When the Earth Moved

What happened to the environmental movement?

by Nicholas Lemann April 15, 2013

See: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2013/04/15/130415crat_atlarge_lemann?currentPage=all

In September 20, 1969, Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, gave a lightly publicized speech in Seattle in which he remarked, “I am convinced that the same concern the youth of this nation took in changing this nation’s priorities on the war in Vietnam and on civil rights can be shown for the problem of the environment. That is why I plan to see to it that a national teach-in is held.” Nelson had been pushing environmental issues for some years, initially worried that water pollution was hurting fishing, canoeing, and other forms of outdoor recreation in his state. In 1963, as a freshman senator, he persuaded President John F. Kennedy to stage a national “conservation tour” to talk about the issue. Kennedy visited eleven states in five days, just two months before his assassination, but the trip was a bust: anemic crowds, little attention, and not much obvious passion from Kennedy himself.

But Nelson’s idea of a national teach-in took off, to an extent that surprised even him. On April 22, 1970, only seven months after his speech in Seattle, the teach-in, dubbed Earth Day, generated more than twelve thousand events across the country, many of them in high schools and colleges, with more than thirty-five thousand speakers. “Today” devoted ten hours of airtime to it. Congress took the day off, and two-thirds of its members spoke at Earth Day events. In all, millions of people participated. This activity was largely uncoördinated. Earth Day had a tiny national staff-a handful of young activists-and there were no big environmental groups around to get behind it. The staff imposed minimal central direction over the local activity, and chose not to put on a main event, like a march on Washington.

Adam Rome’s genial new book, “The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-in Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation” (Hill & Wang), brings to life another era. We’re as distant from Earth Day as the Battle of Gettysburg was from James Monroe’s reëlection, and Rome evokes a United States that feels, politically, like a foreign country. There were a number of liberal Republicans. Most active members of environmental groups were hunters and fishermen. The Sierra Club was an actual club that required new members to be proposed by old ones. The Environmental Defense Fund was two years old. Things like bottle recycling and organic food were exotic.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2013/04/15/130415crat_atlarge_lemann?currentPage=all

The Ecology of Population Growth
See: http://www.earth-policy.org/books/fpep/fpepch2

Throughout most of human existence, population growth has been so slow as to be imperceptible within a single generation. Reaching a global population of 1 billion in 1804 required the entire time since modern humans appeared on the scene. To add the second billion, it took until 1927, just over a century. Thirty-three years later, in 1960, world population reached 3 billion. Then the pace sped up, as we added another billion every 13 years or so until we hit 7 billion in late 2011.

One of the consequences of this explosive growth in human numbers is that human demands have outrun the carrying capacity of the economy’s natural support systems-its forests, fisheries, grasslands, aquifers, and soils. Once demand exceeds the sustainable yield of these natural systems, additional demand can only be satisfied by consuming the resource base itself. We call this overcutting, overfishing, overgrazing, overpumping, and overplowing. It is these overages that are undermining our global civilization.

The exponential growth that has led to this explosive increase in our numbers is not always an easy concept to grasp. As a result, not many of us-including political leaders-realize that a 3 percent annual rate of growth will actually lead to a 20-fold growth in a century.

Over half the world’s population could rely on food imports by 2050 - study

Potsdam Institute projection suggests population growth would increase imported food, even without climate change

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/07/half-population-food-imports-2050

Tomatoes from Spain, olive oil from Italy, plums from Chile, salmon from Alaska and green beans from Kenya – how often might some of these ingredients end up in your basket? In the UK most people’s shopping trolleys contain a significant proportion of imported foods. But could these foods be grown and produced at home? Which countries are capable of food self-sufficiency? A new series of maps shows which countries could feed their entire population, and which countries are limited by lack of land or water.

Marianela Fader from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany, and colleagues, calculated the growing capacity of every country in the world, and compared it with food requirements, both now and projected forward to 2050. Their model employed climate data, soil type and land-use patterns for each country, in order to simulate yields for a variety of types of crop. Using current data on population, and food and water consumption in each nation, they were able to assess what proportion of its food a country could produce.

Although many countries choose to import food right now, the model showed that there are surprisingly few that could not maintain the same diet and still be food self-sufficient. “Today, 66 countries are not able to be self-sufficient due to water and/or land constraints,” said Fader. This equates to 16% of the world’s population depending on food imported from other countries.

