to put this in context, keep in mind that 2007 "to date has been the warmest on record for land [and]… the seventh warmest year so far over the oceans, working out to the fourth warmest overall worldwide." Oh, and up in the Arctic sea, the ice pack reached its lowest level this September since satellite measurements were begun in 1979.
And Then?
And then, there's that question which has been nagging at me ever since this story first caught my attention in early October as it headed out of the regional press and slowly made its way toward the top of the nightly TV news and the front-pages of national newspapers; it's the question I've been waiting patiently for some environmental reporter(s) somewhere in the mainstream media to address; the question that seems to me so obvious I find it hard to believe everyone isn't thinking about it; the one you would automatically want to have answered -- or at least gnawed on by thoughtful, expert reporters and knowledgeable pundits. Every day for the last month or more I've waited, as each piece on Atlanta ends at more or less the same point -- with the dire possibility that the city's water will soon be gone -- as though hitting a brick wall.
Not that there hasn't been some fine reportage -- on the extremity of the situation, the overbuilding and overpopulating of the metropolitan region, the utter heedlessness that went with it, and the resource wars that have since engulfed it. Still, I've Googled around, read scores of pieces on the subject, and they all -- even the one whose first paragraph asked, "What if Atlanta's faucets really do go dry?" -- seem to end just where my question begins. It's as if, in each piece, the reporter had reached the edge of some precipice down which no one cares to look, lest we all go over.
Based on the record of the last seven years, we can take it for granted that the Bush administration hasn't the slightest desire to glance down; that no one in FEMA who matters has given the situation the thought it deserves; and that, on this subject, as on so many others, top administration officials are just hoping to make it to January 2009 without too many more scar marks. But, if not the federal government, shouldn't somebody be asking? Shouldn't somebody check out what's actually down there?
So let me ask it this way: And then?
And then what exactly can we expect? If the southeastern drought is already off the charts in Georgia, then, whether it's 80 days or 800 days, isn't there a possibility that Atlanta may one day in the not-so-distant future be without water? And what then?
Okay, they're trucking water into waterless Orme, Tennessee, but the town's mayor, Tony Reames, put the matter well, worrying about Atlanta. "We can survive. We're 145 people but you've got 4.5 million there. What are they going to do?"
What indeed? Has water ever been trucked in to so many people before? And what about industry including, in the case of Atlanta, Coca Cola, which is, after all, a business based on water? What about restaurants that need to wash their plates or doctors in hospitals who need to wash their hands?
Let's face it, with water, you're down to the basics. And if, as some say, we've passed the point not of "peak oil," but of "peak water" (and cheap water) on significant parts of the planet… well, what then?
I mean, I'm hardly an expert on this, but what exactly are we talking about here? Someday in the reasonably near future could Atlanta, or Phoenix, which in winter 2005-2006, went 143 days without a bit of rain, or Las Vegas become a Katrina minus the storm? Are we talking here about a new trail of tears? What exactly would happen to the poor of Atlanta? To Atlanta itself?
Certainly, you've seen the articles about what global warming might do in the future to fragile or low-lying areas of the world. Such pieces usually mention the possibility of enormous migrations of the poor and desperate. But we don't usually think about that in the "homeland." Maybe we should.
Or maybe, for all I know, if the drought continues, parts of the region will burn to a frizzle first, à la parts of southern California, before they can even experience the complete loss of water? Will we have hundred-year fire records in the South, without a Santa Ana wind in sight? And what then?
Mass Migrations?
Okay, excuse a terrible, even tasteless, sports analogy, but think of this as a major bowl game, and they've sent one of the water boys -- me -- to man the press booth. I mean, please. Why am I the one asking this? Where's the media's first team?
In my own admittedly limited search of the mainstream, I found only one vivid, thoughtful recent piece on this subject: "The Future Is Drying Up," by Jon Gertner, written for the New York Times Magazine. It focused on the southwestern drought and began to explore some of the "and thens," as in this brief passage on Colorado in which Gertner quotes Roger Pulwarty, a "highly regarded climatologist" at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:
"The worst outcome…. would be mass migrations out of the region, along with bitter interstate court battles over the dwindling water supplies. But well before that, if too much water is siphoned from agriculture, farm towns and ranch towns will wither. Meanwhile, Colorado's largest industry, tourism, might collapse if river flows became a trickle during summertime."
Mass migrations, exfiltrations…. Stop a sec and take in that possibility and what exactly it might mean. After all, we do have some small idea, having, in recent years, lost one American city, New Orleans, at least temporarily.
Or consider another "and then" prediction: What if the prolonged drought in the southwest turns out, as Mike Davis wrote in the Nation magazine, to be "on the scale of the medieval catastrophes that contributed to the notorious collapse of the complex Anasazi societies at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde during the twelfth century"?
What if, indeed.
I'm not simply being apocalyptic here. I'm just asking. It's not even that I expect answers. I'd just like to see a crew of folks with the necessary skills explore the "and then" question for the rest of us. Try to connect a few dots, or tell us if they don't connect, or just explain where the dots really are.
As the World Burns
Okay, since I'm griping on the subject, let me toss in another complaint. As this piece has indicated, the southeastern drought, unlike the famed cheese of childhood song, does not exactly stand alone. Such conditions, often involving record or near record temperatures, and record or near record wildfires, can be observed at numerous places across the planet. So why is it that, except at relatively obscure websites, you can hardly find a mainstream piece that mentions more than one drought at a time?
An honorable exception would be a recent Seattle Times column by Neal Peirce that brought together the southwestern and southeastern droughts, as well as the Western "flame zone," where "mega-fires" are increasingly the norm, in the context of global warming, in order to consider our seemingly willful "myopia about the future."
But you'd be hard-pressed to find many pieces in our major newspapers (or on the TV news) that put all (or even a number) of the extreme drought spots on the global map together in order to ask a simple question (even if its answer may prove complex indeed): Do they have anything in common? And if so, what? And if so, what then?
To find even tentative answers to such questions you have to leave the mainstream. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, for example, interviewed paleontologist and author of The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change, Tim Flannery recently on the topic of a "world on fire." Flannery offered the following observation:
"It's not just the Southeast of the United States. Europe has had its great droughts and water shortages. Australia is in the grip of a drought that's almost unbelievable in its ferocity. Again, this is a global picture. We're just getting much less usable water than we did a decade or two or three decades ago. It's a sort of thing again that the climate models are predicting. In terms of the floods, again we see the same thing. You know, a warmer atmosphere is just a more energetic atmosphere. So if you ask me about a single flood event or a single fire event, it's really hard to make the connection, but take the bigger picture and you can see very clearly what's happening."
I know answers to the "and then" question are not easy or necessarily simple. But if drought -- or call it "desertification" -- becomes more widespread, more common in heavily populated parts of the globe already bursting at the seams (and with more people arriving daily), if whole regions no longer have the necessary water, how many trails of tears, how many of those mass migrations or civilizational collapses are possible? How much burning and suffering and misery are we likely to experience? And what then?
