Farming for profit is notorious for boom and bust crises. Farmers chase demand, racing to plant thousands of new acres to high-margin crops. Then they go bankrupt when overproduction drives prices below the cost of production. Nowhere is this pattern clearer than California, the world capital of industrialized agriculture.
Grapes are a recent case in point. Massive overplanting in the 1990s has made it possible for the Bronco Wine Company to produce and sell millions of bottles of Charles Shaw wines. Also known as "Two-Buck Chuck," this good quality table wine sells for about the same price per liter as bottled water. 2005 saw the largest California grape harvest in history, exacerbating the glut. That's a great thing for ordinary people who like to drink wine, but it also means that the industry as a whole is stretched to the financial breaking point. As prices fall, small vulnerable wine-makers will go broke and growers will be forced to let their grapes rot on the vine.
During the boom, landowners in the Southern California town of Temecula jumped on the bandwagon, using imported water to grow wine grapes in the desert. If it is severe enough, industry contraction could bankrupt this new region's dozen winemakers forcing them to lay off their hundreds, perhaps thousands of mostly undocumented immigrant workers.
Crashes are just one of capitalist agriculture's weaknesses. Because commodity production for competitive markets forces the industry to maximize productivity, companies plant contiguous fields to a single crop. This allows for more efficient planting, maintenance, and harvesting. When a region is especially well-suited to a particular plant, monocultural production will spread over hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of acres. In Illinois, for instance, more than 13 million acres are planted to corn.
While industrial agriculture is efficient, it is also risky. Unlike wild ecosystems, which are relatively stable and resilient because they are complex and diverse. Monocultural production processes, relying on a single species and a standardized production methods, have multiples points of vulnerability. Failure at a single point can destroy an entire industry.
In California's Central Valley, 80% of the world's almonds are grown on 600,000 acres that yield more than a billion pounds of nuts per year. High prices have led to a quadrupling of output in just 20 years, and tens of thousands of additional acres will begin producing in the next five years. California growers grossed more than $3 billion in 2005.
The Valley's millions of trees are pollinated by billions of bees. More than 1.4 million hives, about 70% of the mobile hives in the country, are trucked to the Central Valley for the three-week almond bloom. Beekeepers provide pollination services for more than 100 food crops in the U.S. worth over $14 billion per year.
In 2005, bee colonies began to die by the thousands, partly because of of infestation by pesticide-resistant varroa mites, and partly because of something else. Competing theories blame viruses, fungi, pesticides, travel stress, and even an immune disorder that, like AIDS, makes bees vulnerable to secondary disorders. Some beekeepers have lost more than 90% of their hives.
There's no sign that "colony collapse disorder" is slowing. As a result, the demand for pollination services has become so intense that almond growers are flying in hives from Australia and New Zealand. If varroa mites cannot be controlled and the damage continues, the world may soon see a sudden shortage almonds, a nutrient-dense source of high-quality protein.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Stewart Brand's Four Heresies
Environmental guru, Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, makes an intentionally provocative prediction in the May 2005 issue of M.I.T.'s Technology Review.
He begins by observing that the environmental movement has been dominated by romantics who "are moralistic, rebellious against the perceived dominant power, and combative against any who appear to stray from the true path." This is a good thing, he suggests, when it comes to building mass movements. But it also means that "scientific perceptions are always a minority view, easily ignored, suppressed, or demonized if they don’t fit the consensus story line."
It may sound like Brand is setting himself up to deny global warming, but he's too smart for that. Instead, he predicts that within a decade "the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power."
More than half of the world's population now lives in cities, and wherever urbanization increases, birth rates decrease. "Worldwide, birthrates are in free fall. Around one-third of countries now have birthrates below replacement level (2.1 children per woman) and sinking. Nowhere does the downward trend show signs of leveling off." Environmentalists, Brand argues, should welcome massive migration to mega-cities, since it will stabilize global population and allow for restoration of depopulated rural areas. Instead of romanticizing rural villages, which he notes are often sexist and fundamentalist, greens should work on making places like Mumbai, Istanbul, and Mexico City healthy and just.
Next, Brand proposes that the left's rejection of genetically-modified foods is not based on well-reasoned scientific argument, but on knee-jerk suspicion of anything produced in the labs of a multinational. Now, people are right to be suspicious of corporations, but Brand is right to insist that we need to base our final judgments on evidence, not rumor or guilt by association. After all, there are plenty of corporate products we'd be lost without, like computers. So instead of demonizing "frankenfoods," he suggests, we should take control of genetic codes away from the biotech bosses, the same way "open source" hackers have done with computer software.
Brand's most controversial proposal, though, is that we need to get over our "quasi-religious aversion" to nuclear power since it represents the best available solution to the global warming. "There were legitimate reasons to worry about nuclear power, but now that we know about the threat of climate change, we have to put the risks in perspective,” Brand told the New York Times. “Sure, nuclear waste is a problem, but the great thing about it is you know where it is and you can guard it. The bad thing about coal waste is that you don’t know where it is and you don’t know what it’s doing. The carbon dioxide is in everybody’s atmosphere.”
Brand was once a radical anti-nukes campaigner, but he now argues that the "industry is mature, with a half-century of experience and ever improved engineering behind it. Problematic early reactors like the ones at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl can be supplanted by new, smaller-scale, meltdown-proof reactors like the ones that use the pebble-bed design. Nuclear power plants are very high yield, with low-cost fuel."
Whether Brand is right or not about his four heresies, his rational and scientific approach to environmental questions is a badly needed corrective to the Romantic primitivism that too often dominates the movement. "Within the environmental movement, scientists are the radical minority leading the way. They are already transforming the perspective on urbanization and population growth. But their radicalism and leadership will have to increase if humanity is to harness green biotech and step up to its responsibilities for the global climate."
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Unintended Consequences in the New West?
Jim Stiles, longtime publisher of Moab's Canyon Country Zephyr, has been a passionate defender of Utah wilderness for three decades. In the Zephyr's June/July 2005 issue, he challenged the most basic assumptions of the mainstream environmental movement in an eye-opening article, "The Greening of Wilderne$$ in Utah." Stiles tells the disturbing story of Moab's transformation from a sleepy ranching and mining town into a world-class adventure travel destination.
Beginning in the late 1980s, environmental groups began touting the economic benefits of wilderness designation. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), for instance, argued that "Rural Utah counties that have booming economies, such as Grand and Washington, are growing because the public land, open space, and scenery provide the setting for a healthy tourist industry with an influx of people who want to live in such a spectacular setting. The future of Utah's economy lies in preservation of its wildlands and quality of life, as opposed to promotion of an economy based on the extractive industries." Striking a Faustian deal with real estate developers and the booming outdoor recreation industry, SUWA and other groups set out to reorient Moab's economy to the delivery of "environmental amenities."
But as Stiles points out, "Ranchers and oil field workers didn't have the money or the skills or the inclination to invest in tourist-based businesses. What was being proposed and embraced by the environmental community was a new economy that would simply destroy the old lifestyle of the rural west and replace it with a new one. Where would the rural westerners go? Perhaps they could get jobs at McDonald's or the Motel 6--environmentalists were vague on the fine points." These old timers had grown up in Utah's wilderness and staked their identities on its solitude and freedom, qualities that would become increasingly rare in the New West.
Tourism boomed in the 1990s as outdoor sports enthusiasts flooded in to town to bike the Slickrock Trail and run in huge cross-county races routed through sensitive habitat. The construction industry exploded as developers built mammoth second homes for rich out-of-towners. Chain hotels and restaurants crowded the tack and feed stores and the implement yards off Main Street.
Soon, all the new traffic developed into a new threat to wilderness just a serious as the herds of cattle environmentalists loved to hate. The "impacts from millions of those well-meaning 'amenity clients' became more obvious with each passing season. Resource damage from hundreds of thousands of bicyclists, as far as 30 and 40 miles from Moab was clearly changing the landscape of Grand County. And it wasn't just the bikes. It was the vehicles that brought the bikes and bikers--it became a bit embarrassing to praise the non-polluting aspects of non-motorized recreation when most bikers drive their SUVs hundreds of miles so they can pedal for ten."
Stiles concludes by arguing that "wilderness values" are intrinsic, not economic. The environment should be protected for its own sake, not because someone can make a profit off it.
Jim Stiles has a new book out this year: Brave New West: Morphing Moab at the Speed of Greed.
Beginning in the late 1980s, environmental groups began touting the economic benefits of wilderness designation. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), for instance, argued that "Rural Utah counties that have booming economies, such as Grand and Washington, are growing because the public land, open space, and scenery provide the setting for a healthy tourist industry with an influx of people who want to live in such a spectacular setting. The future of Utah's economy lies in preservation of its wildlands and quality of life, as opposed to promotion of an economy based on the extractive industries." Striking a Faustian deal with real estate developers and the booming outdoor recreation industry, SUWA and other groups set out to reorient Moab's economy to the delivery of "environmental amenities."
But as Stiles points out, "Ranchers and oil field workers didn't have the money or the skills or the inclination to invest in tourist-based businesses. What was being proposed and embraced by the environmental community was a new economy that would simply destroy the old lifestyle of the rural west and replace it with a new one. Where would the rural westerners go? Perhaps they could get jobs at McDonald's or the Motel 6--environmentalists were vague on the fine points." These old timers had grown up in Utah's wilderness and staked their identities on its solitude and freedom, qualities that would become increasingly rare in the New West.
Tourism boomed in the 1990s as outdoor sports enthusiasts flooded in to town to bike the Slickrock Trail and run in huge cross-county races routed through sensitive habitat. The construction industry exploded as developers built mammoth second homes for rich out-of-towners. Chain hotels and restaurants crowded the tack and feed stores and the implement yards off Main Street.
Soon, all the new traffic developed into a new threat to wilderness just a serious as the herds of cattle environmentalists loved to hate. The "impacts from millions of those well-meaning 'amenity clients' became more obvious with each passing season. Resource damage from hundreds of thousands of bicyclists, as far as 30 and 40 miles from Moab was clearly changing the landscape of Grand County. And it wasn't just the bikes. It was the vehicles that brought the bikes and bikers--it became a bit embarrassing to praise the non-polluting aspects of non-motorized recreation when most bikers drive their SUVs hundreds of miles so they can pedal for ten."
Stiles concludes by arguing that "wilderness values" are intrinsic, not economic. The environment should be protected for its own sake, not because someone can make a profit off it.
Jim Stiles has a new book out this year: Brave New West: Morphing Moab at the Speed of Greed.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Eight reasons why the market can't solve the climate crisis
"The fourth report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released on November 17, concludes that there is “unequivocal” evidence that human-induced global warming is already under way and, if left unchecked, will lead to rising sea levels, more fierce storms, and more floods and droughts. The report, prepared by 3000 climate scientists, argues that the window of opportunity for quickly reaching a safer, stable level of greenhouse gas emissions is closing fast. Contrary to the claims by mainstream politicians and commentators, the market cannot solve this problem."
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Bill McKibben on the Idea of Growth
In a Mother Jones article, "Reversal of Fortune," Bill McKibben, author of the landmark book, The Death of Nature, argues that the time has come to quit "aiming for growth at all costs and hoping it will trickle down." McKibben claims that "idea" of growth was invented by Lyndon Johnson, since before World War II, people like FDR talked about the American economy as mature and seemed to think it might not continue to grow. Evidently, the Great Depression doesn't seem relevant to this story, since McKibben makes no mention of it.
McKibben also echoes the popular green idea that capitalism and socialism are equally dedicated to the "dogma" of economic growth, noting that LBJ "wasn't alone in thinking this way. From Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev thundered, 'Growth of industrial and agricultural production is the battering ram with which we shall smash the capitalist system.'" The problem here is that economic growth isn't a faulty doctrine or mistaken priority; it's a structural necessity for both private and state capitalist economies, especially when they are locked into competition for control of the planet.
But McKibben is right when he observes that growth doesn't make most people happier. He cites a number of surveys of "life satisfaction" showing that, during the last half century, as real per capita income has increased in the US, the percentage of people who report feeling happy with their lives has declined.
