The Monaco Proposal

In March, nations will vote on Monaco's proposal for an Atlantic bluefin tuna trade ban

The Atlantic bluefin tuna (thunnus thynnus) has seen better days, when it wasn't overfished. But those days are long gone.

It is on the verge of a population collapse as man's appetite for the fish has skyrocketed around the world, driven in large part by the international sushi industry.

According to both the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), all populations of Atlantic bluefin tuna have declined by at least 85% from their unexploited state.

Japanese fishermen have been found selling immature fish, an indication that there are not enough breeding adults left in the ocean to replenish their numbers.

Earlier this year, to support "The End of the Line," the first major documentary about overfishing, Greta Scacchi, Emilia Fox and Terry Gilliam got naked for a photo as they urged consumers to buy only sustainable fish to help fish stocks recover.

In March 2010, nations around the world will have a chance to vote on listing the Atlantic bluefin tuna on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Appendix I, which will introduce a global trade ban.

This ban, proposed by Monaco, will help curb the decline of this critically endangered species.

The big tuna-eating nations like the U.S. and Japan (which is the biggest, with an annual consumption approaching half-a-million tons) have to get on board and stop eating this majestic fish -- at least until its populations can recover.

image: Tom Puchner

Retreat at Îles Kerguelen

France's largest glacier is quickly disappearing

In Ursula LeGuin's 1966's sci-fi novel Rocannon's World, there is a city called "Kerguelen" on the planet "New South Georgia."

Kerguelen is also a French territory composed of about 300 islands in the southern Indian Ocean named after Breton navigator Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen de Trémarec, who discovered the archipelago in 1772.

Also known as Desolation Island, the Îles Kerguelen is home to feral cats, feral sheep and the Cook Glacier, which is melting at an alarming rate.

"Over the last 40 years, the Cook ice cap has thinned by around 1.5 meters per year, its area has decreased by 20%, and retreat has been twice as rapid since 1991," according to a recent press release by France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

While the scientists admit that human activity may not be the sole cause of the glacier's accelerated melting, it is clear that anthropogenic global warming has played a major role over the last four decades.

In LeGuin's book, a young woman leaves her planet to find a family heirloom, but due to relativistic time dilation, what was a quick trip from her perspective translates to many years back home, where she returns to find her husband dead and her daughter an adult.

If greenhouse gas-emitting human activity is not reduced soon, future generations may have to leave our home planet in search of more than just heirlooms.

image: Christmas Harbour, Kerguelens Land, copper engraving 200mm x 130mm, by George Cooke, dated 1811 (The Maritime Gallery, Kent, England)

America's State Department Turns 220

America's State Department was born today in 1789. Over two centuries old, is it flexible enough to deal with crises that have no state borders?

On May 19, 1789, then Representative James Madison of New York introduced a bill to Congress to create an executive Department of Foreign Affairs headed by a Secretary of Foreign Affairs. It was signed into law on July 27 by President George Washington, who appointed Thomas Jefferson as the department's first secretary. In September, its name was changed to the Department of State. Jefferson would later become America's third president. Madison would become the fourth. It was truly a collaborative effort on the part of the Founding Fathers.

But since the birth of the United States Department of State, something happened that dramatically changed the world and how countries interact: the Industrial Revolution. Reconfiguring the modern world on steam, coal, combustion engines and electrical power generation, this period of explosive technological growth during the late 18th and early 19th centuries saw the development of textile manufacturing, metallurgy, glass production, railways, mining and machine tools. Things would never be the same.

And as an unplanned and unforeseen consequence of all this activity, the world is now dramatically warmer. To be sure, it is the first time in Earth's history that human activity has affected the planet's entire environment. And the effects are interrelated. Climate change, desertification, dwindling food supplies and species extinction are, for example, not only connected to each other but also to the development of new, large-growth and heavy-polluting economies like China and India, and to the poor world as well.