These are questions I can't answer; that the Bush administration is guaranteed to be desperately unwilling and unprepared to face; and that, as yet, the media has largely refused to consider in a serious way. And if the media can't face this and begin to connect some dots, why shouldn't Americans be in denial, too?
It's not that no one is thinking about, or doing work on, drought. I know that scientists have been asking the "and then" questions (or perhaps far more relevant ones that I can't even formulate); that somewhere people have been exploring, studying, writing about them. But how am I to find out?
Of course, all of us can wander the Internet; we can visit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has just set up a new website to help encourage drought coverage; we can drop in at blogs like RealClimate.org and ClimateProgress.org, which make a habit of keeping up with, or ahead of, such stories; or even, for instance, the Georgia Drought website of the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; or we can keep an eye on a new organization of journalists (well covered recently on the NPR show "On the Media"), Circle of Blue, who are planning to concentrate on water issues. But, believe me, even when you get to some of these sites, you may find yourself in an unknown landscape with no obvious water holes in view and no guides to lead you there.
In the meantime, there may be no trail of tears out of Atlanta; there may even be rain in the city's near future for all any of us know; but it's clear enough that, globally and possibly nationally, tragedy awaits. It's time to call in the first team to ask some questions.
Honestly, I don't demand answers. Just a little investigation, some thought, and a glimpse or two over that precipice as the world turns.... and bakes and burns.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
Copyright 2007 Tom Engelhardt
Monday, November 19, 2007
Extremes
The year of extremes
Climate changes already apparent; Northeast should be prepared for its turn
By Richard A. Rehberg, Ph.D.
1 Comment
Extreme weather has made the Weather Channel a source of unending fascination this year.
In North America, Texas and Oklahoma experienced record rainfall. Searing heat, severe drought, and intense brush and forest fires plagued the West and the Southwest. Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, and Virginia experienced prolonged drought. Atlanta, Ga., worries whether it will have drinking water beyond the New Year. Record 100-year floods plagued parts of the American Midwest. A tornado struck Brooklyn, New York. Severe thunderstorms shut sections of the New York City subway system. Intense hurricanes swept the Caribbean and Central America, and floods have just inundated much of the Mexican state of Chiapas. Fortunately, in the Southern Tier, we enjoyed a rather pleasant summer.
Europe and Asia have experienced extreme weather as well. May, June and July were the wettest in England and Wales since records began in 1766. Rainfall in Germany was the highest in May since observations began in 1901. Southeastern Europe suffered record-breaking heat during June and July. Heavy rains ravaged areas of Southern China, bringing hardship to almost 14 million people, with more than 120 deaths. Long-term drought threatens to cut farm output in Australia by up to 20 percent and economic growth by 1 to 2 percent.
Weather is what we experience today, this month, and this year. No single weather event -- for example, Hurricane Katrina -- can be attributed to climate change. However, when we average weather over longer periods of time, say over 30 years or more, we have what scientists call climate. Actual weather measurements, including temperature and precipitation extend back 100 or more years. Cores drilled from Greenland and the Antarctic as well as from the ocean beds enable scientists to infer the Earth's climate 300,000 to 400,000 years into the geological past. By studying climate over these periods, scientists are able to understand how our climate is changing.
Climate change over the planet
That the Earth's climate is changing is regarded as "unequivocal" by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Since the 1800s, the average temperature of the planet has risen by almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit. More than half of that increase has occurred since the late 1970s. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the greenhouse gas responsible for about 50 percent of observed human-caused climate change. Since the Industrial Revolution began in the early 1800s, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) to over 385 ppm today. Methane, nitrous oxide and other trace gases also contribute. Greenhouse gases are the "trapdoors" of our atmosphere: open to the shorter wavelengths of the sun's incoming energy, energy that warms the surface of the Earth, but closed to the longer wavelengths (infrared) of that energy that is reradiated to our atmosphere. Once trapped within the atmosphere, that energy warms our planet. The more fossil fuel we burn the more greenhouse gases we emit and the warmer the planet becomes. Absent substantial reductions in our burning of fossil fuels and forests, atmospheric CO2 is projected to rise by 2050 to 450 to 550 ppm and by 2100 to 900 to 1,000 ppm. During this period, average global temperatures are projected to increase by between 4 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
Other evidence confirms the changing of Earth's climate:
* Ocean temperatures to depths of 10,000 feet are rising, indicating that the oceans have absorbed more than 80 percent of the heat added to the climate system;
* Ice sheet losses are accelerating both in Greenland and the Antarctic;
* Arctic temperatures have risen at almost twice the global rate in the past 50 years;
* Atmospheric water vapor is increasing (warmer air holds more moisture);
* Global precipitation is increasing;
* Periods of intense rainfall are becoming more frequent;
* Severe droughts occur more often;
* Cold days and nights are decreasing; warm days and nights are increasing, spring arrives almost a month earlier and fall a month later;
* Heat waves are rising in frequency and intensity; and
* Hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific are becoming more intense.
Climate change here in the Northeast
We in the Northeast should not expect our weather good fortune of this past year to continue. Our region already has been affected by climate change. Since 1970, the Northeast has been warming at a rate of nearly 0.5 degree Fahrenheit per decade with winter temperatures rising even more rapidly at a rate of about 1.3 F per decade from 1970 to 2000.
Indeed, "Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast," a report released in July of this year by the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessments (NECIA) team notes that warming over the past 40 years or so, our region has been marked by:
* More frequent days with temperatures above 90 F;
* Longer growing seasons;
* Less winter precipitation falling as snow and more as rain;
* Reduced snow pack and increased snow density;
* Earlier ice breakups on rivers and lakes;
* Earlier spring snowmelt resulting in earlier river and stream peak flows.
Moreover, because of the heat already stored in the oceans and the heat trapping gases now in the atmosphere, NECIA projects that by mid-century and beyond temperatures in the Northeast will rise another 2.5 to 4 F in winter and 1.5 F to 3.5 F in summer.
If United States, China, and India continue their "high emissions" of carbon and other greenhouse gases, then we may anticipate a "starkly" different climate future. Under this "high emissions" scenario, the NECIA projects for the Northeastern United States that by 2100 (when our children and grandchildren shall have inherited our future):
* Winters in the Northeast will warm by 8 to 12 F and summers by 6 to 14 F above historic levels;
* The snow season in northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine will be cut in half;
* Northeastern cities will average 20 or more days of 100 F-plus temperatures compared with only a few such days at present;
* Short-term droughts (one to three months) could occur as often as once each summer in the Catskills and the Adirondacks and across New England;
* Extreme coastal flooding that now occurs only once a century could strike New York City on average once a decade;
* Hemlock stands that shade and cool Northeast streams could be lost to pests that thrive in warmer weather with the result that many steams will lose their shade, thus raising their temperatures and threatening native brook trout and other favorite species;
* As forest habitat changes, migratory songbirds such as the Baltimore oriole, American goldfinch and song sparrow may become less abundant;
* Parts of the Northeast may become unsuitable for growing certain varieties of apples, blueberries and cranberries. Milk production will be subject to decline significantly in the warmer months.
