Deep Greenhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/Deep Green is Rex Weyler's column, reflecting on the roots of activism, environmentalism, and Greenpeace's past, present, and future. The opinions here are his own. en-gb(c) 2020, GreenpeaceWed, 08 Apr 2020 00:16:32 Z5about us/agriculture/climate change/forests/nuclear/oceans/other issues/toxics0000ee82-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/a-tribute-to-jon-castle/blog/61058/A tribute to Jon Castle <p dir="ltr">James (Jon) Castle -&nbsp;7 December 1950 to 12 January 2018</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Over four decades Captain Jon Castle navigated Greenpeace ships by the twin stars of ‘right and wrong’, defending the environment and promoting peace. Greenpeace chronicler, Rex Weyler, recounts a few of the stories that made up an extraordinary life.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Captain Jon Castle onboard the MV SIRIUS" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/140901_254302.jpg" alt="Captain Jon Castle onboard the MV SIRIUS" /><em>Captain Jon Castle onboard the MV Sirius, 1 May 1996</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">James (Jon) Castle first opened his eyes virtually at sea. He was born 7 December 1950 in Cobo Bay on the Channel Island of Guernsey, UK. He grew up in a house known locally as Casa del Mare, the closest house on the island to the sea, the second son of Robert Breedlove Castle and Mary Constance Castle.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Young Jon Castle loved the sea and boats. He worked on <em>De Ile de Serk</em>, a cargo boat that supplied nearby Sark island, and he studied at the University of Southampton to become an officer in the Merchant Navy.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Jon became a beloved skipper of Greenpeace ships. He sailed on many campaigns and famously skippered two ships during&nbsp;<a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/brent-spar-deep-green-rex-weyler/blog/57539/">Greenpeace’s action against Shell’s North Sea oil platform</a>, Brent Spar. During his activist career, Jon spelt his name as "Castel" to avoid unwanted attention on his family.</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">Right and wrong</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">Jon had two personal obsessions: he loved books and world knowledge and was extremely well-read. &nbsp;He also loved sacred sites and spent personal holidays walking to stone circles, standing stones, and holy wells.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">As a young man, Jon became acquainted with the Quaker tradition, drawn by their dedication to peace, civil rights, and direct social action. In 1977, when Greenpeace purchased their first ship - the Aberdeen trawler renamed, the <em>Rainbow Warrior</em> - Jon signed on as first mate, working with skipper Peter Bouquet and activists Susi Newborn, Denise Bell and Pete Wilkinson.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In 1978, Wilkinson and Castle learned of the British government dumping radioactive waste at sea in the deep ocean trench off the coast of Spain in the Sea of Biscay. In July, the <em>Rainbow Warrior</em> followed the British ship, <em>Gem</em>, south from the English coast, carrying a load of toxic, radioactive waste barrels. The now-famous <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/multimedia/photos/gp-activists-under-barrel-dump/" target="_blank">confrontation</a> during which the <em>Gem</em> crew dropped barrels onto a Greenpeace inflatable boat, ultimately changed maritime law and initiated a ban on toxic dumping at sea.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">After being arrested by Spanish authorities, Castle and Bouquet staged a dramatic escape from La Coruńa harbour at night, without running lights, and returned the Greenpeace ship to action. Crew member Simone Hollander recalls, as the ship entered Dublin harbour in 1978, Jon cheerfully insisting that the entire crew help clean the ship's bilges before going ashore, an action that not only built camaraderie among the crew, but showed a mariner's respect for the ship itself. In 1979, they brought the ship to Amsterdam and participated in the first Greenpeace International meeting.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In 1980 Castle and the <em>Rainbow Warrior</em> crew confronted Norwegian and Spanish whaling ships, were again arrested by Spanish authorities, and brought into custody in the El Ferrol naval base.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">The <em>Rainbow Warrior</em> remained in custody for five months, as the Spanish government demanded 10 million pesetas to compensate the whaling company. On the night of November 8, 1980, the <em>Rainbow Warrior</em>, with Castle at the helm, quietly escaped the naval base, through the North Atlantic, and into port in Jersey.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In 1995, Castle skippered the MV <em>Greenpeace</em> during the campaign against French nuclear testing in the Pacific and led a flotilla into New Zealand to replace the original <em>Rainbow Warrior</em> that French agents <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/history/the-bombing-of-the-rainbow-war/">bombed</a> in Auckland in 1985.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Over the years, Castle became legendary for his maritime skills, courage, compassion, commitment, and for his incorruptible integrity. "Environmentalism: That does not mean a lot to me," he once said, "I am here because of what is right and wrong. Those words are good enough for me."</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">Brent Spar &nbsp;&nbsp;</h4><p></p><address><img title="Action at Brent Spar Oil Rig in the North Sea" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/140902_254304.jpg" alt="Action at Brent Spar Oil Rig in the North Sea" /><span>Action at Brent Spar Oil Rig in the North Sea, 16 June 1995</span></address><p></p><p dir="ltr">One of the most successful Greenpeace campaigns of all time began in the summer of 1995 when Shell Oil announced a plan to dump a floating oil storage tank, containing toxic petroleum residue, into the North Atlantic. Castle signed on as skipper of the Greenpeace vessel <em>Moby Dick</em>, out of Lerwick, Scotland. A month later, on 30 April 1995, Castle and other activists occupied the Brent Spar and called for a boycott of Shell service stations.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">When Shell security and British police sprayed the protesters with water cannons, images flooded across world media, demonstrations broke out across Europe, and on May 15, at the G7 summit, German chancellor Helmut Kohl publicly protested to British Prime Minister John Major. In June, 11 nations, at the Oslo and Paris Commission meetings, called for a moratorium on sea disposal of offshore installations.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">After three weeks, British police managed to evict Castle and the other occupiers and held them briefly in an Aberdeen jail. When Shell and the British government defied public sentiment and began towing the Spar to the disposal site, consumers boycotted Shell stations across Europe. Once released, Castle took charge of the chartered Greenpeace vessel <em>Altair</em> and continued to pursue the Brent Spar towards the dumping ground. Castle called on the master of another Greenpeace ship, fitted with a helideck, to alter course and rendezvous with him. Using a helicopter, protesters re-occupied the Spar and cut the wires to the detonators of scuppering charges.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">One of the occupiers, young recruit Eric Heijselaar, recalls: "One of the first people I met as I climbed on board was a red-haired giant of a man grinning broadly at us. My first thought was that he was a deckhand, or maybe the bosun.&nbsp;So I asked if he knew whether a cabin had been assigned to me yet. He gave me a lovely warm smile, and reassured me that, yes, a cabin had been arranged. At dinner I found out that he was Jon Castle, not a deckhand, not the bosun, but the captain.&nbsp;And what a captain!"</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><span>With activists occupying the Spar once again, Castle and the crew kept up their pursuit when suddenly the Spar altered course, heading towards Norway.</span>&nbsp;Shell had given up. The company announced that Brent Spar would be cleaned out and used as a foundation for a new ferry terminal. Three years later, in 1998, the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) passed a ban on dumping oil installations into the North Sea.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">"There was no question among the crew who had made this possible, who had caused this to happen," Heijselaar recalls. "It was Jon Castle. His quiet enthusiasm and the trust he put into people made this crew one of the best I ever saw.&nbsp;He always knew exactly what he wanted out of a campaign, how to gain momentum, and he always found the right words to explain his philosophies. He was that rare combination, both a mechanic and a mystic. And above all he was a very loving, kind human being."</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">Moruroa</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">After the Brent Spar campaign, Castle returned to the South Pacific on the&nbsp;<em>Rainbow Warrior II</em>, to obstruct a proposed French nuclear test in the Moruroa atoll. Expecting the French to occupy their ship, Castle and engineer, Luis Manuel Pinto da Costa, rigged the steering mechanism to be controlled from the crow's-nest. When French commandos boarded the ship, Castle stationed himself in the crow's-nest, cut away the access ladder and greased the mast so that the raiders would have difficulty arresting him.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Eventually, the commandos cut a hole into the engine-room and severed cables controlling the engine, radio, and steering mechanism, making Castle's remote control system worthless. They towed the<em> Rainbow Warrior II</em> to the island of Hao, as three other protest vessels arrived.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Three thousand demonstrators gathered in the French port of Papeete, demanding that France abandon the tests. Oscar Temaru - leader of Tavini Huiraatira, an anti-nuclear, pro-independence party - who had been aboard the <em>Rainbow Warrior II</em> when it was raided, welcomed anti-testing supporters from Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Canada, Germany, Brazil, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the Philippines, and American Samoa. Eventually, France ended their tests, and atmospheric nuclear testing in the world's oceans stopped once and for all.</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">“Moral courage”</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">Through these extraordinary missions, Jon Castle advocated "self-reflection" not only for individual activists, but for the organisation that he loved. Activists, Castle maintained, required "moral courage." He cautioned, "Don't seek approval. Someone has to be way out in front... illuminating territory in advance of the main body of thought."</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">He opposed "corporatism" in activist organisations and urged Greenpeace to avoid becoming "over-centralised or compartmentalised." &nbsp;He felt that activist decisions should emerge from the actions themselves, not in an office. We can't fight industrialism with "money, numbers, and high-tech alone," he once wrote in a personal manifesto. Organisations have to avoid traps of "self-perpetuation" and focus on the job "upsetting powerful forces, taking on multinationals and the military-industrial complex."</p><p></p><p>He recalled that Greenpeace had become popular "because a gut message came through to the thirsty hearts of poor suffering people ... feeling the destruction around them." &nbsp;Activists, Castle felt, required "freedom of expression, spontaneity [and] an integrated lifestyle." &nbsp;An activist organisation should foster a "feeling of community" and exhibit "moral courage." Castle felt that social change activists had to "question the materialistic, consumerist lifestyle that drives energy overuse, the increasingly inequitable world economic tyranny that creates poverty and drives environmental degradation," and must maintain "honour, courage and the creative edge."</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">Well loved hero</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">Susi Newborn, who was there to welcome Jon aboard the <em>Rainbow Warrior</em> way back in 1977, and who gave the ship its name, wrote about her friend with whom she felt "welded at the heart: He was&nbsp;a Buddhist and a vegetarian and had an earring in his ear. He liked poetry and classical music and could be very dark, but also very funny. Once, I cut his hair as he downed a bottle or two of rum reciting <em>The Second Coming</em> by Yeats."</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Newborn recalls Castle insisting that women steer the ships in and out of port because, "they got it right, were naturals." She recalls a night at sea, Castle "lashed to the wheel facing one of the biggest storms of last century head on. I was flung about my cabin like a rag doll until I passed out. We never talked about the storm, as if too scared to summon up the behemoth we had encountered. A small handwritten note pinned somewhere in the mess, the sole acknowledgment of a skipper to his six-person crew: ‘Thank You.’” Others remember Castle as the Greenpeace captain that could regularly be found in the galley doing kitchen duty.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In 2008, with the small yacht <em>Musichana</em>, Castle and Pete Bouquet staged a two-man invasion of Diego Garcia island to protest the American bomber base there and the UK's refusal to allow evicted Chagos Islanders to return to their homes. They anchored in the lagoon and radioed the British Indian Ocean Territories officials on the island to tell them they and the US Air Force were acting in breach of international law and United Nations resolutions. When arrested, Castle politely lectured his captors on their immoral and illegal conduct.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In one of his final actions, as he battled with his failing health, Castle helped friends in Scotland operate a soup kitchen, quietly prepping food and washing up behind the scenes.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p dir="ltr">Upon hearing of his passing, Greenpeace&nbsp;ships around the world - the Arctic Sunrise, the Esperanza, and the Rainbow Warrior - flew their flags at half mast.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Jon is fondly remembered by his brother David, ex-wife Caroline, their son,&nbsp;Morgan Castle, born in 1982, and their daughter, Eowyn Castle, born in 1984. Morgan has a daughter of eight months Flora, and and Eowyn has a daughter, Rose, who is 2. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>Thu, 25 Jan 2018 15:56:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/a-tribute-to-jon-castle/blog/61058/#comments-holderabout usRex Weyler0000ee27-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/a-brief-history-of-environmentalism/blog/60967/A Brief History of Environmentalism<p style="text-align: center;">"The goal of life is living in agreement with nature."<br />— Zeno ~ 450 BC (from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers)</p><p></p><p>Homo sapiens roamed the Earth. We can only speculate about how these early humans reacted, but migrating to new habitats appears to be a common response.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Jasper National Park in Canada, 2017" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/140526_253414.jpg" alt="Jasper National Park in Canada, 2017" /><em>Jasper National Park in Canada, 2017</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Ecological awareness first appears in the human record at least 5,000 years ago. Vedic sages praised the wild forests in their hymns, Taoists urged that human life should reflect nature's patterns and the Buddha taught compassion for all sentient beings.