The Bangkok round of climate talks begins on Monday so I took a look at how climate change was fairing in the mainstream media. Here are some of the AP and AFP articles in just the last five days:
- Warming affects trees, streams in West
- Experts seek answers on water footprint
- Climate change now a UN human rights issue
- Britain cut greenhouse gas by 2pc in 2007: official
- Study shows Russian and Canadian winter days much milder
- Vietnam must improve sea defence in climate change fight
- UN climate chief warns of ‘accelerated melting’ of ice caps
- Big chunk of Antarctic ice shelf falling apart
- Ice Barrier Near Collapse on Antarctic Peninsula.
- Study: Warming may threaten Lake Tahoe
- Australian animals threatened by climate change: report
- Scorned trash pickers become global environmental force
The message is getting out. (One of those news reports even mentions population pressure as a contributing factor.)
Most amazingly, just four days ago the Wall Street Journal ran this piece: New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears. See also the dialog that followed. It’s a redletter day when the WSJ prints something like this. [For more on this see this post.]
Then there’s Earth Hour tomorrow:
Organizers of Earth Hour 2008 estimate that in excess of 30 million people worldwide will take action on Saturday to raise awareness of how small changes can make big differences when it comes to climate change.
I don’t have the data to prove it, but I think the there has been a clear trend of increasingly frequent reporting of environment news, particularly about climate change and its negative impact on people and the economy. Now if we can begin to respond to the message….
Concerning melting in the arctic and antarctic, see these very important observations for anyone who wants to be fully informed.
Best regards
Tom
There’s a lot of information ticking in. And new scientific reports as well. Problem is: “they” don’t want any possible solution that flashes a light at the growth imperative of the current world economy and questions its validity.
[...] 30, 2008 by Trinifar As I mentioned in the previous post, recently the Wall Street Journal published an article, New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian [...]
I agree, even in Italian papers – where the environment is usually relegated to a section nobody reads – there is more news making it to the front.
I guess with all the garbage and mozzarella scandals they are being forced to do so…
A CLARION CALL FOR CLIMATE ACTION
Press release19-04-2008
Fisher people demand justice for climate refugees
South Indian fishing community conference on Climate change and
Fisherpeople’s livelihood was held on 17th April 2008 at Rotary Community
hall,Nagercoil, Kanyakumari district. This event was organized by
TamilnaduFisher workers Union (TFU), Kerala Independent Fish workers
Federation(KSMTF) and Voices from the Margins (VFM).
Mr. T. Peter Dass, President,Tamilnadu Fish workers Union (TFU) delivered
welcome address and he pointed out that fisher people are facing sea erosion
as a result ofclimate change. This public event is recognized as the first
one organized by the affected community against Climate Change and fisher
people have decided to launch public protest for their sufferings as a
result ofclimate change.
Mr.M.Pakkirisamy, district revenue officer inaugurated this workshop and in
his Chief Guest address said that sea level is rising in the last pastdecade
at an unimaginable rate of increase. Sea level is expected raise 5 meters in
the next 50 years and it is going to affect the fisher people.There is a
need to change the consumption pattern to avoid the expansion of the hole in
ozone layer.
Mr. K.P. Sasi, activist film maker wondered what the government is doing to
stop the carbon emission? There is a need to change the production process
of the industries, agriculture and the energy systems. Nothing is done so
far to the people affected by climate change and marginalized people who are
becoming refugees as a result of ecological impacts thrustupon them.
Dr. A.D.Shobana Raj, ecological researcher highlighted the factthat the
coastal Kanyakumari district has 56 km long coast with apopulation density
of 1500 per sq.km; and the coast line is vanishing. 80% of the water
resources in the coastal area have become saline and peopleare facing water
crisis because of the intrusion of sea water. 132 coastal sea weeds have
disappeared in the last 10 years. If the global temperature rises 2 degree
Celsius then it will have impact on micro organisms leadingto several
contagious diseases affecting coastal people.
Dr. S.P.Udayakumar social activist demanded that our energy consumption
pattern should change. The solution for climate change lies in shifting our
energy sector from fossil fuel dependent sector to renewable energy. Our
transportation pattern should move towards effective and efficientpublic
transport system rather than promoting cars which will lead toincrease in
carbon emission and vehicular pollution.
Mr. Sathya Sivaraman,journalist & film maker stressed the need to pinpoint
who emits more carbon and who should pay for carbon credit. USA is
responsible for 25% ofcarbon emission and it should take the responsibility
in compensation to the victims of carbon emission and climate change. The
relationship of Human species to Earth should be the equivalent to child and
mother, but this species has taken up the role of the destroyer of the earth
and other species. Carbon emitting industries should be changed and if this
is not possible all such industries should be closed.