Immediate and substantial action by the world's major economies, including the United States, India and China, could and would avoid Northeast climate change of the magnitude we have just described. NOTE: With a lower-emissions scenario, projected changes might be only half the magnitude of those described for the higher-emissions scenario.
In California, both Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature, informed and inspired in part by examples set by the European Union, have committed the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to pre-1990 levels by the year 2020. They have set an even more ambitious goal of an 80 percent reduction below 1990 levels by 2050. New York state is considering similar ambitious reductions. Almost all scientists believe that such dramatic reductions must be achieved by all of humanity if we are to avoid potentially catastrophic climate change.
Which leaves us with this critical question: if California, New York, and a number of other states, along with much of Europe, recognize the severity the challenge posed by climate change and appear to be acting rather decisively to address that challenge, why is there so little evidence of bold and decisive leadership in Washington?
Climate changes already apparent; Northeast should be prepared for its turn
By Richard A. Rehberg, Ph.D.
1 Comment
Extreme weather has made the Weather Channel a source of unending fascination this year.
In North America, Texas and Oklahoma experienced record rainfall. Searing heat, severe drought, and intense brush and forest fires plagued the West and the Southwest. Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, and Virginia experienced prolonged drought. Atlanta, Ga., worries whether it will have drinking water beyond the New Year. Record 100-year floods plagued parts of the American Midwest. A tornado struck Brooklyn, New York. Severe thunderstorms shut sections of the New York City subway system. Intense hurricanes swept the Caribbean and Central America, and floods have just inundated much of the Mexican state of Chiapas. Fortunately, in the Southern Tier, we enjoyed a rather pleasant summer.
Europe and Asia have experienced extreme weather as well. May, June and July were the wettest in England and Wales since records began in 1766. Rainfall in Germany was the highest in May since observations began in 1901. Southeastern Europe suffered record-breaking heat during June and July. Heavy rains ravaged areas of Southern China, bringing hardship to almost 14 million people, with more than 120 deaths. Long-term drought threatens to cut farm output in Australia by up to 20 percent and economic growth by 1 to 2 percent.
Weather is what we experience today, this month, and this year. No single weather event -- for example, Hurricane Katrina -- can be attributed to climate change. However, when we average weather over longer periods of time, say over 30 years or more, we have what scientists call climate. Actual weather measurements, including temperature and precipitation extend back 100 or more years. Cores drilled from Greenland and the Antarctic as well as from the ocean beds enable scientists to infer the Earth's climate 300,000 to 400,000 years into the geological past. By studying climate over these periods, scientists are able to understand how our climate is changing.
Climate change over the planet
That the Earth's climate is changing is regarded as "unequivocal" by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Since the 1800s, the average temperature of the planet has risen by almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit. More than half of that increase has occurred since the late 1970s. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the greenhouse gas responsible for about 50 percent of observed human-caused climate change. Since the Industrial Revolution began in the early 1800s, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) to over 385 ppm today. Methane, nitrous oxide and other trace gases also contribute. Greenhouse gases are the "trapdoors" of our atmosphere: open to the shorter wavelengths of the sun's incoming energy, energy that warms the surface of the Earth, but closed to the longer wavelengths (infrared) of that energy that is reradiated to our atmosphere. Once trapped within the atmosphere, that energy warms our planet. The more fossil fuel we burn the more greenhouse gases we emit and the warmer the planet becomes. Absent substantial reductions in our burning of fossil fuels and forests, atmospheric CO2 is projected to rise by 2050 to 450 to 550 ppm and by 2100 to 900 to 1,000 ppm. During this period, average global temperatures are projected to increase by between 4 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
Other evidence confirms the changing of Earth's climate:
* Ocean temperatures to depths of 10,000 feet are rising, indicating that the oceans have absorbed more than 80 percent of the heat added to the climate system;
* Ice sheet losses are accelerating both in Greenland and the Antarctic;
* Arctic temperatures have risen at almost twice the global rate in the past 50 years;
* Atmospheric water vapor is increasing (warmer air holds more moisture);
* Global precipitation is increasing;
* Periods of intense rainfall are becoming more frequent;
* Severe droughts occur more often;
* Cold days and nights are decreasing; warm days and nights are increasing, spring arrives almost a month earlier and fall a month later;
* Heat waves are rising in frequency and intensity; and
* Hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific are becoming more intense.
Climate change here in the Northeast
We in the Northeast should not expect our weather good fortune of this past year to continue. Our region already has been affected by climate change. Since 1970, the Northeast has been warming at a rate of nearly 0.5 degree Fahrenheit per decade with winter temperatures rising even more rapidly at a rate of about 1.3 F per decade from 1970 to 2000.
Indeed, "Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast," a report released in July of this year by the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessments (NECIA) team notes that warming over the past 40 years or so, our region has been marked by:
* More frequent days with temperatures above 90 F;
* Longer growing seasons;
* Less winter precipitation falling as snow and more as rain;
* Reduced snow pack and increased snow density;
* Earlier ice breakups on rivers and lakes;
* Earlier spring snowmelt resulting in earlier river and stream peak flows.
Moreover, because of the heat already stored in the oceans and the heat trapping gases now in the atmosphere, NECIA projects that by mid-century and beyond temperatures in the Northeast will rise another 2.5 to 4 F in winter and 1.5 F to 3.5 F in summer.
If United States, China, and India continue their "high emissions" of carbon and other greenhouse gases, then we may anticipate a "starkly" different climate future. Under this "high emissions" scenario, the NECIA projects for the Northeastern United States that by 2100 (when our children and grandchildren shall have inherited our future):
* Winters in the Northeast will warm by 8 to 12 F and summers by 6 to 14 F above historic levels;
* The snow season in northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine will be cut in half;
* Northeastern cities will average 20 or more days of 100 F-plus temperatures compared with only a few such days at present;
* Short-term droughts (one to three months) could occur as often as once each summer in the Catskills and the Adirondacks and across New England;
* Extreme coastal flooding that now occurs only once a century could strike New York City on average once a decade;
* Hemlock stands that shade and cool Northeast streams could be lost to pests that thrive in warmer weather with the result that many steams will lose their shade, thus raising their temperatures and threatening native brook trout and other favorite species;
* As forest habitat changes, migratory songbirds such as the Baltimore oriole, American goldfinch and song sparrow may become less abundant;
* Parts of the Northeast may become unsuitable for growing certain varieties of apples, blueberries and cranberries. Milk production will be subject to decline significantly in the warmer months.
Immediate and substantial action by the world's major economies, including the United States, India and China, could and would avoid Northeast climate change of the magnitude we have just described. NOTE: With a lower-emissions scenario, projected changes might be only half the magnitude of those described for the higher-emissions scenario.
In California, both Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature, informed and inspired in part by examples set by the European Union, have committed the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to pre-1990 levels by the year 2020. They have set an even more ambitious goal of an 80 percent reduction below 1990 levels by 2050. New York state is considering similar ambitious reductions. Almost all scientists believe that such dramatic reductions must be achieved by all of humanity if we are to avoid potentially catastrophic climate change.