</p><p></p><p>In the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, we see apprehension about forest destruction and drying marshes. When Gilgamesh cuts down sacred trees, the deities curse Sumer with drought, and Ishtar (mother of the Earth goddess) sends the Bull of Heaven to punish Gilgamesh.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In ancient Greek mythology, when the hunter Orion vows to kill all the animals, Gaia objects and creates a great scorpion to kill Orion. When the scorpion fails, Artemis, goddess of the forests and mistress of animals, shoots Orion with an arrow.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In North America, Pawnee Eagle Chief, Letakots-Lesa, told anthropologist Natalie Curtis that "Tirawa, the one Above, did not speak directly to humans... he showed himself through the beasts, and from them and from the stars, the sun, and the moon should humans learn."</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Some of the earliest human stories contain lessons about the sacredness of wilderness, the importance of restraining our power, and our obligation to care for the natural world.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">Early environmental response</h4><p></p><p>Five thousand years ago, the Indus civilisation of <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/archaeology/mohenjo-daro/" target="_blank">Mohenjo Darro</a> (an ancient city in modern-day Pakistan), were already recognising the effects of pollution on human health and practiced waste management and sanitation. In Greece, as deforestation led to soil erosion, the philosopher Plato lamented, "All the richer and softer parts have fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land remains." Communities in China, India, and Peru understood the impact of soil erosion and prevented it by creating terraces, crop rotation, and nutrient recycling.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">The Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen began to observe environmental health problems such as acid contamination in copper miners. Hippocrates' book, <em><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0248%3Atext%3DAer." target="_blank">De aëre, aquis et locis</a> </em>(<em>Air, Waters, and Places</em>), is the earliest surviving European work on human ecology.</p><p></p><p>Advancing agriculture boosted human populations but also caused soil erosion and attracted insect infestations that led to severe famines between 200 and 1200 CE.</p><p></p><p>In 1306, the English king Edward I limited coal burning in London due to smog. In the 17th century, the naturalist and gardener John Evelyn wrote that London resembled "the suburbs of Hell." These events inspired the first ‘renewable’ energy boom in Europe, as governments started to subsidise water and wind power.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In the 16th century, the Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted scenes of raw sewage and other pollution emptying into rivers, and Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius wrote <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_Liberum" target="_blank">The Free Sea</a></em>, claiming that pollution and war violate natural law.</p><p></p><p><img title="Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) - Pieter Bruegel the Elder" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/140527_253416.jpg" alt="Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) - Pieter Bruegel the Elder" /><em>Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) - Pieter Bruegel the Elder. If you look closely at the mid-ground to the right, you can see a wealthy man dumping money into the sewage.&nbsp;</em></p><p></p><h4>Environmental rights</h4><p></p><p>Perhaps the first real environmental activists were the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishnoi" target="_blank">Bishnoi Hindus</a> of Khejarli, who were slaughtered by the Maharaja of Jodhpur in 1720 for attempting to protect the forest that he felled to build himself a palace.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">The 18th century witnessed the dawn of modern environmental rights.&nbsp;After a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin petitioned to manage waste and to remove tanneries for clean air as a public "right" (albeit, on land stolen from Indigenous nations). Later, American artist George Catlin proposed that Indigenous land be protected as a "natural right".</p><p></p><p>At the same time in Britain, Jeremy Benthu, wrote <em><a href="http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/bentham1780.pdf" target="_blank">An Introduction to Principles of Morals and Legislation</a></em> which argued for animal rights. Thomas Malthus wrote <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_on_the_Principle_of_Population" target="_blank">his famous essay</a> warning that human overpopulation would lead to ecological destruction. Knowledge of global warming began 200 years ago, when Jean Baptiste Fourier <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/why-we-know-about-the-greenhouse-gas-effect/" target="_blank">calculated</a> that the Earth's atmosphere trapped heat like a greenhouse.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Then, in 1835, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_(essay)" target="_blank">Nature</a></em>, encouraging us to appreciate the natural world for its own sake and proposing a limit on human expansion into the wilderness. American Botanist <a href="https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/naturalists/bartramw01.htm" target="_blank">William Bartram</a> and ornithologist <a href="http://www.audubon.org/content/john-james-audubon" target="_blank">James Audubon</a> dedicated themselves to the conservation of wildlife. Henry David Thoreau wrote his seminal ecological treatise, <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden" target="_blank">Walden</a></em>, which has since inspired generations of environmentalists.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Hikers on a tour in the Spessart Mountain, 2017" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/140528_253418.jpg" alt="Hikers on a tour in the Spessart Mountain, 2017" /><em>Man and nature in the Spessart Mountains, 2017</em></p><p></p><p>A few decades later, George Perkins Marsh wrote <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_and_Nature" target="_blank">Man and Nature</a></em>, denouncing humanity's indiscriminate "warfare" upon wilderness, warning of climate change, and insisting that "The world cannot afford to wait" - a plea we still hear today.</p><p></p><p>At the end of the 19th century, in Jena, Germany, zoologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel">Ernst Haeckel</a> wrote <em>Generelle Morphologie der Organismen</em> in which he discussed the relationships among species and coined the word ‘ökologie’ (from the Greek oikos, meaning home), the science we now know as ecology.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In 1892, John Muir founded the <a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/">Sierra Club</a> in the US to protect the country’s wilderness. Seventy years later, a chapter of the Sierra Club in western Canada broke away to become more active. This was the beginning of Greenpeace.</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">Environmental action</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">"That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology," wrote Aldo Leopold in <em><a href="https://www.aldoleopold.org/about/aldo-leopold/sand-county-almanac/">A Sand County Almanac</a></em>, "but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics ... a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”</p><p></p><p><img title=" Auwagi Sekapiya, of the Ubei Clan; Kosuo tribe in Papua New Guinea, 2003" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/140529_253420.jpg" alt=" Auwagi Sekapiya, of the Ubei Clan; Kosuo tribe in Papua New Guinea, 2003" /><em>Customary landowner, Auwagi Sekapiya, of the Ubei Clan; Kosuo tribe in Papua New Guinea, 2003.&nbsp;&nbsp;</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In the early 20th century, the chemist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Hamilton" target="_blank">Alice Hamilton</a> led a campaign against lead poisoning from leaded gasoline, accusing General Motors of willful murder. The corporation attacked Hamilton, and it took governments 50 years to ban leaded gasoline. Meanwhile, industrial smog choked major world cities. In 1952, 4,000 people died in London's infamous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London" target="_blank">killer fog</a>, and four years later the British Parliament passed the first Clean Air Act.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Ecology grew into a full-fledged, global movement with the development of nuclear weapons. Albert Einstein, who felt morally troubled by his contribution to the nuclear bomb, drafted an anti-nuclear manifesto in 1955 with British philosopher Bertrand Russell, signed by ten Nobel Prize winners. The letter inspired the <a href="http://www.cnduk.org/" target="_blank">Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament</a>, in the UK - a model for modern, non-violent civil disobedience. In 1958, the Quaker Committee for Non-Violent Action launched two boats - the <em>Golden Rule</em> and <em>Phoenix</em> - into US nuclear test sites, a direct inspiration for Greenpeace a decade later.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Rachel Carson brought the environmental movement into focus with the 1962 publication of <em>Silent Spring</em>, describing the impact of chemical pesticides on biodiversity. “For the first time in the history of the world," she wrote, "every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals.” Shortly before her death she expressed the emerging ecological ethic in a magazine essay: “It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the Earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.”</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Norwegian philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_N%C3%A6ss" target="_blank">Arne Næss</a> cited <em>Silent Spring</em> as a key influence for his concept of ‘Deep Ecology’ - ecological awareness that goes beyond the logic of biological systems to a deep, personal experience of the self as an integrated part of nature.</p><p></p><p>In <a href="https://archive.org/details/subversivescienc00shep" target="_blank"><em>The Subversive Science</em></a>, Paul Shepard described ecology as a "primordial axiom," revealed in ancient cultures, which should guide all human social constructions. Ecology was "subversive" to Shepard because it supplanted human exceptionalism with interdependence.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><img title="The ecology symbol" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/140530_253422.jpg" alt="The ecology symbol" /><em>The ecology symbol designed by comic artist <a href="http://roncobb.net/" target="_blank">Ron Cobb</a></em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In India, villagers in Gopeshwar, Uttarakhand, inspired by Gandhi and the 18th century Bishnoi Hindus, defended the forest against commercial logging by encircling and embracing trees. Their movement spread across northern India, known as Chipko ("to embrace") - the original tree-huggers.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In 1968, the American writer Cliff Humphrey founded <a href="https://ecoact.org/about/history" target="_blank">Ecology Action</a>. One media stunt involved Humphrey gathering 60 people in Berkeley, California, to smash his 1958 Dodge Rambler into the street, declaring, “these things pollute the earth.” Prophetically, Humphrey told Greenpeace co-founder Bob Hunter, “This thing has just begun.”</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">A year later, inspired by the writings of Carson, Shepard, and Naess, and by the actions of Chipko and Ecology Action, a group of Canadian and American activists set out to merge peace with ecology, and Greenpeace was born.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Co-founder Ben Metcalfe commissioned 12 billboard signs around Vancouver that read:</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr">Ecology</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr">Look it up.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr">You're involved.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">It’s hard to imagine now, but in 1969, most people did have to look it up. Ecology was still not a household word, although it soon would be.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Crew of the Greenpeace, the original voyage to protest nuclear testing in Amchitka, 1971" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/140531_253424.jpg" alt="Crew of the Greenpeace, the original voyage to protest nuclear testing in Amchitka, 1971" /><em>Crew of the Greenpeace, the original voyage to protest nuclear testing in Amchitka, 1971, with the ecology logo on our sail&nbsp;</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In 1977, after two anti-nuclear bomb campaigns and confrontations with Soviet whalers and Norwegian sealers, Greenpeace purchased a retired trawler in London and renamed it the Rainbow Warrior, after a indigenous legend from Canada. The Cree story (recounted in Warriors of the Rainbow, by William Willoya and Vinson Brown) tells of a time when the land, rivers, and air are poisoned, and a group of people from all nations of the world band together to save the Earth.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Nearly a half-century after the foundation of Greenpeace, the global ecology movement has reached every corner of the world, with thousands of groups springing up to defend the environment. Meanwhile, the challenges facing us grow ever more daunting. The next half-century will test whether or not humanity can respond to the challenge. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p dir="ltr">Resources and Links:</p><p></p><p>Environmental History Timeline: <a href="http://environmentalhistory.org/">Radford University</a></p><p></p><p>Ramachandra Guha:<em> Environmentalism: A Global History</em>, 2000</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">The European Society for Environmental History: <a href="http://eseh.org/">ESEH.org</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Environmental History, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/envhis/issue">Oxford Journals</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Donald Worster: <em>Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas</em>, 1977</p><p></p><p>J. D. Hughes:&nbsp;<em>Ecology in Ancient Civilizations</em> (U. New Mexico Press, 1975): <a href="https://academic.oup.com/foreconshist/article-abstract/20/2/105/523689?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Oxford Academic</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Society for Environmental Journalists: <a href="http://www.sej.org/">sej.org</a></p><p></p><p>Letakots-Lesa (Eagle Chief) and Natalie Curtis on Pawnee songs: <a href="http://entersection.com/posts/1093-letakots-lesa-eagle-chief-and-natalie-curtis-on-pawnee-songs">Entersection</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">William Willoya and Vinson Brown:<em>&nbsp;Warriors of the Rainbow</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Alice Hamilton, MD: <em>Exploring The Dangerous Trades</em>, 1943</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Aldo Leopold:&nbsp;<em>Sand County Almanac</em>, 1949</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Rachel Carson: <em>Silent Spring</em>, 1962</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Barry Commoner: <em>The Closing Circle</em>, 1971</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Paul Shepard: <em>The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game,&nbsp;</em>1973</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Gregory Bateson:<em> Mind and Nature,</em> 1978</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Roderick Nash: <em>The Rights of Nature</em>, 1989</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Deep Ecology for the 21st Century: A good survey of ecology writers, Arne Naess, Chellis Glendinning, Gary Snyder, Paul Shepard, and others</p>Fri, 05 Jan 2018 14:32:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/a-brief-history-of-environmentalism/blog/60967/#comments-holderabout usother issuesRex Weyler0000ede7-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/world-scientists-warning-to-humanity/blog/60903/World scientists’ warning to humanity<p dir="ltr">Environmental activists and organisations typically try and stay positive, to give people hope that we can change. Positive signs exist, going back to the historic whaling and toxic dumping bans of the 1980s. The 1987 Montreal Protocol, reducing CFC gas emissions, led to a partial recovery of the ozone hole. Birth rates have declined in some regions, and forests and freshwater have been restored in some regions. The world's nations have, at least, <a href="http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php" target="_blank">made promises to reduce carbon emissions</a>, even if action has been slow.