Al Gore argues that when we are asked to choose between economic and environmental progress, we are being asked to make a false choice, since "if we do the right thing, then we're going to create a lot of wealth and opportunity." Gore argues for "using market capitalism as an ally" and approvingly quotes General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt: "We think green means green. This is a time period where environmental improvement is going to lead toward profitability."
--An Inconvenient Truth (Rodale, 2006), pp. 271, 270, 275-276.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Summary: The Future of Life
In The Future of Life (New York: Knopf, 2002), ecologist E. O. Wilson argues that we have entered the “Century of the Environment,” a “post-ideological” era in which we must “shift to a culture of permanence” in order to avoid a planetary ecological catastrophe (22-23). Wilson begins by surveying the "membrane of organisms" that cover the Earth, showing that from "Everest's Peak to the floor of the Mariana Trench, creatures of one kind or another inhabit virtually every square inch of the planetary surface" (3). Only a small percentage of those creatures, about 1.5 million species, have been identified to science.
Increasingly, the Earth's living membrane is dominated by a single species, Homo Sapiens. Taken together, the planet's 6 billion people make up about 100 times more biomass than any other large animal species that has ever existed. And global population is projected to reach as much as 10 billion before stabilizing sometime later this century. Already, human beings consume 40 percent of the solar energy stored by the planet's green plants. And Wilson calculates that for “every person in the world to reach present U.S. levels of consumption with existing technology would require four more planet Earths” (23).
As a result of the massive growth of human population, natural habitats and biodiversity are declining at unprecendented rates. The primary causes are anthropogenic deforestation, pollution, climate change, and biological transfer. Species are disappearing at as much as one thousand times background extinction rates. As many as half of existing species may be extinct within a century. As a result, Wilson writes, "The most memorable heritage of the twenty-first century will be the Age of Loneliness that lies before humanity" (77).
What's being lost is of incalculable value, not only for its own sake, but also to human society. Forests, fisheries, and other ecosystems provide irreplacable economic inputs, and they are most productive when most biodiverse. More critically, almost all of world food production relies on a few dozen plants. Hundreds of thousands of potential cultivars exist in the wild, waiting to be developed into food plants or medicines. More importantly, Wilson argues, biophilia or love of nature is a fundamental element of our human nature. In a world without wild nature, we will lead deeply impoverished lives.
Wilson argues that the solution is a cultural revolution in which science and religion join forces. He places his hopes in the development of a global land ethic informed by solid environmental science. And he proposes a list of concrete goals including: protecting the world's biodiversity hotspots and old-growth forests, protecting critical freshwater and marine habitats, mapping the world's ecosystems to inform a planetary conservation strategy, restoring degraded ecosystems, gene-banking in zoos and gardens, and aggressive support for birth control programs.
Wilson points out that the cost of these efforts would be minimal: "The tropical wilderness areas and the hottest of the hotspots . . . which together contain perhaps 70 percent of Earth's plant and animal species, can be saved by a single investment of roughly $30 billion [which] is only about one-thousandth of the annual combined gross national products of the world" (183). And he concludes with kudos to the green NGOs that built the global justice movement of the 1990s who recognized that the two biggest problems confronting humanity are a "devastated environment" and "the press of land-hungry people with nowhere else to go" (189).
Increasingly, the Earth's living membrane is dominated by a single species, Homo Sapiens. Taken together, the planet's 6 billion people make up about 100 times more biomass than any other large animal species that has ever existed. And global population is projected to reach as much as 10 billion before stabilizing sometime later this century. Already, human beings consume 40 percent of the solar energy stored by the planet's green plants. And Wilson calculates that for “every person in the world to reach present U.S. levels of consumption with existing technology would require four more planet Earths” (23).
As a result of the massive growth of human population, natural habitats and biodiversity are declining at unprecendented rates. The primary causes are anthropogenic deforestation, pollution, climate change, and biological transfer. Species are disappearing at as much as one thousand times background extinction rates. As many as half of existing species may be extinct within a century. As a result, Wilson writes, "The most memorable heritage of the twenty-first century will be the Age of Loneliness that lies before humanity" (77).