After the people’s response, Mr. T.Peter president KSMTF demanded that
chemical farming practices, polluting industries and carbon emitting
lifestyle should be stopped since the fisher people are the most affected
bythe climate change. Today, this public event is organized with the
conviction that the affected communities can not remain in halls but there
is a need to launch mass public protest not just for their survival alonebut
for the entire humanity locally, nationally and internationally.
In the concluding session Mr. S.M.Prithiviraj, Convener, Voices from the
Margins explained how the marginalized farmers of the Tamilnadu are affected
by climate change in recent heavy rains as a result unusual low pressure in
Arabian Sea. Fisher people are affected by changes in pattern of fish catch,
reduction in fish wealth, and loss of working days as a result of climate
change and tidal waves and their houses are washed away by intruding sea in
many places of South India. Why should the fisherpeople pay for the impacts
of climate change entirely created by other vested interests? The conference
ended with a resolution questioning the polluting industries, chemical
farming practices, non-renewable energy sectors,carbon emitting life style
and the need for taxing the polluters to paythe price for ecologically
affected fisher people and other marginalized communities.
Press release issued byTamilnadu Fisher workers Union (TFU)
Ph:09443294198
Kerala Independent Fish workers Federation (KSMTF)
Ph:09447429243and
Voices from the Margins
(VFM)Ph:09843080963____________________________________
another clarion call……
http://www.mywire.com/pubs/JapanTimes/2008/04/22/6279398/print/
Japan Times
Is growth driving us to oblivion?
By STEPHEN HESSE | Apr 22, 2008 | 1491 words, 0 images
Last month, when I wrote a column headlined ‘Apocalypse when? Can three experts all be wrong on looming disaster?,’ I expected that readers would harangue me for taking up ranks with the pessimists. After all, for every doomster, there seems to be a Pangloss reassuring us that all will be well. Recently in The Japan Times, for example, Ray Kurzweil argued that exponential progress in technology will offer solutions to all our problems before they get the better of us (’Making the world a billion times better’; April 17). Nice to think so, certainly, though at least one scientist I’ll introduce later believes that the exponential function, and our failure to understand it, is precisely why we have so many problems. In any case, I was wrong. No one wrote to accuse me of being a prophet of doom; just the opposite happened. Everyone who wrote said the experts Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, British scientist James Lovelock, and Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York are not critical enough in their assessments. Several readers in particular, from different corners of the globe, were adamant in their criticism. Each sent me Web site links to check out, and they also stressed that planetary survival hinges on the issue of population. This column will share some of their comments and some of the people and resources they introduced, so thanks to you all, worldwide, in advance. Prof. Eric R. Pianka, a biologist at the University of Texas in Austin, didn’t waste any words setting me straight: Hi Steve, You, like almost everybody, miss the point. Treating the symptoms of overpopulation while denying the cause is like driving into a brick wall at top speed. We must get out of this state of total denial and face reality. We must confront the source of ALL our problems: Too Many People. Above all, face reality and THINK. Best wishes, Eric If you’re interested in knowing more about Pianka’s opinions, research and solutions, see his thought-provoking Web site at: http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/THOC/ Another reader, from Switzerland, sent along his Web site address and some pointed criticisms of all three experts. Dear Mr. Hesse, Yes. All three ‘learned experts’ are wrong. Mr. Sachs is wrong because he still believes in economic growth and progress on a planet that has finite space and resources. Hardly any economist gets that point right! Mr. Brown is wrong because he believes we can at least maintain our present level of exuberant consumption. One has to sound vaguely optimistic to be taken seriously. Optimism and hope and belief in technology are today’s civic duties. And Mr. Lovelock has lost his logic. He is right in saying that many solutions are a scam and a waste of time and effort. But his nuclear solution is tremendously off. Humanity’s problem is not that we don’t have enough energy, but that we have too much. The vast amounts of cheap, easy fossil energy have allowed humanity to reach the enormous overshoot of the Earth’s carrying capacity, in numbers and in consumption per capita. The world’s population under business-as-usual scenarios is expected to rise to 8.5 billion by 2050 (it is 6.7 billion now), and nobody knows how all those people can live in terms of either space or resources. Kind regards, Helmut Lubbers I asked Lubbers in a followup e-mail what he thought we should be doing to get humans and the planet back in balance. He replied: Relocalization, elimination of motorized transportation, but for emergency services, slowing down in general, using power when nature provides it, i.e., when the wind blows and the rivers carry water, and elimination of all destructive and useless activities, demechanization, and a return to a very frugal lifestyle. All this will only make sense if people realize that we have far overshot the Earth’s carrying capacity, that economic growth means increasing the speed of resource depletion, and that as a logical consequence we have to consciously