For McKibben, the culprit is individualism, the habit of seeking self-fulfillment through the pursuit of wealth and consumer goods. Life in affluent societies isolates people from each other, when "we seem to be genetically wired for community." So, he argues, we need to localize our lives, disconnecting ourselves from the global growth economy by doing things like buying food and goods produced near where we live, "working on regional-scale sustainable timber projects," and "building energy networks that work like the Internet by connecting solar rooftops and backyard windmills in robust mini-grids." Not only will doing so be good for the environment, it will connect us to the kinds of communities that can give us real satisfaction.
But individualism isn't a way of life that people simply choose; it's a backwards way of talking about how capitalist labor markets force workers into a competition of all against all. And while well-meaning networks of environmentalists can achieve truly inspiring feats of green innovation and solidarity, what they can't do is prevent global capitalism from destroying the natural systems on which their local economies and communities depend.25% of US Birds Threatened
More than a quarter of all US bird species are vulnerable to extinction, according to WatchList 2007, compiled by the National Audubon Society and the American Bird Conservancy.
Anthropogenic Biomes
"Humans are the ultimate ecosystem engineers, routinely reshaping ecosystem form and process using tools and technologies, such as fire, that are beyond the capacity of any other organism. This exceptional capacity for ecosystem engineering, expressed in the form of agriculture, forestry, industry and other activities, has helped to sustain unprecedented population growth, such that humans now consume about one third of all terrestrial net primary production, move more earth and produce more reactive nitrogen than all other terrestrial processes combined, and are causing global extinctions and changes in climate that are comparable to any observed in the natural record. Clearly, humans are now a force of nature rivaling climate and geology in shaping the terrestrial biosphere and its processes.... Recent analyses have demonstrated that more than three quarters of Earth's land surface has been reshaped by human activity."
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Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Review: Environment, Capitalism, Socialism
Environment, Capitalism, Socialism, edited by Dick Nichols for the Australian Democratic Socialist Party, is impressively international in its range of reference. At the same time, it engages in effective polemics with most major American environmentalists and the strands of green theory that they represent. It's very good on the ecological thinking of Marx and Engels. It mounts a devastating critique of mainstream environmentalism and its obsession with the UN, the World Bank, and the greening of corporations. And it provides a very clear theoretical analysis of capitalism's inherent environmental destructiveness, arguing that a socialist revolution, expropriation of private property, a planned economy, and massive ecological reconstruction efforts are the only realistic solution. It's a little fuzzy on the USSR and China, and it's a little rosy on Cuba and Nicaragua, but these are not major features of the argument. Also, the writing is somewhat flat. Nevertheless, it's an excellent resource.
Plastic Oceans
Plastic has only been produced commercially since World War II. When I was a sixth grader in Monterey, thirty years later, a short walk on the beach showed there was already a lot of plastic trash floating in the ocean. Still, the seawrack of styrofoam cooler lids, soda bottles, and fishing bobbers didn't seem to be much more than ugly. And we didn't worry about it much, except to be careful with six-pack rings since they could strangle birds.
The scale and seriousness of the problem is now more clear. Greenpeace recently released a report, "Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans," that synthesizes the results of a number of studies published between 1990 and 2005. The oceans have become what Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation calls the "world's largest landfill." They are packed with plastic bottles, shopping bags, cigarette butts, syringes, lighters, fishing gear, and more. In what has come to be called "ghost fishing," abandoned nets continue to catch and kill huge quantities of fish. Meanwhile, seals, sea lions, whales, dolphins, turtles, birds, and other animals get entangled in floating plastic ropes, lines, bands, and nets. These are not occasional incidents. One study found that as many as 130,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises are caught in derelict nets each year. Another found that 40,000 fur seals were killed by plastic entanglement every year in the Bering Sea.
Floating plastic is gradually broken down by sunlight and wave action into particles the size of sand grains that float in the top few fathoms of the water column and even gather in windrows on the surface. In the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, an Africa-sized area of still winds and currents where flotsam accumulates, there is six times more granular plastic in the water than plankton. This is just one of seven similar gyres around the world. Marine animals mistake granular plastic for food, eating it in large quantities. Studies of sea turtle carcasses found that more than half had ingested significant quantities of plastic. Once ingested, plastic blocks the digestive tract, causing malnutrition and starvation. In addition, plastic fragments absorb chemicals that are not water soluble, including DDT and PCBs. These toxins disrupt hormonal functions once they are ingested, reducing the reproductive rates of many species.
Alan Weisman devotes a chapter of his powerful new book, The World Without Us, to plastic in the oceans.
The scale and seriousness of the problem is now more clear. Greenpeace recently released a report, "Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans," that synthesizes the results of a number of studies published between 1990 and 2005. The oceans have become what Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation calls the "world's largest landfill." They are packed with plastic bottles, shopping bags, cigarette butts, syringes, lighters, fishing gear, and more. In what has come to be called "ghost fishing," abandoned nets continue to catch and kill huge quantities of fish. Meanwhile, seals, sea lions, whales, dolphins, turtles, birds, and other animals get entangled in floating plastic ropes, lines, bands, and nets. These are not occasional incidents. One study found that as many as 130,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises are caught in derelict nets each year. Another found that 40,000 fur seals were killed by plastic entanglement every year in the Bering Sea.
Floating plastic is gradually broken down by sunlight and wave action into particles the size of sand grains that float in the top few fathoms of the water column and even gather in windrows on the surface. In the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, an Africa-sized area of still winds and currents where flotsam accumulates, there is six times more granular plastic in the water than plankton. This is just one of seven similar gyres around the world. Marine animals mistake granular plastic for food, eating it in large quantities. Studies of sea turtle carcasses found that more than half had ingested significant quantities of plastic. Once ingested, plastic blocks the digestive tract, causing malnutrition and starvation. In addition, plastic fragments absorb chemicals that are not water soluble, including DDT and PCBs. These toxins disrupt hormonal functions once they are ingested, reducing the reproductive rates of many species.
Alan Weisman devotes a chapter of his powerful new book, The World Without Us, to plastic in the oceans.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Upside Down Priorities
Cost of the Iraq War as of today: $472 billion
2006 Revenue
Walmart : $351 billion
Exxon Mobil: $347 billion
General Motors: $207 billion
2006 Profits
ExxonMobil: $39.5 billion
Chevron: $17.1 billion
Conoco Phillips: $15.5 billion
2007 Losses in Sub-Prime Collapse
Citigroup: $9.8 billion
Merrill Lynch: $7.9 billion
Morgan Stanley: 43.7 billion
Bank of America: $3.5 billion
2008 Federal Budget Requests
Environmental Protection Agency: $7.2 billion
National Forest Service: $4.1 billion
National Park Service: $2.4 billion
Bureau of Land Management: $1.8 billion
Occupational Safety and Health Administration: $0.5 billion
2006 Revenue
Walmart : $351 billion
Exxon Mobil: $347 billion
General Motors: $207 billion
2006 Profits
ExxonMobil: $39.5 billion
Chevron: $17.1 billion
Conoco Phillips: $15.5 billion
2007 Losses in Sub-Prime Collapse
Citigroup: $9.8 billion
Merrill Lynch: $7.9 billion
Morgan Stanley: 43.7 billion
Bank of America: $3.5 billion
2008 Federal Budget Requests
Environmental Protection Agency: $7.2 billion
National Forest Service: $4.1 billion
National Park Service: $2.4 billion
Bureau of Land Management: $1.8 billion
Occupational Safety and Health Administration: $0.5 billion
Carbon Moralism
It's true that we must reduce carbon emissions, but things get absurd quickly when we frame that process in terms of individual decisions, rather than structural changes:
The flame burning over the 2012 London Olympic Stadium will use a low-carbon fuel, organisers said on Monday.
"It's early days but it will happen," a spokesman for French energy company EDF, London 2012's sustainability partner, told reporters after a series of environmental targets were announced.
"We are working with the organising committee (LOCOG) and we will see what options there are for a low carbon fuel for the cauldron. It's a challenge because a 'clean' flame would be invisible and that would not be ideal.... We are looking for a flame of the right quality but with a low carbon footprint," he said.
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The flame burning over the 2012 London Olympic Stadium will use a low-carbon fuel, organisers said on Monday.
"It's early days but it will happen," a spokesman for French energy company EDF, London 2012's sustainability partner, told reporters after a series of environmental targets were announced.
"We are working with the organising committee (LOCOG) and we will see what options there are for a low carbon fuel for the cauldron. It's a challenge because a 'clean' flame would be invisible and that would not be ideal.... We are looking for a flame of the right quality but with a low carbon footprint," he said.
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Sunday, November 25, 2007
Weather disasters quadruple in 20 years
"The number of weather-related disasters has quadrupled in the past 20 years and more should be done to prepare for them, according to Oxfam. The international aid agency blames rising greenhouse gas emissions for the jump in severe storms, flooding and drought. In a report released today, Oxfam says there are now as many as 500 weather-related disasters a year, compared to an average of 120 in the early 1980s. The number of floods has increased six-fold over the same period, while the number of people affected by weather-related disasters has also risen by 68 per cent."
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Requiem
The crucified planet Earth,
should it find a voice
and a sense of irony,
might now well say
of our abuse of it,
"Forgive them, Father,
They know not what they do."
The irony would be
that we know what
we are doing.
When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.
--Kurt Vonnegut
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Houston Principles
Houston Principles
Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment
Preamble
On May 19, 1999, environmental and labor leaders confronted CEO Charles Hurwitz in Houston to demand that his Maxxam Corporation, which owns Kaiser Aluminum and Pacific Lumber Company, be held accountable for its impact on working people, communities and the
environment.
By clear-cutting ancient redwoods in Northern California, and by locking out striking steelworkers in five cities, the Maxxam Corporation and its subsidiaries, Pacific Lumber Company and Kaiser Aluminum Corporation, have become icons of corporate irresponsibility. Recognizing that we have a common interest in making corporations more accountable for their behavior world wide, environmental and labor leaders have formed the Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment and circulated the following statement, dubbed the "Houston Principles":
Whereas:
The spectacular accumulation of wealth by corporations and America's most affluent during the past two decades has come with a huge price tag.
Corporations have become more powerful than the government entities designed to regulate them.
The goal of a giant, global corporation is to maximize wealth and to wield political power on its own behalf. Too often, corporate leaders regard working people, communities, and the natural world as resources to be used and thrown away.
Recognizing the tremendous stakes, labor unions and environmental advocates are beginning to recognize our common ground. Together we can challenge illegitimate corporate authority over our country's and communities' governing decisions.
While we may not agree on everything, we are determined to accelerate our efforts to make alliances as often as possible.
We believe that:
A healthy future for the economy and the environment requires a dynamic alliance between labor, management, and environmental advocates.
The same forces that threaten economic and biological sustainability undermine the democratic process.
The drive for short-term profits without regard for long-term sustainability hurts working people, communities, and the earth.
Labor, environmental and community groups need to take action to organize as a counter-balance to abusive corporate power.
The environmental and labor advocates who have signed these principles resolve to work together to:
Remind the public that the original purpose behind the creation of corporations was to serve the public interest — namely working people, communities, and the earth.
Seek stricter enforcement of labor laws and advocate for new laws to guarantee working people their right to form unions and their right to bargain collectively.
Make workplaces, communities and the planet safer by reducing waste and greenhouse gas emissions.
Demand that global trade agreements include enforceable labor and environmental standards.
Promote forward-thinking business models that allow for sustainability over the long term while protecting working people, communities, and the environment.
This ground-breaking alliance of labor and environmentalists invites all people to join with us in a spirit of creative cooperation.
Together, we can forge a partnership that protects people and the planet.
Study: global warming killing coral reefs
"Pacific coral reefs are dying at an unprecedented rate, scientists have found. Almost 600 square miles of reef have disappeared every year since the late 1960s - twice the rate of rainforest loss. Reefs disappear at a rate of one per cent a year. Coral loss has become a global phenomenon caused mainly by climate change, rising sea temperatures and man-made nutrient pollution."
