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Less Meat, Less Global Warming – NYTimes.com

16 May

Whether it’s 18%, 51%, or somewhere in between, the percentage of greenhouse gases attributable to livestock is very large.

Five years ago, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization published a report called “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” which maintained that 18 percent of greenhouse gases were attributable to the raising of animals for food. The number was startling.

A couple of years later, however, it was suggested that the number was too small. Two environmental specialists for the World Bank, Robert Goodland (the bank’s former lead environmental adviser) and Jeff Anhang, claimed, in an article in World Watch, that the number was more like 51 percent. It’s been suggested that that number is extreme, but the men stand by it, as Mr. Goodland wrote to me this week: “All that greenhouse gas isn’t emitted directly by animals.  ”But according to the most widely-used rules of counting greenhouse gases, indirect emissions should be counted when they are large and when something can be done to mitigate or reduce them.”

via Less Meat, Less Global Warming – NYTimes.com.

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Superweeds: A Long-Predicted Problem for GM Crops Has Arrived – Marion Nestle – Health – The Atlantic

16 May

I was a member of the FDA Food Advisory Committee when the agency approved production of genetically modified foods in the early 1990s.

At the time, critics repeatedly warned that widespread planting of GM crops modified to resist Monsanto’s weed-killer, Roundup, were highly likely to select for “superweeds” that could withstand treatment with Roundup….

Today, the idea that planting of GM crops is “widespread” is an understatement.

So, according to Reuters, is Roundup resistance.

“Weed resistance has spread to more than 12 million U.S. acres and primarily afflicts key agricultural areas in the U.S. Southeast and the corn and soybean growing areas of the Midwest.

“Many of the worst weeds, some of which grow more than six feet and can sharply reduce crop yields, have become resistant to the popular glyphosate-based weed-killer Roundup, as well as other common herbicides.”

This is not a trivial problem….How is the chemical industry responding to this threat? Zap it harder!

The industry is pressing the U.S. and Canadian governments to approve GM corn engineered to resist 2,4-D.

Remember 2,4-D? It was the principal ingredient in Agent Orange, the defoliant used during the Vietnam War.

Some people never learn, do they?

via Superweeds: A Long-Predicted Problem for GM Crops Has Arrived – Marion Nestle – Health – The Atlantic.

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April 2012 heats up as 5th warmest month globally

16 May

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center calculated that April’s average temperature of 57.9 degrees (14.4 degrees Celsius) was nearly 1.2 degrees (0.7 degrees Celsius) above the 20th Century normal. Two years ago was the hottest April since recordkeeping started in 1880.

Last month was the third hottest April in the United States and unusually warm in Russia, but cooler than normal in parts of western Europe. This is despite a now ended La Nina which generally lowers global temperatures…

The last time the globe had a month that averaged below the 20th Century normal was February 1985. April makes it 326 months in a row. Nearly half the population of the world has never seen a month that was cooler than normal, according to United Nations data.

via April 2012 heats up as 5th warmest month globally.

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Nearly one-tenth of hemisphere’s mammals unlikely to outrun climate change: study

15 May

It’s not just about us. It’s about all the animals and plants in the biosphere.

For the first time a new study considers whether mammals will actually be able to move to those new areas before they are overrun by climate change. Carrie Schloss, University of Washington research analyst in environmental and forest sciences, is lead author of the paper out online the week of May 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We underestimate the vulnerability of mammals to climate change when we look at projections of areas with suitable climate but we don’t also include the ability of mammals to move, or disperse, to the new areas,” Schloss said.

Indeed, more than half of the species scientists have in the past projected could expand their ranges in the face of climate change will, instead, see their ranges contract because the animals won’t be able to expand into new areas fast enough, said co-author Josh Lawler, UW associate professor of environmental and forest sciences.

via Nearly one-tenth of hemisphere’s mammals unlikely to outrun climate change: study.

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Colin Beavan, Environmental Activist, Makes a Run for Congress – NYTimes.com

14 May

In the name of living his New York City life with as little environmental impact as possible, Colin Beavan embarked on a punishing project five years ago. He and his family stopped taking the elevator to their ninth-floor Manhattan apartment; they did their laundry by stomping on it in the tub; for about six months, they even went without electricity at home. Mr. Beavan called the project No Impact Man, scored a book deal and became the subject of a documentary.