Perhaps this presents a new opportunity for nations to work together and build consensus around shared goals -- like accessible water and stable food production. No longer just for settling national borders and maintaining military security, treaties -- like the Kyoto Protocol -- now must consider larger security issues that go beyond state lines, such as water security, food security, air security and ecosystem security. In some cases, territorial disputes -- especially bloody ones -- should at least be put on hold until the environment is made secure for future generations.

A forward-looking, 21st-century American foreign policy, championed by the internationally respected Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, must look for innovative solutions to the world's thorniest transnational issues. One possible avenue might be to spend some political capital on some non-political aims.

An obvious flashpoint could be tackling anthropogenic climate change. After all, it is something that most scientists agree will likely have globally devastating consequences -- and it is the root of so many other problems. One response is to mitigate its effects. Another is to accept the projected temperature increases and start making contingency plans to help people live on a significantly hotter planet. Either way, it won't matter much how many ballistic missiles a nation has if its people cannot eat.

But though some of the more profound effects of global warming have already been seen on a large scale -- the rapid melting of the Arctic ice, ocean acidification and rising sea levels, for example -- the increase in temperature has a distinct and immediate impact on many local levels. Coastal residents in the South Pacific watch their beachfronts disappear underwater while farmers in China are forced to relocate for greener pastures as farmland turns into desert.

In embattled Kashmir, for example, where more than 47,000 people have been killed in a two-decade-old territorial battle between India, Pakistan and China, something on a deeper level has been happening, and it cares not for human disputes over imaginary map lines. It is the melting of Kolahoi, a critical glacier in the Kashmir Valley that is the region's only source of year-round fresh water.

One thing that Secretary Clinton could pursue is a Kolahoi Accord, which was proposed by 13.7 Billion Years last year. Such an agreement might create a bi- or trilateral research and development committee with members from local governments, green businesses, trade unions and environmental organizations such as The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in Delhi and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Pakistan to come up with a sustainable solution to save Kolahoi.

The plan could include trade incentives on goods that depend on a healthy glacier, the development of ecotourism and other market-driven initiatives to improve the livelihood of millions of Kashmiris.

The Center for Global Development, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit think tank has proposed the creation of a Department of Global Development. This is a good way of thinking. But if the State Department would take on such a mandate, it would put global environmental issues at the forefront of foreign policy, which is exactly where they belong. The Secretary of State is the first Cabinet position in the line of presidential succession. Global warming should be high on this person's agenda.

Which cabinet-level department is best suited to address the issues concerning, for example, Atlantis, BP's massive oil and gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico? The non-profit consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch says that more than 6,000 documents concerning the design of the 58-million-metric-ton monster are lacking the required engineer approval.

BP is a multinational company based in London. A spill caused by Atlantis could affect the waters of both the United States and Mexico and have ramifications on the health of several other nations' waters and wildlife. Which of President Obama's cabinet members is best suited to the job of looking after the safety of such a potentially hazardous transnational adventure? The Secretary of Energy? The Secretary of Commerce? The Secretary of State? A new Secretary of Global Development?

According to a July 20 Washington Post story covering Secretary Clinton's recent trip to India, Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said, "India's position, let me be clear, is that we are simply not in the position to take legally binding emissions targets."

"No one wants to in any way stall or undermine the economic growth that is necessary to lift millions more out of poverty," replied Secretary Clinton. "We also believe that there is a way to eradicate poverty and develop sustainability that will lower significantly the carbon footprint."

If she makes good on this belief, perhaps a Department of Global Development will not be necessary. Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Madison would probably have agreed.

image: The Harry S. Truman Department of State building, as seen from the George Washington University's school of international affairs. (credit: Paco8191)

Gone Fishin': Independence Day in Liberia

As Liberia celebrates its 162nd anniversary as an independent nation, how much fish will be on the menu?

Liberia has a history very different from the other 52 nations that together make up modern-day Africa. The West African nation was colonized by freed American slaves, a group of which declared the country's independence today in 1847. Named in honor of the fifth president of the United States James Monroe, the capital city of Monrovia is the only city outside of the U.S. to be named after an American president.

And among the continent's leaders, Ellen-Johnson Sirleaf certainly stands out as well. When she became president of Liberia in 2006, she also became the first democratically-elected female president of an African nation -- and the world's first black female head of state.