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Arctic sea ice melting
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, "Arctic sea ice during the 2007 melt season plummeted to the lowest levels since satellite measurements began in 1979. The average sea ice extent for the month of September was 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles), the lowest September on record, shattering the previous record for the month, set in 2005, by 23 percent (see Figure 1). At the end of the melt season, September 2007 sea ice was 39 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000 (see Figure 2). If ship and aircraft records from before the satellite era are taken into account, sea ice may have fallen by as much as 50 percent from the 1950s."
Study: global warming extends fire seasons
The number and size of large forest fires in the West have grown "suddenly and dramatically" in the past two decades in part because of global warming, a study released Thursday says.
The scientific paper, posted online by the journal Science, says wildfire season in Western states has grown up to 2½ months longer since 1987 because of warmer spring temperatures and earlier, faster melting of mountain snow. The timing of that annual snowmelt, a key source of the West's water, also helps gauge the severity of wildfire season.
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The scientific paper, posted online by the journal Science, says wildfire season in Western states has grown up to 2½ months longer since 1987 because of warmer spring temperatures and earlier, faster melting of mountain snow. The timing of that annual snowmelt, a key source of the West's water, also helps gauge the severity of wildfire season.
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Study: global warming intensifying hurricanes
A new study concludes that rising sea temperatures have been accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes, adding fuel to an international debate over whether global warming contributed to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina....
According to data gathered by researchers at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the number of major Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years, even though the total number of hurricanes, including weaker ones, has dropped since the 1990s.
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According to data gathered by researchers at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the number of major Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years, even though the total number of hurricanes, including weaker ones, has dropped since the 1990s.
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Is Going Green Good Business?
"Forget the science debate," says Cinergy Corp. CEO James E. Rogers, who was at the meeting. "The regulations will change someday. And if we're not ready, we're in trouble."
A surprising number of companies in old industries such as oil and materials as well as high tech are preparing for this profoundly altered world. They are moving swiftly to measure and slash their greenhouse gas emissions. And they are doing it despite the Bush Administration's opposition to mandatory curbs.This change isn't being driven by any sudden boardroom conversion to environmentalism. It's all about hard-nosed business calculations.
"If we stonewall this thing to five years out, all of a sudden the cost to us and ultimately to our consumers can be gigantic," warns Rogers, who will manage 20 coal-fired power plants if Cinergy's pending merger with Duke Energy is completed next year.
Green Washing
Guests at Hyatt Hotels find an information card on the bathroom counter. The heading is the old activist slogan, "Think Globally. Act Locally." The text informs the guest that "linens and towels washed daily by hotels worldwide use millions of gallons of fresh water and add tons of detergents to our environment." Fortunately, as part of its "ongoing commitment to improving the environment," Hyatt will now change bed linens and towels only once every three days. Making sure to drive home the good feelings, the card concludes, "Together we can make a difference." And of course, it sports a recycling logo with the caption, "Printed on recycled paper and laminated to reduce waste."
A New Sagebrush Rebellion?
Global warming is not only cutting the U.S. off from the rest of the world, it's also dividing the U.S. ruling class against itself and causing breaches of discipline in the two-party system.
The governors of six western states--California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, and Montana--have decided not to wait for the federal government to act on climate change. Five Democrats and one Republican have rejected the Bush Administration's emphasis on voluntary emissions reductions. After the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Bush's attempt to outlaw state-level regulation of CO2 emissions, these Western renegades are developing their own plans and programs.
For instance, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D) committed his state to stabilizing CO2 emissions at 2000 levels by 2012. That would mean a 10 percent reduction from 2006 levels, the equivalent of retiring more than 100,000 cars. Richardson calls for a further 10% cut by 2020 and a 75% reduction by 2050.
California, the world's 18th largest producer of carbon dioxide, has a long track record of requiring tighter auto emissions standards than the federal government. And 14 other states have adopted California's standards. In November, Governor Schwarzenegger (R) sued the Bush administration to force quick approval of a waiver that would allow the state to tighten its rules even further.
The governors of six western states--California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, and Montana--have decided not to wait for the federal government to act on climate change. Five Democrats and one Republican have rejected the Bush Administration's emphasis on voluntary emissions reductions. After the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Bush's attempt to outlaw state-level regulation of CO2 emissions, these Western renegades are developing their own plans and programs.
For instance, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D) committed his state to stabilizing CO2 emissions at 2000 levels by 2012. That would mean a 10 percent reduction from 2006 levels, the equivalent of retiring more than 100,000 cars. Richardson calls for a further 10% cut by 2020 and a 75% reduction by 2050.
California, the world's 18th largest producer of carbon dioxide, has a long track record of requiring tighter auto emissions standards than the federal government. And 14 other states have adopted California's standards. In November, Governor Schwarzenegger (R) sued the Bush administration to force quick approval of a waiver that would allow the state to tighten its rules even further.
Friday, November 23, 2007
A New Dawn of Solar?
"Imagine a solar panel without the panel. Just a coating, thin as a layer of paint, that takes light and converts it to electricity. From there, you can picture roof shingles with solar cells built inside and window coatings that seem to suck power from the air. Consider solar-powered buildings stretching not just across sunny Southern California, but through China and India and Kenya as well, because even in those countries, going solar will be cheaper than burning coal. That’s the promise of thin-film solar cells: solar power that’s ubiquitous because it’s cheap. The basic technology has been around for decades, but this year, Silicon Valley–based Nanosolar created the manufacturing technology that could make that promise a reality.
The company produces its PowerSheet solar cells with printing-press-style machines that set down a layer of solar-absorbing nano-ink onto metal sheets as thin as aluminum foil, so the panels can be made for about a tenth of what current panels cost and at a rate of several hundred feet per minute. With backing from Google’s founders and $20 million from the U.S. Department of Energy, Nanosolar’s first commercial cells rolled off the presses this year."
Nanosolar may bring down the cost of PV cells by 50 percent or more, which would be a significant gain, but would do nothing about the problems of night and batteries. Also, cells only account for about half the cost of a complete system.
The Department of Energy estimates that photovoltaic solar will provide no more than 3 percent of grid electricity in the US in 2030. Coal-burning power plants, on the other hand, will still be producing half of the electricity we use. A new coal plant fires up every week somewhere in the world.
Melting Permafrost and Runaway Warming
In August 2006, The Guardian reported that a "vast expanse of western Siberia is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today. Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere."
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Tipping Point?
In February 2005, climate scientists met in Exeter, UK, for "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change," an international symposium on the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations. The conference steering committee's report, published a year later, focuses on the issue of "tipping points" or critical thresholds. Based on a survey of existing literature, the committee predicts "increasing damage if the globe warms about 1 to 3 C above current levels. Serious risk of large scale, irreversible system disruption, such as reversal of the land carbon sink and possible destabilisation of the Antarctic ice sheets is more likely above 3 C" (5). The committee then suggests 2 C as a threshold beyond which the risk of catastrophic ecosystems failure would become unacceptably high, stating that to limit "warming to 2 C above pre-industrial levels with a relatively high certainty requires the equivalent concentration of CO2 to stay below 400 ppm" (6). The equivalent concentration of CO2 is calculated by adding together the effects of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.
When the conference report was released, The Independent commissioned Keith Shine, head of the meteorology department at the University of Reading, to calculate the equivalent concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. A widely read article, published on February 11, 2006 under the title, "Global Warming: Passing the 'Tipping Point,'" reported the resulting figure of 425 ppm. The article quotes veteran environmentalist Tom Burke, who argues that "we have actually entered a new era--the era of dangerous climate change.... Governments must stop talking and start spending. We already have the technology to allow us to meet our growing need for energy while keeping a stable climate. Doing so will cost less than the Iraq war, so we know we can do it."
When the conference report was released, The Independent commissioned Keith Shine, head of the meteorology department at the University of Reading, to calculate the equivalent concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. A widely read article, published on February 11, 2006 under the title, "Global Warming: Passing the 'Tipping Point,'" reported the resulting figure of 425 ppm. The article quotes veteran environmentalist Tom Burke, who argues that "we have actually entered a new era--the era of dangerous climate change.... Governments must stop talking and start spending. We already have the technology to allow us to meet our growing need for energy while keeping a stable climate. Doing so will cost less than the Iraq war, so we know we can do it."
James Lovelock says climate change is unavoidable
In his 2006 book, The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back - and How We Can Still Save Humanity, geophysicist James Lovelock argues that global warming has passed a tipping point beyond which profound climate change is unavoidable. According to Lovelock, massive destruction of ecosystems, epidemics of hunger and disease, water scarcity, and even large-scale social collapses are no longer merely possible, they are inevitable. Lovelock calls for societies to adapt to global warming and prevent chaos by retreating from their current levels of development. At the same time, he argues for aggressive replacement of coal-fired power plants with nuclear reactors, arguing that the environmental risks are far outweighed by the benefits.
The Ultimate Feel-Good Sweater
Super-hip gear brand Patagonia offers a "Classic Retro Cardigan" sewn out of fleece made from recycled plastic bottles. Available in four colors, Inca Gold Heather, Natural, Pandora Red Heather, and Velvet Brown, the sweater retails for $175.
Anybody want to do the research to figure out how many bottles they've kept out of landfills? I'm guessing it's about as many as people use in one summer day in Sedona.
Yvon Chouinard's memoir, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (2005) tells how he started out selling climbing gear from his car, then built Patagonia into a huge business that many see as a model of corporate responsibility.
Anybody want to do the research to figure out how many bottles they've kept out of landfills? I'm guessing it's about as many as people use in one summer day in Sedona.
Yvon Chouinard's memoir, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (2005) tells how he started out selling climbing gear from his car, then built Patagonia into a huge business that many see as a model of corporate responsibility.
ISR Article on Global Warming (May 2005)
In order to make our relationship with nature sustainable, we will have to make it rational, and not just on an individual basis. We will have to take control of energy—along with transportation, food, and everything else we need—out of the hands of corporate bosses locked in competition, and instead plan our economy democratically, collectively, and scientifically. In short, stopping global warming will take permanently changing the way our society does business. That means not just challenging corporate power, but getting rid of capitalism altogether and replacing it with a socialist society in which decisions about how we live on the planet are made according to human needs, including the need for a clean and healthy planet.
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11th Hour asks if time is running out
11th Hour powerfully shows the intensity and scale of the environmental crisis. Produced and narrated by Leonardo diCaprio, the film bombards viewers with shots of devastated industrial landscapes, pollution-fouled rivers, raging forest fires, collapsing ice fields, flooded slums, and the diseased bodies of animals and humans. These images are interwoven with interviews of many of today’s most respected environmental thinkers, including physicist Stephen Hawking, Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute and Kenny Ausubel of Bioneers. The result is a forceful and moving call to action. Unfortunately, the film falls apart when it comes time to say exactly what is to be done.
The 11th Hour makes the important point that what is at risk isn’t just pretty landscapes but the survival of human society. It backs up this argument by surveying the biggest threats to the environment: global warming, deforestation, desertification, soil erosion and toxic pollution of air and water. All of the planet’s natural systems are in decline, threatening the most basic physical conditions on which modern society depends, like reliable water cycles, stable weather patterns, and productive farmland, fisheries and forests.
The destruction of society’s physical foundation disproportionately affects the poor, especially poor people of color, who face epidemics of environmental diseases like asthma and cancer. The impending “convergence of crises” threatens to destabilize the planet so profoundly that we may face a catastrophic societal collapse. In short, we have reached the moment at which we must take action. We have reached the 11th hour.
The film identifies the right culprits. In one of its most telling sequences, images of post-Katrina New Orleans alternate with footage of President Bush and other prominent politicians describing global warming as an uncertainty and even a hoax. It goes on to describe how powerful multinational corporations, especially energy companies like Exxon Mobil, have systematically used their spectacular profits to torpedo progressive environmental legislation. Our society, one interviewee argues, is based on a system of organized greed. “The madness of conventional economics” allows a tiny minority of corporate bosses to steal natural resources that should be managed for the benefit of all people.