Now, Mr. Beavan is engaged in an endeavor that may be even more punishing: a run for Congress on the Green Party ticket. His platform is as much about getting New Yorkers engaged in politics, promoting local businesses and reducing economic dependence on corporations as it is about fossil fuels. But it was the actions that mostly took place in his apartment five years ago that put him on the radar of Green Party activists who eventually recruited him to run.

via Colin Beavan, Environmental Activist, Makes a Run for Congress – NYTimes.com.

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Saudi Arabia Unveils $100 Billion Plan To Make Solar ‘A Driver For Domestic Energy For Years To Come’ | ThinkProgress

14 May

In a report from Bloomberg Businessweek on the recent announcement, a consultant with the Saudi government, Maher al- Odan, explained the country’s strategy: “We are not only looking for building solar plants….We want to run a sustainable solar energy sector that will become a driver for the domestic energy for years to come.”

The plan will also help the country save hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude per day. With diplomats and energy experts privately concerned that Saudi Arabia has overstated its oil reserves by as much as 40%, the country will need new resources to make up for declines in production.

via Saudi Arabia Unveils $100 Billion Plan To Make Solar ‘A Driver For Domestic Energy For Years To Come’ | ThinkProgress.

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An Inconvenient Lawsuit: Teenagers Take Global Warming to the Courts – Katherine Ellison – National – The Atlantic

9 May

Alec Loorz turns 18 at the end of this month. While finishing high school and playing Ultimate Frisbee on weekends, he’s also suing the federal government in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

The Ventura, California, teen and four other juvenile plaintiffs want government officials to do more to prevent the risks of climate change — the dangerous storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, and food-supply disruptions that scientists warn will threaten their generation absent a major turnabout in global energy policy. Specifically, the students are demanding that the U.S. government start reducing national emissions of carbon dioxide by at least six percent per year beginning in 2013.

Of course I’m glad the kids are doing this. But it’s also sad that they have to do it and that they’re the ones doing it, not their parents.

via An Inconvenient Lawsuit: Teenagers Take Global Warming to the Courts – Katherine Ellison – National – The Atlantic.

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stump speech

8 May

if the stump could speak 
what would it say
if trees had standing in court
would they get their day
 
if each pol had to speak 
from an actual stump
would we be so quick
to put Nature in the dump

 — Charlie Keil

 

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Are We in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction? – NYTimes.com

6 May

We’re on the precipice of mass extinction and we haven’t got a clue about the implications. Biological species do not live alone. They live in complex ecosystems. When a species goes extinct, an ecosystem is damaged.

The vast majority of living things that share our planet remain undiscovered or have been so poorly studied that we have no idea whether their populations are healthy, or approaching their demise. Less than 4 percent of the roughly 1.7 million species known to exist have been evaluated. And for every known species, there are most likely at least two others — possibly many more — that have not yet been discovered, classified and given a formal name by scientists. Just recently, for instance, a new species of leopard frog was found in ponds and marshes in New York City. So we have no idea how many undiscovered species are poised on the precipice or were already lost.

It is often forgotten how dependent we are on other species. Ecosystems of multiple species that interact with one another and their physical environments are essential for human societies.

These systems provide food, fresh water and the raw materials for construction and fuel; they regulate climate and air quality; buffer against natural hazards like floods and storms; maintain soil fertility; and pollinate crops. The genetic diversity of the planet’s myriad different life forms provides the raw ingredients for new medicines and new commercial crops and livestock, including those that are better suited to conditions under a changed climate.

We need to learn how to value ecosystems.

Benefits provided by ecosystems are vastly undervalued. Take pollination of crops as an example: according to a major United Nations report on the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, the total economic value of pollination by insects worldwide was in the ballpark of $200 billion in 2005. More generally, efforts to tally the global monetary worth of the many different benefits provided by ecosystems come up with astronomically high numbers, measured in tens of trillions of dollars.

These ecosystem services are commonly considered “public goods” — available to everyone for free. But this is a fundamental failure of economics because neither the fragility nor the finiteness of natural systems is recognized. We need markets that put a realistic value on nature, and we need effective environmental legislation that protects entire ecosystems.

via Are We in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction? – NYTimes.com.

Wastewater Jitters in New York – NYTimes.com

5 May

As I report in Friday’s Times, disposing of the waste produced by natural gas drilling will become a larger and more contentious issue if New York State gives the go-ahead to horizontal hydraulic fracturing, which uses millions of gallons of fluids per well to release gas from the Marcellus Shale.

New York already deals with waste from about 6,800 active vertical and horizontal gas wells upstate. Although these wells require just a fraction of the water that would be needed for fracking in the Marcellus, they still produce waste that needs to go somewhere.

via Wastewater Jitters in New York – NYTimes.com.

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