Which leaves us with this critical question: if California, New York, and a number of other states, along with much of Europe, recognize the severity the challenge posed by climate change and appear to be acting rather decisively to address that challenge, why is there so little evidence of bold and decisive leadership in Washington?
The Dollar's heading for the pits
Tension over dollar-weakness boils over at OPEC summit
Riyadh (dpa) - Tension over the weakness of the US dollar and rising oil prices boiled over Saturday at the opening session of the third-ever OPEC summit, with strident discussion over an Iranian demand that the final summit statement mention the weakness of the US dollar.
The heads of state of the 13-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries - meeting in Riyadh for only the third time in OPEC's 47-year history - had on their formal agenda the effect of rising oil prices on poorer nations, climate change and fighting global warming.
But an inadvertently open microphone allowed reporters to eavesdrop before the official opening as oil ministers disagreed over the future role of the falling dollar in determining oil prices.
King Abdullah Abdel-Aziz opened the summit with a pledge that Saudi Arabia would allocate a grant of 300 million dollars "as a seed" for research on climate change, environment and energy resources.
Ironically, the OPEC meeting coincided with Saturday's presentation in Valencia, Spain, by the UN panel on climate change of a report that summarized warnings about the catastrophe that awaits the world if carbon dioxide emissions from burning oil and coal continue unabated.
"I hope that (oil) producing and consuming countries will engage in a similar programme, an endeavour that guarantees the wellbeing of the environment," said the Saudi monarch in his opening speech.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, with quick support from Venezuela, had requested that Iran's "concerns over the weak performance of the US dollar" be mentioned in the summit's concluding statement.
But Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal warned that it could lead to a "collapse" in the US currency. The microphone was cut off after organizers realized the breach.
EUX.TV
Riyadh (dpa) - Tension over the weakness of the US dollar and rising oil prices boiled over Saturday at the opening session of the third-ever OPEC summit, with strident discussion over an Iranian demand that the final summit statement mention the weakness of the US dollar.
The heads of state of the 13-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries - meeting in Riyadh for only the third time in OPEC's 47-year history - had on their formal agenda the effect of rising oil prices on poorer nations, climate change and fighting global warming.
But an inadvertently open microphone allowed reporters to eavesdrop before the official opening as oil ministers disagreed over the future role of the falling dollar in determining oil prices.
King Abdullah Abdel-Aziz opened the summit with a pledge that Saudi Arabia would allocate a grant of 300 million dollars "as a seed" for research on climate change, environment and energy resources.
Ironically, the OPEC meeting coincided with Saturday's presentation in Valencia, Spain, by the UN panel on climate change of a report that summarized warnings about the catastrophe that awaits the world if carbon dioxide emissions from burning oil and coal continue unabated.
"I hope that (oil) producing and consuming countries will engage in a similar programme, an endeavour that guarantees the wellbeing of the environment," said the Saudi monarch in his opening speech.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, with quick support from Venezuela, had requested that Iran's "concerns over the weak performance of the US dollar" be mentioned in the summit's concluding statement.
But Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal warned that it could lead to a "collapse" in the US currency. The microphone was cut off after organizers realized the breach.
EUX.TV
OPEC and Global Warming
OPEC supports fight against global warming
The Yomiuri Shimbun
In an apparent attempt not to be singled out as "bad guys" in the international community, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries expressed its shared concern over global warming and pledged to ensure stable oil supplies in the long run in the Riyadh Declaration issued at its summit meeting.
OPEC usually makes decisions on such important matters as crude oil production ceilings at general meetings of oil ministers held several times a year. Mid- and long-term issues are supposed to be discussed at summit meetings of leaders of member states, and the latest meeting was only the third of its kind held since OPEC was established in 1960.
As a group, OPEC has taken the most passive stance on anti-global warming efforts. Expressing its concerns that reduction in oil consumption would shake the foundations of its members' national economies, the group has resisted efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
But in the declaration, the group clearly showed its support for efforts to halt global warming, saying it would support international challenges on global environmental issues and cooperate in forestation projects and other efforts.
===
Money for research
Saudi Arabia, which hosted the summit meeting of OPEC member nations, announced it would provide 300 million dollars in research funds, saying that such funds would be allocated for research and development of technologies such as those to contain CO2 underground after separating greenhouse gasses from exhaust released at thermal power plants.
As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that global warming was mainly due to human-induced causes, the reduction of CO2 emissions became a task to be achieved by all people around the world. OPEC therefore likely judged that it would not be in its best interests if it continued to be reluctant to support measures to fight the problem.
Next year will be the start of the first five years for achieving numerical targets in reducing CO2 emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. The shift in stance by OPEC may drive the United States and China, which oppose regulations to reduce emissions, to face even harder situations.
As the price of crude oil nears 100 dollars per barrel, consumer nations had some hope the OPEC summit meeting would make a decision to increase output.
===
Speculation distorting market
The largest factor in the the recent rise in oil prices is the inflow of speculative funds into the oil futures market. It is not the case yet that the balance of supply and demand on global oil markets has collapsed. Even so, if OPEC shifts to increase oil outputs, it would effectively weaken the impetus behind speculative transactions.
The declaration underlined that OPEC was well aware that stable oil supply is essential for sustained economic growth in consumer nations. But regarding the more imminent issue of rising oil prices, the declaration only referred to short-term price volatility being harmful to both producers and consumers. OPEC thus did not shift to raise outputs. At a general meeting in December, the group should agree to increase production.
Due to economic growth in such nations as China and India, global oil demand is sure to increase over the next few years, but it cannot be said that development of new oil fields to meet increased future demand is going well.
Oil producing nations have obtained sufficient development funds with high oil prices. But they remain reluctant to raise production levels for fear that prices might go down with increased output. It is regrettable that the declaration did not directly touch on this problem.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Nov. 20, 2007)
(Nov. 20, 2007)
The Yomiuri Shimbun
In an apparent attempt not to be singled out as "bad guys" in the international community, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries expressed its shared concern over global warming and pledged to ensure stable oil supplies in the long run in the Riyadh Declaration issued at its summit meeting.
OPEC usually makes decisions on such important matters as crude oil production ceilings at general meetings of oil ministers held several times a year. Mid- and long-term issues are supposed to be discussed at summit meetings of leaders of member states, and the latest meeting was only the third of its kind held since OPEC was established in 1960.
As a group, OPEC has taken the most passive stance on anti-global warming efforts. Expressing its concerns that reduction in oil consumption would shake the foundations of its members' national economies, the group has resisted efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
But in the declaration, the group clearly showed its support for efforts to halt global warming, saying it would support international challenges on global environmental issues and cooperate in forestation projects and other efforts.
===
Money for research
Saudi Arabia, which hosted the summit meeting of OPEC member nations, announced it would provide 300 million dollars in research funds, saying that such funds would be allocated for research and development of technologies such as those to contain CO2 underground after separating greenhouse gasses from exhaust released at thermal power plants.