Unfortunately, when it tries to explain why the environmental crisis is happening and what can be done to stop it, 11th Hour clearly reflects the political weakness of the current environmental movement. The problem, it argues, is one of ideas. The crisis is fundamentally “a thinking disorder.” As a society, we have forgotten the “ancient wisdoms,” especially the idea that we are part of nature. Our “minds are out of balance” and we think of ourselves as superior to nature. The solution, therefore, is a “cultural shift” across the whole of society, from the grassroots to the boardrooms.
The rest of the film is dedicated to a mish-mash of prescriptions. Individuals should get involved in environmental organizations. Green designers should re-engineer all of the technologies that support our lives, from power plants to cars. Governments should replace income taxes with carbon taxes and limit corporate political power. The 11th Hour takes an inspiringly can-do attitude, urging us to see that it’s time for “all hands on deck.”
But the truth it fails to confront is that capitalism is much more than a bad idea. It is a deeply entrenched economic system whose rulers will do anything to defend their right to ravage our lives and our planet for profit. If we want a healthy society that lives in balance with nature, we will need to overturn the most basic structures of power in our society. We will need to take our common home back from the bosses.
first published in Socialist WorkerThe inconvenient truth about Al Gore
An Inconvenient Truth does a good job of presenting the latest scientific facts and figures. Gore does know his stuff on this issue, and the film gives hard-hitting examples of the potential consequences of inaction. But the film spends far too much time telling the latest version of Gore’s worn-out life story, packaging him as a crusader who experienced an awakening, and now sees that saving the earth is a “moral imperative.”
And it only gives its last five minutes to the question of what is to be done, demanding that audience members reduce their personal carbon emissions by carpooling, checking tire pressure, buying low-wattage light bulbs, changing the settings on home thermostats and so on. This conclusion falls horribly flat after the film has spent so much time showing that climate change is a global problem, driven by vast forces like the oil economy and population growth.more...
Clinton, Bush, and National Forests
In January 2001, Bill Clinton declared 58.5 million acres of National Forest Service land off limits to road building and other commercial development. That's a larger area than the entire state of Utah and represents about one third of the service's total acreage. The new "Roadless Area Rule" could have been an important step forward, but Clinton waited until the last days of his presidency to announce it, knowing that it would be one of the incoming administration's first targets.
Republicans challenged the roadless rule in the courts, convincing U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer in Wyoming to issue a permanent injunction. Then in July 2004, the Bush Administration announced plans to overturn it, allowing state governors to reopen forests to road-building, logging, mining, and exploration for oil and gas. Two years later, Elizabeth D. Laporte, a federal judge in San Francisco, set aside Bush's new policy, reinstating Clinton's rule and setting the stage for a new round of legal challenges.
Instead of making decisions based on the health of the land, Democrats and Republicans have spent the last decade playing a game of political hot potato with the people's forests.
Republicans challenged the roadless rule in the courts, convincing U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer in Wyoming to issue a permanent injunction. Then in July 2004, the Bush Administration announced plans to overturn it, allowing state governors to reopen forests to road-building, logging, mining, and exploration for oil and gas. Two years later, Elizabeth D. Laporte, a federal judge in San Francisco, set aside Bush's new policy, reinstating Clinton's rule and setting the stage for a new round of legal challenges.
Instead of making decisions based on the health of the land, Democrats and Republicans have spent the last decade playing a game of political hot potato with the people's forests.
Warming of the Oceans
In 2005, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Lawrence Livermore Laboratories announced the results of a new study of global warming. They modeled changes in ocean temperature in response to the release of greenhouse gasses during the last forty years. Then they checked their models against 7 million direct measurements of ocean temperature. They found a 95 percent correspondence between the models and the observed data.
Most modeling studies so far have focused on atmospheric temperatures, but the planet's oceans represent a much larger energy sink, absorbing and holding much more heat than the atmosphere. Ocean temperatures are one of the key patterns determining worldwide weather patterns.
Tim Barnett, one of the authors of the study, told The Independent that, "Over the past 40 years there has been considerable warming of the planetary system and approximately 90 per cent of that warming has gone directly into the oceans.... If we could mine the energy that has gone in over the past 40 years we could run the state of California for 200,000 years."
Most modeling studies so far have focused on atmospheric temperatures, but the planet's oceans represent a much larger energy sink, absorbing and holding much more heat than the atmosphere. Ocean temperatures are one of the key patterns determining worldwide weather patterns.
Tim Barnett, one of the authors of the study, told The Independent that, "Over the past 40 years there has been considerable warming of the planetary system and approximately 90 per cent of that warming has gone directly into the oceans.... If we could mine the energy that has gone in over the past 40 years we could run the state of California for 200,000 years."
Thursday, November 22, 2007
GM Goes Green?
American car makers have watched their profits collapse this year as the credit crunch hit sales and crude oil approached $100 a barrel. GM, Ford, and the rest have focused on highly profitable jumbo SUVs and trucks, while fighting any increase in federal fuel economy standards. Now they are scrambling to reverse course (or to look like they are doing so).
GM's vice chairman and product development chief Robert Lutz told Reuters, "We somehow ... let Toyota get ahead of us in terms of environmental technology because they did the Prius hybrid, and we elected not to do that kind of hybrid. We have since realized that letting Toyota gain that mantle of green respectability and technology leadership has really cost us dearly in the marketplace."
Lutz claims that GM will introduce 12 new hybrids in the next 3 years. But the centerpiece of their new strategy is the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid that may manage as much as 100 miles per gallon. Lutz noted that one benefit of producing the Volt would be an increase in GM's fleetwide fuel economy numbers that might be enough to meet new requirements expected to pass Congress soon. In other words, the Volt will make it possible for GM to keep building Yukons, Denalis, and Hummers. By doing what's right ten years late, they'll get to keep doing what's wrong.
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GM's vice chairman and product development chief Robert Lutz told Reuters, "We somehow ... let Toyota get ahead of us in terms of environmental technology because they did the Prius hybrid, and we elected not to do that kind of hybrid. We have since realized that letting Toyota gain that mantle of green respectability and technology leadership has really cost us dearly in the marketplace."
Lutz claims that GM will introduce 12 new hybrids in the next 3 years. But the centerpiece of their new strategy is the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid that may manage as much as 100 miles per gallon. Lutz noted that one benefit of producing the Volt would be an increase in GM's fleetwide fuel economy numbers that might be enough to meet new requirements expected to pass Congress soon. In other words, the Volt will make it possible for GM to keep building Yukons, Denalis, and Hummers. By doing what's right ten years late, they'll get to keep doing what's wrong.
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People are a Force of Nature
A group of researchers writing in the most recent issue of Science argue that industrial fishing has created a process of unnatural selection favoring fish that mature smaller and earlier, and that carry fewer eggs.
more...Global Warming and War
According to International Alert, a conflict resolution NGO based in London, 46 countries are at risk of violent conflict as a result of global warming and a further 56 face a high risk of instability.
"Hardest hit by climate change will be people living in poverty, in under-developed and unstable states, under poor governance. The effect of the physical consequences – such as more frequent extreme weather, melting glaciers, and shorter growing seasons – will add to the pressures under which those societies already live. The background of poverty and bad governance means many of these communities both have a low capacity to adapt to climate change and face a high risk of violent conflict."
more...Dreams of Solar
Photovoltaic panels were first developed for the U.S. space program during the Cold War. When the anti-nuclear movement called attention to the politics of energy production, solar suddenly became the next great clean technology. Jimmy Carter tried to jumpstart the industry with a federal incentive program, but Ronald Reagan dumped it as soon as he took office, giving solar a radical aura. During the dismal 80s, tens of thousands of grassroots environmentalists dedicated their best energies to building arrays and wiring inverters for life off the grid. Now, even after a decade of double-digit annual growth in the industry, silicon-based photovoltaic panels provide less than .01 percent of the electricity used in the US. Not even the most optimistic industry watchers think that current solar technologies will ever supply more than 2 or 3 percent of grid power. Aside from high cost, solar faces one big problem. Light can only be gathered in the daytime. Of course, batteries can be used to store energy, but they are both expensive and short-lived.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Pollution in Colorado River
American Rivers put the Colorado first on its list of "America's Most Endangered Rivers of 2004."According to the report, "Three major sources of pollution are seeping into the Colorado River via contaminated groundwater.... Human waste from riverfront boomtowns in California and Arizona contaminates the river below Hoover Dam.... A second type of contamination is an ingredient in rocket fuel called perchlorate, which has been measured in Lake Mead at concentrations as high as 24 parts per billion.... The third pollution source is radioactive mill waste from a defunct facility along the Colorado River near Moab, Utah. With almost 12 million tons of radioactive material stored in a crude, unlined impoundment on the riverbank, the former Atlas Minerals Corporation site is the fifth largest and single most dangerous uranium tailings pile in the country. An estimated 110,000 gallons of radioactive groundwater seep into the river each day from this site. Uranium is one of the few carcinogens considered dangerous at any level, and levels in the river increase by 1,660 percent in the vicinity of the Atlas site."
A modeling study commissioned by the Department of Energy proposed a much lower leakage rate at the Atlas mill pile--between 8,500 and 24,000 gallons per day.
The Department of Energy has spent $2 billion to relocate more than 20 uranium tailings piles since 1980, mainly to protect water sources.
A modeling study commissioned by the Department of Energy proposed a much lower leakage rate at the Atlas mill pile--between 8,500 and 24,000 gallons per day.
The Department of Energy has spent $2 billion to relocate more than 20 uranium tailings piles since 1980, mainly to protect water sources.
Depletion of Groundwater in India
"If groundwater can be thought of as a nation’s savings account for dry, desperate drought years, then India, which has more than its share of them, is rapidly exhausting its reserve. That situation is true in a growing number of states.
Indian surveyors have divided the country into 5,723 geographic blocks. More than 1,000 are considered either overexploited, meaning more water is drawn on average than is replenished by rain, or critical, meaning they are dangerously close to it.
Twenty years ago, according to the Central Groundwater Board, only 250 blocks fell into those categories."
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Indian surveyors have divided the country into 5,723 geographic blocks. More than 1,000 are considered either overexploited, meaning more water is drawn on average than is replenished by rain, or critical, meaning they are dangerously close to it.
Twenty years ago, according to the Central Groundwater Board, only 250 blocks fell into those categories."
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The Next Resource War?
"Russian explorers have planted their country's flag on the seabed 4,200m (14,000ft) below the North Pole to further Moscow's claims to the Arctic.
The rust-proof titanium metal flag was brought by explorers travelling in two mini-submarines, in what is believed to be the first expedition of its kind....
"This isn't the 15th Century," Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay told the CTV channel. "You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say 'We're claiming this territory'," he said.
Russia's claim to a vast swathe of territory in the Arctic, thought to contain oil, gas and mineral reserves, has been challenged by several other powers, including the US."
Marine power
Marine hydroelectric, which harnesses the energy in waves and tides, may become a significant source of renewable energy in suitable areas, especially Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. This is an industry at the earliest stages of development, with many competing candidate technologies. One of the most prominent US demonstration projects was installed in early 2007 by Verdant Power. Five turbines mounted in the East River off Manhattan supplied energy directly to a grocery store and parking structure. The windmill-like turbines lasted just six months before strong currents ripped off their blades. There are also important concerns about impacts on fish and other wildlife, which may be caught in turbines or displaced by large-scale wave farms.
Galbraith, Kate, “Testing the Waters,” High Country News 39.15 (August 20, 2007): 8-9.
Working-class neighborhoods really are hotter
"Socioeconomics determines a lot about our environment: what kind of housing we live in; how far we have to commute to work; the quality of our children's schools. In cities like Phoenix, however, it also determines how hot you're going to be.
Researchers at the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long Term Ecological Research project at Arizona State University have found that wealthier neighborhoods are cooler - literally. Affluent neighborhoods, such as those in Scottsdale, can be as much as 13 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than poorer neighborhoods. In an area that routinely reaches hellish triple digits in the summer, every degree counts....
Phoenix may be giving us a glimpse of the future we've set ourselves up for. Many of the climate changes predicted to happen on a global scale are already occurring in the city. The conversion of lighter desert to dark heat-absorbing roads and buildings has raised average daily temperatures by about 5 degrees Fahrenheit across the entire city, as well as raising nighttime minimum temperatures and decreasing frost events.