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">A challenge we face as ecologists and environmentalists, however, is that when we step back from our victories and assess the big picture - the global pace of climate change, forest loss, biodiversity decline - we must admit: our achievements have not been enough.</p><p></p><p><img title="Children play near a coal plant in Central Java" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/140233_252745.jpg" alt="Children play near a coal plant in Central Java" /><em>Children playing near a coal plant in Central Java</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">25 years ago, in 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued the “World Scientists’ <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229" target="_blank">Warning to Humanity</a>” signed by 1,700 scientists, including most living Nobel laureates. They presented disturbing data regarding freshwater, marine fisheries, climate, population, forests, soil, and biodiversity. They warned that “a great change" was necessary to avoid "vast human misery.”</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">This year, on the 25th anniversary of that warning, the <a href="http://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/" target="_blank">Alliance of World Scientists</a> published a second warning - an evaluation of our collective progress. With the exception of stabilising ozone depletion, they report that "humanity has failed to make sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse."</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">A short history of warnings</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">Environmental awareness is not new. Over 2,500 years ago, Chinese Taoists articulated the disconnect between human civilisation and ecological values. Later Taoist Bao Jingyan warned that "fashionable society goes against the true nature of things… harming creatures to supply frivolous adornments.”</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Modern warnings began in the 18th century, at the dawn of the industrial age, particularly from Thomas Malthus, who warned that an exponentially growing population on a finite planet would reach ecological limits. Modern growth advocates have ridiculed Malthus for being wrong, but his logic and maths are impeccable. He did not foresee the discovery of petroleum, which allowed economists to ignore Malthus for two centuries, aggravating the crisis that Malthus correctly identified.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Rachel Carson ignited the modern environmental movement in 1962 with <em>Silent Spring,</em> warning of eminent biodiversity collapse. A decade later, in the early days of Greenpeace, the Club of Rome published <em><a href="https://www.clubofrome.org/report/the-limits-to-growth/" target="_blank">The Limits To Growth</a></em>, using data to describe what we could see with our eyes: declining forests and biodiversity, and resources, clashing head-on with growing human population and consumption demands. Conventional economists mocked the idea of limits, but <em>The Limits to Growth</em> projections have proven accurate.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In 2009, in <em>Nature</em> journal, a group of scientists lead by Johan Rockström published <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/specials/planetaryboundaries/index.html" target="_blank">Planetary Boundaries</a>, warning humanity that essential ecological systems – biodiversity, climate, nutrient cycles, and others – had moved beyond ecological limits to critical tipping points.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Iceberg in the Southern Ocean " src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/140234_252747.jpg" alt="Iceberg in the Southern Ocean " /><em>Melting iceberg in the Southern Ocean&nbsp; </em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Three years later, 22 international scientists published a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11018" target="_blank">paper</a> called ‘Approaching a State Shift in Earth’s Biosphere’ which warned that human growth had “the potential to transform Earth... &nbsp;into a state unknown in human experience.” Canadian co-author, biologist Arne Mooers lamented, “humans have not done anything really important to stave off the worst. My colleagues… are terrified.”&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In 2014 Michael Gerst, Paul Raskin, and Johan Rockström published ‘Contours of a Resilient Global Future’ in <em><a href="http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/6/1/123" target="_blank">Sustainability 6</a></em>, searching for viable future scenarios that considered both the natural limits to growth and realistic targets for human development. They warned that the challenge is "daunting" and that "marginal changes" are insufficient.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Last year, the UN International Resource Panel (IRP), <a href="http://unep.org/documents/irp/16-00169_LW_GlobalMaterialFlowsUNEReport_FINAL_160701.pdf" target="_blank">published</a> ‘Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity’ warning nations that global resources are limited, human consumption trends are unsustainable, and that resource depletion will have unpleasant impacts on human health, quality of life, and future development.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">This year, the second “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,” alerted us again that marginal changes appear insignificant and that we are surpassing "the limits of what the biosphere can tolerate without substantial and irreversible harm."</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">The data speaks</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">The Alliance of World Scientists researchers tracked data over the last 25 years, since the 1992 warning. They cite some hopeful signs, such as the decline in ozone-depleting CFC gases, but report that, from a global perspective, our "changes in environmental policy, human behavior, and global inequities... are far from sufficient."</p><p></p><p>Here’s what the data shows:</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Ozone: CFC (chlorofluorocarbons) emissions are down by 68% since 1992, due to the 1987 UN Montreal Protocol. The ozone layer is expected to reach 1980 levels by mid-century. This is the good news.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Freshwater: Water resources per capita have declined by 26% since 1992. Today, about one billion people suffer from a lack of fresh, clean water, "nearly all due to the accelerated pace of human population growth" exacerbated by rising temperatures.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Fisheries: The global marine catch is down by 6.4% since 1992, despite advances in industrial fishing technology. Larger ships with bigger nets and better sonar cannot catch fish that are not there.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img style="float: left; margin: 7px;" title="Environmental Crisis in Chiloé Island in Chile" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/140235_252749.jpg" alt="Environmental Crisis in Chiloé Island in Chile" width="314" height="471" /></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Ocean dead zones: Oxygen-depleted zones have increased by 75 %, caused by fertilizer runoff and fossil-fuel use. Acidification due to carbon emissions kills coral reefs that act as marine breeding grounds.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Forests: By area, forests have declined by 2.8% since 1992, but with a simultaneous decline in forest health, timber volume, and quality. Forest loss has been greatest where forests are converted to agricultural land. Forest decline feeds back through the ecosystem as reduced carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and freshwater.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Biodiversity: Vertebrate abundance has declined 28.9 %. Collectively, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals have declined by 58% between 1970 and 2012. This is harrowing.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">CO2 emissions: Regardless of international promises, CO2 emissions have increased by 62% since 1960.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Temperature change: The global average surface temperature is <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/" target="_blank">increasing</a> in parallel to CO2 emissions. The 10 warmest years in the 136-year record have occurred since 1998. Scientists warn that heating will likely cause a decline in the world’s major food crops, an increase in storm intensity, and a substantial sea level rise, inundating coastal cities.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Population: We’ve put 2 billion more humans on this planet since 1992 - that’s a 35 % increase. To feed ourselves, we’ve increased livestock by 20.5 %. Humans and livestock now comprise 98.5% of mammal biomass on Earth. The scientists stress that we need to find ways to stabilise or reverse human population growth. "Our large numbers," they warn, "exert stresses on Earth that can overwhelm other efforts to realise a sustainable future"</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Soil: The scientists report a lack of global data, but from national data we can see that soil productivity has declined around the world (by up to 50% in some regions), due to nutrient depletion, erosion, and desertification. The EU reports losing 970 million tonnes of topsoil annually to erosion. The US Department of Agriculture estimates 75 billion tons of soil lost annually worldwide, costing nations $400 billion (€340 billion) in lost crop yields. &nbsp;</p><p></p><h4>The pending question&nbsp; &nbsp;</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">"We are jeopardising our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption," the scientists warn, "and by not perceiving ... population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and societal threats.”</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">The Alliance of World Scientists report offers some hope, in the form of steps that we can take to begin a more serious transition to sustainability: &nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><ul><p></p><li>Expand well-managed reserves - terrestrial, marine, freshwater, and aerial - to preserve biodiversity and ecosystem services.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li><p></p></ul><p></p><ul><p></p><li>Restore native plant communities, particularly forests, and native fauna species, especially apex predators, to restore ecosystem integrity.</li><p></p></ul><p></p><ul><p></p><li>End poaching, exploitation, and trade of threatened species.</li><p></p></ul><p></p><ul><p></p><li>Reduce food waste and promote dietary shifts towards plant-based foods.</li><p></p></ul><p></p><ul><p></p><li>&nbsp;Increase outdoor nature education and appreciation for children and adults.</li><p></p></ul><p></p><ul><p></p><li>Divest from destructive industries and invest in genuine sustainability. That means phasing out subsidies for fossil fuels, and adopting renewable energy sources on a large scale.</li><p></p></ul><p></p><ul><p></p><li>Revise economic systems to reduce wealth inequality and account for the real costs that consumption patterns impose on our environment.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li><p></p></ul><p></p><ul><p></p><li>Reduce the human birth-rate with gender-equal access to education and family-planning.</li><p></p></ul><p></p><p>These proposed solutions are not new, but the emphasis on population is important, and often overlooked. Some environmentalists avoid discussing human population, since it raises concerns about human rights. We know that massive consumption by the wealthiest 15% of us is a fundamental cause of the ecological crisis. Meanwhile, the poorest individuals consume far less than their fair share of available resources.</p><p></p><p><img title="Aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, 2013" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/140236_252751.jpg" alt="Aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, 2013" /><em>Aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">As an ecologist, I feel compelled to ask myself: if the last 50 years of environmental action, research, warnings, meetings, legislation, regulation, and public awareness has proven insufficient, despite our victories, then what else do we need to do?</p><p></p><p>That question, and an integrated, rigorous, serious answer, needs to be a central theme of the next decade of environmentalism.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p dir="ltr">Resources and Links:</p><p></p><p>World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice; eight authors and 15,364 scientist signatories from 184 countries; <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/bix125/4605229" target="_blank">BioScience</a>, W.J. Ripple, et. al., 13 November 2017</p><p></p><p>List of 15,364 signatories from 184 Countries: <a href="http://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/signatories" target="_blank">Oregon State University</a>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Alliance of World Scientists: &nbsp;<a href="http://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/" target="_blank">Oregon State University</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Recovery of Ozone depletion after Montreal Protocol: B. Ewenfeldt, "Ozonlagret mår bättre", <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbetarbladet" target="_blank">Arbetarbladet</a> 12 September, 2014.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Fertility rate reduction in some regions: <a href="http://www.un.org/esa/population" target="_blank">UN</a> &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Accuracy of Limits to Growth Study: "Is Global Collapse Imminent? An Update to Limits to Growth with Historical Data," Graham Turner, 2014): <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ecoap/about-eco-innovation/research-developments/eu/limits-to-growth-predictions-borne-out-analysis-finds_en.htm" target="_blank">Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">“Contours of a Resilient Global Future,” Michael Gerst, Paul Raskin, and Johan Rockström, &nbsp;<a href="http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/6/1/123" target="_blank">Sustainability 6</a>, 2014.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY" target="_blank">Arithmetic, Population, and Energy</a>: Albert Bartlett video lecture on exponential growth</p><p></p><p>William Rees, <a href="http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1113" target="_blank">The Way Forward: Survival 2100</a>, Solutions Journal, human overshoot and genuine solutions.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Johan Rockström, et. al., “Planetary Boundaries,” <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/specials/planetaryboundaries/index.html" target="_blank">Nature</a>, September 23, 2009.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Anthony D. Barnosky, et. al., “Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere,” <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11018" target="_blank">Nature</a>, June 7, 2012.