As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that global warming was mainly due to human-induced causes, the reduction of CO2 emissions became a task to be achieved by all people around the world. OPEC therefore likely judged that it would not be in its best interests if it continued to be reluctant to support measures to fight the problem.
Next year will be the start of the first five years for achieving numerical targets in reducing CO2 emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. The shift in stance by OPEC may drive the United States and China, which oppose regulations to reduce emissions, to face even harder situations.
As the price of crude oil nears 100 dollars per barrel, consumer nations had some hope the OPEC summit meeting would make a decision to increase output.
===
Speculation distorting market
The largest factor in the the recent rise in oil prices is the inflow of speculative funds into the oil futures market. It is not the case yet that the balance of supply and demand on global oil markets has collapsed. Even so, if OPEC shifts to increase oil outputs, it would effectively weaken the impetus behind speculative transactions.
The declaration underlined that OPEC was well aware that stable oil supply is essential for sustained economic growth in consumer nations. But regarding the more imminent issue of rising oil prices, the declaration only referred to short-term price volatility being harmful to both producers and consumers. OPEC thus did not shift to raise outputs. At a general meeting in December, the group should agree to increase production.
Due to economic growth in such nations as China and India, global oil demand is sure to increase over the next few years, but it cannot be said that development of new oil fields to meet increased future demand is going well.
Oil producing nations have obtained sufficient development funds with high oil prices. But they remain reluctant to raise production levels for fear that prices might go down with increased output. It is regrettable that the declaration did not directly touch on this problem.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Nov. 20, 2007)
(Nov. 20, 2007)
Threats to Farming And Food
Facing a Threat to Farming and Food Supply
Climate change may be global in its sweep, but not all of the globe's citizens will share equally in its woes. And nowhere is that truth more evident, or more worrisome, than in its projected effects on agriculture.
Several recent analyses have concluded that the higher temperatures expected in coming years -- along with salt seepage into groundwater as sea levels rise and anticipated increases in flooding and droughts -- will disproportionately affect agriculture in the planet's lower latitudes, where most of the world's poor live.
India, on track to be the world's most populous country, could see a 40 percent decline in agricultural productivity by the 2080s as record heat waves bake its wheat-growing region, placing hundreds of millions of people at the brink of chronic hunger.
Africa -- where four out of five people make their living directly from the land -- could see agricultural downturns of 30 percent, forcing farmers to abandon traditional crops in favor of more heat-resistant and flood-tolerant ones such as rice. Worse, some African countries, including Senegal and war-torn Sudan, are on track to suffer what amounts to complete agricultural collapse, with productivity declines of more than 50 percent.
Even the emerging agricultural powerhouse of Latin America is poised to suffer reductions of 20 percent or more, which could return thriving exporters such as Brazil to the subsistence-oriented nations they were a few decades ago.
And those estimates do not count the effects of new plant pests and diseases, which are widely expected to come with climate change and could cancel out the positive "fertilizing" effects that higher carbon dioxide levels may offer some plants.
Scenarios like these -- and the recognition that even less-affected countries such as the United States will experience significant regional shifts in growing seasons, forcing new and sometimes disruptive changes in crop choices -- are providing the impetus for a new "green revolution." It is aimed not simply at boosting production, as the first revolution did with fertilizers, but at creating crops that can handle the heat, suck up the salt, not desiccate in a drought and even grow swimmingly while submerged.
Washington Post
Climate change may be global in its sweep, but not all of the globe's citizens will share equally in its woes. And nowhere is that truth more evident, or more worrisome, than in its projected effects on agriculture.
Several recent analyses have concluded that the higher temperatures expected in coming years -- along with salt seepage into groundwater as sea levels rise and anticipated increases in flooding and droughts -- will disproportionately affect agriculture in the planet's lower latitudes, where most of the world's poor live.
India, on track to be the world's most populous country, could see a 40 percent decline in agricultural productivity by the 2080s as record heat waves bake its wheat-growing region, placing hundreds of millions of people at the brink of chronic hunger.
Africa -- where four out of five people make their living directly from the land -- could see agricultural downturns of 30 percent, forcing farmers to abandon traditional crops in favor of more heat-resistant and flood-tolerant ones such as rice. Worse, some African countries, including Senegal and war-torn Sudan, are on track to suffer what amounts to complete agricultural collapse, with productivity declines of more than 50 percent.
Even the emerging agricultural powerhouse of Latin America is poised to suffer reductions of 20 percent or more, which could return thriving exporters such as Brazil to the subsistence-oriented nations they were a few decades ago.
And those estimates do not count the effects of new plant pests and diseases, which are widely expected to come with climate change and could cancel out the positive "fertilizing" effects that higher carbon dioxide levels may offer some plants.
Scenarios like these -- and the recognition that even less-affected countries such as the United States will experience significant regional shifts in growing seasons, forcing new and sometimes disruptive changes in crop choices -- are providing the impetus for a new "green revolution." It is aimed not simply at boosting production, as the first revolution did with fertilizers, but at creating crops that can handle the heat, suck up the salt, not desiccate in a drought and even grow swimmingly while submerged.
Washington Post
Sea Levels
Climate change's wild card: sea levels
UN climate scientists said in a key report for policymakers on Saturday that they could no longer put an upper limit on the potential rise in sea levels over the next century.
Recent studies have implied that projections made earlier this year by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) may badly underestimate the rate at which the oceans will rise — and thus the devastation they could wreak.In the first volume of a major report on global warming, published in February, the IPCC said sea levels would climb between 18 and 59 centimetres by 2100.
Such an increase could already threaten several small island nations and severely disrupt hundreds of millions of people living in low-lying mega deltas, especially in Asia and Africa.
But these projections did not take into detailed account the impact of any significant loss of land ice in Greenland and the West Antarctic, the IPCC acknowledged on Saturday. It therefore scrapped the upper band.
"It became apparent that, concerning the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, we really don't know enough," IPCC Chairperson Rajendra Pachauri told AFP on Saturday in Valencia, Spain, where the body on Saturday published its keenly awaited report.
"There is a possibility, and a fair amount of literature, which suggests that it could be faster than what one has anticipated. Given the uncertainty, it was prudent, and scientifically correct, to remove the upper boundary," he said.
AFP
UN climate scientists said in a key report for policymakers on Saturday that they could no longer put an upper limit on the potential rise in sea levels over the next century.
Recent studies have implied that projections made earlier this year by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) may badly underestimate the rate at which the oceans will rise — and thus the devastation they could wreak.In the first volume of a major report on global warming, published in February, the IPCC said sea levels would climb between 18 and 59 centimetres by 2100.
Such an increase could already threaten several small island nations and severely disrupt hundreds of millions of people living in low-lying mega deltas, especially in Asia and Africa.
But these projections did not take into detailed account the impact of any significant loss of land ice in Greenland and the West Antarctic, the IPCC acknowledged on Saturday. It therefore scrapped the upper band.
