Shantih Shantih Shantih

Global warming suggests future waste lands around the world

In the first line of his 1922 poem "The Waste Land," American poet T. S. Eliot famously declared that "April is the cruellest month."

That may be so, but May 2010 will go down as the warmest, so far.

"The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for May was the warmest on record, at 1.24°F (0.69°C) above the 20th century average of 58.6°F (14.8°C)," according to press release issued by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"Worldwide average land surface temperature for May and March-May was the warmest on record while the global ocean surface temperatures for both May and March-May were second warmest on record, behind 1998."

As the world heats up, the race -- and perhaps the political will -- to find solutions to anthropogenic global warming is cooling off. The recent United Nations climate change negotiations in Bonn produced little but continued inaction and growing frustration.

"The U.N. talks made limited progress overall, but plenty of conflicts remain," said Annie Petsonk, international counsel for Environmental Defense Fund, in an EDF press release.

"The discouraging news is that even as the BP oil disaster continued to unfold in the Gulf of Mexico, some oil-exporting countries -- including Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar -- were so desperate to protect the oil industry that they blocked efforts to expand studies of the climate change problem," Petsonk said.

According to Climate-L.org, "Many parties and civil society representatives expressed 'deep disappointment' at the outcome."

One of the most important poems of the 20th century, "The Waste Land" is a far-reaching exploration of the universal sense of disillusionment and despair that followed World War I. Its final line is "Shantih shantih shantih."

In Sanskrit, shantih means peace -- a word that is uttered three times at the end of every Shantih mantra. Each utterance, according to the scriptures of Hinduism, is an attempt to eliminate the barrier that exists in each of the three realms where trouble lie -- the physical, the internal and the divine, in order to achieve a sense of calm before a task is accomplished.

Perhaps the 2,900 Bonn participants might consider these three words before their next climate change meeting. Because if global temperatures continue their seemingly inexorable rise, the world will become a waste land, and it won't be just April that's the cruellest of the months.

image: T.S. Eliot photographed one Sunday afternoon in 1923 by Lady Ottoline Morrell, 16 June 1873 – 21 April 1938 (National Portrait Gallery)

Jimmy Carter Was Right

Barely two weeks into his presidency, Jimmy Carter called for a comprehensive, long-range energy policy that emphasized conservation. Too bad no one listened

"One of our most urgent projects is to develop a national energy policy," said President Jimmy Carter in a televised Oval Office address on February 2, 1977. It was his Report to the American People on Energy. He had been president for just 13 days.

Noting that America was "only major industrial country without a comprehensive, long-range energy policy," Carter championed a program that would "emphasize conservation."

"The amount of energy being wasted which could be saved is greater than the total energy that we are importing from foreign countries," Carter said. "We will also stress development of our rich coal reserves in an environmentally sound way; we will emphasize research on solar energy and other renewable energy sources; and we will maintain strict safeguards on necessary atomic energy production."

Just think for a moment where we might be today if Americans had answered Carter's call to action. But alas, for the ensuing three decades, at least when it came to energy -- our policy, our usage, our investments, our waste -- we were asleep at the wheel. And for a good lot of us, that wheel happened to be connected to a gas-guzzling SUV.

And all the while, oil companies kept drilling for more of the stuff to which we became so addicted. Profits were huge. Thanks to our unchecked addiction, ExxonMobil posted a staggering, record-breaking net income of $40.61 billion in 2007. (That's more than the nominal GDP of over 100 countries, including Tunisia, Guatemala and Kenya.) Now, that addiction (and all the other addictions that oil fed so well) has led us directly to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill -- the greatest ecological catastrophe to befall the nation in its 233-year history. And it was man-made.

"Already, this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced," said President Obama during his Oval Office address last night. "And unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it's not a single event that does its damage in a matter of minutes or days. The millions of gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years."

An addiction that led to an epidemic? Sounds positively Caligulan.

Obama pointed out that "for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again, the path forward has been blocked, not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor."

Democratic senators are planning to meet tomorrow to discuss the agenda that will cover the remaining time of the 111th Congress, which will come to a close on January 3, 2011. Will they show the political courage to vote for comprehensive legislation to address climate change?

Worryingly, some of them have said they will hold their vote unless such legislation caters to some offshore drilling interests. In the meantime, anthropogenic climate change -- tied closely to America's fossil fuel usage (Obama noted that "we consume more than 20 percent of the world's oil") -- continues to take a devastating toll on the global environment.

In 2004, a group of international researchers published a bleak study entitled "Extinction Risk from Climate Change" in the journal Nature. The authors predicted that millions of species will become extinct due to climate change by 2050 -- a quarter of animals and plants living on land alone. Up to 37% of the species in the biodiverse regions they studied could be wiped out, primarily because of the effects of all the carbon dioxide we're releasing into the atmosphere. These aren't just numbers. These are living creatures, and the vast majority of them have been around -- and doing perfectly fine, thank you very much -- long before Homo sapiens turned up. Now they are disappearing at a rapid clip, while humans reproduce at an unsustainable rate.

