Today In Depressing Environmental News

The oceans are facing an increasing likelihood in massive extinctions:

Researchers from the University of Bristol, who looked at how levels of acid in the ocean have changed over years, found that the current acidification is more severe than any time in the last 65 million years ago.

According to the report as ocean acidification accelerated it caused mass extinctions at the bottom of the food chain that could threaten whole ecosystems in the future.

The study, published in Nature Geoscience, looked at sediments from around 55 million years ago, when temperature rose by up to 6 degrees Celsius and acidification was occurring at a similar rate as today.

For those of you non-creationists wondering what happened 65 million years ago, that would be the end of the Cretaceous period. So basically the oceans now are the worst they've been since the dinosaurs were wiped out, only this time, it is human pollution instead of a devastating meteor that is the culprit.

We'll wipe ourselves out yet.

Today in Depressing Environmental News

A new report says half of the primates in the world are in danger of extinction. Not surprisingly, human-spurred deforestation is a major factor. Of course, the report will probably be ignored by the primates who are responsible, but it's just another devastating and depressing reminder of the destructive power of unchecked human growth and "development" is having on the rest of the world.

Around Latin America

-Staying true to its word, Argentina is going to the UN to protest the plans for oil exploration off the Malvinas/Falklands Islands.

-Although Roberto Micheletti's repressive government has exited office, there are reports that anti-coup leaders in Honduras are continuing to suffer repression and violence, indicating the human rights violations of the intern government may be continuing. Certainly, maintaining the military chief behind last June's coup, as Lobo has chosen to do, is not a step in the right direction.

-Also in Honduras, in more bad news (non-political variety), its forests are falling victim to a growing illegal logging industry, a fact that could have terrible repercussions not only on the environment, but on the Honduran economy and communities as well.

-More trouble for Alvaro Uribe: having already had political allies tied to paramilitary groups in the past, three of Uribe's closest aides are now involved in a wiretap scandal in which they're charged with tapping the lines of politicians, judges, and others in Colombia.

-Concerns over death-squad killings in El Salvador have risen in the wake of a coordinated attack that left 12 youths dead last week.

Silent Spring Again a Threat

In 1962, Rachel Carson published her seminal work on the effects of pesticides upon nature, Silent Spring. The title referred to the lack of birdsong in a future spring when all birds would be dead. This powerful book led to the banning of DDT and other of the most poisonous pesticides and herbicides in the United States, though they are often still used in the developing world.

47 years later, we again face the specter of a silent spring. This time it's not from pesticides though. It's from suburban development, from the destruction of wetlands, from cell phone towers, windows, and other impediments to bird travel that they crash into; and from increasingly intensive industrial farming. Over 1/3 of bird species in the United States are in severe decline. It's possible that some of them will go extinct. Here are some numbers of individual species numbers I quoted in a previous post on the subject.

We have shown that we can bring back individual bird species with effort. This is especially true with birds of prey and wetland birds. When I was born, few bald eagles lived in the lower 48, now almost every state has them and in some places they are almost common. But grassland birds, often small and inconspicuous, suffer potential extinction because their habitat has little emotional value for Americans, because that habitat is often in states with few environmental restrictions, and because of the ideology of unrestricted growth so prevalent in this nation.

Message Not Getting Through

The number of Americans who think global warming is "exaggerated" is growing, reaching a record high of 41%. Why? I think there are a few reasons. First, media coverage of this issue has been atrocious. Giving equal time to lunatics making things up in the name of fairness has undermined the necessity of changing our lifestyles to combat climate change. Second, it's been a cold winter in much of the nation (though certainly not Texas). People have difficulty thinking outside their current experience. It's snowing, therefore climate change is overrated. Third, the closer we get to asking people to make real sacrifices to fight this issue, the more resistance there is going to be to the idea of it. Fourth, scientists have done a poor job communicating their findings.

The combination of all these factors is leading to people ignoring a problem much more profound and with much more serious long-term ramifications than the current economic collapse.

Van Jones in the White House!

Obama has just recruited environmental justice activist Van Jones to join the Council on Environmental Quality as a special advisor for green jobs.

I cannot overstate how much I LOVE this man.  He has been an advocate for green jobs as a solution to the environmental crisis and the growing economic inequality in the U.S. since before the economic crisis, but his work is even more important now.  He is the founder of the advocacy group Green For All, which advocates for government commitment to creating jobs and providing job training - especially for people from disadvantages communities - that will move the US toward a clean energy economy.  He is also the author of the New York Times best-seller, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems.  To top it all off, he is also an amazing and inspirational speaker.  

Most importantly, I think Van Jones and Majora Carter and other activists like them represent the beginning of the end of the racially-exclusive environmental movement.  Up until very recently, the mainstream environmental movement has been very limited to upper middle class white people, and some would even argue that women were kept out of the leadership of the movement as well.  Now environmental leaders like Jones and Carter (both black) are changing all of that.  Van Jones advocates changing the whole system - not just the pollution.  Taking the pollution out of a broken (read: racist, sexist, violent, etc.) system will only leave a racist world with solar-powered wars fought over the lithium for batteries.  ...And yeah, it's really easy to recognize that we have a lot of problems, but Van Jones also has a solution, which is why I'm glad he's starting at the White House next week.