"It became apparent that, concerning the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, we really don't know enough," IPCC Chairperson Rajendra Pachauri told AFP on Saturday in Valencia, Spain, where the body on Saturday published its keenly awaited report.
"There is a possibility, and a fair amount of literature, which suggests that it could be faster than what one has anticipated. Given the uncertainty, it was prudent, and scientifically correct, to remove the upper boundary," he said.
AFP
Brown's pledges on climate change
Gordon Brown will insist that Britain must be a world leader in the fight against climate change - hinting that more ambitious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions may be necessary.
In his first major speech on the environment since becoming Prime Minister, he will underscore the need to act immediately to combat global warming and argue that green measures do not have to damage economic growth.
Despite recent reports he has been under pressure from ministers to curb commitments to reducing carbon emissions, Mr Brown will stress he is looking at the possibility of making them even tougher.
He is also expected to outline new ways of cutting emissions in the UK following the weekend publication of a major scientific report showing the Earth is heating up at a quickening pace because of human activity.
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that current trends would see an temperature increases of up to 4 degrees centigrade and sea levels 60 cm higher by 2100.
Mr Brown will also cite International Energy Agency predictions of soaring energy demand.
He will argue that, rather than holding back growth in the UK, efforts to tackle climate change offer economic opportunities in the development of new low carbon technology.
It is possible to be both pro-environment and pro-growth, he will say.
His speech comes ahead of a major UN conference in Bali next month when countries will work on a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol.
Mr Brown's call for the most developed countries to take a lead on reducing carbon emissions will be seen as a message to the US, which famously shunned Kyoto, that it needs to be on board.
Gordon Brown will insist that Britain must be a world leader in the fight against climate change - hinting that more ambitious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions may be necessary.
In his first major speech on the environment since becoming Prime Minister, he will underscore the need to act immediately to combat global warming and argue that green measures do not have to damage economic growth.
Despite recent reports he has been under pressure from ministers to curb commitments to reducing carbon emissions, Mr Brown will stress he is looking at the possibility of making them even tougher.
He is also expected to outline new ways of cutting emissions in the UK following the weekend publication of a major scientific report showing the Earth is heating up at a quickening pace because of human activity.
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that current trends would see an temperature increases of up to 4 degrees centigrade and sea levels 60 cm higher by 2100.
Mr Brown will also cite International Energy Agency predictions of soaring energy demand.
He will argue that, rather than holding back growth in the UK, efforts to tackle climate change offer economic opportunities in the development of new low carbon technology.
It is possible to be both pro-environment and pro-growth, he will say.
His speech comes ahead of a major UN conference in Bali next month when countries will work on a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol.
Mr Brown's call for the most developed countries to take a lead on reducing carbon emissions will be seen as a message to the US, which famously shunned Kyoto, that it needs to be on board.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Some information on ECO
The Campaign for Political Ecology
About ECO
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is ECO trying to do?
ECO's aim is to inject truly ecological thinking into political debate.
What is ECO's philosophy ?
ECO's philosophy is ecocentric - that is, based on the understanding that our survival and that of millions of other species depends on the health of the Earth's natural systems. Such an understanding, therefore, should be central to all political decision-making.
No British political party has an ecocentric philosophy, value system or political programme. Even the Green Party puts concerns about human social justice before concerns about ecosystems. Environmental pressure groups increasingly avoid proposing measures necessary to protect the natural world if these appear to infringe human 'rights'.
What - in a nutshell - is ECO's view ?
ECO believes that human activity is now impacting on the global environment to a disastrous extent. While the scale of human suffering, oppression, and injustice in many parts of the world is heart-breaking, political efforts centred solely on making life for human beings more secure, more comfortable and more successful, will ultimately fail, resulting in environmental melt-down and more human suffering.
Concerns purely for human-welfare must be transcended by a 'post-humanist' world view: allocation of resources in the fairest way within the constraints imposed on us by the Earth. That means looking critically at individual consumption of goods and services, and reforming the technologies used to provide them so that the environmental impact is reduced. It also means challenging the 'right' for humans to continue expanding their numbers. Otherwise all the improvements which technological reforms might achieve could be wiped out by the ever-increasing number of consumers.
What kind of future society does ECO wish for?
ECO's goal is a society in which the institutions and lifestyles do not degrade its citizens, nor deprive future generations of an environment that can sustain their lives, nor threaten the survival of other species with whom we share the Earth.
Surely "sustainable development " is taking us there?
ECO is deeply worried by the glib use of the term 'sustainability' without consideration of the underlying concept. Even where this is used to convey the aim of ecological sustainability, there is generally little appraisal to show that the project being proposed, when added to hundreds of similar projects, would in fact be sustainable. A great complacency has developed around the use of this term: tweak the technologies a bit, label them 'sustainable' and then everything is hunky-dory.
Is ECO a political party ?
No. We only seek to inform and influence.
What are ECO's main issues?
Our guiding concepts are limits, diversity and stability. The key issues are overpopulation, overconsumption and uncontrolled technology. They are based on the equation:
I = P x A x T
(where I is humanity's environmental impact, P is population/human numbers, A is affluence or resource consumption per capita, and T is the technology factor - higher if wasteful and polluting and lower if 'greener'.)
ECO's publications examine the ways in which all these factors could be reduced and consistently emphasise the importance of tackling all three. We acknowledge that worldwide inequality and injustice add immensely to the complexity of the problem.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How ECO operates
A small voluntary team meets at intervals to discuss additions to the website and to pool ideas.
To contact us, please send an email to eco-cpe@bigfoot.com or write to ECO at 17 Fog Lane, Manchester, M20 6A, UK.
Advisors
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ECO Home Page
Copyright ©
This page last updated: 30-June-2003
About ECO
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is ECO trying to do?
ECO's aim is to inject truly ecological thinking into political debate.
What is ECO's philosophy ?
ECO's philosophy is ecocentric - that is, based on the understanding that our survival and that of millions of other species depends on the health of the Earth's natural systems. Such an understanding, therefore, should be central to all political decision-making.
No British political party has an ecocentric philosophy, value system or political programme. Even the Green Party puts concerns about human social justice before concerns about ecosystems. Environmental pressure groups increasingly avoid proposing measures necessary to protect the natural world if these appear to infringe human 'rights'.
What - in a nutshell - is ECO's view ?
ECO believes that human activity is now impacting on the global environment to a disastrous extent. While the scale of human suffering, oppression, and injustice in many parts of the world is heart-breaking, political efforts centred solely on making life for human beings more secure, more comfortable and more successful, will ultimately fail, resulting in environmental melt-down and more human suffering.
Concerns purely for human-welfare must be transcended by a 'post-humanist' world view: allocation of resources in the fairest way within the constraints imposed on us by the Earth. That means looking critically at individual consumption of goods and services, and reforming the technologies used to provide them so that the environmental impact is reduced. It also means challenging the 'right' for humans to continue expanding their numbers. Otherwise all the improvements which technological reforms might achieve could be wiped out by the ever-increasing number of consumers.
What kind of future society does ECO wish for?