"Polar bears drowning as the sea ice they need to survive melts away," writes Defenders of Wildlife president Rodger Schlickeisen in a recent email. "Sea turtles, pelicans and other wildlife coated in oil, poisoned in their homes as the result of America’s addiction to oil...Last year, Big Oil spent millions of dollars lobbying against climate change legislation and for more drilling off our coasts."

"I am happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party -- as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels," Obama said last night.

"Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development -- and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development. All of these approaches have merit and deserve a fair hearing in the months ahead. But the one approach I will not accept is inaction."

Well, unless the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is the wake-up call that environmentalists are hoping will end up being the disaster's silver lining, Obama may have no choice but to accept that last approach. Inaction is exactly what followed Carter's call for an environmentally sound, long-range energy policy over 33 years ago. "There is no way that I, or anyone else in the government, can solve our energy problems if you are not willing to help," Carter warned Americans in his address. But no one listened to him.

We weren't willing to help back then. What about now? Are we addicted to oil, and if so, can we admit it and change our daily behavior. Will we consider more seriously the things we choose to do and buy and the size of our carbon footprint? If we wait another 33 years to do something, what will be left of our environment? What species can survive three more decades of humans sleeping at the wheel?

image: screenshot from President Carter's Report to the American People on Energy, February 2, 1977 (Jimmy Carter Presidential Library)

A Desert Grows Where an Emperor Once Hid

Centuries ago, a young Chinese emperor fled to Guangdong to escape the Mongols. Now the residents of China's most populous province are facing a different sort of enemy -- themselves

On June 14, 1276, as Mongol invaders approached Fuzhou -- China's "City of Banyan Trees" located along the southeastern coast in Fujian province -- an 8-year-old prince named Zhao Shi was hurriedly crowned the Emperor Duanzong of Song by the remaining exiled members of the Song Dynasty. Two years later, as the Mongols were about to cross the emperor's last line of defense, the child ruler fled south by boat to Guangdong.

Today, this coastal mega-city bursts with over 95 million inhabitants -- about the same population as Mexico. Economically speaking, it's the same size as Turkey. The intense human activity has put a strain on the region's fertile land. Much of it is turning into desert.

"When talking about desertification, what appear in one’s brain are desert scenes in arid and semi-arid regions in [the] northwest of China," according to the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research in Beijing. The institute notes that in Guangdong, "vegetation has been destroyed by irrational human activities...running water erosion is terribly fierce on purple sandstone here, which does not hold much anti-erodibility."

One of these newly arid places in Guangdong's Nanxiong district is known as the "red desert." The surface soil is gone. It is a barren, rocky landscape completely devoid of plant life.

"According to the Guangdong Province-based newspaper Southern Weekend, while the ecological systems of some pastoral areas were recovering, grassland degradation and desertification were still serious," writes Li Li in the Beijing Review. "The paper was quoted as saying that 13.33 million hectares of China's protected natural grasslands suffer from soil erosion."

According to James Estrin of the New York Times, an estimated 1.74 million square kilometers of China's land is now classified as desert. That's about four times the size of California. Worldwide, desertification claims 6 million hectares a year, notes Colin Dunn in a GreenerIdeal.com article. That's an area almost the size of West Virginia.

But while desertification is a global issue, it is of particular concern in China, which is home to one out of every five human beings on Earth. Li notes that the anti-desertification branch of China's State Forestry Administration is undertaking several initiatives, including "prohibitions on overgrazing, excessive farming and mining, reconverting farmland to forests or pastures, and building water-conservation irrigation facilities."

"China’s problems are particularly pressing because of its trade-oriented growth strategy which favors development along the coast," note Kiyana Allen and Kayly Ober of American University in a 2009 paper. "More concerning is that the problem is only getting worse -- the population in China’s low-lying coastal region grew at three times the rate of the national population growth rate between 1990 and 2000...This kind of rapid urbanization incites coastal degradation, which in turn leaves an inadequate infrastructure open to flooding and other weather-related disasters spurred by climate change."

Duanzong was the penultimate emperor of Southern Song Dynasty. He reigned for just two years and died at the age of 10. His flight to Guangdong did not save him. And perhaps, the scores of Chinese migrating to coastal communities like Guangdong will also find that "irrational human activities" will ultimately tip the ecological balance into permanent unsustainability. As officials tackle the nation's desertification problems, they might take Duanzong's ill-fated story as a bit of a warning. After all, his temple name means "Final Ancestor."

image: desertification near Datang Town, Nanxiong County, Guangdong Province (credit: Chen Zhiqing)

The Real Price of Meat

Eating meat is a costly affair on several levels. The international "Meatout" campaign adds up the total bill

The deleterious effects of meat-eating are being seen on a global level.

"As environmental science delves deeper into the effects of meat production, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the consequences of this unsustainable practice that causes problems including a loss of biodiversity, global warming, deforestation, air and water pollution, diseases and violence," writes Alicia Graef of Care2.

According to a new report by Worldwatch.org, "livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32,564 million tons of CO2 per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions."

The report concludes that the best way to reverse climate change is to replace animal products with soy-based products and other alternatives, stating, "This approach would have far more rapid effects on GHG emissions and their atmospheric concentrations -- and thus, on the rate the climate is warming -- than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy."