All that traffic necessitated by Phoenix's sprawling design has resulted in an atmospheric bubble of carbon dioxide over the metro area that's twice the global atmospheric mean concentration, as well as significantly elevated levels of atmospheric nitrogen deposition."
Petra Spiess, "Scientists and the City," High Country News 39.15 (August 20, 2007): 6.
Researchers at the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long Term Ecological Research project at Arizona State University have found that wealthier neighborhoods are cooler - literally. Affluent neighborhoods, such as those in Scottsdale, can be as much as 13 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than poorer neighborhoods. In an area that routinely reaches hellish triple digits in the summer, every degree counts....
Phoenix may be giving us a glimpse of the future we've set ourselves up for. Many of the climate changes predicted to happen on a global scale are already occurring in the city. The conversion of lighter desert to dark heat-absorbing roads and buildings has raised average daily temperatures by about 5 degrees Fahrenheit across the entire city, as well as raising nighttime minimum temperatures and decreasing frost events.
All that traffic necessitated by Phoenix's sprawling design has resulted in an atmospheric bubble of carbon dioxide over the metro area that's twice the global atmospheric mean concentration, as well as significantly elevated levels of atmospheric nitrogen deposition."
Petra Spiess, "Scientists and the City," High Country News 39.15 (August 20, 2007): 6.
Fires in the Wildland Urban Interface
"More and more people are building homes in the western "wildland urban interface", the forested areas where housing borders undeveloped public lands. With more homes built in forested areas, it has become increasingly expensive to fight the inevitable wildfires that are part of life in the arid West. Building remote homes on the outskirts of western wildlands is placing a huge strain on U.S. firefighting efforts.
Only 14% of forested western private land adjacent to public land is currently developed for residential use. Based on current growth trends, there is tremendous potential for future development on the remaining 86%.
Given the skyrocketing cost of fighting wildfires in recent years (on average $1.3 billion each year between 2000-2005), this potential development would create an unmanageable financial burden for taxpayers.
If homes were built in 50% of the forested areas where private land borders public land, annual firefighting costs could range from $2.3 billion to $4.3 billion per year. By way of comparison, the U.S. Forest Service's annual budget is approximately $4.5 billion."
San Dieguito Wetlands Restoration project
For more than a year, commuters stuck in traffic on Interstate 5 have been watching a fleet of yellow earthmovers working in the San Dieguito River Valley north of San Diego. Most assume they're laying the groundwork for yet another massive condominium complex. In fact, they are carrying out an $86 million wetlands restoration project paid for by Southern California Edison to mitigate the environmental effects of its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which uses 2.5 billion gallons of seawater a day as coolant. More than 2 million cubic yards of earth will be moved during the three-year project. The river channel will be excavated to maintain tidal exchange and 150 acres of wetlands will be restored will native plants. In addition, five nesting sites will be built for migratory birds, including Belding’s Savannah Sparrow, Snowy Plover, the endangered California Least Tern and the Light Footed Clapper Rail. Wetlands are among the most productive of ecosystems worldwide, providing critical breeding habitat for thousands of species of birds, reptiles, mammals, fresh and saltwater fish. They also act as filters, cleaning urban and agricultural runoff before it flows into the ocean. More than half of the planet's wetlands have been lost to development, and only 5% remain in San Diego County.
The Perfect Drought
Since the turn of the millenium, the Southwestern United States has been suffering through a drought that matches predictions made by computer models of global warming. High pressure over the Pacific has redirected the moist jetstream northward, bringing heavy rains to Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. Meanwhile, San Diego has seen eight years in a row of precipitation below its annual average of 10.77 inches. The last two years have been the driest since record-keeping began in 1801. Oak and pine forests are retreating upslope in the East County mountains. Large areas of highly drought-tolerant chapparral are dying. Bird populations are declining and several species have shifted their range. A U.S. Geological Survey report released in June 2004 said that based on water levels in the Colorado River basin, the drought "may be comparable to or more severe than the largest-known drought in 500 years." In each of the last three years, more than 8 million acres of wildlands burned nationwide, mostly in the West, costing an average of $1.3 billion per year to fight.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
William Morris on Nature and Profit
"I feel sure that the time will come when people will find it difficult to believe that a rich community such as ours, having such command over external Nature, could have submitted to live such a mean, shabby, dirty life as we do.
And once for all, there is nothing in our circumstances save the hunting of profit that drives us into it. It is profit which draws men into enormous unmanageable aggregations called towns, for instance; profit which crowds them up when they are there into quarters without gardens or open spaces; profit which won't take the most ordinary precautions against wrapping a whole district in a cloud of sulphurous smoke; which turns beautiful rivers into filthy sewers; which condemns all but the rich to live in houses idiotically cramped and confined at the best, and at the worst in houses for whose wretchedness there is no name."
William Morris, Signs of Change (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903), 29-30.
And once for all, there is nothing in our circumstances save the hunting of profit that drives us into it. It is profit which draws men into enormous unmanageable aggregations called towns, for instance; profit which crowds them up when they are there into quarters without gardens or open spaces; profit which won't take the most ordinary precautions against wrapping a whole district in a cloud of sulphurous smoke; which turns beautiful rivers into filthy sewers; which condemns all but the rich to live in houses idiotically cramped and confined at the best, and at the worst in houses for whose wretchedness there is no name."
William Morris, Signs of Change (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903), 29-30.
Marx on Robbing the Worker and the Soil
"Capitalist production ... disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the fertility of the soil.... All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility.... Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the worker."
Karl Marx, Capital (I.637-638).
Karl Marx, Capital (I.637-638).
Developers Defeated Anti-Sprawl Measure
After the October 2003 fires in San Diego, Save Our Forest and Ranchlands launched the Rural Lands Initiative which would have allowed no more than one house per forty acres outside of established cities and towns. Designed to restrict suburban development, the measure was rejected by voters in March 2004, the second time in five years that environmental activists failed to win passage of initiatives designed to stave off urban sprawl in San Diego's backcountry.
Longtime San Diego activist, Rocky Neptune, claims that "The Building Industry Association and the San Diego Association of Realtors, with the aid of the Board of Supervisors, spent over $2.5 million in a campaign of lies and confusion. After the ballot measure was defeated, developers have raked in billions grading away back country acres; while Supervisors stash the cash for subdivision decisions."
In "Moneybags Promote Sobbing Farmers," veteran San Diego journalist Don Bauder argues that, "The San Diego County Farm Bureau does the talking, and real estate interests do the bankrolling."
Longtime San Diego activist, Rocky Neptune, claims that "The Building Industry Association and the San Diego Association of Realtors, with the aid of the Board of Supervisors, spent over $2.5 million in a campaign of lies and confusion. After the ballot measure was defeated, developers have raked in billions grading away back country acres; while Supervisors stash the cash for subdivision decisions."
In "Moneybags Promote Sobbing Farmers," veteran San Diego journalist Don Bauder argues that, "The San Diego County Farm Bureau does the talking, and real estate interests do the bankrolling."
Unions seeing new benefits in 'smart growth'
SAN DIEGO — A battle to curtail suburban sprawl around California's second-largest city feels like déjà vu. The same powerful interests that shot down protections for rural land six years ago are poised to torpedo a new ballot measure in March.
Except for a key difference. Organized labor, once opposed to any development curbs for fear of losing jobs, avidly supports the recycled voter initiative.
The building trades unions, usually wary of "smart growth" policies, have become convinced that those development practices hold potential for more jobs and better jobs than sprawl does.
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Except for a key difference. Organized labor, once opposed to any development curbs for fear of losing jobs, avidly supports the recycled voter initiative.
The building trades unions, usually wary of "smart growth" policies, have become convinced that those development practices hold potential for more jobs and better jobs than sprawl does.
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Underfunded Public Safety Heightens San Diego's Fire Risk
As wildfires devastated San Diego neighborhoods this week, chronic and systematic underfunding of public safety services left the region needlessly vulnerable to the destruction.
That is the conclusion of the Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI), a non-profit research organization based in San Diego.
"Although this is a region with extreme natural fire hazards, anti-tax politics have led to an undersupply of fire stations, equipment and personnel to adequately fight fires," said CPI president Donald Cohen. "Our 2005 study, The Bottom Line, documented that San Diego's per capita spending on fire protection is the third lowest among large California cities, and the number of firefighters per 1,000 residents is the lowest."
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That is the conclusion of the Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI), a non-profit research organization based in San Diego.
"Although this is a region with extreme natural fire hazards, anti-tax politics have led to an undersupply of fire stations, equipment and personnel to adequately fight fires," said CPI president Donald Cohen. "Our 2005 study, The Bottom Line, documented that San Diego's per capita spending on fire protection is the third lowest among large California cities, and the number of firefighters per 1,000 residents is the lowest."
more...
Colin Fisher on Underfunding of SD Fire Department
Local politics also plays a role in this "natural" disaster. San Diegans have failed to learn the lessons from the terrible firestorms that ravaged the county in October 2003. At the time, San Diego had no unified county fire department. The city, the county, and outside agencies failed to work in concert. The city had a small fleet of antiquated fire engines, no firefighting helicopters, and not enough money for radios, batteries and emergency fire shelters for its firefighters. At the time, the city, arguably the most fire-prone major city in the United States, ranked 40th in the nation in firefighters per capita.
This time, firefighters have again fought heroically. Generous citizens are offering time, money and supplies. Inter-agency communication is decidedly better. And the city owns a firefighting helicopter.
But little else has changed. There's still no unified countywide fire department, and San Diegans refuse to tax themselves (or even out-of-town hotel guests) to bring fire service up to national standards. The city and the county remain underequipped and understaffed.
more...
This time, firefighters have again fought heroically. Generous citizens are offering time, money and supplies. Inter-agency communication is decidedly better. And the city owns a firefighting helicopter.
But little else has changed. There's still no unified countywide fire department, and San Diegans refuse to tax themselves (or even out-of-town hotel guests) to bring fire service up to national standards. The city and the county remain underequipped and understaffed.
more...
Autumn Rain Down 90 Percent in China Rice Belt
BEIJING - Large areas of south China are suffering from serious drought, with water levels on two major rivers in rice-growing provinces dropping to historic lows, state media said on Tuesday.
Rainfall since the beginning of October had dropped by 90 percent in Jiangxi and 86 percent in neighbouring Hunan, the country's largest rice-growing province, from average figures, Xinhua news agency said.
Rice is a staple for most Chinese and a crop which needs a constant supply of water
more...
Rainfall since the beginning of October had dropped by 90 percent in Jiangxi and 86 percent in neighbouring Hunan, the country's largest rice-growing province, from average figures, Xinhua news agency said.
Rice is a staple for most Chinese and a crop which needs a constant supply of water
more...
Biosolids Recycling
The Encina Plant in Carlsbad, California is currently building a biosolids recycling facility that will burn methane released during wastewater treatment to generate electricity and dry solid wastes. Drying biosolids will reduce their volume by about 80%, or about 1,200 truck loads per year. The resulting pellets can be used as fertilizer or biofuel.
Leucadia Wastewater District, Downstream (Fall 2007): 3.
Leucadia Wastewater District, Downstream (Fall 2007): 3.
John Bellamy Foster on Environmental Justice
"Those who have devoted their energies to overcoming social inequality have always been involved in the battle for environmental justice. War, economic inequality, and third world underdevelopment ... are inextricably bound to the larger question of the systematic degradation of the planet and the conditions of life for a majority of the world's people. The failure to perceive this connection is the principal weakness of mainstream environmentalism. If we are to make sense of the environmental crisis, we must not abandon radical social concerns but broaden and deepen them to take into account the destruction of the earth itself. It is above all the interconnectedness of social and environmental problems that constitutes the primary basis upon which a potent movement for change can be created."
John Bellamy Foster, The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999), 9-10.
John Bellamy Foster, The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999), 9-10.