ECO's goal is a society in which the institutions and lifestyles do not degrade its citizens, nor deprive future generations of an environment that can sustain their lives, nor threaten the survival of other species with whom we share the Earth.
Surely "sustainable development " is taking us there?
ECO is deeply worried by the glib use of the term 'sustainability' without consideration of the underlying concept. Even where this is used to convey the aim of ecological sustainability, there is generally little appraisal to show that the project being proposed, when added to hundreds of similar projects, would in fact be sustainable. A great complacency has developed around the use of this term: tweak the technologies a bit, label them 'sustainable' and then everything is hunky-dory.
Is ECO a political party ?
No. We only seek to inform and influence.
What are ECO's main issues?
Our guiding concepts are limits, diversity and stability. The key issues are overpopulation, overconsumption and uncontrolled technology. They are based on the equation:
I = P x A x T
(where I is humanity's environmental impact, P is population/human numbers, A is affluence or resource consumption per capita, and T is the technology factor - higher if wasteful and polluting and lower if 'greener'.)
ECO's publications examine the ways in which all these factors could be reduced and consistently emphasise the importance of tackling all three. We acknowledge that worldwide inequality and injustice add immensely to the complexity of the problem.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How ECO operates
A small voluntary team meets at intervals to discuss additions to the website and to pool ideas.
To contact us, please send an email to eco-cpe@bigfoot.com or write to ECO at 17 Fog Lane, Manchester, M20 6A, UK.
Advisors
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ECO Home Page
Copyright ©
This page last updated: 30-June-2003
Thinking before the act..........
NEWS RELEASE
May 7 2007
COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE WITH FEWER BABIES – OPT REPORT
A radical form of “offsetting” carbon dioxide emissions to prevent climate change is proposed today – having fewer children.
Each new UK citizen less means a lifetime carbon dioxide saving of nearly 750 tonnes, a climate impact equivalent to 620 return flights between London and New York*, the Optimum Population Trust says in a new report.
Based on a “social cost” of carbon dioxide of $85 a tonne**, the report estimates the climate cost of each new Briton over their lifetime at roughly £30,000. The lifetime emission costs of the extra 10 million people projected for the UK by 2074 would therefore be over £300 billion. ***
A 35-pence condom, which could avert that £30,000 cost from a single use, thus represents a “spectacular” potential return on investment – around nine million per cent.
The report adds: “The most effective personal climate change strategy is limiting the number of children one has. The most effective national and global climate change strategy is limiting the size of the population.
“Population limitation should therefore be seen as the most cost-effective carbon offsetting strategy available to individuals and nations – a strategy that applies with even more force to developed nations such as the UK because of their higher consumption levels.”
A Population-Based Climate Strategy, the OPT’s latest research briefing, is published today (Monday, May 7 2007). It says human population growth is widely acknowledged as one of the main causes of climate change yet politicians and environmentalists rarely discuss it for fear of causing offence. The result is that a “de facto taboo” exists, throughout civil society and government.
One consequence is that “couples making decisions about family size do so in the belief that it is a matter for them and their personal preferences alone: the public debate and awareness that might have encouraged them to think about the implications of their choices for their fellow citizens, the climate and the wider environment have been missing.”
Other points in the briefing include:
*Providing low-carbon electricity for the 11 million extra UK households forecast for 2050 would mean building seven more Sizewell B nuclear power stations or 10-11,000 wind turbines.
*Global population growth between now and 2050 is equivalent in carbon dioxide emissions terms to the arrival on the planet of nearly two more United States, over two Chinas, 10 Indias or 20 UKs.
*Even if by 2050 the world had managed to achieve a 60 per cent cut in its 1990 emission levels, in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recommendations and the UK Government’s target, almost all of it would be cancelled out by population growth.
It concludes: “A population-based [climate] strategy…involves fewer of the taxes, regulations and other limits on personal freedom and mobility now being canvassed in response to climate change…To sum up, it would be easier, quicker, cheaper, freer and greener.”
Valerie Stevens, co-chair of the OPT, said: “We appreciate that asking people to have fewer children is not going to make us popular in some quarters. Equally, expressing concern about the environmental impacts of mass migration, which currently accounts for the bulk of population growth in the UK and will have a major effect on Britain’s carbon emissions, is a quick route to being labelled racist. But these are hugely important issues and the unfortunate fact is that both politicians and the environmental movement are in denial about them. It’s high time we started discussing them like adults and confronting the real challenges of climate change.”
She added: “Government fiscal measures that support child-bearing however many children a couple has, send a signal that increasing numbers are good for the welfare of everyone. In a world needing to diminish its consumption of key resources, especially energy, this is sadly no longer true.”
NOTES
*Based on 1.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per return flight (Department for Transport).
**Stern Review, October 2006.
***Fertility levels in the UK have been below replacement level (2.1 children per woman) for around 30 years. Inward migration is currently the main driver of UK population growth, accounting for over 80 per cent of projected increase to 2074. However, even without the effects of immigration, demographic momentum – the result of the large numbers of children produced in earlier age bands reaching child-bearing age – would have prevented any population decline up to the present. The total fertility rate (TFR) peaked in 1964 at 2.95 children per woman, but this was followed by a rapid fall in the number of births per woman in the 1970s. In 2005 the TFR in the UK was 1.78 children; it is expected to level off at 1.74 (Office of National Statistics).
The full briefing is available on the OPT’s Briefings and Submissions page.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Optimum Population Trust, 12 Meadowgate, Urmston, Manchester M41 9LB, UK
Tel: 07976-370 221 email: info@optimumpopulation.org
May 7 2007
COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE WITH FEWER BABIES – OPT REPORT
A radical form of “offsetting” carbon dioxide emissions to prevent climate change is proposed today – having fewer children.
Each new UK citizen less means a lifetime carbon dioxide saving of nearly 750 tonnes, a climate impact equivalent to 620 return flights between London and New York*, the Optimum Population Trust says in a new report.
Based on a “social cost” of carbon dioxide of $85 a tonne**, the report estimates the climate cost of each new Briton over their lifetime at roughly £30,000. The lifetime emission costs of the extra 10 million people projected for the UK by 2074 would therefore be over £300 billion. ***
A 35-pence condom, which could avert that £30,000 cost from a single use, thus represents a “spectacular” potential return on investment – around nine million per cent.
The report adds: “The most effective personal climate change strategy is limiting the number of children one has. The most effective national and global climate change strategy is limiting the size of the population.
“Population limitation should therefore be seen as the most cost-effective carbon offsetting strategy available to individuals and nations – a strategy that applies with even more force to developed nations such as the UK because of their higher consumption levels.”
A Population-Based Climate Strategy, the OPT’s latest research briefing, is published today (Monday, May 7 2007). It says human population growth is widely acknowledged as one of the main causes of climate change yet politicians and environmentalists rarely discuss it for fear of causing offence. The result is that a “de facto taboo” exists, throughout civil society and government.
One consequence is that “couples making decisions about family size do so in the belief that it is a matter for them and their personal preferences alone: the public debate and awareness that might have encouraged them to think about the implications of their choices for their fellow citizens, the climate and the wider environment have been missing.”