</p>Fri, 15 Dec 2017 11:04:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/world-scientists-warning-to-humanity/blog/60903/#comments-holderother issuesRex Weyler0000ed0d-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/fire-and-rain/blog/60685/Fire and Rain<p dir="ltr">The year 2017 may become a historic milestone where the visceral effects of global heating - extreme storms and wildfires - finally reach public consciousness.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">&nbsp;<img title="Homeowners Access Hurricane Irma Damage - 12 Sep, 2017" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/139523_251051.jpg" alt="Homeowners Access Hurricane Irma Damage - 12 Sep, 2017" /><em>Homeowners Access Hurricane Irma Damage - 12 Sep, 2017</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Humans have known about the effects of carbon in the atmosphere for two centuries, since the work of <span id="docs-internal-guid-1fdce332-a656-9da5-5a46-2e0874cbf822"><a href="http://ocean.phys.msu.ru/courses/geo/lectures-addons/04/1999%20Fleming,%20Joseph%20Fourier,%20the%20greenhouse%20effect,%20and%20the%20quest%20for%20a%20universal%20theory%20of%20terrestrial%20temperatures.pdf" target="_blank"><span>Joseph Fourier</span></a><span> </span></span>at the French Academy of Science. A century ago, Swedish chemist,&nbsp;<span id="docs-internal-guid-1fdce332-a657-8b68-d2ae-588836d80447"><span><a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Arrhenius/" target="_blank">Svante Arrhenius</a>,</span></span>&nbsp;calculated that doubling atmospheric CO2 would increase Earth's average temperature by 5-6°C, which now appears accurate. In 1981, Dr. James Hansen wrote the&nbsp;<span id="docs-internal-guid-1fdce332-a658-7367-a227-b9459cca09ef"><a href="https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/" target="_blank"><span>first NASA global temperature analysis</span></a></span>, and in 1991, the UN convened the first climate conference in Berlin. As of today, none of this has significantly altered the actions of human society enough to actually reduce carbon emissions.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In the last few years, we have witnessed more wildfires and violent storms that are directly linked to global heating. This year, communities around the world have experienced a dramatic increase in climate-related natural disasters, costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars, and leaving behind devastation.&nbsp;</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">Year of the fire</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">I've lived on the west coast of Canada for 45 years, and during that time, I've witnessed a few days of smoke from wildfires in the interior fir and cedar forests. For the past two summers, however, the entire coast has been blanketed in thick smoke through July and August, the summer sun barely piercing the haze. Citizens experience respiratory problems, tourism is disrupted, and firefighting teams from the northern and southern hemispheres now routinely trade support teams in alternate seasons.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In February, the North Pole experienced a staggering +30°C temperature anomaly, unprecedented in modern record-keeping. The melting permafrost releases methane gas, a greenhouse-gas far more powerful than CO2. The Arctic contains about <span id="docs-internal-guid-1fdce332-a659-e31a-d4f6-28f88af5689b"><span> </span><a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html" target="_blank"><span>1.8 trillion tonnes of carbon</span></a></span>, stored as methane, and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has not yet accounted for this significant positive feedback of global heating. The 2017 data so far shows that over the last decade, Earth is heating about twice as fast as IPCC scientists had predicted.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Grass Fire in the Astrakhan Nature Reserve, Russia - 13 Mar, 2015" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/139521_251047.jpg" alt="Grass Fire in the Astrakhan Nature Reserve, Russia - 13 Mar, 2015" /><em>Grass Fire in the Astrakhan Nature Reserve, Russia - 13 Mar, 2015</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">This extra heat means drier grasslands and forests, resulting in more frequent, more intense fires. Warmer temperatures add moisture to the atmosphere, which we might assume would dampen fires, but it has the opposite effect. Increased precipitation during the winter means that grasslands grow more. Then, during the drier summers, this extra growth becomes added fuel to the fires. Even a fraction of a degree increase to winter temperatures allows insects like pine beetles to move toward the poles, into boreal forests, killing more trees that also add fuel to fires.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">During the summer of 2017, fires raged across Europe, killing hundreds, devastating communities, and leading the European Union to declare a state of emergency. Portugal suffered the worst fire season ever recorded, scorching almost 520,000 hectares of forest. It was six times the annual average for recent years, and killed over 100 people. The Interior Minister, Constanca Urbano de Sousa, remarked that she had wanted to quit after 64 people were killed in June wildfires and after investigators had chastised the official response. When October fires killed 42 more citizens, de Sousa resigned.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Meanwhile, four people died from fires in the Galicia region of northwest Spain. Fires in Croatia destroyed homes and other buildings in the village of Podstrana, and the historic town of Split. Along the Dalmatian coastline of the Adriatic Sea, grasslands and woods burned, along with homes, cars, and public buildings. On the southern Adriatic coast, in Montenegro, fires burned through the historic Lustica Peninsula town of Tivat, which had to be evacuated. Montenegro, unprepared for the scale of fires, asked NATO for firefighters, aircraft, and assistance with evacuations.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In Italy this year, some 900 wildfires burned over 130,000 hectares. Residents and tourists were forced to evacuate parts of Rome and Naples, including Mount Vesuvius national park and the Castelfusano coastal pine forest, south of Rome. A beach resort on the island of Sicily had to be evacuated. This is a typical impact of global heating. Italy experienced 30% less rain and 30% more wildfires. In July, fires burned near Castagniers and Nice, in southeast France and on the French island of Corsica. In southwest Turkey, fires destroyed 40 homes as communities evacuated.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">July was the hottest month in 130 years of Moscow's recorded climate history, and smoke from fires blanketed the region. Within a few days in July, fires burned some 150,000 hectares during an historic heat wave and drought.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In May, under record high temperatures and dry conditions,&nbsp;China and Mongolia grew even hotter and drier, leading to some of the largest fires on Earth in recent history. Fires burned through the Greater Hinggan Mountains, threatening the Hanma Nature Reserve and the city of Hulun Buir. In early July, Mongolia's National Emergency Management Agency fought 11 major forest fires across northern Mongolia, exhausting their supply of fire extinguishing equipment. President Khaltmaa Battulga and Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat prohibited people from entering the forest areas, called an emergency meeting, and instructed their engineers to attempt creating artificial rainfall. Legions of Mongolian citizens, communicating through social media, joined the fire brigades, but by the end of July, they faced more than 20 major fires, some threatening the capital at Ulan Bator.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Fires in western North America, broke records in Alaska, Canada, Washington, Oregon, and California. The Seattle region experienced a +10°C temperature anomaly in August as fires burned through Washington state forests. Wildfires ravaged Oregon and killed 30 people in northern California, destroying some 3,500 homes and businesses in California's wine region, obliterating neighborhoods. Throughout the western United States, over a million hectares burned this summer.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Santa Rosa, California, Fire Devastation - 13 Oct, 2017" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/139520_251045.jpg" alt="Santa Rosa, California, Fire Devastation - 13 Oct, 2017" /><em>Santa Rosa, California, fire devastation - 13 Oct, 2017</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">"Climate change is turning up the dial on everything," said LeRoy Westerling at the University of California. "Dry periods become more extreme, wet periods become more extreme, and fires are increasing. The ecosystem is changing."</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">Extreme Storms&nbsp;</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">Global heating has increased ocean temperatures, adding energy to storms. By October, the year 2017 already approached the all-time record for both total measured storm energy and accumulated damage. This summer, hurricanes Nate, Harvey, Irma, and Maria pounded the Caribbean and Southeastern US. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US has experienced 15 weather disasters this year that cost more than $1 billion, an all-time record. A study from 13 US federal agencies concluded that "extreme weather events have cost the United States $1.1 trillion since 1980."&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Hurricane Harvey Flooding Rescue in Texas - 27 Aug, 2017" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/139522_251049.jpg" alt="Hurricane Harvey Flooding Rescue in Texas - 27 Aug, 2017" /><em>Hurricane Harvey Flooding Rescue in Texas - 27 Aug, 2017</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Storms have been getting stronger since the mid-1980s. An <a href="https://apnews.com/01e72fd70ba74cee9917558c54d67d8a" target="_blank">analysis of 167 years of data</a> by the Associated Press found that no 30-year period in history had seen this many major storms. Typically, North Atlantic ocean temperatures remain too cool to support hurricane-level storms. This year, warmer than normal North Atlantic temperatures fueled tropical storm Ophelia to hurricane status on October 14, as it moved toward Ireland. Hurricane-force gusts of 192 km/hour hit Ireland, flooding coastal towns, and causing structural damage, vast power outages, and two deaths.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">The Atlantic coasts of Ireland, England, France, Spain, and Portugal now face, for the first time, the sustained threat of hurricanes. Four years ago, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute predicted that by 2100, global warming would increase the frequency of hurricane winds in western Europe.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">The extreme fires and storms of 2017 signify more than just a 'new normal'. With each fraction of a degree that Earth's average temperature increases, these fires and storms will increase in intensity. The effects of climate change are not linear. A one-degree increase in temperature will yield about four-times the intensity of fires and storms. Some evidence suggests that by mid-century, fires and storms could double in their destructive power.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">A <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3352.epdf" target="_blank">study published in Nature</a> suggests that limiting global heating to the Paris goal of 2°C is now "unlikely". The UN now estimates that the median projected global temperature increase is 3.2°C with a likely range up to 4.9°C and a high end of 8°C. The "new normal" will be constant change; a growing intensity of storms, fires, and other extreme weather, for as long as human carbon emissions continue.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">We can still act decisively to shift these disturbing trends. Here are "seven megatrends" published in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/08/seven-megatrends-that-could-beat-global-warming-climate-change" target="_blank">Guardian</a> that will help.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><p>26/11/2017: Updated to include "seven megatrends".</p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p dir="ltr">Sources and Links:</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">&nbsp;How climate change is "turning up the dial" on wildfires:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-wildfires-effects-of-climate-change">CBS News</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">"The Uninhabitable Earth,' David Wallace Wells:&nbsp;<a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html">New York Magazine</a>, June 2017</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">"Spain, Portugal Wildfires Kill at Least 39":&nbsp;<a href="https://weather.com/news/news/2017-10-16-spain-portugal-deadly-wildfires">weather.com</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">"Wildfires Roar Across Southern Europe":&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/world/europe/france-split-italy-fires.html">New York Times</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Fires in Russia:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/7924392/Forest-fires-in-Russia.html">the Telegraph</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Forest fires in N. Mongolia:&nbsp;<a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-07/16/c_136447918.htm">Xinhua</a> news</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Huge forest fire in northern China:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2092663/thousands-tackling-huge-forest-fire-northern-china">South China Morning Post</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Video, Fires in Mongolia / China:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ey1jGQ_LIc">China People's Daily</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Maps of 2017 global fires:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.popsci.com/global-wildfire-maps">Popular Science</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Wildfires, Hurricanes, Tornadoes, October 2017:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/10/13/18117">Countercurrents</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Storms: weather and global warming:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/10/12/poll-americans-blame-wild-weather-global-warming">MPR News</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Historic Storm: Ophelia Strikes Ireland with Hurricane Force:&nbsp;<a href="https://robertscribbler.com/2017/10/16/another-historic-storm-surreal-ophelia-strikes-ireland-with-hurricane-force">Robert Scribbler</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Hurricane Ophelia Batters Ireland:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/strange-days-ex-hurricane-ophelia-batters-ireland-under-orange-skies">Weather Underground</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">"Less than 2°C warming by 2100 unlikely":&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3352.epdf">Nature, July 2017</a>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">"C02 Levels 50 Million Years Ago Tell Us About Climate Change Today":&nbsp;<a href="https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/13/can-carbon-dioxide-levels-50-million-years-ago-tell-us-climate-change-today">Clean Technica</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Tropical forests no longer carbon sinks:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/09/28/tropical-forests-used-to-protect-us-from-climate-change-a-new-study-says-theyre-now-making-it-worse">Washington Post</a></p>Fri, 10 Nov 2017 16:17:00 Zother issuesRex Weyler0000ec23-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/ocean-plastic-crisis/blog/60451/The Ocean Plastic Crisis<p>"Plastics!" This became one of the most famous film lines from the 1960s era. In the film The Graduate, young university graduate, Ben (Dustin Hoffman) appears annoyed and distracted when his wealthy American parents stage an elaborate party to show him off to their peers. A family friend approaches him and says, "Ben I have one word for you: Plastics." Ben nods and stares into space, oblivious to the career advice.