Evo Morales: "Let's Respect Our Mother Earth"
We need to create a World Environment Organisation which is binding, and which can discipline the World Trade Organisation, which is propelling as towards barbarism. We can no longer continue to talk of growth in Gross National Product without taking into consideration the destruction and wastage of natural resources. We need to adopt an indicator that allows us to consider, in a combined way, the Human Development Index and the Ecological Footprint in order to measure our environmental situation.
We need to apply harsh taxes on the super concentration of wealth, and adopt effective mechanisms for its equitable redistribution. It is not possible that three families can have an income superior to the combined GDP of the 48 poorest countries. We can not talk of equity and social justice whilst this situation continues.
See here for more
We need to apply harsh taxes on the super concentration of wealth, and adopt effective mechanisms for its equitable redistribution. It is not possible that three families can have an income superior to the combined GDP of the 48 poorest countries. We can not talk of equity and social justice whilst this situation continues.
See here for more
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Talk at SoCal Socialist Conference
See here for a transcript of my talk on "Capitalism and the Environment in Crisis" at the Southern California Socialist Conference.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Windbelt, Cheap Generator Alternative
Working in Haiti, Shawn Frayne, a 28-year-old inventor based in Mountain View, Calif., saw the need for small-scale wind power to juice LED lamps and radios in the homes of the poor. Conventional wind turbines don’t scale down well—there’s too much friction in the gearbox and other components. “With rotary power, there’s nothing out there that generates under 50 watts,” Frayne says. So he took a new tack, studying the way vibrations caused by the wind led to the collapse in 1940 of Washington’s Tacoma Narrows Bridge (aka Galloping Gertie).
Frayne’s device, which he calls a Windbelt, is a taut membrane fitted with a pair of magnets that oscillate between metal coils. Prototypes have generated 40 milliwatts in 10-mph slivers of wind, making his device 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best microturbines. Frayne envisions the Windbelt costing a few dollars and replacing kerosene lamps in Haitian homes.
more...
Frayne’s device, which he calls a Windbelt, is a taut membrane fitted with a pair of magnets that oscillate between metal coils. Prototypes have generated 40 milliwatts in 10-mph slivers of wind, making his device 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best microturbines. Frayne envisions the Windbelt costing a few dollars and replacing kerosene lamps in Haitian homes.
more...
Katrina leaves permanent scar on forests
An analysis of satellite imagery of the Gulf Coast shows that Hurricane Katrina destroyed an estimated 320 million trees in Mississippi and Louisiana, an unprecedented loss of forestland that will reshape the region for generations, Louisiana researchers reported today.
The death of the trees from wind damage and soaking in saltwater will ultimately release about 367 million tons of carbon dioxide as they decompose -- about the same amount that is absorbed by all U.S. forests in a year, according to the study published in the journal Science.
Considered on the vast scale of global climate change, Katrina's impact is small. But as a one-time event, its infusion of carbon is significant, exceeding an entire season's worth of emissions from U.S. forest fires.
more...
The death of the trees from wind damage and soaking in saltwater will ultimately release about 367 million tons of carbon dioxide as they decompose -- about the same amount that is absorbed by all U.S. forests in a year, according to the study published in the journal Science.
Considered on the vast scale of global climate change, Katrina's impact is small. But as a one-time event, its infusion of carbon is significant, exceeding an entire season's worth of emissions from U.S. forest fires.
more...
Climate scepticism: The top 10
What are some of the reasons why "climate sceptics" dispute the evidence that human activities such as industrial emissions of greenhouse gases and deforestation are bringing potentially dangerous changes to the Earth's climate?
See here.
See here.
Monday, November 12, 2007
The Sixth Extinction
Human beings have always altered their environments, especially since the beginning of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. But that process has radically accelerated under capitalism. Southern California used to be one of the most biologically diverse areas in North America. But in the last 100 years, we’ve destroyed 85 percent of Coastal Sage Scrub. In Los Angeles County, only 5 percent of ancestral wetlands are left.
Worldwide, this translates into what paleobiologists call the Sixth Extinction. At least three of the first five were caused by climate change. The last one, about 65 million years ago, was caused by a comet that smashed into the Earth, carving out the Gulf of Mexico. Right now, as a result of habitat destruction and global warming, we are losing about 30,000 species per year, or about three per hour.
This isn’t just bad for willow flycatchers and fairy shrimp. One of the most promising areas of medical research right now is ethnopharmacology, which focuses on isolating complex organic compounds that can be used to treat disease. The plants and animals that contain these compounds have evolved over millions of years, but they are disappearing faster than they can be studied.
The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind by Richard E. Leakey
Worldwide, this translates into what paleobiologists call the Sixth Extinction. At least three of the first five were caused by climate change. The last one, about 65 million years ago, was caused by a comet that smashed into the Earth, carving out the Gulf of Mexico. Right now, as a result of habitat destruction and global warming, we are losing about 30,000 species per year, or about three per hour.
This isn’t just bad for willow flycatchers and fairy shrimp. One of the most promising areas of medical research right now is ethnopharmacology, which focuses on isolating complex organic compounds that can be used to treat disease. The plants and animals that contain these compounds have evolved over millions of years, but they are disappearing faster than they can be studied.
The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind by Richard E. Leakey
Green consumerism
According to a 2005 Harris poll, 74% of US adults agree that "protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high, and continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost." Many of them feel, rightly, that they can’t wait for the superheroes of environmental capitalism to get it right. And a lot of them act on their convictions every day.
They volunteer, like my friend who spends her weekends at beach clean-ups. That’s okay, but remember that Ronald Reagan launched the Adopt-a-Highway program so he could lay off unionized maintenance workers.
They also get religious about litter and recycling. For three years in a row, students at my university have won first place for the best campus recycling program in the country. That’s a good thing, but it also means they’re doing a hell of a lot of free work for Waste Management Incorporated, the "Walmart of Waste."
The truth is that watching where we put our trash may help us feel better about ourselves, but it really doesn’t do a damned thing about the environmental crisis.
They also watch what they buy, doing their best to use organic local produce, for example. I do that when I can too. It tastes better and its easier on my liver. But I don’t kid myself that it’s going to save the environment.
The problem with green consumerism is that it attacks the problem with our weakest weapon, our power as individuals in a global system. Meanwhile, agribusiness companies are taking over organic food production, ratcheting down standards, and plowing local farmers under. In the end, we use up our energy policing ourselves instead of putting any kind of effective pressure on the companies that that are the real source of the problem.
The truth is that choices about fuel efficiency, fuel sources, emissions, and so on, are not made at the individual level. They’re made at the level of whole societies, and in this capitalist society, huge corporations use their power to maintain our dependence on the chemicals, and nuclear power, and fossil fuels they sell.
They volunteer, like my friend who spends her weekends at beach clean-ups. That’s okay, but remember that Ronald Reagan launched the Adopt-a-Highway program so he could lay off unionized maintenance workers.
They also get religious about litter and recycling. For three years in a row, students at my university have won first place for the best campus recycling program in the country. That’s a good thing, but it also means they’re doing a hell of a lot of free work for Waste Management Incorporated, the "Walmart of Waste."
The truth is that watching where we put our trash may help us feel better about ourselves, but it really doesn’t do a damned thing about the environmental crisis.
They also watch what they buy, doing their best to use organic local produce, for example. I do that when I can too. It tastes better and its easier on my liver. But I don’t kid myself that it’s going to save the environment.
The problem with green consumerism is that it attacks the problem with our weakest weapon, our power as individuals in a global system. Meanwhile, agribusiness companies are taking over organic food production, ratcheting down standards, and plowing local farmers under. In the end, we use up our energy policing ourselves instead of putting any kind of effective pressure on the companies that that are the real source of the problem.
The truth is that choices about fuel efficiency, fuel sources, emissions, and so on, are not made at the individual level. They’re made at the level of whole societies, and in this capitalist society, huge corporations use their power to maintain our dependence on the chemicals, and nuclear power, and fossil fuels they sell.
Pollution and Human Health
The other thing that capitalism is really good at producing, besides pollution, is poverty. And pollution disproportionatly affects the poor. “In all important areas of illness, over the last 40 years, mortality amongst the professional classes has decreased, while increasing amongst the poor....”(1)
Farm-workers, for example, face especially high health risks from working with toxic materials. In 1990, the World Health Organization estimated that there were at least 3 million cases of acute pesticide poisoning per year, not counting cases of chronic toxicity. There are at least 20,000 deaths from pesticide poisoning each year, mostly in developing countries.
But most exposure to toxic chemicals doesn’t actually happen at work. It happens in our neighborhoods and homes. People living in areas with heavy air pollution from traffic--in other words, workers and the poor--have a 40 per cent greater than average chance of developing lung cancer, whether or not they are smokers. Three times as many people die from the effects of chronic exposure to exhaust than from collisions.
During the Twentieth Century under capitalism we eradicated most of the major biological diseases of the past: tuberculosis, influenza, polio, smallpox, etc. But we’ve replaced them with epidemics of new environmental disorders: cancer, asthma, allergies, heart disease, obesity, infertility, and so on.
“In the 10 year period from 1982 to 1992, the incidence of all cancers, malign and benign, for the whole population increased by 77 per cent, diabetes in males escalated by 61 per cent, asthma in younger males and females increased by 114 per cent and 165 per cent respectively, osteoarthritis increased in men by 58 per cent and in women by 214 per cent and breast cancer in women rose by 39 per cent.” (1)
In other words, for all the progress, all the better living through chemistry, capitalist society has become intensely unhealthy because of what it has done to the environment. And because it is a class society, health problems, like health care, aren’t distributed evenly.
(1) Martin Walker, “Home Sickness,” The Ecologist, April 2001.
Farm-workers, for example, face especially high health risks from working with toxic materials. In 1990, the World Health Organization estimated that there were at least 3 million cases of acute pesticide poisoning per year, not counting cases of chronic toxicity. There are at least 20,000 deaths from pesticide poisoning each year, mostly in developing countries.
But most exposure to toxic chemicals doesn’t actually happen at work. It happens in our neighborhoods and homes. People living in areas with heavy air pollution from traffic--in other words, workers and the poor--have a 40 per cent greater than average chance of developing lung cancer, whether or not they are smokers. Three times as many people die from the effects of chronic exposure to exhaust than from collisions.
During the Twentieth Century under capitalism we eradicated most of the major biological diseases of the past: tuberculosis, influenza, polio, smallpox, etc. But we’ve replaced them with epidemics of new environmental disorders: cancer, asthma, allergies, heart disease, obesity, infertility, and so on.
“In the 10 year period from 1982 to 1992, the incidence of all cancers, malign and benign, for the whole population increased by 77 per cent, diabetes in males escalated by 61 per cent, asthma in younger males and females increased by 114 per cent and 165 per cent respectively, osteoarthritis increased in men by 58 per cent and in women by 214 per cent and breast cancer in women rose by 39 per cent.” (1)
In other words, for all the progress, all the better living through chemistry, capitalist society has become intensely unhealthy because of what it has done to the environment. And because it is a class society, health problems, like health care, aren’t distributed evenly.
(1) Martin Walker, “Home Sickness,” The Ecologist, April 2001.
Everyday Pollution
We live in a world that is laced with toxic chemicals in a way that we have never seen in human history. “In 1940, the world output of chemicals was 1 billion lb; by the 1980s, this had risen to 500 billion pounds. There are now about 60,000-70,000 synthetic chemicals in regular use [in] building materials, cleaning products, self-care products, gardening products, pesticide residues on foods, etc.” (1) On an evolutionary time-scale, that’s like going down to your hardware store and drinking a gallon of paint thinner.
Americans use as much as 60 million pounds of pesticides and 280 million pounds of antimicrobial disinfectants each year just in their homes. In the mid 1990s, it was estimated that in pesticides killed about 10,400 people per year in the US alone.
But its not just consumer products. Industrial waste and agricultural runoff poisons rivers and lakes. Toxic smoke from factories and exhaust from cars and trucks poisons the air. Urban sprawl driven by real estate profiteers makes the problem worse by increasing the time we spend in traffic.