All this C02 can be deadly for humans. In a study published in Environmental Science & Technology, Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson estimated that localized "C02 domes" could cause the premature deaths of 50 to 100 people a year in California and 300 to 1,000 for the continental United States, according to a recent article in Scientific American.

Of course, humans aren't the only ones who can die from the global warming effects of the meat industry (not to mention the direct health problems caused by eating red meat, such as cardiopathy, atherosclerosis, colon cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, endometriosis and even Alzheimers). There are also the billions animals that are killed every year on their way to dinner tables around the world.

"It's also difficult to ignore the intense suffering of innocent animals who are treated as mere commodities with dollar signs attached, but there seems to be a disconnect between neatly wrapped packages on store shelves and their origins," writes Graef.

In an effort to educate the public about the effects of eating meat, the Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), which is dedicated to "promoting planetary survival through plant-based eating" and In Defense of Animals (IDA), whose mission is "to end animal exploitation, cruelty, and abuse by protecting and advocating for the rights, welfare, and habitats of animals, as well as to raise their status beyond mere property, commodities, or things," have joined with consumer protection and animal rights advocates, healthcare professionals and public officials around the world for Meatout, an international grassroots diet education campaign that launches on March 20.

It is difficult to comprehend the real price of meat. But starting to tally its true global cost is a step in the right direction.

image: Keith Weller, USDA

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

Save Kolahoi, Save Kashmir

A crucial glacier in Kashmir is rapidly disappearing -- time for the violence to stop and create the "Kolahoi Accord"






"Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream
Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert stream
My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high and true, when movin' through Kashmir."

- Robert Plant, "Kashmir," 1975

Though its lyrics were inspired by a 1973 drive through the Sahara Desert in Morocco, Led Zeppelin's famous song is named after a majestic and fertile valley nestled between the Great and Middle Himalayas. Unsurprisingly, Kashmir has always been a mystical place, and not just to the people of Central Asia.

In the early first millennium, it was a hotbed of Hinduism and later, Buddhism. Since the middle of the 14th century, Kashmir has been variously ruled by the Muslims, the Mughal Empire, the Afghan Durranis, the Sikhs, the Dogras and the British Empire. Today, India, Pakistan and China all lay claim to this beautiful region surrounded by deep gorges carved by the Indus River.

The clashes of recent months between Indian troops and Muslim militants have resulted in over 40 deaths and have led to India's tightening military grip. There are now around 600,000 Indian troops deployed there.

On Monday, separatists called a general strike to mark the anniversary of the day when the Indian army took control in 1947. Businesses, schools, banks and government offices were closed in an attempt to stop a plan to create a human chain as part of a peaceful protest to Indian occupation.

Though this day has been marked by the separatists since the militant uprisings began in 1988, this is the first year that Indian officials took such harsh counterinsurgency measures. Their troops have killed five militants during a gun battle in the forests of Kishtiwar. Seventeen others were reported injured.

But violence is just the tip of Kashmir's iceberg, so to speak. Kolahoi, a twin-peaked glacier rising almost 18,000 feet (5,500m) into the sky, is rapidly melting due to global warming. The glacier's importance cannot be overestimated: Kolahoi is the region's only source of year-round fresh water, and is the origin of the valley's teeming apple orchards and rich fields of wheat, corn, rice and saffron.

Given the violence, Kolahoi has not been the most accessible place for scientists to visit. But local reports suggest that it has retreated up to half a mile (800 meters) since the mid-1980s. Geologists estimate that, at the current melt rate, the glacier will be totally gone in ten years.

In August, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India agreed to reopen trade in Kashmir in a commendable rapprochement that will hopefully bear fruit as more and more Kashmiris interact with some level of normalcy and get past 60 years of infighting. Last month was Ramadan, and Kashmir was relatively quiet as Muslims spent the holiest month of the Islamic calendar in prayer, reflection and fasting.

The latest skirmishes show that it will take more than political handshaking and spiritual contemplation to tamp down on the aggression. Perhaps the slow death of Kashmir's lush valley will finally give its various inhabitants a reason to put down their arms and find a common cause.

President Zardari and Prime Minister Singh should take this opportunity to form a "Kolahoi Accord" that creates a bilateral 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.

Parts of 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.

And the Kashmiri youth are already one step ahead of the violence that has riddled Kashmir's past. Instead of guns, they carry cameras to record instances of abuse, which are then posted on the internet. Perhaps if India allows peaceful protest and reduces the military tension a bit, the young photographers could be enlisted to train their lenses on recording the effects of the receding glacier instead of on public beatings by the police.

Whatever a Kolahoi Accord may or may not accomplish, if it means giving the violence a temporary rest to ponder the future of a glacier that everybody needs, it's certainly worth the effort.

While devising a plan for Kolahoi, Messrs. Zardari and Singh would do well to listen to some other lyrics from "Kashmir" as a message of warning:

"All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground
And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land
Trying to find, trying to find where I've been."

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a petition urging UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, President Zardari and Prime Minister Singh to create and sign a Kolahoi Accord by 2011

Photo of Kolahoi glacier courtesy of Motographer. Map courtesy of Planemad.