But her glow has been tarnished by her recent admittance of -- and apology for -- her past support of the Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, who is currently facing war crimes charges in the Hague. Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called for Ms. Sirleaf's resignation.

It is unlikely that the commission's recommendation will significantly hurt Ms. Sirleaf's standing. Indeed, the 70-year-old Monrovian-born Harvard graduate is a transformative figure. In the international community, she is a respected economist: Her past positions include Senior Loan Officer at World Bank, Regional Director of the Africa bureau of the UN Development Programme and Vice President of Citibank.

But she must not forget that a large part of her popularity within Liberia is that her countrymen are still hopeful that she can increase their standard of living. And that standard may well go down if overfishing and illegal fishing result in the collapse of fisheries within the 200 nautical miles of Liberia's waters, including a coastline that stretches 360 miles (579 km) along the Atlantic Ocean. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, fish supplies the Liberian population with 65 percent of its animal protein.

"The overfishing of West African coastal waters, often by large European trawlers and sometimes by 'fishing pirates' who trawl without any authorisation, has largely depleted local fish stocks," writes Hilaire Avril in an August 11 AllAfrica.com article. "This has a direct impact on the rising rate of unemployment and on the ever-increasing flow of West Africans who embark on perilous journeys to Europe, in search of a better life."

According to the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Liberia has yet to ratify the Convention on Fishing and Conservation of Living Resources of the High Seas. Designed to increase international cooperation towards marine conservation, including the critical issue of overfishing, the ratification of this agreement is something that Ms. Sirleaf should give some priority. Not only would it help maintain sustainable fish stocks, it would keep jobs -- and people -- alive. It could also help regain some of her recently lost luster.

As President Sirleaf leads her nation in their celebration of independence, she would do well to remember the ship that graces Liberia's coat of arms. Symbolizing the ships that brought the first freed slaves to Liberia, it is also an apt reminder of the trawlers in the nation's waters that are rapidly removing all the fish.

The True Cost of Megamalls

The global recession has stifled mall culture. That's not a bad thing

In December, the French business management consultancy group Beauvais Consultants released a study entitled "Setting Up Superstores and Climate Change," which examined the environmental impact of shopping in suburban malls -- or "hypermarkets" -- through surveys of 5,000 urban-dwelling consumers.

The 15-page report found that shopping in these megamalls produces four times as much carbon dioxide emissions as shopping locally.

"The question arises as to whether, in the light of sustainable development, this is the right model to export throughout the world," the report states.

This research confirms an obvious assumption -- that shopping locally or online is a much greener option than driving to the nearest megamall.

"As icons of excessive consumption and shortsighted urban planning," asserts Kimberly D. Mok in an article on Treehugger.com, "malls represent everything that has gone wrong with our car-based consumer culture."

Norway is leading the charge. Last year, the country banned the creation of suburban malls bigger than 3,000 square meters.

"The most important fact about our shopping malls," says social scientist Henry Fairlie as quoted in a recent story on TheWeek.com, "is that we do not need most of what they sell."

In 2004, developer Larry Siegel broke ground for Xanadu, a $2.2 billion, 2.4-million-square-foot New Jersey mall that was supposed to open its doors in June. Original plans included an indoor ski slope, a fishing pond, a Ferris wheel and a 30-foot-high chocolate waterfall.

Mr. Siegel has touted Xanadu as the ultimate in "shoppertainment." But the recession has forced a scale-back on this carbon-gushing concept.

If a decadent waterfall must be built, perhaps it might at least spout locally-grown, organic chocolate.

image: Festival Walk Mall, Hong Kong (credit: mischiru)

Dying for a Diet Drink

One hundred and twenty-three years ago today, Americans were introduced to a drink that would change the world, for better or worse

On this day in 1886, those who opened up the pages of the Atlanta Journal were the first to see an advertisement for a product that would eventually become one of the world’s most ubiquitous beverages: Coca-Cola, also known as Coke.