Other points in the briefing include:
*Providing low-carbon electricity for the 11 million extra UK households forecast for 2050 would mean building seven more Sizewell B nuclear power stations or 10-11,000 wind turbines.
*Global population growth between now and 2050 is equivalent in carbon dioxide emissions terms to the arrival on the planet of nearly two more United States, over two Chinas, 10 Indias or 20 UKs.
*Even if by 2050 the world had managed to achieve a 60 per cent cut in its 1990 emission levels, in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recommendations and the UK Government’s target, almost all of it would be cancelled out by population growth.
It concludes: “A population-based [climate] strategy…involves fewer of the taxes, regulations and other limits on personal freedom and mobility now being canvassed in response to climate change…To sum up, it would be easier, quicker, cheaper, freer and greener.”
Valerie Stevens, co-chair of the OPT, said: “We appreciate that asking people to have fewer children is not going to make us popular in some quarters. Equally, expressing concern about the environmental impacts of mass migration, which currently accounts for the bulk of population growth in the UK and will have a major effect on Britain’s carbon emissions, is a quick route to being labelled racist. But these are hugely important issues and the unfortunate fact is that both politicians and the environmental movement are in denial about them. It’s high time we started discussing them like adults and confronting the real challenges of climate change.”
She added: “Government fiscal measures that support child-bearing however many children a couple has, send a signal that increasing numbers are good for the welfare of everyone. In a world needing to diminish its consumption of key resources, especially energy, this is sadly no longer true.”
NOTES
*Based on 1.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per return flight (Department for Transport).
**Stern Review, October 2006.
***Fertility levels in the UK have been below replacement level (2.1 children per woman) for around 30 years. Inward migration is currently the main driver of UK population growth, accounting for over 80 per cent of projected increase to 2074. However, even without the effects of immigration, demographic momentum – the result of the large numbers of children produced in earlier age bands reaching child-bearing age – would have prevented any population decline up to the present. The total fertility rate (TFR) peaked in 1964 at 2.95 children per woman, but this was followed by a rapid fall in the number of births per woman in the 1970s. In 2005 the TFR in the UK was 1.78 children; it is expected to level off at 1.74 (Office of National Statistics).
The full briefing is available on the OPT’s Briefings and Submissions page.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Optimum Population Trust, 12 Meadowgate, Urmston, Manchester M41 9LB, UK
Tel: 07976-370 221 email: info@optimumpopulation.org
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Drought & Rain in China July 2007
Meteorologists warn against natural disasters
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-07-29 08:40
Rainstorms will hit China's northern and southwestern regions while the southeastern and northwestern areas will experience temperatures up to 39 degrees Celsius from midnight Saturday to Sunday, said the Chinese Central Meteorological Station.
Meteorologists warned that strong rainstorms would cause floods in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Henan, Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan. Meanwhile, thunder and lightning would hit the rainy areas and southern Guangdong and Hainan provinces, threatening people's lives there.
While high temperatures in the provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Jiangsu, Hunan, Hubei and northern Guangdong would add to water and food supply pressures there and might bring drought, said the station.
It also warned that landsides and mud-rock flows might happen in northeastern Sichuan and southern Shaanxi.
Fierce rainstorms swept China this summer, triggering floods, landslides and mud-rock flows, which many experts believe to be a result of the global climate change.
Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao had urged local governments to improve weather monitoring, give priority to people's safety and properly relocate people in flood-hit areas amid the ongoing battle against floods.
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-07-29 08:40
Rainstorms will hit China's northern and southwestern regions while the southeastern and northwestern areas will experience temperatures up to 39 degrees Celsius from midnight Saturday to Sunday, said the Chinese Central Meteorological Station.
Meteorologists warned that strong rainstorms would cause floods in the provinces of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Henan, Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan. Meanwhile, thunder and lightning would hit the rainy areas and southern Guangdong and Hainan provinces, threatening people's lives there.
While high temperatures in the provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Jiangsu, Hunan, Hubei and northern Guangdong would add to water and food supply pressures there and might bring drought, said the station.
It also warned that landsides and mud-rock flows might happen in northeastern Sichuan and southern Shaanxi.
Fierce rainstorms swept China this summer, triggering floods, landslides and mud-rock flows, which many experts believe to be a result of the global climate change.
Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao had urged local governments to improve weather monitoring, give priority to people's safety and properly relocate people in flood-hit areas amid the ongoing battle against floods.
China speaks
Experts contest CO2 emmisions report
Officials and experts have contested a recent report that said China had for the first time overtaken the United States as the world's top producer of carbon dioxide (CO2).
The report, released on Tuesday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, said China overtook the US in emissions of CO2 by 8 percent in 2006. While China was 2 percent below the US in 2005, coal consumption and increased cement production had caused the numbers to rise rapidly.
The study said China, which relies on coal for two-thirds of its energy needs and makes 44 percent of the world's cement, produced 6.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2006. In comparison, the US, which gets half of its electricity from coal, produced 5.8 billion metric tons of CO2, it said.
"It is meaningless to compare China's national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with those of other countries, as China has the world's largest population," Cui Cheng, deputy director of the energy research institute at the National Development and Reform Commission.
Qin Gang, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: "China's gas emissions per capita are far below that of developed countries.
"Take China and the Netherlands. China's annual per capita figure is 3.66 tons, while for the Dutch it is 11.4 tons, about three times higher. China's emissions are just at survival levels."
Qin said developed countries were also responsible for the high levels, as they had moved their factories to China.
"On one hand, they boost their production in China, on the other, they denounce the country's high emission levels. It is unfair."
China released 5.6 billion tons of CO2 equivalents in 2004, according to China's National Climate Change Program.
Source: China Daily
Officials and experts have contested a recent report that said China had for the first time overtaken the United States as the world's top producer of carbon dioxide (CO2).
The report, released on Tuesday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, said China overtook the US in emissions of CO2 by 8 percent in 2006. While China was 2 percent below the US in 2005, coal consumption and increased cement production had caused the numbers to rise rapidly.
The study said China, which relies on coal for two-thirds of its energy needs and makes 44 percent of the world's cement, produced 6.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2006. In comparison, the US, which gets half of its electricity from coal, produced 5.8 billion metric tons of CO2, it said.
"It is meaningless to compare China's national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with those of other countries, as China has the world's largest population," Cui Cheng, deputy director of the energy research institute at the National Development and Reform Commission.
Qin Gang, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: "China's gas emissions per capita are far below that of developed countries.
"Take China and the Netherlands. China's annual per capita figure is 3.66 tons, while for the Dutch it is 11.4 tons, about three times higher. China's emissions are just at survival levels."
Qin said developed countries were also responsible for the high levels, as they had moved their factories to China.
"On one hand, they boost their production in China, on the other, they denounce the country's high emission levels. It is unfair."
China released 5.6 billion tons of CO2 equivalents in 2004, according to China's National Climate Change Program.
Source: China Daily
Monday, July 23, 2007
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