What's being lost is of incalculable value, not only for its own sake, but also to human society. Forests, fisheries, and other ecosystems provide irreplacable economic inputs, and they are most productive when most biodiverse. More critically, almost all of world food production relies on a few dozen plants. Hundreds of thousands of potential cultivars exist in the wild, waiting to be developed into food plants or medicines. More importantly, Wilson argues, biophilia or love of nature is a fundamental element of our human nature. In a world without wild nature, we will lead deeply impoverished lives.
Wilson argues that the solution is a cultural revolution in which science and religion join forces. He places his hopes in the development of a global land ethic informed by solid environmental science. And he proposes a list of concrete goals including: protecting the world's biodiversity hotspots and old-growth forests, protecting critical freshwater and marine habitats, mapping the world's ecosystems to inform a planetary conservation strategy, restoring degraded ecosystems, gene-banking in zoos and gardens, and aggressive support for birth control programs.
Wilson points out that the cost of these efforts would be minimal: "The tropical wilderness areas and the hottest of the hotspots . . . which together contain perhaps 70 percent of Earth's plant and animal species, can be saved by a single investment of roughly $30 billion [which] is only about one-thousandth of the annual combined gross national products of the world" (183). And he concludes with kudos to the green NGOs that built the global justice movement of the 1990s who recognized that the two biggest problems confronting humanity are a "devastated environment" and "the press of land-hungry people with nowhere else to go" (189).
Factoids
Less than half of the planet’s arable land is being farmed (about 4 billion acres).
Since WWII, world grain production has more than doubled, but so has population. In 1950, the world grew about 550 pounds of grain per person. By 2000, that number had risen to about 660 pounds.
In the last 150 years, more than 10 million new chemicals have been synthesized.
About 1.5 million species have been identified, named, and described to science. Estimates of the total number of species on Earth range as high as 100 million.
Carbon dioxide makes up about 80% of greenhouse gas emissions. The next two biggest contributors are methane and nitrous oxide.
Increased CO2 emissions are taken up by the oceans in the form of carbonic acid, lowering the Ph of seawater and killing coral and other organisms.
US is responsible for more than 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
Since WWII, world grain production has more than doubled, but so has population. In 1950, the world grew about 550 pounds of grain per person. By 2000, that number had risen to about 660 pounds.
In the last 150 years, more than 10 million new chemicals have been synthesized.
About 1.5 million species have been identified, named, and described to science. Estimates of the total number of species on Earth range as high as 100 million.
Carbon dioxide makes up about 80% of greenhouse gas emissions. The next two biggest contributors are methane and nitrous oxide.
Increased CO2 emissions are taken up by the oceans in the form of carbonic acid, lowering the Ph of seawater and killing coral and other organisms.
US is responsible for more than 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Population Explosion?
Natural populations tend to grow along an S-curve, with numbers increasing exponentially until a limiting factor like disease or resource scarcity causes them to level off. Earth’s human population remained below one million for most of the species’ history. Since the dawn of capitalism in about 1750, our numbers have exploded, reaching six billion on October 12, 1999.
Neo-Malthusian Paul Ehrlich argued in The Population Bomb (1968) that humanity had overstretched the planet’s carrying capacity and that a catastrophic collapse was around the corner. Instead, we’ve seen the beginnings of a slowdown. Most statisticians now predict that the human population with stabilize at around 8-10 billion sometime in the next century.
Neo-Malthusian Paul Ehrlich argued in The Population Bomb (1968) that humanity had overstretched the planet’s carrying capacity and that a catastrophic collapse was around the corner. Instead, we’ve seen the beginnings of a slowdown. Most statisticians now predict that the human population with stabilize at around 8-10 billion sometime in the next century.
Green Revolution
The post-WWII Green Revolution spread intensive modern agriculture around the world, introducing highly productive strains of wheat, rice, and other grains, along with mechanical cultivation and chemical fertilizers and biocides. Productivity gains were spectacular. Mexico, for instance, saw its grain harvest increase eight-fold in just 20 years. Along with higher yields, though, came growing environmental problems, including toxicity and vulnerability to disease and pests.
Competition vs. Cooperation
Competition for resources both within and between species is a fundamental dynamic of life of Earth. Just as basic and widespread, though, are symbiosis and mutualism. Almost all living things depend for their survival on cooperative relationships with other organisms, not the least of which are the gastrointestinal microorganisms that make it possible for animals to digest their food.