One of Gabon's Natural Preserves Under Threat (with Bonus Racist Colonialist Terminology from the New York Times)

There's a lot that's disturbing about this article: the threat to Gabon's (allegedly) nationally-protected forests and the damming of one of its more impressive waterfalls; the ways in which reliance upon oil for the nation's income are threatening the environment as president Omar Bongo promotes iron ore mining; the fact that Bongo has been president since 1967 (forty years!); the expectation that ecotourism will be your economic salvation without any of the extremely complex and involved infrastructural development and planning the ecotourism industry requires; the extremely understaffed park rangers, who in no way could protect much of the park when they are only 15 people. All of these are very serious issues, and I have very little hope for Gabon on this issue, especially given the economic straits it is facing and the general disregard the Chinese seem to be showing for the environment in this case (which, unfortunately, has been all too common a theme among development projects).

I also realize it's probably one of the least important aspects of the article, but the New York Times' editors most certainly should have done a better job editing Polgreen's report. Gabon is coming off bad enough as it is; there's no need to use words like "wily" to describe president Bongo, and passages like "In neighboring countries, impoverished hordes have razed and burned their forests to plant crops and make charcoal. They have slaughtered the gorillas, elephants, chimpanzees and hippos in jungles for meat. But the Gabonese flocked to cities, living in comparative splendor," while perhaps factually correct, also rely on some of the poorest choices of words to describe residents of Africa (or anywhere else) in sweeping generalities. Unfortunately, talking to people who are quite familiar with the Times' reports on Africa, this is about par for the course.

Happy Singles Awareness Day!

I woke up this morning to one of the best Valentine gifts I can think of.

Finally, congress and our president realize that we can solve two of the biggest problems in the U.S. with one bill. 

The bill includes $71 billion for clean energy programs—more than three times the current spending for these same programs... H.R. 1 also adds $20 billion in clean energy tax incentives. The bill would “spark the creation of a clean-energy economy” that President Barack Obama promised during his inaugural address.

This will put people to work doing what we need to be focusing on most: reducing our dependence on petroleum and reducing our contributions to climate change.  But instead of losing US jobs, we will be creating much needed jobs that cannot be outsourced.  The constructions markets have been hit really hard by the recession, but this bill could directly and indirectly create as many 1 million jobs that focus on energy efficiency in federal buildings and low income housing.  So not only will we be creating jobs that stimulate the economy and reducing our impact on climate change, the taxpayers will also be saving money on heating and cooling federal buildings - up to 2 billion dollars.  

The bill will also provide much needed money for public transit.  The $16 billion for transit projects and high speed rail will create up to 20,000 jobs for every $1 billion invested.  Public transit will also make it easier for people to get to work where they can find higher paying jobs and make it easier for people to stretch their paychecks.  

So, I may be alone on one of the lamest and cheesiest holidays ever, but I can think of at least one reason to be really happy.  <3

Population Control

Gregory Lamb's article on world population asks some very important questions.

Do we need a concerted effort to control the world's population? Should this be a government goal? Related to that, do we need to cut consumption of the world's resources?

I feel the answer to these questions is a definitive yes. While I'm not usually comfortable with the government in the bedroom, the planet simply has too many people. 9 billion by 2050 is just too many. Access to birth control helps. But it's not enough.

I believe it is simply an immoral choice to have more than 2 children. As Paul Ehrlich, author of the 1968 environmental classic The Population Bomb says, “You’ve got to get a president who’s got the guts to say, ‘Patriotic Americans stop at two. That if you care about your children and grandchildren, we should have a smaller population in the future, not larger.”

Yes. I am willing to go as far as saying that it is unpatrotic to have a lot of children. You are hurting the future of our society by doing so.

This is one reason why we need to support abortion rights. Too often, pro-choice people apologize for their position, saying that it is regrettable that we have to abortion and we should reduce the number, but... I don't actually agree with this. I don't see that abortion should be considered a bad thing at all. Certainly, birth control is a better thing but people should not be ashamed of having an abortion. And society should make it safe, cheap, and accessible.

Note that this previous paragraph has just killed any political career I might have wanted to have someday.

The economists will be in an uproar too. Because our capitalist economy is designed for constant growth rather than sustainability, business interests and economic planners will freak out, like they are doing right for Japan. But while a smaller population would be an economic adjustment, wouldn't it also be better for the world and humanity in the long run.

I actually admire China's one child policy. Certainly I don't quite approve of some of the harshest enforcement tactics they use, but I do think our government could give tax credits or some kind of benefits to families with 0-2 children. Or even punish with higher taxes families with too many children, though you'd want to ensure that the children didn't suffer as a result.

Of course, related to this issue is consumption. Since Americans consume like there is no tomorrow and the rest of the world wants to live like Americans, we have a real problem on our hand. There's no way around it--9 billion people can't live on the planet and consume like early 21st century Americans. It's a Malthusian crisis.

Given the pie in the sky ideas I have about this, you can imagine my pessimism that any of this will actually happen. Nonetheless, it's an issue that we need to talk about much more seriously than we do now.