</p><p></p><p><iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/26Buca9n1DwUes91u" width="600" height="280"></iframe></p><p></p><p>This short scene foreshadowed the age that followed. Plastics were about to explode upon the world. Commercial organic polymers were first synthesized a century ago, used by armies in World War II. They first entered consumer production in the 1950s. Plastic packaging created a global shift from reusable containers to single-use, throw-away containers.</p><p></p><p>According to a<a href="https://committee.iso.org/files/live/sites/tc61/files/The%20Plastic%20Industry%20Berlin%20Aug%202016%20-%20Copy.pdf"> 2016 plastic industry report</a>, the world’s plastic production has grown by 8.6% per year since 1950: from 1.5 million tonnes annually to over 330 million tonnes annually. As of today, some 9 billion metric tons of plastics have been produced and spread around the world. To the plastics industry, this is a "global success story." For Earth's beleaguered ecosystems, for all non-human species, and for anyone paying attention, plastics have been a deadly disaster.</p><p></p><p>According to a <a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782.full">report</a><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> </span>&nbsp;published in <em>Science Advances</em> - from researchers at the University of California, University of Georgia, and Woods Hole Institute in Massachusetts - only about 9% of plastic has been recycled, 12 % has been incinerated (polluting the air with toxic gases), and the remaining 79 %, remains in the environment. If current production and waste management trends continue, by 2050, there will be 12 billion tonnes of plastic in natural environments. That's the weight of 100 million blue whales - 5,000 times the actual blue whale population left on Earth.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Whale Art Installation in the Philippines, May 2017. © Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/138936_249588.jpg" alt="Whale Art Installation in the Philippines, May 2017. © Greenpeace" />Whale Art Installation in the Philippines, May 2017. © Greenpeace</em></p><p></p><p>Plastics are closely correlated with economic growth. Multinational corporations often impose plastic packaging on poor nations that may lack recycling systems to deal with them. Because of the fundamental chemistry of most commonly used plastics, they are not biodegradable, so they accumulate as virtually permanent contamination in Earth's ecosystems. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Choking the oceans</p><p></p><p>Plastic debris appears in every ocean of the world. Every year, we’re adding millions of tons more plastic to marine environments. Some researchers estimate that we may be adding up to 12 million tonnes annually.</p><p></p><p>The Guardian has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/15/38-million-pieces-of-plastic-waste-found-on-uninhabited-south-pacific-island?utm_source=esp&amp;utm_medium=Email&amp;utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&amp;utm_term=226173&amp;subid=22127261&amp;CMP=EMCNEWE" target="_blank">reported</a> that marine scientists documented 38 million pieces of plastic on the remote, uninhabited Henderson Island in the South Pacific. The human garbage the found originated from all over the world. They found samples from Germany, New Zealand, Canada, and elsewhere, amounting to about 18 tonnes. A lot of this plastic is not even visible. In a single square-metre of sand, digging down 10 cm the researchers found over 4,000 tiny bits of plastic.</p><p></p><p>In the open ocean, plastic collects in eddies or gyres, relative calm regions surrounded by stronger ocean currents. There are five major ocean gyres; two in the Atlantic, north and south, two in the Pacific, and one in the Indian Ocean, plus dozens of smaller gyres. The gyres accumulate plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic containers, &nbsp;plastic drums, polystyrene packing, foam pieces, polypropylene fishing net, plastic rope, plastic traffic cones, disposable lighters, plastic toys, rubber tires, plastic toothbrushes, and other unidentifiable bits and pieces.</p><p></p><p>The North Pacific gyre creates the largest garbage site in the world: 700,000 to a million square kilometers of floating plastic. The gyre contains six kilograms of plastic for every kilogram of plankton. In Hawaii, south of this gyre, a dead turtle was found with over a thousand pieces of plastic in its stomach.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Turtle and Plastic in the Ocean. © Troy Mayne / Oceanic Imagery Publications" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/138937_249590.jpg" alt="Turtle and Plastic in the Ocean. © Troy Mayne / Oceanic Imagery Publications" />Turtle and Plastic in the Ocean. © Troy Mayne / Oceanic Imagery Publications</em></p><p></p><p>Pieces of plastic are sharp, brittle, toxic, and routinely found in the stomachs of dead fish, turtles, and marine mammals. Plastics can come with a range of hazardous additives and can act as a chemical sponge, soaking up and concentrating other pollutants. Marine species, including fish, seabirds and even marine mammals, can end up eating pieces of plastic, and at the same time get an additional dose of toxic chemicals.</p><p></p><p>Researchers have found plastic in the stomachs of 44% of all seabird species, 22% of cetacean species, and in all sea turtle species. Among seabirds, the Procellariiformes (albatross, petrels, shearwaters) are most vulnerable due to their small gizzard and inability to regurgitate the plastics. Plankton eaters - birds, fish, and mammals - often confuse plastic pellets with their food; copepods, euphausiids, and cephalopods.</p><p></p><p>The plastics obstruct the animals' intestines, block gastric enzyme secretion and there are growing fears that they might also disrupt hormone levels or cause other biological effects as a result of the chemical burden they carry. It is estimated that up to about one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals die each year from ingesting plastic or by getting tangled in nylon fishing line, nets, six-pack plastic can holders, and plastic rope.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Plastic Waste on Manila Bay Beach, 3 May, 2017. © Daniel Müller / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/138938_249592.jpg" alt="Plastic Waste on Manila Bay Beach, 3 May, 2017. © Daniel Müller / Greenpeace" />Plastic Waste on Manila Bay Beach, 3 May, 2017. © Daniel Müller / Greenpeace</em></p><p></p><p>Solutions: obvious but inconvenient</p><p></p><p>Without large-scale action, global plastic production continues to rise. According to the 2015 Global Ocean Commission it’s estimated to reach 500 million tonnes a year by 2020.</p><p></p><p>Solutions to the plastic waste crisis exist, but they require us to change our lifestyles and for corporations to take responsibility for the products they make. We can fight for total bans on plastic materials (bags, bottles, etc.), but we also need governments to enforce requirements that corporations who manufacture or distribute plastic, take responsibility for recycling 100% of their production and distribution.</p><p></p><p>Plastic bag bans already exist in some cities and countries around the world: San Francisco and Portland in the US; Modbury in the UK; Mexico City; Delhi, Mumbai, Karwar, Rajasthan in India; Oyster Bay and other communities in Australia; and throughout Rwanda, Kenya, Morocco and many other African countries. Some nations are imposing recycling taxes on plastic bags.</p><p></p><p>Locally, in some environments, these bans have reduced plastic waste. But the flow of plastics into the environment continues on a global scale. Banning plastic bags is a good start, but we need large-scale global bans on throw-away plastic containers, including water bottles, juice and drink bottles, and other packing materials.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Common Species of the Inner Hebrides (artwork). © Mandy Barker / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/138939_249594.jpg" alt="Common Species of the Inner Hebrides (artwork). © Mandy Barker / Greenpeace" />Common Species of the Inner Hebrides (artwork). © Mandy Barker / Greenpeace</em></p><p></p><p>I've attended allegedly "green" events, where organizers distribute hundreds, perhaps thousands of plastic water bottles. In mainstream society, this behaviour appears normal. Corporations have lobbied to decrease drinking fountains in certain markets. We need to reverse this trend by increasing public investment in water fountains, water filling stations, water hook-ups for public events, and bans on plastic drink bottles.</p><p></p><p>In June this year, Greenpeace Germany activists protested at the G20 conference in Bremen and demanded that wealthy nations take concrete steps to reduce the use of plastics by banning key sources of plastic pollution and phasing out single-use plastic items.</p><p></p><p>They also called for pressure on companies that produce plastic items - packaging, containers, &nbsp;and so forth - to hold these companies accountable with Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws that would require them to create recycling systems for their products.</p><p></p><p>“As the world’s most developed nations," said Thilo Maack of Greenpeace Germany, "the G20 countries have a responsibility to adopt legally-binding solutions. We cannot recycle our way out of the plastic litter problem. Governments should prioritise prevention at source."</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Protest at the G20 Conference in Bremen, 1 June 2017. © Daniel Müller / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/138940_249596.jpg" alt="Protest at the G20 Conference in Bremen, 1 June 2017. © Daniel Müller / Greenpeace" />Protest at the G20 Conference in Bremen, 1 June 2017. © Daniel Müller / Greenpeace</em></p><p></p><p>Citizens can put pressure on their governments to require glass bottles for drinks, substitute packing materials with materials that are reusable. "Mandatory phase out timelines" said Maack, "would motivateinnovation [and] G20 competition to identify and implement the most innovative solutions, contributing far more than continued talks.”</p><p></p><p>Economic "success" without ecological consciousness can end in disaster. The flood of plastic in our environment is a typical example. Plastics helped create a throwaway culture. Several generations have now grown up believing that tossing out a drink container is completely normal, reasonable behaviour. Ecology teaches us, however, that there is no “away." Everything that passes through our hands ends up somewhere.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><p>============</p><p></p><p>Sources and links:</p><p></p><p>"Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made," Roland Geyer, Jenna R. Jambeck, and Kara Lavender Law, <a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782.full" target="_blank">Science Advances</a>, 19 July 2017.</p><p></p><p>"Marine birds and plastic pollution," Marie Y. Azzarello &amp; Edward S. Van Vleet, <a href="http://plastics.earthmind.net/files/ART_Azzarello_1987.pdf" target="_blank">Marine Ecology</a>, 1987</p><p></p><p>"Plastic ingestion and PCBs in seabirds,” P.G.Ryan, et. al.<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0025326X88906741" target="_blank"> Marine Pollution Bulletin</a>, 1988.</p><p></p><p>World Plastic production 1950 - 2015: <a href="https://committee.iso.org/files/live/sites/tc61/files/The%20Plastic%20Industry%20Berlin%20Aug%202016%20-%20Copy.pdf" target="_blank">Plastic Industry report, 2016</a></p><p></p><p>"38 million pieces of plastic waste on uninhabited island": <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/15/38-million-pieces-of-plastic-waste-found-on-uninhabited-south-pacific-island?utm_source=esp&amp;utm_medium=Email&amp;utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&amp;utm_term=226173&amp;subid=22127261&amp;CMP=EMCNEWE" target="_blank">Guardian</a>, 2017</p><p></p><p>Plastic pellets on all UK beaches: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/17/tiny-plastic-pellets-found-on-73-of-uk-beaches" target="_blank">Guardian</a></p><p></p><p>Pollution in 10 km deep Mariana Trench:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/13/extraordinary-levels-of-toxic-pollution-found-in-10km-deep-mariana-trench" target="_blank">Guardian</a><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> </span>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Plastic statistics, stats: <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/22-facts-about-plastic-pollution-and-10-things-we-can-do-about-it-1881885971.html" target="_blank">Eco Watch</a> , 2014</p><p></p><p>The Trash Vortex, <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/oceans/fit-for-the-future/pollution/trash-vortex/" target="_blank">Greenpeace</a>, March 2014</p><p></p><p>Greenpeace calls on G20 to act for plastic-free oceans.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/2017/Greenpeace-activists-call-on-G20-to-act-for-plastic-free-oceans/" target="_blank">Greenpeace</a>, June, 2017</p><p></p><p>“How You Can Help the Ocean”:&nbsp;<a href="http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-news/how-you-can-help-ocean" target="_blank">Smithsonian</a></p><p></p><p>"Seven actions for healthy oceans":&nbsp;<a href="http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/healthy-oceans-blog/2013/08/seven-things-you-can-do-every-day-to-protect-our-oceans/" target="_blank">David Suzuki Foundation </a></p><p></p><p>Phaseout of lightweight plastic bags - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_lightweight_plastic_bags" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></p><p></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;</p>Sun, 15 Oct 2017 10:30:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/ocean-plastic-crisis/blog/60451/#comments-holderoceansother issuesRex Weyler0000eb51-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/chevron-amazon-indigenous-people-legal-case-canada/blog/60241/Chevron's Amazon Chernobyl Case moves to Canada<p>After perpetrating what is probably the worst oil-related catastrophe on Earth - a 20,000 hectare death zone in Ecuador, known as the “Amazon Chernobyl” - the Chevron Corporation has spent two decades and over a billion dollars trying to avoid responsibility. In 2011, Indigenous and peasant villagers won an $9.5-billion compensation judgment in Ecuador. Chevron, despite accepting jurisdiction in Ecuador to avoid a US jury trial, refused to pay.<br /><br /><img title="Indigenous Person - Image Courtesy of Amazon Watch" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/138320_248097.jpg" alt="Indigenous Person - Image Courtesy of Amazon Watch" /><em>Image courtesy of Amazon Watch</em></p><p></p><p>The company sold its assets in Ecuador to avoid seizure, left the country, and threatened the victims with a "lifetime of litigation" if they pursued compensation. The 30,000 plaintiffs, however, have not given up. The case now moves to Canada, where Chevron holds assets, and where the victims hope, at last, to gain justice.</p><p></p><p>This tragic story reveals almost unthinkable corporate irresponsibility, intimidation, and arrogance, not just by Chevron executives, but by their 60 law firms, 2,000 lawyers and paralegals, six public relations firms, squads of private investigators, thugs and bribed witnesses, and at least one severely compromised US judge. Chevron has probably spent more money trying to weasel out of this case than any corporation in world history.</p><p></p><p>If we sometimes wonder why significant ecological progress appears so monumentally difficult, this blood-curdling case will give us some clues.</p><p></p><h4>Crimes in the oil patch</h4><p></p><p>In 1964, Texaco (now Chevron) discovered oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest where the Indigenous Cofán, Siona, Secoya, Quichua, and Huaorani people lived traditional lives, untouched by industrial civilization. Over the next 28 years, the oil producers perpetrated some of the most horrendous ecological crimes in history. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Texaco/Chevron dumped some 16 billion gallons of wastewater laced with carcinogens into rivers and streams. The company abandoned hundreds of toxic waste pits in the rainforest -- containing toxic oil sludge, in violation of basic industry standards. The Indigenous inhabitants were left with poisoned land, food supply, and drinking water. The region's river sediment remains contaminated with heavy metals and chemical toxins.</p><p></p><p>Chevron's own environmental audits (by Fugro-McClelland) confirm these crimes and show that the company never conducted basic monitoring of its pipelines and never developed a plan to clean up its routine oil spills. Records reveal that 38 pipelines ruptured in a single month - September 1978 - in just one of the oil fields.</p><p></p><p>In 1972, to hide the crimes, a Texaco/Chevron executive in Ecuador ordered that “only major [environmental] events . . . are to be reported," and defined a "major event" as one that might "attract the attention of the press and/or regulatory authorities." The policy stated that “no reports are to be kept ... and all previous reports are to be removed ... and destroyed.” Evidence showed that Chevron never approved a budget for environmental clean-up in Ecuador.</p><p></p><p>Each of 54 judicial site inspections during the trial in Ecuador found that Chevron left oil contamination in violation of national legal standards that are ten times more lax than typical U.S. standards. Some Chevron pits showed contamination 900-times higher than the Ecuadorian standard, and the average pit contained 20-times the allowable Ecuadorean contamination (200-times the US standard).</p><p></p><p>Rainforest inhabitants testified that Chevron's waste pits overflowed into streams, that local drinking water became noxious, that family members became ill, and that some died from exposure to the toxins. The contamination contained human carcinogens and other toxins including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and benz[a]anthracene. Samples revealed illegal levels of barium, cadmium, copper, mercury, lead, and other metals that can damage the immune, nervous and reproductive systems and cause cancer.</p><p></p><p>Chevron's own documents reveal that the company adopted these practices to save money. By conducting its Ecuador operation in ways that were illegal in the US, and around the world, Texaco saved an estimated $3 per barrel of oil - approximately $5 billion over 20 years. During that time, the company made profits of about $25 billion.</p><p></p><h4>Avoiding liability</h4><p></p><p>In 1993, lawyers for 30,000 local inhabitants filed a lawsuit asking a New York Federal court to order a cleanup and payment of damages. In response, Texaco/Chevron staged a phony "clean-up," proven by later court evidence to be a sham. Evidence from Chevron's environmental auditor, two court-nominated Chevron experts, and third-party investigators showed that 83% of Chevron’s allegedly “remediated” pits contained illegal levels of petroleum contamination.</p><p></p><p><img title="Burning oil fields - courtesy of Amazon Watch" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/138319_248099.jpg" alt="Burning oil fields - courtesy of Amazon Watch" /><em>Image courtesy of Amazon Watch</em></p><p></p><p>In 2001, Chevron bought Texaco and succeeded in shifting the case to Ecuador where the company accepted jurisdiction and probably believed it could influence the court with a politically-engineered dismissal of the case. When the trial finally commenced in 2003, Chevron’s top executive in Ecuador met with the Ecuadorean Justice Minister and asked him to pressure the trial judge to dismiss the case. That effort failed.</p><p></p><p>The evidence clearly stood against Chevron: the open toxic pits, the 16 billion gallons of contaminated waste water, poisoned rivers, the company's own records, and reports from Chevron’s own environmental consultants.</p><p></p><p>Witnesses testified about a culture of disdain for the Indigenous inhabitants and how the company remained unresponsive and openly hostile to grievances from the local people. The court heard how Texaco oil workers committed acts of sexual violence, ridiculed Indigenous people for customs and dress, and told inhabitants that oil run-off was full of vitamins, similar to milk.</p><p></p><p>Secoya leader Ricardo Piaguaje, testified how Texaco "drilled wells and set off dynamite next to our people's houses" and how "oil spills and petroleum waste products" contaminated their home. The court heard how contamination had reduced fish and game stocks, such that subsistence hunting communities could not survive. Those who did endure experienced a catastrophic public health crisis, loss of food sources, and poverty.</p><p></p><h4>Corporate rescue squad</h4><p></p><p>In 2009, facing a landslide loss on the evidence, Chevron hired notorious New York law firm, Gibson Dunn, the self-described “rescue squad” for scandal-plagued clients. The firm possesses an historic <a href="http://thechevronpit.blogspot.com/2015/03/chevron-law-firm-gibson-dunn-blasted-by.html" target="_blank">track record</a> of being sanctioned by courts for unethical dirty tricks. Chevron appears to have hired the firm precisely because of its willingness to cross the ethical line.</p><p></p><p>In 2007, the Montana Supreme Court <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/montana031207.pdf" target="_blank">assessed a $9.9 million fine against Gibson Dunn</a> for "maliciously trying to intimidate" its adversary with "legal thuggery." A New York federal judge sanctioned the firm for making "deceptive" statements, hiding documents, and for other "unacceptable shenanigans."</p><p></p><p>In 2005, a California federal court sanctioned Gibson Dunn for tampering with a witness, noting that the firm's "culture promoted obstruction, gamesmanship, and flagrant disregard of this Court's orders." A California state court ordered Gibson Dunn’s clients to compensate a documentary filmmaker and a human rights lawyer for illegitimate SLAPP lawsuits designed to silence criticism.</p><p></p><p>In Ecuador, lawyers from another firm representing Chevron <a href="http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2011/0203-chevron-threatened-judge-with-prison-time-if-he-failed-to-grant-motions" target="_blank">threatened judges with jail</a>&nbsp;if they ruled against Chevron, but the dirty tricks campaign failed. Ecuadorean judges rebuked Chevron's lawyers for their tactics, and in 2011 issued the $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron for two decades of ecological and civil rights abuses. Eight appellate judges, including Ecuador's highest court, unanimously upheld the verdict. Chevron refused to pay and removed its assets from Ecuador to avoid collection by its victims.</p><p></p><h4>US and Canadian courts</h4><p></p><p>Meanwhile, the Gibson Dunn "rescue squad" filed "racketeering" charges in the US against the Ecuadorean villagers and their lawyers, claiming they used "fraud" to gain victory in Ecuador, clearly a SLAPP lawsuit designed to suppress legitimate advocacy and obstruct the villagers from collecting payment in the US.</p><p></p><p>Chevron's claim relied heavily on the testimony of a disgraced former Ecuadorean judge, Alberto Guerra, who admitted openly under oath in a subsequent case that he had accepted bribes as a judge before being removed from the bench. Chevron helped Guerra flee to the US and has paid him roughly $2 million for his cooperation.</p><p></p><p>After spending weeks rehearsing his testimony with a Gibson Dunn legal team headed by lawyer Randy Mastro, Guerra claimed in US federal court that lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote the Ecuador judgment and gave it to the trial judge on a flash drive. This ruse appeared similar to a 2015 case, in which the High Court of England sanctioned Gibson Dunn for <a href="http://thechevronpit.blogspot.ca/2015/03/chevron-law-firm-gibson-dunn-blasted-by.html" target="_blank">fabricating evidence</a> to frame the political opponent of a client, the President of Djibouti. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In the US, however, the Chevron scheme worked. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, a notorious pro-business judge, displayed relentless <a href="https://chevrontoxico.com/assets/docs/2011-petition-writ-mandamus.pdf" target="_blank">bias</a> against the Ecuadorean victims and their lawyers, refused to sit a jury, insisted on ruling by himself, accepted the testimony of Guerra - even after his deceits had been exposed - and ruled in favor of Chevron's claim.</p><p></p><p>Guerra later admitted under oath to lying about having been offered a $300,000 bribe by the lawyers of the Ecuadorian victims. A&nbsp;forensic analysis&nbsp;by one of the world’s leading computer experts debunked Guerra’s story by showing that the Ecuador trial judge had written the judgment, without interference, on his office computer over several months. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Judge Kaplan's decision almost certainly violates US law and the international comity principle that require the courts of one country to respect the judgments of foreign courts. An earlier attempt by Kaplan to block the Ecuador judgment was overturned for violating this principle. The U.S. appellate court that supervises Kaplan shockingly refused to review his acceptance of Guerra’s lies, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined review. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Chevron, however, cannot use a U.S. court to block enforcement of a foreign judgment in Canada or in any other country. The victims are now moving the case to Canada for collection. Enforcing foreign judgments against those who refuse to pay is considered routine internationally, and Canada has domestic laws governing this practice. Canada's Supreme Court – unlike the U.S. court – already has backed universal legal principles by unanimously rejecting another Chevron attempt to deny jurisdiction to the Ecuadorians. An Ontario trial court will soon commence a trial to enforce the judgment.</p><p></p><p>Chevron has already begun a campaign of intimidation against Canadian politicians and judges, mocking Canadian courts for accepting the case, and calling it a “crock” and a “waste of time and money.” Chevron claims the Ecuadorians cannot collect in Canada because its assets are held by a wholly-owned Chevron subsidiary – a subterfuge that, if accepted, would offer corporations impunity for environmental crimes the world over.</p><p></p><p>Chevron holds some $15 billion in Canadian assets and takes about &nbsp;$3 billion in annual profits from Canadian operations in the Beaufort Sea, Newfoundland, and the Alberta Tar Sands. The company, however, has started dumping Canadian assets. In April 2017, Chevron sold a refineryin British Columbia, and has sold 213 Canadian fuel stations. The plaintiffs may find it necessary&nbsp;to ask Canadian courts to freeze Chevron assets, before they dump them all to avoid payment, as they did in Ecuador.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><img title="Protesting for justice - image courtesy of Amazon Watch" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/138318_248101.jpg" alt="Protesting for justice - image courtesy of Amazon Watch" /><em>Image courtesy of Amazon Watch</em></p><p></p><p>The International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law has filed a “friend of the court” brief supporting the villagers' rights to pursue Chevron’s assets in Canada. Lawyers for the indigenous and peasant villagers of Ecuador have not been intimidated by 24 years of attacks and dirty tricks by Chevron and its agents. They vow to endure until they collect compensation for the victims and the cost of restoring the Amazon rainforest.</p><p></p><p>Human rights advocates the world over need to carefully study Chevron’s playbook of spending massively to buy witnesses against its adversaries to evade paying compensation to the people it harmed. If U.S. courts refuse to provide the Ecuadorians a fair hearing, then Canada’s courts must do so for the sake of corporate accountability, universal principles of justice, and Indigenous rights.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><p>___________________________________________________________________________</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Sources and Links:</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Ecuador Indigenous communities affected: <a href="http://chevrontoxico.com/about/affected-communities/about-the-affected-communities" target="_blank">ChevronToxico</a></p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Ecuador's Supreme Court <a href="http://chevrontoxico.com/assets/docs/2013-11-12-supreme-court-ecuador-decision-english.pdf" target="_blank">unanimous judgement</a> vs. Chevron.</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Summary of evidence against Chevron found by Ecuador's courts: <a href="http://chevrontoxico.com/assets/docs/2012-01-evidence-summary.pdf" target="_blank">evidence</a></p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Environmental Impacts of Chevron in Ecuador: <a href="http://chevrontoxico.com/about/environmental-impacts/" target="_blank">ChevronToxico</a>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;A Rainforest Chernobyl: <a href="http://chevrontoxico.com/about/rainforest-chernobyl/" target="_blank">ChevronToxico</a></p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Chevron's health impacts on indigenous groups:&nbsp;independent health studies&nbsp;cited by the court.</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Chevron's Gibson Dunn lawyers <a href="http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2011/0203-chevron-threatened-judge-with-prison-time-if-he-failed-to-grant-motions" target="_blank">threatened Ecuador's judges with jail</a>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Video, Chevron in Ecuador: <a href="http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2012/0208-the-true-story-of-chevrons-ecuador-disaster" target="_blank">video on the case</a></p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Video: <a href="http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2009/0503-60-minutes-amazon-crude" target="_blank">60 Minutes segment</a></p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Shareholders rebuke Chevron, June 2017, <a href="http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2017/0601-chevron-ceo-suffers-major-rebuke-over-12-billion-ecuador-liability-at-annual-meeting" target="_blank">Amazon Defense Coalition</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;How the US courts got it wrong: rebuttal, Chevron RICO case. <a href="http://stevendonziger.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/KaplanRebuttal.pdf" target="_blank">Steven Donziger</a>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Chevron falsification of Guerra's testimony: <a href="http://thechevronpit.blogspot.mx/2015/03/courthouse-news-forensic-report.html" target="_blank">background</a> and <a href="http://stevendonziger.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Defendants-motion-to-strike-testimony-of-Alberto-Guerra-Bastides.pdf" target="_blank">legal motion</a></p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Chevron's <a href="http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/39995-New-Report-Details-How-U-S-Courts-Endorsed-Chevron-s-Fabricated-Evidence-In-Historic-Amazon-Pollution-Case" target="_blank">bribery and fabrication</a> of evidence in U.S. courts to evade Ecuador judgment</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;"Chevron Law Firm Gibson Dunn Blasted by High Court of England For Falsifying Evidence": <a href="http://thechevronpit.blogspot.ca/2015/03/chevron-law-firm-gibson-dunn-blasted-by.html" target="_blank">Chevron Pit</a>, 2015</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Gibson Dunn's Ecuador narrative crumbling; the firm's unethical tactics: &nbsp;<a href="http://thechevronpit.blogspot.com/2015/03/chevrons-ecuador-strategy-starts-to.html" target="_blank">The Chevron Pit</a></p><p></p><p>"Plaintiffs cannot collect $9.5-billion judgment in the U.S. against Chevron": <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chevron-ecuador-20160808-snap-story.html" target="_blank">LA Times</a>, 2016</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Gibson Dunn firm frequently criticized and sanctioned&nbsp;by courts for crossing the ethical line.