Invented by American chemist John Pemberton, the drink was originally promoted as a “valuable brain tonic” that, among other health benefits, was touted as a cure for opium and morphine addiction. The recipe that gives Coke its unique taste is a closely guarded secret, known only to a handful of executives. It is widely believed to have contained, at least at one time, coca leaf (from which cocaine is made) and kola nut extract, hence the name Coca-Cola.

But there are a couple of ingredients in Diet Coke (Coke's sugar-free version) and many other diet soft drinks that are not secret -- and rather controversial: potassium benzoate and aspartame (also known by its trade name NutraSweet).

Potassium benzoate is used as a preservative to prevent the growth of mold and bacteria. However, according to the United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA), "Benzene can form at very low levels (ppb level) in some beverages that contain both benzoate salts and ascorbic acid (vitamin C)." Benzene is a known carcinogen.

In 2007, the Coca-Cola Company settled a lawsuit over two of its drinks -- Fanta Pineapple and Vault Zero -- which contained the benzene-forming mix. These drinks were discontinued.

The other chemical that is under fire, aspartame, is an artificial sweetener developed by G.D. Searle & Company in the mid-1960s. Found in a number of diet soft drinks, many scientists believe that it can cause a number of serious illnesses, including cancer, brain tumors and lymphoma.

In 2006, Natural News published an interview with Russell Blaylock, a leading American neurosurgeon and associate editor of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, who cited an Italian study that linked aspartame with leukemia.

According to a story by Anthony Wile for Health Freedom Alliance, "The Ramazzini Institute in Bologna...released the results of a very large, long-term animal study into aspartame ingestion. Its study shows that aspartame causes lymphomas and leukemia in female animals fed aspartame at doses around 20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, or around half the accepted daily intake for humans. Health problems linked to aspartame reportedly include arthritis, brain cancer, memory loss, hearing loss, hypertension, abdominal pain, headache and migraines."

When asked how the beverage industry "managed to suppress this information and keep this chemical legal in the food supply," Dr. Blaylock replied, "Donald Rumsfeld was the one who pushed a lot of this through, when he was in the chairmanship of the G.D. Searle company...he got it approved through the regulatory process, but once it was approved, the government didn't want to admit that they had made a mistake. They just continued to cover it up, like the fluoride thing and the milk industry."

From 1977 to 1985, former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld held three executive positions at Searle -- chief executive officer, president and finally chairman.

In 1974, the use of aspartame was approved by the FDA. But a year later, after the Department of Justice began an investigation of Searle for fraud concerning its aspartame studies, the FDA issued a stay on the chemical's approval.

Then in 1981, FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes approved the use of aspartame. Two years later, he left the FDA to become the senior medical advisor for the large public-relations firm Burson-Marsteller. Among its clients? Searle. Conspiracy theories were born.

"Rumsfeld’s major mission while he was in that job was to get this...approved for release for sale to the public, which he finally managed to do, but only after the Reagan administration came in, whereupon the FDA commissioner was promptly fired, and someone more obedient was put in, who, of course, approved release," said Andrew Cockburn, the author of Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy, in a DemocracyNow.org interview.

Two years after Rumsfeld left Searle, amid continuing public concern surrounding aspartame, Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum requested that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigate the process that led to the FDA approval. The GAO report found "no evidence of pressure on the former FDA Commissioner to approve aspartame," and that "12 of the 69 scientists responding to its questionnaire expressed major concerns about aspartame safety."

In 2007, New Mexico introduced a bill to ban aspartame. Earlier this year, Hawaiian lawmakers signed a petition calling for the FDA to revoke their approval of aspartame.

As the controversy about aspartame and other additives continues, so does the consumption of beverages that have, in some form or another, been sold to consumers as "valuable brain tonics."