The countries with the most reliance on imports were found in North Africa, the Middle East and Central America, with over half the population depending on imported food in many of these locations. Outside those locations many countries could become food self-sufficient if they chose to.

But roll the clock forward to 2050 and population pressure paints a very different picture. Vast swathes of the global map are coloured red and orange, highlighting those countries that would have to maximize food production – by improving agricultural productivity, and expanding cropland, for example – in order to feed their population. The figures suggest that over half the world’s population could depend on imported food by 2050.

“Assuming that all low-income economies achieve full potential productivity by 2050 in addition to full cropland expansion – which would be a huge societal and technological challenge and thus a very optimistic assumption – the food self-sufficiency gap will still be equivalent to about 55-123 million people, with over 20 million in Niger and Somalia alone,” explained Fader, whose findings are published in Environmental Research Letters. Add on the impact of climate change – not included in this study – and the problem could be even more severe.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/07/half-population-food-imports-2050

Biologist Paul Ehrlich gives dire prediction for global civilization

See: http://vtdigger.org/2013/05/01/biologist-paul-ehrlich-gives-dire-prediction-for-global-civilization/

The 81-year-old Ehrlich, a professor at Stanford University, spurred the growth of new fields of science and called attention to environmental problems through his work on overpopulation, evolutionary biology, and conservation. He addressed a packed ballroom at the University of Vermont on Tuesday.

Ehrlich, who paced back and forth across the stage, ignoring the podium, started by saying, “I believe and all of my colleagues believe that we are on a straightforward course to a collapse of our civilization.” He cited signs, such as diminishing returns from natural resources, that he said were recognizable from studying the collapse of other civilizations throughout history.

The problem can be traced to our evolution, said Ehrlich.

“We’re a small-group animal, both genetically and culturally. We have evolved to relate to groups of somewhere between 50 and 150 people,” he said. “And now suddenly we’re trying to live in a group not of 150 or 100 people, but of seven billion people, somewhat over seven billion people at the moment, and that is presenting us with a whole array of problems.”

Those problems include an inability to recognize gradual, large-scale changes in our environment as dangerous.

“Another thing that’s related to that, that’s presenting us with a whole array of problems, is that most of our evolution going on now is cultural evolution,” Ehrlich went on. “And the problem is cultural evolution has not gone on at the same rate in every area of human endeavor. Where has it gone on most rapidly? It’s gone on most rapidly in the area of technology.”

In contrast, our cultural evolution has not progressed much at all in terms of ethics, said Ehrlich.

Please see here for full article: http://vtdigger.org/2013/05/01/biologist-paul-ehrlich-gives-dire-prediction-for-global-civilization/

Egypt: Too Big, Too Late to Save?
See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-walker/egypt-too-big-too-late-to_b_3178979.html

With the world’s attention riveted on war-torn Syria, far too little attention has been focused on Egypt’s economic woes and their long-term implications for the region. Heavily dependent on food imports for survival, Egypt desperately needs cash, but its foreign currency reserves have been shrinking dramatically and without more external aid, it’s difficult to see how Egypt will manage to feed itself. In the end, Egypt may be too big and too late to save.

Earlier this month Qatar, Turkey, and Libya pledged a cash infusion of $6.2 billion so that Egypt could continue to purchase wheat, cooking oil, and other staples, but without a continuous flow of aid, it is hard to see how Egypt survives. For several months now Egypt has been attempting to negotiate a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, but Egypt’s negotiator just quit, leading outside observers to wonder whether it might take several more months to iron out an agreement with the IMF.

With a population of 82 million, Egypt has more people than Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and the United Arab Emirates combined. Half or more of Egypt’s food, including its wheat, is imported. Egypt is also heavily dependent on diesel imports to transport its food and run its agriculture machinery.

For years, Egypt has relied heavily upon tourism to pay the bills, but unless political stability is restored, it has no hope of bringing the tourists back. And without a healthier economy, there’s no end in sight to the political unrest.

Egypt’s poor and middle class are heavily dependent on government food and fuel subsidies for their economic survival. Believing — and correctly so — that the subsidies are wasteful and inefficient, the IMF is insisting that the government agree to trim them. Doing so, however, would almost certainly fuel widespread protests and further undermine the government. It’s a colossal Catch 22.