</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Chevron selling assets in Canada: <a href="https://www.biv.com/article/2017/4/new-owners-plan-100-million-upgrade-chevron-refine/" target="_blank">Business in Vancouver</a>, April, 2017.</p><p></p><p>A <a href="http://amazonwatch.org/news/2013/1218-chevrons-threat-to-open-society" target="_blank">letter</a> signed by over 40 US environmental and civil rights organizations&nbsp; (including Greenpeace, Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club, and Friends of the Earth) stating that Chevron's tactics "targeted nonprofit environmental and indigenous rights groups ... designed to cripple their effectiveness and chill their speech."</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;</p>Fri, 15 Sep 2017 11:13:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/chevron-amazon-indigenous-people-legal-case-canada/blog/60241/#comments-holderforestsother issuesRex Weyler0000e990-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/indigenous-activists-violence-mexico/blog/59792/Violence against Indigenous peoples destroys our common home <p dir="ltr">In May this year, two brothers, Vázquez and Agustín Torres, were murdered near Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico. They were Wixárika (Huichol) leaders, working to preserve their land from incursion by cattle ranchers and drug cartels. This tragedy of greed and corruption serves as an alarm bell for activists attempting to preserve our natural world. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Murdered Wixárika leader, Miguel Vázquez Torres. (Photo by Nelson Denman) " src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/136982_244797.jpg" alt="Murdered Wixárika leader, Miguel Vázquez Torres (Photo by Nelson Denman) " /><em>Murdered Wixárika leader, Miguel Vázquez Torres (photo by&nbsp;Nelson Denman)&nbsp;</em></p><p></p><p>The worldwide crisis on Indigenous land is as urgent as climate change or biodiversity loss. Approximately 400 million Indigenous peoples, with 5,000 distinct cultures, represent most of the world’s cultural diversity. Their land is threatened by mining and logging companies, ranchers and farmers, oil exploration, and now by the drug cartels too.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In spite of the 2007 <a href="http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf" target="_blank">United Nations&nbsp;Declaration on the Rights of&nbsp;Indigenous Peoples,</a>&nbsp;few nations actually recognise the land rights of Indigenous peoples. Their land is lost to resource extraction without legally mandated prior informed consent. Since Indigenous lands contain vast biological diversity, these communities are fighting not only to preserve their cultures but also to preserve what is left of Earth's wild ecosystems.</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">Political capital in Mexico&nbsp;</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">Miguel Vázquez Torres, commissioner of Wixárika public lands, and Agustín, an attorney in the land claim battle, were members of the Indigenous San Sebastian Teponahuaxtlán community. They led a campaign to recover 10,000 hectares, a meagre 4% of Wixárika ancestral lands. They had invited ranchers to engage in peaceful dialogue and had asked the Mexican government to provide security to avoid violence while resisting the cartels.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Drug cartels now infiltrate Wixárika land, seeking remote regions to grow illegal crops. In 2001, drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán confiscated Wixárika land for cannabis plantations. After El Chapo was captured in 2014, the Sinaloa and Nueva Generación (New Generation) cartels took over, and poppy plantations replaced marijuana, serving the US heroin market. Since ranchers and drug dealers shared the desire to eliminate Wixárika resistance, some believe the two groups collaborated in the violence.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">During European colonisation, the 240,000-hectare Wixárika territory on the west coast of Mexico was confiscated, primarily by ranchers. Armed settlers, often assisted by police, have resisted Wixárika efforts to retrieve their land.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Wixárika (Huichol) community Sept. 22, 2016. (Photo by Abraham Pérez) " src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/136983_244799.jpg" alt="Wixárika (Huichol) community Sept. 22, 2016. (Photo by Abraham Pérez) " /><em>Wixárika community during reoccupation of ancestral lands, Sept. 22, 2016 (photo by&nbsp;Abraham Pérez)&nbsp;</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">After a 50-year struggle, Nayarit courts ruled to return 10,000 hectares of land to the Wixárika. Vázquez Torres set up a dialogue to ease the fear of ranchers and petitioned the government to create a transfer fund for ranchers, to avoid violence. When the government refused the fund and failed to provide security for the scheduled transfer, Wixárika leaders mobilized 1,000 community members to occupy a single abandoned farm.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Angry ranchers established roadblocks, trapping court officials, journalists and the Wixárika. Public lands commissioner, Santos Hernandez revealed that officials were afraid to travel in the region due to the threat of violence. "They [ranchers and cartels] are watching all of us and our families,” he told the <a href="https://intercontinentalcry.org/huichol-leader-assassinations-wound-heart-community/" target="_blank">Center For World Indigenous Studies</a>. In January 2017, Isidro Baldenegro, an environmental leader in the Tarahumara community, was gunned down in Chihuahua. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In the Mexican Congress, House Minority Speaker Clemente Castañeda's resolution for government security in the Nayarit/Jalisco region passed into law in February 2017, but to no avail. The government stalled. In May, Vázquez and Agustín Torres were shot and killed.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">“We solicited the governor of the state," said Fela Pelayo, head of Jalisco congressional commission for Indigenous Affairs. "We said that the situation was delicate, and ... now, after eight months of inaction, we have two Indigenous leaders dead.”</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">“Indigenous people don’t represent political capital for the political parties," Vázquez Torres told a journalist before he was killed; "that’s why they don’t have us on their agendas.”</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">The human family</h4><p></p><p><img title="Munduruku Mother and Children Portrait in the Amazon" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/136944_244700.jpg" alt="Munduruku Mother and Children Portrait in the Amazon" /><span><em>Munduruku mother and her children in the Amazon</em>&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p>All around the world, Indigenous people are fighting to protect their land. From the Sami in Scandinavia, to the Ainu of Hokkaidō in the Sea of Japan; from Tibetans and Mongolians occupied by China, to the Degar and Khmer Krom in Vietnam; from the Balinese, Sasak, Nuaulu and over 300 ethnic groups in Indonesia, to the Arctic Inuit, and thousands more on every continent.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Over 60 uncontacted tribal peoples remain in the Brazilian Amazon. Protecting their independence would also preserve millions of hectares of tropical rainforest. In the 1950s, land belonging to Guarani and Kaiowa peoples were sold for plantations. Reduced to living in poverty in cities and settlements, the suicide rate among Indigenous Peoples rose to 22 times that of other Brazilian citizens. When Guarani and Kaiowa people returned to live on their ancestral land in 2004, loggers, ranchers and farmers attacked them. In 2011, elder Nizio Gomes was shot and killed.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In 1964, Texaco (now Chevron), discovered oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon. They began drilling in 1967. Twenty-five years later, they left behind a nightmare of contaminated water and land, causing rates of cancer to increase among the Indigenous population. The Cofán, Siona, Secoya, Kichwa and Huaorani peoples launched a 30,000 member class-action lawsuit against Texaco in 1993. In 2014, after 20 years in court, the plaintiffs won a $9.5 billion judgement in Ecuador's highest court. Chevron bought Texaco, left Ecuador, and refused to pay the judgement. The case was dismissed in a US court, but earlier this year the case against Chevron moved to Canada. Chevron has spent $2 billion on lawyers to defend themselves, but not one cent has gone to their Indigenous victims.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">The Guarani and Wichi people of Argentina have survived conquistadors, slave traders, missionaries, juntas and death squads. In 2004, they took on big business too. The governor of Salta, in northern Argentina, Juan Carlos Romero, granted permission to bulldoze and burn 18,000 hectares of previously protected forest for soy plantations, on behalf of agribusiness giants Monsanto and Cargill. The Wichi and Guarani people invited Greenpeace to help them restore their homeland.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">&nbsp;<img title="Forest Action Against Deforestation in Argentina" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/136945_244702.jpg" alt="Forest Action Against Deforestation in Argentina" /><em>In Argentina, a forest area the size of a football pitch disappears every three minutes.</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">I travelled to Argentina in the summer of 2005 for the campaign and witnessed an entire horizon ablaze with fires. Ranks of bulldozers swept across the land like wartime tank divisions, obliterating the home of the Wichi people and the homes of fox, tapir, ocelot, jaguar, anteaters, wild pigs, toucan, raptors and parrots.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">When the Wichi and Greenpeace occupied bulldozers and gained media attention, prominent celebrities stepped forward, including football star Diego Maradona, who invited Wichi elders onto his television show. In October, 2006, Argentina’s president, Néstor Carlos Kirchner, finally intervened to preserve the Wichi homeland. "We asked the president to put people and the forest ahead of multinational corporations," said Guarani campaigner Noemi Cruz. "For once, we won.”</p><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">Destructive development&nbsp;</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">Political economists rationalise seizing Indigenous land for industrial development with the theory that this will lift people from poverty. In reality, industrial resource extraction drives people from modest, secure lives in productive ecosystems into poverty in urban slums, while the money flows to rich developers and multinational corporations.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Violence against Indigenous peoples reveals the limitations, perhaps complete failure, of the World Bank and free-trade economic theories. Globalisation has not benefited masses of people, but has widened the gap between rich and poor. The challenge of 21st century society remains to discover a credible, honourable balance among economy, ecology and social justice.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="COP21: UN Equator Prize to Munduruku Leaderships in Paris" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/136946_244704.jpg" alt="COP21: UN Equator Prize to Munduruku Leaderships in Paris" /><em>Indigenous leaders receive the Equator Prize during the COP21 in Paris</em></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">During the 2015 climate conference, a gathering of Indigenous leaders - Sami, Mongolian, Lakota, Salish and others - met outside Paris in the town of Millemont. In a statement to world leaders on "The Critical State of Our Mother Earth," they wrote:</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">"Our sacred Mother Earth – who gives life to all living things – is critically wounded, degraded, poisoned and depleted by the misguided activity of our human family. Colonialism, industrialism, consumerism and warfare are primary drivers of this relentless assault on our beloved Mother Earth...</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">“We must remind ourselves and our Human Family, through living, sacred prayers, songs, ceremony and our ancient prophecies, that Mother Earth is our sacred provider of life, not to be treated as an endless storehouse, a limitless dump for our waste, and to satisfy our appetite for the material dimension of life."</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Wixárika leaders and brothers, Vázquez and Agustín Torres, gave their lives for this sacred prayer.<em><br /></em></p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Resources and Links: <br /><br />2007 United Nations&nbsp;Declaration on the Rights of&nbsp;Indigenous Peoples: <a href="http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf">UN</a></p><p></p><p>Huichol leader assassinations, 2017: <a title="https://intercontinentalcry.org/huichol-leader-assassinations-wound-heart-community/" href="http://">Intercontinental Cry</a>, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-violence-tribe-idUSKBN18J0HU">Reuters</a>, and <a href="https://www.indianz.com/News/2017/05/23/brothers-from-huichol-tribe-murdered-as.asp?print=1">Indianz.com</a>.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Cartels: "En territorio huichol la siembra de amapola desplaza a la de cannabis," <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/06/13/estados/029n1est">La Jornada</a></p><p></p><p>State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, 2010: <a href="http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/SOWIP/press%20package/sowip-press-package-en.pdf">UN report</a></p><p></p><p>Guarani-Kaiowa in Brazil, death of Nizio Gomes: <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/brazil-indigenous-land/article34628966/">Toronto Globe and Mail</a></p><p></p><p>Colombian army and settlers killing Guahibo people: London, New York Times News Service, 1973. British Petroleum buying army in Colombia: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/22/world/oil-companies-buying-an-army-to-ward-off-rebels-in-colombia.html">New York Times</a>, 1996.</p><p></p><p>Paraguay genocide and slave trade: The Nation, Sept 24, 1973; Akwesasne Notes, Autumn, 1976; and <a href="http://www.nationalia.info/new/10886/in-paraguay-many-of-the-countrys-poorest-girls-undergo-slavery-just-to-receive-an-educatio">Nationalia</a>, June 2017</p><p></p><p>Canadian mining companies in Latin America: <a href="http://globalnews.ca/news/1393152/canadian-mining-companies-under-fire-for-latin-america-operations/">Global news</a>, <a href="http://miningwatch.ca/sites/default/files/problematic_canadian_mining_cases_0.pdf">MiningWatch Canada</a>, 2007</p>Fri, 07 Jul 2017 10:40:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/indigenous-activists-violence-mexico/blog/59792/#comments-holderabout usother issuesRex Weyler0000e8bc-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/silent-spring-bird-extinction-rex-weyler/blog/59580/Silent Spring, 2017<p>In 1962, Rachel Carson published <em>Silent Spring</em>, drawing attention to the impact of DDT on bird populations. Her book inspired most nations to ban DDT by the 1980s. The ban and other protection efforts helped save some bird species from extinction, including the osprey, brown pelican, and white stork. However, fifty-five years after Carson's book, the rate of bird decline has accelerated globally, due to pesticide use, habitat loss, climate change, domestic cats, and other threats.</p><p></p><p><img title="A boobie bird takes a rest aboard the MY Esperanza." src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/136305_243210.jpg" alt="A boobie bird takes a rest aboard the MY Esperanza." /><em>A Booby bird takes a rest on board the Greenpeace ship, Esperanza. 