In the 1990s, the air in Mexico City was so bad that Heberto Castillo Martinez, president of Mexico’s Senate Commission on Science and Technology, endorsed a plan to tunnel holes in the mountains that surround the city, and then use huge fans to blow smog out of the valley.
Agribusiness corporations like Monsanto, Syngenta, and DuPont have invented a whole new form of pollution in the last couple of decades: genetically-modified crops whose purpose is not to increase the world’s food supply or be more nutritious, but to increase their market control.
Their favorite strategy is to produced seed varieties that are genetically modified to resist extremely toxic herbicides that they just happen to also sell. The problem with GMO organisms is that nobody knows what they will do outside the context of an agricultural research station.
Mad cow disease is a kind of pollution too. Cattle companies feed cow parts, especially spinal cord tissue, to cows, spreading a disease-causing protein that works like a virus. Then they feed the sick cows to us and make us sick.
Likewise, most American milk is toxic. Bovine growth hormone makes cows give about 20% more milk. It also stimulates their livers to release a huge amounts of a substance called Insulin-like Growth Factor that promotes breast cancer in women and may affect children’s growth. (2)
Business as usual under capitalism is an environmental catastrophe. If there’s one thing capitalism does really well, its pumping us full of pollution everyday.
(1) Martin J Walker, Home Sickness, Ecologist, 22 April 2001.
(2) Cancer Prevention Coalition, “Milk: America’s Health Problem.”
Americans use as much as 60 million pounds of pesticides and 280 million pounds of antimicrobial disinfectants each year just in their homes. In the mid 1990s, it was estimated that in pesticides killed about 10,400 people per year in the US alone.
But its not just consumer products. Industrial waste and agricultural runoff poisons rivers and lakes. Toxic smoke from factories and exhaust from cars and trucks poisons the air. Urban sprawl driven by real estate profiteers makes the problem worse by increasing the time we spend in traffic.
In the 1990s, the air in Mexico City was so bad that Heberto Castillo Martinez, president of Mexico’s Senate Commission on Science and Technology, endorsed a plan to tunnel holes in the mountains that surround the city, and then use huge fans to blow smog out of the valley.
Agribusiness corporations like Monsanto, Syngenta, and DuPont have invented a whole new form of pollution in the last couple of decades: genetically-modified crops whose purpose is not to increase the world’s food supply or be more nutritious, but to increase their market control.
Their favorite strategy is to produced seed varieties that are genetically modified to resist extremely toxic herbicides that they just happen to also sell. The problem with GMO organisms is that nobody knows what they will do outside the context of an agricultural research station.
Mad cow disease is a kind of pollution too. Cattle companies feed cow parts, especially spinal cord tissue, to cows, spreading a disease-causing protein that works like a virus. Then they feed the sick cows to us and make us sick.
Likewise, most American milk is toxic. Bovine growth hormone makes cows give about 20% more milk. It also stimulates their livers to release a huge amounts of a substance called Insulin-like Growth Factor that promotes breast cancer in women and may affect children’s growth. (2)
Business as usual under capitalism is an environmental catastrophe. If there’s one thing capitalism does really well, its pumping us full of pollution everyday.
(1) Martin J Walker, Home Sickness, Ecologist, 22 April 2001.
(2) Cancer Prevention Coalition, “Milk: America’s Health Problem.”
Spotlight Toxic Events
The Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989, carrying about 53,000,000 gallons of North Slope Crude. A little over 11,000,000 of that spilled and coated 1300 miles of pristine coastline. That's a big spill, but it isn't even in the top 50 in terms of the amount of oil lost.
What was most interesting about this event was how clearly it showed that environmental accidents are anything but accidental. In the aftermath, we learned that oil companies had been spending millions of dollars to defeat legislation that would have required them to use tankers with double hulls. Instead of taking responsibility for their malfeasance, Exxon pinnedthe blame on the captain, Joe Hazelwood, accusing him of drinking on the job. But they couldn’t prove it, so Hazelwood was convicted of negligence, fined $50,000, and forced to do 1000 hours of community service picking up litter along the highway and working in a soup kitchen.
Exxon ended up paying about $1 billion in fines and they claim to have spent $2 billion on the clean-up. But that’s peanuts to them. Their profits alone for 2003 were over $17 billion and their first quarter revenue for 2004 was $66 billion.
So oil spills are bad for the environment and they happen all the time. The risk management people in the big corporate towers call them part of the cost of doing business. So what else is new? Well, it’s not just the lives of seals and seagulls that they’re are willing to take risks with.
Early in the morning on December 3, 1984, 40 tons of cyanide gas leaked from a tank at the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India. The plant’s warning sirens had been turned off, so the cyanide caught half a million people asleep in their beds. At least 8,000 people were killed. About 400,000 were injured, suffering lung and neurological damage resulting in chronic pain and fevers, as well as persistent anxiety and depression. (1) This is just one of the thousands of unplanned toxic chemical spills and releases that happen every year.
Of course, the most powerful toxic substance of all is radioactivity. One of the most spectacular environmental disasters in history was the melt-down of Reactor #4 at Chernobyl in 1986. The reactor overheated and blew its lid, releasing a huge cloud of radioactive material that that settled across much of Europe.
Right after it blew, Mikhail Gorbachev went on TV and said: “There has been an incredible misfortune--an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It has painfully affected the Soviet People and shocked the international community. For the first time we confront the real power of nuclear energy, out of control.”
Out of control is right. But it wasn’t the first time. What about the meltdown of Reactor 2 at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, near Middletown, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1979?
It wasn’t the last time either. In April 2002, a technician found a hole several inches across in the reactor containment vessel at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant, about 30 miles east of Toledo, Ohio. The only thing keeping the pressurized coolant solution in the reactor core was a 3/8-inch thick stainless steel sheath that had begun to bulge. If it had cracked, the coolant would have escaped and the reactor would likely have melted down. (2)
Of course, the most devastating releases of radioactivity have been the explosions of atomic bombs--at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, at the Nevada test site, in the South Pacific, and in lots of other places around the world.
And in the last couple of decades, the Pentagon has invented a new way to irradiate the planet. They coat their bullets and shells with nuclear waste called depleted uranium, or DU. Depleted uranium is everywhere in Iraq. During the two invasions, at least 2500 tons of depleted uranium munitions were fired, with as many as 200 tons being fired on Baghdad alone. (3)
In other words, Iraq is a toxic wasteland. Women as young as 35 are developing breast cancer. Sterility amongst men has increased ten-fold. Birth defects and miscarriages have skyrocketed. The rate of leukemia has increased 600% since 1990.
Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.7 billion years.
(1) The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, “The Union Carbide Disaster.”
(2) Union of Concerned Scientists, “Davis-Besse: The Reactor with a Hole in its Head.”
(3) Paul Brown, Uranium hazard prompts cancer check on troops,” The Guardian, Friday April 25, 2003.
What was most interesting about this event was how clearly it showed that environmental accidents are anything but accidental. In the aftermath, we learned that oil companies had been spending millions of dollars to defeat legislation that would have required them to use tankers with double hulls. Instead of taking responsibility for their malfeasance, Exxon pinnedthe blame on the captain, Joe Hazelwood, accusing him of drinking on the job. But they couldn’t prove it, so Hazelwood was convicted of negligence, fined $50,000, and forced to do 1000 hours of community service picking up litter along the highway and working in a soup kitchen.
Exxon ended up paying about $1 billion in fines and they claim to have spent $2 billion on the clean-up. But that’s peanuts to them. Their profits alone for 2003 were over $17 billion and their first quarter revenue for 2004 was $66 billion.
So oil spills are bad for the environment and they happen all the time. The risk management people in the big corporate towers call them part of the cost of doing business. So what else is new? Well, it’s not just the lives of seals and seagulls that they’re are willing to take risks with.
Early in the morning on December 3, 1984, 40 tons of cyanide gas leaked from a tank at the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India. The plant’s warning sirens had been turned off, so the cyanide caught half a million people asleep in their beds. At least 8,000 people were killed. About 400,000 were injured, suffering lung and neurological damage resulting in chronic pain and fevers, as well as persistent anxiety and depression. (1) This is just one of the thousands of unplanned toxic chemical spills and releases that happen every year.
Of course, the most powerful toxic substance of all is radioactivity. One of the most spectacular environmental disasters in history was the melt-down of Reactor #4 at Chernobyl in 1986. The reactor overheated and blew its lid, releasing a huge cloud of radioactive material that that settled across much of Europe.
Right after it blew, Mikhail Gorbachev went on TV and said: “There has been an incredible misfortune--an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It has painfully affected the Soviet People and shocked the international community. For the first time we confront the real power of nuclear energy, out of control.”
Out of control is right. But it wasn’t the first time. What about the meltdown of Reactor 2 at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, near Middletown, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1979?
It wasn’t the last time either. In April 2002, a technician found a hole several inches across in the reactor containment vessel at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant, about 30 miles east of Toledo, Ohio. The only thing keeping the pressurized coolant solution in the reactor core was a 3/8-inch thick stainless steel sheath that had begun to bulge. If it had cracked, the coolant would have escaped and the reactor would likely have melted down. (2)
Of course, the most devastating releases of radioactivity have been the explosions of atomic bombs--at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, at the Nevada test site, in the South Pacific, and in lots of other places around the world.
And in the last couple of decades, the Pentagon has invented a new way to irradiate the planet. They coat their bullets and shells with nuclear waste called depleted uranium, or DU. Depleted uranium is everywhere in Iraq. During the two invasions, at least 2500 tons of depleted uranium munitions were fired, with as many as 200 tons being fired on Baghdad alone. (3)
In other words, Iraq is a toxic wasteland. Women as young as 35 are developing breast cancer. Sterility amongst men has increased ten-fold. Birth defects and miscarriages have skyrocketed. The rate of leukemia has increased 600% since 1990.
Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.7 billion years.
(1) The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, “The Union Carbide Disaster.”
(2) Union of Concerned Scientists, “Davis-Besse: The Reactor with a Hole in its Head.”
(3) Paul Brown, Uranium hazard prompts cancer check on troops,” The Guardian, Friday April 25, 2003.
Jonathon Porritt and Environmental Capitalism
In 2005, Jonathon Porritt, the former head of the British Green Party, published Capitalism as if the World Matters, in which he finally says what many environmentalists have been thinking for a while now: Capitalism is here to stay, so instead of dreaming about alternatives, we should figure out how to get it to go green. This has become the conventional wisdom in the environmental movement over the last decade or so, at least since the publication of Al Gore’s first book, Earth in the Balance. Capitalist environmentalism is to the green movement what the Democratic National Committee was to the old Democratic Party. Its job is to badger greens into putting on a suit and rejecting the populist idealism of the grassroots past. Change will come not from the streets, but from the boardroom and the Beltway. These new realistic greens believe that the planet will be saved by the Fantastic Four of capitalism: engineers, entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, and accountants.
Two San Diegos
The evacuation of half a million residents in San Diego provided an inspiring picture of the way that an entire society can pull itself together to respond to a crisis. Almost unlimited social resources--food, clothing, shelter, fuel, and even cash--were instantly made available for free to help the displaced. And there were innumerable stories of individual acts of selflessness and heroism as people put everything on hold to pitch in for the rescue and relief efforts. The response to the fires also showed the viciousness and cruelty of a society that's been ripped in two by anti-immigrant racism.
San Diego County's population is about 30% Latino and the city is home to tens of thousands of undocumented immigrant workers. Like many other major American cities, San Diego is split in half by a color line, the San Diego River, which flows into the bay just north of the original Spanish mission. The farther north or south you travel, the more uniform the population. San Ysidro in the south is 75 percent Latino, while the North County coastal town of Carlsbad is 85 percent white. During the evacuation, San Diego's Latino and immigrant communities faced a second firestorm of scapegoating, racial profiling, harassment, and intimidation.