and democratically contract economic activities and population sizes. So in sum I think we are lost as long as the BAU (business-as-usual) scenario reigns in this world, Lubbers wrote. You can visit Lubbers’ Web site, an eclectic compendium, at: ecoglobe.ch/ Meanwhile, a third reader, Peter Salonius, provided the most comprehensive comments and links. Salonius is a soil scientist in Canada and he, too, argues that population is overshooting the planet’s carrying capacity, resulting in the degradation of ecosystems that already cannot support present population levels. I have taken the liberty of synthesizing parts of his e-mail with other comments he sent. Hello Stephen Hesse, I do hope you have time to run through the material I present below; it is as far as I have gotten after starting to broaden my attention away from the reductionist soil science that occupied me for about 40 years toward more holistic/systems deliberations. Many keen thinkers have understood that the driver that has enabled our numbers to shoot so far over long-term carrying capacity is the planet’s one-time gift of fossil fuels, and this overshoot has resulted in our rampant destruction of the biosphere. The global human population before the start of the Fossil-Fuel Revolution was about 1 billion, while it is now about 6.6 billion and rising. These holistic thinkers suggest that without oil, the Earth will only support about 2-3 billion. The other major factor that has enabled our numbers to shoot so far over long-term carrying capacity is the one-time gift of erodible soils and the vast store of plant nutrients they contained. William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel have developed the Ecological Footprint Analysis and believe that humanity overshot global carrying capacity sometime in the 20th century, while it is more likely that the human family has been in overshoot for the last 10,000 years, and has been sidestepping this overshoot by further forest destruction for agriculture, migration to new areas, global trade, and the fossil-fuel-dependent motive power, fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides that make modern agriculture possible, Salonius wrote. Salonius also included two interesting links, one an easy-to-understand slide show on food production and population, and the other an engaging talk by Dr. Albert Bartlett explaining the so-called exponential function. The slide show, titled ‘World Food and Human Population Growth,’ explains how increasing food production to feed a growing population spurs even further population growth. An important corollary is that industrial agriculture, which we have embraced to feed the hungry masses, is rapidly degrading soils and destroying forest, marine and freshwater ecosystems. The slide show is the work of Dr. Russell Hopfenberg, a consulting associate at Duke University in North Carolina. You can find it at http://www.panearth.org The talk by Bartlett, an emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, explains the so-called exponential function in simple terms. This may not be the sexiest topic, but Bartlett makes a clear and convincing case for why we all need to have a better understanding of exponentiation. His talk is titled ‘Arithmetic, Population and Energy.’ ‘Some of these problems are local, some are national, some are global. They’re all tied together. They’re tied together by arithmetic, and the arithmetic isn’t very difficult,’ begins Bartlett. He goes on to explain that we need to understand the function better, because our society’s addiction to exponential growth is both untenable and undesirable. Population growth, another exponential threat, is ‘the immediate cause of all our resource and environmental crises,’ he warns. Bartlett makes his point convincingly, with humor and pithy quotes such as this one from Isaac Asimov: ‘Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive overpopulation. Convenience and decency cannot survive overpopulation. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies, the more people there are, the less one individual matters,’ said Asimov. Clearly, across the globe, from America to Switzerland to Canada, the fate of our planet and the population threat are very real concerns for Japan Times readers. The consensus is that we need to reverse exponential growth of both the numbers of new people and resource consumption, and we need to start now. As Bartlett notes, this will require educating policy-makers worldwide to the lessons of simple math. ‘The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand this very simple arithmetic,’ he chides good-naturedly. Bartlett ends with a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King on overpopulation: ‘What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution, but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and the education of the billions who are its victims.’ So, while corporations and politicians continue to reassure us that we can squeeze more energy, more food, and more resources from the planet’s shrinking reserves, perhaps the best, real solution is to give women and families worldwide the education and support they need to raise just one or two children well rather than three or more willy-nilly, at the planet’s and all children’s peril. A video of Dr Bartlett’s talk can be seen at http://www.youtube.com Stephen Hesse welcomes readers’ comments at stevehesse@hotmail.com A video of Dr Bartlett’s talk can be seen at http://www.youtube.com Stephen Hesse welcomes readers’ comments at stevehesse@hotmail.com
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
Triage in the climate change context seems to be worth considering. I’ve been reading up about it on http://www.climatechangetriage.net. Worth a look.