Given sufficient time and aid, Egypt might be able to muddle through for some years to come, but time may be running out and when it does, so will the aid. The IMF is not an international relief agency; it expects its loans to be repaid. Without a reasonable prospect of repayment, the IMF will not extend credit, and neither will many other international lenders.

Egypt is not just food dependent, it is young and poor. One-third of its population is under the age of 15, and, by some estimates, as many as 40 percent of Egyptians are living on less than $2 a day. Egypt’s population growth rate, unfortunately, makes it highly unlikely that it will turn the corner on food dependency and poverty anytime soon. In 13 years or less, Egypt’s population, currently 82 million, is projected to reach 102 million, and by 2050, 135 million.

To read the full essay, please click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-walker/egypt-too-big-too-late-to_b_3178979.html

Stewards of the natural world do not understand the precautionary principle

The UK government does not possess a definition of the principle at the heart of environmental protection and law

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/may/01/protect-natural-world-understand-precautionary-principle?CMP=twt_fd

Here’s something remarkable I stumbled across while researching my column on Monday, but did not have room to include. I hope you’ll agree that it is worth sharing.

I was trying to understand the context for the new chief scientist’s cavalier treatment of scientific evidence, in an article he wrote opposing a European ban on neonicotinoid pesticides. These are the toxins which, several studies suggest, could be partly responsible for the rapid decline in bees and other pollinators.

Just one month into the job, Sir Mark Walport has, I believe, disgraced himself: by misrepresenting the science, misinforming the public about risk and uncertainty and indulging in scaremongering and wild exaggeration in support of the government’s position. I believe he has seriously damaged his standing and that of the office he holds.

To read the full essay, please click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2013/may/01/protect-natural-world-understand-precautionary-principle?CMP=twt_fd

Environmental Ignorance Is Economic Bliss

by Philip Barnes

See: http://steadystate.org/environmental-ignorance-is-economic-bliss/

In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin wrote that “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” This single line succinctly describes a recently conceptualized psychological phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. David Dunning and Justin Kruger, two researchers from Cornell University, have concluded that there is an inverse relationship between a person’s knowledge and skill level in a particular area and the person’s self-rated ability to perform in the area. Dunning and Kruger argue that people who are unknowledgeable and unskilled at performing an activity are also unable to recognize their own incompetence, which is why they tend to overestimate the quality of their performance when asked to self-evaluate. (Likewise, those individuals who are highly knowledgeable and highly skilled tend to underestimate their performance when asked to self-evaluate.)

Enter the economics discipline. Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that economic activity is exceeding environmental limits and destabilizing both global and local ecosystems, demonstrably flawed pro-growth economic theory continues to be touted as the cure to our ailments. Could the collective of practicing economists, policy-makers, economics professors, and economics students all be suffering from something akin to the Dunning-Kruger Effect? As a community, are these individuals so unknowledgeable about the environmental consequences of pro-growth economic activity that they tend to systematically overestimate the discipline’s environmental performance?

A good place to start investigating these questions would be in the departments of economics at higher education institutions. After all, economic knowledge and skills are taught and cultivated at universities.

To read the full essay, please click here: http://steadystate.org/environmental-ignorance-is-economic-bliss/

The state of the world: is it too late for sustainability?

There is plenty of evidence of ecological strain and so far the response has mostly been denial or ignorance. But trouble is coming and we need to respond now.

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/ecological-challenge-too-late-sustainability

In November 2012, the “big four” professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report that concluded it was too late to hold the future increase in global average temperatures to just two degrees Celsius. “It’s time,” the report announced, “to prepare for a warmer world”.

The same month, the World Bank released Turn Down the Heat, which soberly set forth why a four-degree warmer world must be avoided. Meanwhile, accounts of myriad emerging calamities were easy to find in the press: the failure of the Rio+20 talks to result in positive action, “zombie” coral reefs, calls for higher birth rates, declining Arctic sea ice, an approaching “state shift” in the earth’s biosphere, and other evidence of strain in natural systems and of human blindness, ignorance or denial.

Clearly, trouble is coming. There are, however, better responses to it than stockpiling canned goods and weaponry – an image broadcast in shows such as Preppers UK. In view of humanity’s lack of foresight and the absence of political will to address the array of sustainability problems ahead, we asked some notable thinkers to ponder what we might do to respond to our predicament in our newest annual report, State of the World 2013. The answers were so important that we devoted a final section to them, “Open In Case of Emergency.”