The Union Tribune played a key role in fanning the flames of racism. When a group of immigrants were caught in the Harris Fire and taken to the burn unit at UCSD Hospital, the UT ran the story under the inflammatory headline, "Illegal border crossers brave flames, get burned." Reporter Leslie Berenstein made her angle explicit, complaining in the third paragraph that UCSD "would not confirm the identity or immigration status of any of the 16 patients in the hospital's burn unit." Evidently, Berenstein felt this information was important enough to pursue with all the determination and zeal of a Bob Woodward. She published a follow-up story published a week later, "11 of 18 in burn unit undocumented." The subtitle declares, "UCSD cases put focus on who pays for care." The ghoulish story details the advanced techniques used by the burn center, including the grafting of "human cadaveric skin." But Berenstein isn't concerned with their effectiveness. Instead, she focuses on their expense and approvingly quotes a representative of an anti-immigrant think tank who suggests sending the patients to Mexico for care. The story also mentions in passing that four bodies had been found near the border, remarking only that "authorities suspect they crossed illegally before they died." The barely concealed implication is that they too might have ended up in the hospital at taxpayers' expense.
The fires unmasked anti-immigrant hatred not only on the front pages of the UT, but across the city. Immigrant agricultural workers at multiple sites were ordered to keep working despite heavy smoke and ash, in some cases even as flames approached. 477,000 reverse-911 calls went out in English only and there were very few bilingual staff at most evacuations centers, in some cases none. Volunteers at some centers took it upon themselves to ask for IDs and inquire about the immigration status of Latinos applying for relief. And after the Union Tribune published unsubstantiated rumors of looting in suburban neighborhoods, a smog of tension and suspicion began to mix with the smoke of the fires. At Del Mar Fairgrounds, Sheriff's deputies conducted a sweep, questioning Latino evacuees especially closely. And as people began to return to their homes, Latinos were grilled at check points across the county.
The atmosphere at Qualcomm Stadium, the "civilized" counterpart to the Superdome, was especially intense. On Wednesday, the third day of the fires, donated goods were so plentiful that relief workers told people to take as much as they needed for themselves and their families. A Latino family of about twelve adults and children accepted the offer, gathering up food, water, diapers, along with "puzzles and notebooks for the children to draw on and a cooler with juice and Gatorade." San Diego City Police detained them, allegedly for stealing, then turned them over to the Border Patrol who deported them to Mexico. The Border Patrol then stationed uniformed officers as "observers" at FEMA and Red Cross tables. In response to the intimidation, many families simply left, while others felt trapped inside. Wednesday night, San Diego Police launched a midnight sweep through the stadium, waking people up to ask for identification and rousting those who couldn't provide it. The next morning they set up ID check points at the entrances to the stadium.
Despite the flood of racism, the Union Tribune boasted about the response to the fires in what may be one of the most hypocritical headlines in its 135 history: "Regardless of ZIP code, we're all in this together." The truth is that, even in the midst of the city’s biggest disaster, there are two San Diegos, one for the rich and white, another for the poor and brown.
Divided by fire
Firestorm: Treatment of Vulnerable Populations During the San Diego Fires
San Diego County's population is about 30% Latino and the city is home to tens of thousands of undocumented immigrant workers. Like many other major American cities, San Diego is split in half by a color line, the San Diego River, which flows into the bay just north of the original Spanish mission. The farther north or south you travel, the more uniform the population. San Ysidro in the south is 75 percent Latino, while the North County coastal town of Carlsbad is 85 percent white. During the evacuation, San Diego's Latino and immigrant communities faced a second firestorm of scapegoating, racial profiling, harassment, and intimidation.
The Union Tribune played a key role in fanning the flames of racism. When a group of immigrants were caught in the Harris Fire and taken to the burn unit at UCSD Hospital, the UT ran the story under the inflammatory headline, "Illegal border crossers brave flames, get burned." Reporter Leslie Berenstein made her angle explicit, complaining in the third paragraph that UCSD "would not confirm the identity or immigration status of any of the 16 patients in the hospital's burn unit." Evidently, Berenstein felt this information was important enough to pursue with all the determination and zeal of a Bob Woodward. She published a follow-up story published a week later, "11 of 18 in burn unit undocumented." The subtitle declares, "UCSD cases put focus on who pays for care." The ghoulish story details the advanced techniques used by the burn center, including the grafting of "human cadaveric skin." But Berenstein isn't concerned with their effectiveness. Instead, she focuses on their expense and approvingly quotes a representative of an anti-immigrant think tank who suggests sending the patients to Mexico for care. The story also mentions in passing that four bodies had been found near the border, remarking only that "authorities suspect they crossed illegally before they died." The barely concealed implication is that they too might have ended up in the hospital at taxpayers' expense.
The fires unmasked anti-immigrant hatred not only on the front pages of the UT, but across the city. Immigrant agricultural workers at multiple sites were ordered to keep working despite heavy smoke and ash, in some cases even as flames approached. 477,000 reverse-911 calls went out in English only and there were very few bilingual staff at most evacuations centers, in some cases none. Volunteers at some centers took it upon themselves to ask for IDs and inquire about the immigration status of Latinos applying for relief. And after the Union Tribune published unsubstantiated rumors of looting in suburban neighborhoods, a smog of tension and suspicion began to mix with the smoke of the fires. At Del Mar Fairgrounds, Sheriff's deputies conducted a sweep, questioning Latino evacuees especially closely. And as people began to return to their homes, Latinos were grilled at check points across the county.
The atmosphere at Qualcomm Stadium, the "civilized" counterpart to the Superdome, was especially intense. On Wednesday, the third day of the fires, donated goods were so plentiful that relief workers told people to take as much as they needed for themselves and their families. A Latino family of about twelve adults and children accepted the offer, gathering up food, water, diapers, along with "puzzles and notebooks for the children to draw on and a cooler with juice and Gatorade." San Diego City Police detained them, allegedly for stealing, then turned them over to the Border Patrol who deported them to Mexico. The Border Patrol then stationed uniformed officers as "observers" at FEMA and Red Cross tables. In response to the intimidation, many families simply left, while others felt trapped inside. Wednesday night, San Diego Police launched a midnight sweep through the stadium, waking people up to ask for identification and rousting those who couldn't provide it. The next morning they set up ID check points at the entrances to the stadium.
Despite the flood of racism, the Union Tribune boasted about the response to the fires in what may be one of the most hypocritical headlines in its 135 history: "Regardless of ZIP code, we're all in this together." The truth is that, even in the midst of the city’s biggest disaster, there are two San Diegos, one for the rich and white, another for the poor and brown.
Divided by fire
Firestorm: Treatment of Vulnerable Populations During the San Diego Fires
Green Engineering
Alternative energy sources are the holy grail of what I like to call Popular Science Environmentalism. For years, photovoltaic electricity has been the main game in town. But it only works in the daytime, batteries are extremely expensive, and most people in the industry agree that it could never produce more than about 5% of the electricity we need.
Wind power, fuel cells, geothermal, ocean-based hydroelectric, methane and municipal waste have all been the focus of intense experimentation, but all of them run up against barriers of either efficiency or cost. So the environmental media are always packed with articles speculating about the next great green invention.
One of the more convincing candidates is the US company, Ausra, which has developed a simple and extremely efficient system for generating electricity by capturing the sun’s hear with mirrors. Ausra claims that a solar thermal electric park covering about 8 percent of the land area of Nevada could generate all of the electricity used in the US.
The easy response is to say that powerful multinational energy corporations and utilities will never allow an upstart like Ausra to steal their market. The last seven years of Bush and Big Oil show what they’re up against.
Still it’s very possible that real progress will be made. But one thing we know for sure is that under capitalism any progress will be driven by the bottom line of shareholder profits. And under capitalism, no one outside a corporate boardroom will get to vote on whether the energy economy goes solar or nuclear.
Wind power, fuel cells, geothermal, ocean-based hydroelectric, methane and municipal waste have all been the focus of intense experimentation, but all of them run up against barriers of either efficiency or cost. So the environmental media are always packed with articles speculating about the next great green invention.
One of the more convincing candidates is the US company, Ausra, which has developed a simple and extremely efficient system for generating electricity by capturing the sun’s hear with mirrors. Ausra claims that a solar thermal electric park covering about 8 percent of the land area of Nevada could generate all of the electricity used in the US.
The easy response is to say that powerful multinational energy corporations and utilities will never allow an upstart like Ausra to steal their market. The last seven years of Bush and Big Oil show what they’re up against.
Still it’s very possible that real progress will be made. But one thing we know for sure is that under capitalism any progress will be driven by the bottom line of shareholder profits. And under capitalism, no one outside a corporate boardroom will get to vote on whether the energy economy goes solar or nuclear.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Shelter in Place
Southern California's developers have figured out how to build fire-proof houses in even the most fire-prone areas. Five subdivisions on the edges of Rancho Santa Fe, the second richest zipcode in California, were built to meet a stringent "Shelter in Place" protection plan. The houses were built from fire-resistant materials with interior sprinkler systems. And in an area where an undeveloped half-acre lot sells for upwards of $1.5 million, they boast 100-foot defensive perimeters landscaped with fire-resistant plants. During the fires, a wall of flames marched through the neighborhoods, consuming wild vegetation, but leaving all the houses untouched. If you can afford a 5000 square-foot, golf-course mansion here, you can sleep peacefully at night, no matter how hot it gets.
Exclusive homes emerge unscathed as fire-protection concept is tested
Exclusive homes emerge unscathed as fire-protection concept is tested
A Holiday in SoCal
It's a safe bet that San Diego has the world's highest per capita concentration of super-sized SUVs and monster trucks. It's also a place where one of the more common selling points in real-estate ads is "RV parking spot." On Labor Day, the Fourth of July, and Memorial Day, well-heeled suburbanites all over the county get up in the dark and drive their behemoths from the suburbs to the beach to get in position for all-day barbecues and surf sessions. By dawn, the curbside parking lanes along the Coast Highway are packed, bumper to bumper, with bus-sized motor homes.
As soon as the fire evacuation calls started, San Diego RV owners packed up their photo albums and laptops and headed for the beach. While working-class families slept in tents on the artificial turf of Qualcomm Stadium, the Gulf Stream set mixed cocktails and watched DVDs in their pop-out sitting rooms. When the beaches filled up, impromptu RV rallies gathered in mall parking lots. Inside, people roamed the stores and food courts, getting an early start on their holiday shopping.
As soon as the fire evacuation calls started, San Diego RV owners packed up their photo albums and laptops and headed for the beach. While working-class families slept in tents on the artificial turf of Qualcomm Stadium, the Gulf Stream set mixed cocktails and watched DVDs in their pop-out sitting rooms. When the beaches filled up, impromptu RV rallies gathered in mall parking lots. Inside, people roamed the stores and food courts, getting an early start on their holiday shopping.
An Unnatural Disaster
The San Diego fires show nothing more clearly than capitalism’s irrational relationship to nature. Giant development corporations, like the Irvine Company and DR Horton, grow houses in Southern California like Monsanto and Cargill grow corn in the midwest. Their goal is to maximize profit, so they plant monocultural stands of sheetrock and 2x4s, plowing subdivisions into a matrix of dry chapparal and coastal sage scrub. Both ecosystems have adapted over millenia to the local reality of fire. Both burned regularly in their pre-capitalist state, but the fires tended to be relatively small and cool, partly because local tribes used small-scale controlled burning to diversify habitat. As a result the regional landscape was a complex patchwork of tracts of varying maturity and fuel load.
With the advent of large-scale development and fire suppression, the fires have become bigger and hotter. Unburnt brush that has built up over decades now fuels intense, fast-moving conflagrations. They typically start in the foothills then race toward the coast, with wide drainages acting like wind tunnels, concentrating October's dry Santa Ana winds. These firestorms are hot enough to kill native plants, which are then replaced by invasive annual grasses. These fast-growing weeds cover hundreds of square miles and they die every fall, just in time for the next round of Santa Anas. In other words, the firestorm of 2007 was an unnatural disaster brewed up by billionaire developers and politicians who put millions of people in harm’s way.
San Diego Union Tribune Fires Archive
Los Angeles Times Fires Archive
Invasive Plants and Wildfires in Southern California
Mike Davis on fires:
The Collision of Capitalism and Nature
Who Really Set the California Fires?
A market-driven recipe for disaster
Firebugs: Build it in California's foothills, and it will burn
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