Shrinking Biomes
Most of the Earth’s major biomes have shrunk rapidly in the last 200 years. At one time, forest covered about 40 percent of the Earth’s surface. But about half of all tropical rainforest have now been destroyed. Only 30 percent of tropical dry forests remain. Only 25 percent of grasslands, which once covered one third of the Earth, have survived. The only expanding biome is deserts.
Primary Productivity
About one percent of the solar energy that reaches Earth is captured by plants through photosynthesis, which store it in the form of living matter. Humans use about 40 percent of this primary productivity every year, leaving only 60 percent for other animals, both wild and domestic.
Carbon and Life
Humans, like all other living things on Earth, are carbon-based organisms, meaning that the human body’s most fundamental biochemical processes rely heavily on carbon’s exceptional ability to bond with other elements to form millions of complex organic compounds. In other words, the planet’s carbon cycle, which we are changing rapidly, is absolutely fundamental, not just to human life, but to all life. Most of the planet’s carbon is stored in the crust, the oceans, and biomass. The atmosphere stores a relatively small amount, about 650 billion tons, in the form of carbon dioxide, a number that has been steadily growing for the last 200 years.
Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement with the publication of Silent Spring (1962). The book reported on the toxicity of DDT and other synthetic pesticides and herbicides, presenting a stark picture of a world without birds. Environmentalism took root in the rich political soil of the 1960s, taking its place alongside the black power, women’s liberation, and anti-war movements.
Conservation vs. Preservation
Throughout the 20th Century, the environmental movement has been divided between conservationists, who argue for the wise management of resources in order to maximize their value over time, and preservationists, who argue that nature is intrinsically valuable and deserves to be protected from human impacts.
John Muir
Early environmentalist John Muir founded the Sierra Club in 1892, leading a successful campaign to designate California’s Yosemite Valley a national park.
Haeckel
The word “ecology,” which combines the Greek words for “home” and “to study,” was coined by German socialist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). A professor of zoology at the University of Jena, Haeckel was a student of the pioneering naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, whose studies in South America focused on the complex ways that organisms interact with their environments.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Marx on Labor and Nature
"Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values ... as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power.... And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth.... [P]recisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission."
--Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, Part 1
--Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, Part 1
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Fencing Out Endangered Species
Far too many environmentalists fall for anti-immigrant racism. They complain about the detritus that border crossers leave behind in order to stay light as they race for the North. And they too often support the construction of the border fence, implying in their arguments that undocumented immigrants are no more than human trash.*
But immigration is driven by the same neo-liberal forces that have all but overturned hard-won federal and state powers to protect the environment from industry and development. Most importantly, the North American Free Trade Agreement allows companies to challenge environmental regulations as barriers to trade. It has also allowed US agriculture corporations to strike down Mexican tariffs on farm products. By flooding Mexico with cheap corn and beans, American companies are driving another generation of farmers off the land, driving a fresh wave of migrants onto the road north.
Moreover, militarization of the border is seriously disrupting some of the most remote and healthy North American ecosystems. Non-stop SUV, ATV, helicopter, and foot traffic along the border is taking a heavy toll on sensitive arid wildernesses. And because the Department of Homeland Security can overrule any environmental restrictions that impede its plans, the fence is being built through the middle of regions that should be treated as international treasures.
In Arizona's remote Coronado National Forest, a few jaguars have begun to repopulate the area just north of the border after the endangered species was extirpated from the US by government bounty hunters. One of the Southwest's most inspiring animals, this large predator is also an important indicator of its habitat's overall health. The 12- to 18-foot border fence will bisect its newly established range, almost certainly putting an end to its recovery and that of the Baboquivari mountains it has only recently reclaimed.
Cat Fight on the Border (HCN)
* Thanks to Sarah Jacqette at the University of Oregon for this insight.
But immigration is driven by the same neo-liberal forces that have all but overturned hard-won federal and state powers to protect the environment from industry and development. Most importantly, the North American Free Trade Agreement allows companies to challenge environmental regulations as barriers to trade. It has also allowed US agriculture corporations to strike down Mexican tariffs on farm products. By flooding Mexico with cheap corn and beans, American companies are driving another generation of farmers off the land, driving a fresh wave of migrants onto the road north.