Just as fire extinguishers are placed in buildings in case there is a fire, the time has come to start preparing for the ecological transition (or what some call the long emergency) already built into our future. In other words, let’s not wait until the fires erupt to install fire extinguishers, as it’ll be too late then.

To read the full essay, please click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/ecological-challenge-too-late-sustainability

Excerpts: Energy, Ethics and Civilization
See: http://populationpress.org/2013/04/23/energy-ethics-and-civilization-by-vaclav-smil/

NOTE — link to full essay can be found here: http://www.vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/smil-articles-science-energy-ethics-civilization.pdf

In 1922 Alfred Lotka (1880-1949) formulated his law of maximized energy flows: In every instance considered, natural selection will so operate as to increase the total mass of the organic system, to increase the rate of circulation of matter through the system, and to increase the total energy flux through the system so long as there is present and unutilized residue of matter and available energy.

The greatest possible flux of useful energy, the maximum power output (rather than the highest conversion efficiency) thus governs the growth, reproduction, maintenance, and radiation of species and complexification of ecosystems. The physical expression of this tendency is, for example, the successional progression of vegetation communities toward climax ecosystems that maximize their biomass within the given environmental constraints-although many environmental disturbances may prevent an ecosystem from reaching that ideal goal. In the eastern United States, an unusually powerful hurricane may uproot most of the trees before an old-growth forest can maximize its biomass. Human societies are, fundamentally, complex subsystems of the biosphere and hence their evolution also tends to maximize their biomass, their rate of circulation of matter, and hence the total energy flux through the system.

The trend toward higher energy throughputs has been universal, but the process has been proceeding at a very uneven pace, with affluent countries claiming disproportionate shares of modern energies…..

In order to keep the future global warming (climate disruption) within acceptable limits, concentrations of atmospheric CO2 should be kept below 500 ppm (they surpassed 394 ppm in 2012). That, of course, implies a necessity of limiting the future rate of fossil fuel combustion. Two much-discussed strategies commonly seen as effective solutions are energy conservation and massive harnessing of renewable sources of energy. Unfortunately, neither of these strategies offers a real solution…. Claims that simple and cost-effective biomass approaches could provide 50% of the world’s TPES by 2050 or that 1-2 Gt of crop residues can be burned every year would put the human appropriation of phytomass close to or above 50% of terrestrial photosynthesis. This would further reduce the phytomass available for microbes and wild heterotrophs, eliminate or irreparably weaken many ecosystemic services, and reduce the recycling of organic matter in agriculture. Only an utterly biologically illiterate mind could recommend such action. . . .

To read the full article, please click here: http://populationpress.org/2013/04/23/energy-ethics-and-civilization-by-vaclav-smil/

None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use

See: http://grist.org/business-technology/none-of-the-worlds-top-industries-would-be-profitable-if-they-paid-for-the-natural-capital-they-use/

The notion of “externalities” has become familiar in environmental circles. It refers to costs imposed by businesses that are not paid for by those businesses. For instance, industrial processes can put pollutants in the air that increase public health costs, but the public, not the polluting businesses, picks up the tab. In this way, businesses privatize profits and publicize costs.

While the notion is incredibly useful, especially in folding ecological concerns into economics, I’ve always had my reservations about it. Environmentalists these days love speaking in the language of economics – it makes them sound Serious – but I worry that wrapping this notion in a bloodless technical term tends to have a narcotizing effect. It brings to mind incrementalism: boost a few taxes here, tighten a regulation there, and the industrial juggernaut can keep right on chugging. However, if we take the idea seriously, not just as an accounting phenomenon but as a deep description of current human practices, its implications are positively revolutionary.

To see what I mean, check out a recent report [PDF] done by environmental consultancy Trucost on behalf of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) program sponsored by United Nations Environmental Program. TEEB asked Trucost to tally up the total “unpriced natural capital” consumed by the world’s top industrial sectors. (“Natural capital” refers to ecological materials and services like, say, clean water or a stable atmosphere; “unpriced” means that businesses don’t pay to consume them.)

See here for the full article: http://grist.org/business-technology/none-of-the-worlds-top-industries-would-be-profitable-if-they-paid-for-the-natural-capital-they-use/