With soft drinks sales approaching $400 billion worldwide, these tonics are valuable indeed, but perhaps not so much for our brains.

photo: Drink Coca-Cola 5¢", an 1890s advertising poster showing a woman in fancy clothes (partially vaguely influenced by 16th- and 17th-century styles) drinking Coke. The card on the table says "Home Office, The Coca-Cola Co. Atlanta Ga. Branches: Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas". Notice the cross-shaped color registration marks near the bottom center and top center (which presumably would have been removed for a production print run). Someone has crudely written on it at lower left (with an apparent leaking fountain pen) "Our Faovrite" [sic]. (U.S. Library of Congress)

The Beautiful Lady Without Pity

America releases major bird report, warns of 'silent forests'

In a statement Thursday announcing the release of the first-ever comprehensive report of America's bird populations, United States Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recalled Rachel Louise Carson (1907-1964), a pioneer of the international environmental movement:

"Just as they were when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring nearly 50 years ago, birds today are a bellwether of the health of land, water and ecosystems. From shorebirds in New England to warblers in Michigan to songbirds in Hawaii, we are seeing disturbing downward population trends that should set off environmental alarm bells. We must work together now to ensure we never hear the deafening silence in our forests, fields and backyards that Rachel Carson warned us about."

Starting out as a biologist with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, Ms. Carson documented the negative effects of pesticides, particularly on birds, in her 1962 book Silent Spring, which helped launch the environmental movement. The book's title was inspired by a line from John Keats' 1884 poem "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (French for "The Beautiful Lady Without Pity"), which reads, "The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing." She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter in 1980.

"The U.S. State of the Birds" synthesizes data from three long-term censuses taken by professional biologists and thousands of citizen scientists. Its sobering conclusion: A third of the over 800 species of birds in America are either endangered, threatened or in decline. A main threat: habitat loss.

President Obama's decision to appoint Mr. Salazar as Interior Secretary received mixed reviews from environmentalists, many of whom are concerned about his ties to the coal and mining industries. Earlier this month, On March 6, 2009, he approved the delisting of the gray wolf from the Endangered Species list in Montana and Idaho. Conservation groups are outraged. But certainly Mr. Salazar's recent call to "set off environmental alarm bells" regarding the plight of the nation's birds is something on which both sides can agree.

As President Obama and the country's legislators ponder the report's various findings, they would do well to take Mr. Salazar's cue and remember the "silent spring" imagined by Rachel Carson, who once said, "Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world."

Perhaps they might also take a deeper look at "La Belle Dame sans Merci." The poem opens with a haggard knight wandering a bleak landscape "alone and palely loitering."

image: "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," illustration by W. J. Neatby, from "A Day with Keats"

Paper Tigers: Not So Eco-Friendly

Inaction on climate change inspires civil disobedience


According to the Climate Justice Programme, an international coalition of scientists, activists and lawyers, progress in combating climate change has fallen far short of where it needs to be.

Though they agree that "we have international agreements, more resources for scientific research leading to stronger evidence, some policy advances, a change in industry rhetoric and a certain increase in public awareness," it just hasn't been enough to raise the specter of a devastating climactic future for the planet, caused primarily by the rich world but felt mostly by the poor world.

The heat will be turned up on the debate next month, during what has been billed as "the largest mass civil disobedience for the climate in U.S. history."

The Capitol Climate Action (CCA) -- a national coalition of more than 40 environmental, public health, social justice and labor groups -- has been organizing thousands of supporters to descend on the Capitol Power Plant in Washington, D.C., on the afternoon of March 9 in a act of civil disobedience in the hopes of heightening public awareness and official action on the climate and energy crises.

From the actions of Rosa Parks to Mahatma Gandhi, non-violent civil disobedience has been an important tool for citizens seeking social change when governments have been unhelpful or when laws have been unfair -- or unenforced.

As Henry David Thoreau observed in his seminal 1849 text Civil Disobedience, "Most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient."

"The field of law has, in many ways, been the poor relation in the world-wide effort to deliver a cleaner, healthier and ultimately fairer world," says Klaus Töpfer, the former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme.

"We have over 500 international and regional agreements, treaties and deals covering everything from the protection of the ozone layer to the conservation of the oceans and seas. Almost all, if not all, countries have national environmental laws too. But unless these are complied with, unless they are enforced, then they are little more than symbols, tokens, paper tigers."

photo: 'No Matter' Project