Moreover, militarization of the border is seriously disrupting some of the most remote and healthy North American ecosystems. Non-stop SUV, ATV, helicopter, and foot traffic along the border is taking a heavy toll on sensitive arid wildernesses. And because the Department of Homeland Security can overrule any environmental restrictions that impede its plans, the fence is being built through the middle of regions that should be treated as international treasures.
In Arizona's remote Coronado National Forest, a few jaguars have begun to repopulate the area just north of the border after the endangered species was extirpated from the US by government bounty hunters. One of the Southwest's most inspiring animals, this large predator is also an important indicator of its habitat's overall health. The 12- to 18-foot border fence will bisect its newly established range, almost certainly putting an end to its recovery and that of the Baboquivari mountains it has only recently reclaimed.
Cat Fight on the Border (HCN)
* Thanks to Sarah Jacqette at the University of Oregon for this insight.
Toilet to Tap
San Diego imports about 90% of its municipal water from hundreds of miles away, mainly from the Colorado River and Northern California. Both sources are becoming less and less reliable as a result of competition and a decade-long drought. As a result, local politicians recently approved a pilot program for "toilet-to-tap" recycling.
San Diego already has two plants that recycle effluent for non-culinary uses like irrigation and manufacturing. But the city has not been able to find enough customers, so the plants are operating below capacity. The new plan calls for treating recycled water even further and then pumping it into a local reservoir where it will enter the primary supply. In theory, what comes out of the tap should be just as pure as water that has moved through the entire natural cycle of evaporation, precipitation, and biological and geological filtering.
In fact, given the levels of pollution in the Colorado River, toilet-to-tap water might even be purer than the existing supply. Las Vegas dumps roughly 60 billion gallons of wastewater a year into the Colorado. Samples from Lake Mead contain "prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, caffeine, sunscreen, synthetic compounds used in plastics and detergents, and even methamphetamines...." San Diego's supply contains "small but measurable quantities of ibuprofen, the insect repellent DEET, and the anti-anxiety drug meprobamate" before it goes through treatment to become drinking water. City planners argue that they will have control of reclaimed water through its entire life-cycle, rather than dealing the effects of this upstream pollution.
On the other hand, water treatment is a notoriously difficult process to get right, especially in an era of deregulated utilities, shrinking municipal budgets, and privatization. San Diego sees regular accidental spills, in which millions of gallons of raw sewage flood the area's lagoons and the ocean. And monitoring regularly discloses elevated levels of synthetic chemicals and medical compounds in the recycled water discharged from treatment plants around the country.
Toilet to Tap Takes Flight
Facing the Yuck Factor (HCN)
San Diego already has two plants that recycle effluent for non-culinary uses like irrigation and manufacturing. But the city has not been able to find enough customers, so the plants are operating below capacity. The new plan calls for treating recycled water even further and then pumping it into a local reservoir where it will enter the primary supply. In theory, what comes out of the tap should be just as pure as water that has moved through the entire natural cycle of evaporation, precipitation, and biological and geological filtering.
In fact, given the levels of pollution in the Colorado River, toilet-to-tap water might even be purer than the existing supply. Las Vegas dumps roughly 60 billion gallons of wastewater a year into the Colorado. Samples from Lake Mead contain "prescription and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, caffeine, sunscreen, synthetic compounds used in plastics and detergents, and even methamphetamines...." San Diego's supply contains "small but measurable quantities of ibuprofen, the insect repellent DEET, and the anti-anxiety drug meprobamate" before it goes through treatment to become drinking water. City planners argue that they will have control of reclaimed water through its entire life-cycle, rather than dealing the effects of this upstream pollution.
On the other hand, water treatment is a notoriously difficult process to get right, especially in an era of deregulated utilities, shrinking municipal budgets, and privatization. San Diego sees regular accidental spills, in which millions of gallons of raw sewage flood the area's lagoons and the ocean. And monitoring regularly discloses elevated levels of synthetic chemicals and medical compounds in the recycled water discharged from treatment plants around the country.
Toilet to Tap Takes Flight
Facing the Yuck Factor (HCN)
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Hot Water
Radioactive and chemical wastes dumped by Sandia National Laboratories threaten to contaminate the Albuquerque aquifer that provides drinking water for the city's half million residents. Just up the road, plutonium from Los Alamos has already been detected in Santa Fe's municipal water supply.
Toxic Legacy (HCN)
Toxic Legacy (HCN)
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