22 Nov, 2007</em></p><p></p><p>In 2004, the Po'ouli or black-faced honeycreeper disappeared from Maui, the last member of its genus&nbsp;<em>Melamprosops</em>. Hawaii also recently lost two species of Nukupu'u honeycreepers, the O'ahu 'alauahio, and the Maui 'akepa. We have bid farewell in recent decades to Australia's masked owl, the Grand Cayman oriole, New Providence yellowthroat, Gonave Island chat-tanager, Santa Barbara song sparrow, and Florida's Dusky seaside sparrow. Gone forever.</p><p></p><p>Ornithologists face a challenge to know if a species is technically extinct, since it is difficult to confirm that no breeding pairs exist. Some species, known to exist in remnants, appear "functionally extinct," including the Giant Ibis with less than 100 breeding pairs. Birds require specific habitats and diets, are vulnerable to domestic cats and other introduced predators, and serve as a fragile indicator for Earth's general ecological health.</p><p></p><p>Global challenge&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>A 2005 <a href="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/january12/birds-011205.html" target="_blank">Stanford Study</a> analysed all 9,787 known living bird species and 129 extinct species; tracked distribution, ecological function, and life history; and collated 600,000 computer entries.&nbsp; From one of the most comprehensive biological databases ever compiled, the authors of the study estimated that 25% of bird species would be functionally extinct by 2100.</p><p></p><p>Of highest risk, were species in the northern latitudes&nbsp; and highly specialized species in bounded range with limited food, particularly island birds. In 2008, <a href="http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6123" target="_blank">Worldwatch</a> Institute and the IUCN Red List determined that 1,227 bird species (12 % of known birds) are now threatened with extinction. Among 192 species in critical crisis are the Giant Ibis, India's Forest Owlet, with less than a hundred individuals; the New Zealand Kakapo owl parrot, about 150 individuals; and the New Caledonia owlet-nightjar, that has not been sighted in over a decade.</p><p></p><p>Richard Inger at the University of Exeter surveyed bird populations in 25 countries over 30 years, and estimated that total population in those nations had declined by 421 million birds between 1980 and 2009. A 2015 review of his study in <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215006600" target="_blank">Current Biology</a> explains that the bird crisis in Europe is not just about extinctions but massive declines among the once-common species, such as sparrows, swifts, and Jackdaws. The most abundant quarter of the species lost 83 percent in 30 years. These massive declines, even if the species survive, effect the&nbsp; functioning of the wider ecosystem.</p><p></p><p>Birds provide essential, symbiotic services to the ecosystem, including decomposition, seed dispersal, and nutrient recycling. Birds contribute to human agriculture through pollination and pest control. Scavenger birds clean up dead animals, limiting the spread of disease. In the 1990s in India, the rapid loss of vultures led to an explosion of rabid dogs and rats, that feed on carrion. As a result, in 1997, rabies claimed more than 30,000 human deaths in India, more than half of the world's annual rabies deaths.</p><p></p><p>The Passenger pigeon case provides a lesson in ecology. The Passenger pigeon once swarmed North America in flocks of over a billion birds, but were decimated by human hunters and became extinct by 1914. The pigeons had competed with deer mice for acorns, keeping the mice population in check. With the demise of the pigeons, deer mice populations swelled and became a primary vector of ticks, which carried the Lyme spirochete into the human community, contributing to the modern Lyme disease outbreak that has debilitated thousands of people, especially along the Atlantic coast, where the Passenger pigeon thrived.</p><p></p><p><img title="Magnificent Frigate bird showing the red throat. It is sitting on a bush or tree." src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/136308_243212.jpg" alt="Magnificent Frigate bird showing the red throat. It is sitting on a bush or tree." /><em>A Frigate bird. 1 Nov, 2001</em></p><p></p><p>Cortes Island, where I live off the west coast of Canada, sits on the migration path for dozens of species of birds, some that travel between Mexico and the Arctic. We have witnessed a sharp decline in Barn swallows, Tree swallows, Goshawks, Rufous hummingbirds, Great blue heron, Great horned owl, and other species, reflecting a recent demise of birds throughout North America.</p><p></p><p>The 2016 Partners in Flight <a href="http://www.partnersinflight.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/pif-continental-plan-final-spread-single.pdf" target="_blank">Bird population analysis</a>&nbsp;reveals that North America has lost 1.5 billion birds in 40 years. The Rufous hummingbirds have lost 60 percent of their populations, and the Snowy owl and Chimney swift are also in steep decline. Twenty percent of the breeding species appear vulnerable to extinction.</p><p></p><p>Boreal and polar habitats provide the world's nursery for thousands of bird species. Nature Canada's 2012 <a href="http://www.stateofcanadasbirds.org/overview.jsp" target="_blank">State of Birds</a> survey revealed that avian insectivores had declined by more than 60% across Canada in 40 years. Chimney swifts, Field sparrows, Short-eared owls, Snowy owl, and the Oak titmouse, all lost more than half their populations.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Conservation&nbsp;programmes typically focus on charismatic and&nbsp;rare&nbsp;species close to extinction, species that enhance funding appeals: Who cares about a bloody sparrow? But the declines in common species have a dramatic impact throughout the web of life.</p><p></p><p>The human factors</p><p></p><p>We know why birds and other species are suffering historic declines: Human sprawl, the unrelenting advance of a single species, <em>Homo sapiens</em>. Habitat destruction appears as the primary cause of bird decline. Bird species evolve into very specific habitats. Most species nest in a particular species of tree, in a particular micro-climate that supports their food supply and protects them from predators. As we drain wetlands, level forests, and sprawl across grasslands and wetlands, we unravel this fragile web.</p><p></p><p>In 1958, China's Communist leader Mao Tse Tung decided that four "pests" -- mosquitoes, flies, rats, and sparrows (who ate farmers' seeds) -- should be eliminated for public health and agricultural growth. Chinese citizens began to <a href="http://io9.gizmodo.com/5927112/chinas-worst-self-inflicted-disaster-the-campaign-to-wipe-out-the-common-sparrow" target="_blank">eradicate sparrows</a> until 1960, when Chinese leaders realized that the sparrows had controlled insects. Insects increased, decimating crops, and China's agricultural yields declined. The Chinese Academy of Sciences advised Mao, and he ended the sparrow campaign, replacing them on the "Four Pests" list with bed bugs. "Mao knew nothing about animals," environmental activist Dai Qing told the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3371659.stm" target="_blank">BBC</a> in 2004. "He just decided that the 'four pests' should be killed." &nbsp;</p><p></p><p><img title="Bird feather in the Arctic, Spitzbergen, Norway." src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/136307_243206.jpg" alt="Bird feather in the Arctic, Spitzbergen, Norway." /><em>A bird feather in the Arctic. 23 August, 2012</em></p><p></p><p>Human activity that contributes to bird declines includes our agriculture and forestry, pesticide use, power lines, windmills, buildings, vehicles, domestic cats, and climate change. Intense agriculture transforms river deltas, swamps, grasslands, and forests. Our pesticides, particularly from the neonicotinoid family that <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/honey-bee-collapse-a-lesson-in-ecology/blog/45357/" target="_blank">endangers bees</a>, kill the insects that feed birds.</p><p></p><p>After habitat destruction, cats and window collisions are the most lethal. A typical house cat that wanders freely might kill a dozen birds in a single night, and studies in North America show that cats kill over two billion birds annually. Cat owners can reduce bird deaths by limiting cat reproduction and providing cats with bright, visible collars and bells.</p><p></p><p>Collisions with window glass kill over 600-million birds annually in North America and over a billion worldwide. Cars and power lines kill hundreds of millions more. Hunting claims over 100-million birds annually.</p><p></p><p>The diversity crisis</p><p></p><p>One of the fundamental <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/deep-green/deep-green-special-1/" target="_blank">laws of ecology</a> states that stability in an ecosystem depends on diversity. We may save a disappearing bird species by breeding a few in a zoo, but this does not buy back the loss of diversity in our ecosystems. The impacts of human sprawl result in diversity loss across all classes of plant and animal life.</p><p></p><p>In 2008, there were 44,838 species on the IUCN Red List. The World Wildlife Fund <a href="http://www.livingplanetindex.org/projects?main_page_project=LivingPlanetReport&amp;home_flag=1" target="_blank">Living Planet Index</a> declined by 52 percent between 1970 and 2010. Sixty percent of all amphibians are in dramatic decline due to the loss of wetlands. Forty-two percent of reptiles and 28 percent of all vertebrate species are in decline. According to some European studies, <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone" target="_blank">insect declines</a> have reached 80 percent over 25 years.</p><p></p><p>The current rate of of species loss has reached the order of 1000 to 10,000-times the historic background extinction rate. Over the long march of evolution, about one mammal species disappears every 400 years, and a whole family of species might disappear in a million years. In 2014, a study by <a href="https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/pimm" target="_blank">Stuart Pimm</a> at Duke University and colleagues at <a href="https://news.brown.edu/articles/2014/09/extinctions" target="_blank">Brown University</a>, estimated that the extinction rate was 1000-times faster than background. Biologist <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/audio/2009/nov/30/science-weekly-extra-podcast-eo-wilson" target="_blank">E O Wilson</a> has estimated that the rate is 10,000-times background, and other biologists at IUCN and the <a href="http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/" target="_blank">Center for Biological Diversity</a> believe he is correct.</p><p></p><p>In the 1970s, as Greenpeace staged its first campaigns, Norman Myers estimated that Earth was losing one species per day, and this appeared as a tragic crises. Today, after almost fifty years of ecological actions, Earth is now losing about one species per hour.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Resources and Links:</p><p></p><p>National Academy of Sciences, 2005: 25% of bird species functionally extinct by 2100: <a href="http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/january12/birds-011205.html" target="_blank">Stanford</a>.</p><p></p><p>“Climate change and population declines in a long-distance migratory bird,” C. Both, et. al., University of Groningen, <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7089/full/nature04539.html" target="_blank">Nature</a> 441, 81-83, 4 May 2006.</p><p></p><p>Bird populations in steep decline, Eric Andrew-Gee, <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/report-finds-north-american-skies-quieter-by-15-billion-fewer-birds/article31876053/" target="_blank">Globe and Mail</a>, Sep. 14, 2016&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Partners in Flight <a href="http://www.partnersinflight.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/pif-continental-plan-final-spread-single.pdf" target="_blank">Bird decline analysis</a></p><p></p><p>Europe’s bird populations in decline, Michael Gross, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215006600" target="_blank">Current Biology</a>, 15 June 2015 &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Global Bird Species in Decline, 2008: Ben Block, <a href="http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6123" target="_blank">Worldwatch</a> Institute.</p><p></p><p>Leading causes of bird deaths, Environment Canada, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/9-leading-causes-of-bird-deaths-in-canada-1.1873654" target="_blank">CBC</a>, 2013</p><p></p><p>State of Canada’s Birds, 2012: <a href="http://www.stateofcanadasbirds.org/overview.jsp" target="_blank">NABCI</a></p><p></p><p>Mao's 4-pest eradication: <a href="http://io9.gizmodo.com/5927112/chinas-worst-self-inflicted-disaster-the-campaign-to-wipe-out-the-common-sparrow" target="_blank">China Sparrow Campaign</a></p><p></p><p>Rate of species loss could reach 10,000 times background, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/audio/2009/nov/30/science-weekly-extra-podcast-eo-wilson" target="_blank">E O Wilson</a></p><p></p><p>Species loss 1,000 - 10,000 times background: <a href="http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/" target="_blank">Center for Biological Diversity</a>:</p><p></p><p>Extinctions during human era worse than thought: <a href="https://news.brown.edu/articles/2014/09/extinctions" target="_blank">Brown Univ. study</a>, 2014</p><p></p><p>Stuart Pimm species diversity study, Duke University, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.12380/abstract" target="_blank">Conservation Biology</a></p><p></p><p>Where have all the insects gone?, Gretchen Vogel, 2017, <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone" target="_blank">Science</a> magazine</p>Fri, 02 Jun 2017 17:00:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/silent-spring-bird-extinction-rex-weyler/blog/59580/#comments-holderabout usother issuesRex Weyler0000e7be-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/nuclear-weapons-power-Chernobyl-Fukushima-danger/blog/59326/Nuclear power and the collapse of society<p dir="ltr">On March 1 1954, on Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, the US military detonated the world’s first lithium-deuteride hydrogen bomb, a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The radiation blew downwind, to the southeast, and irradiated the residents of Rongelap and Utirik atolls, and the crew of tuna boat Fukuryu Maru, “Lucky Dragon.” &nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">The islanders and fishing crew suffered radiation sickness, hair loss, and peeling skin. Crew member, Aikichi Kuboyama, died six months later in a Hiroshima hospital. Island children, suffered lifelong health effects, including cancers, and most died prematurely. The Lucky Dragon sailors were exposed to 3-5 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert" target="_blank">sieverts</a> of radiation.</p><p></p><p>One sievert will cause severe radiation sickness leading to cancer and death. Five sieverts will kill half those exposed within a month (like the workers who died at Chernobyl within the first few week). Ten sieverts will kill any human being. Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims received 150 Sieverts. Even microorganisms perished.</p><p></p><p><img title="Castle Bravo Blast - Creative Commons " src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/135566_241416.jpg" alt="Castle Bravo Blast - Creative Commons " /></p><p></p><address dir="ltr">Castle Bravo nuclear weapons test on Bikini Atoll&nbsp;</address><p></p><p dir="ltr">Today, inside the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactor-2, the melting core releases 530 sieverts per hour, enough to kill a human instantly and melt steel robotic equipment within two hours.</p><p></p><h3 dir="ltr">The meaning of “collapse”</h3><p></p><p dir="ltr">When we hear the term “collapse of industrial society,” some may picture a doomsday or a Hollywood apocalypse film. But the collapse of societies – like in Rome, Mesopotamia, or the Rapa Nui on Easter Island – doesn’t work like that. The “collapse” of a complex society usually involves ecological habitat degradation that can take centuries. So, what does “social collapse” really look like?</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">James Kunstler calls the collapse of industrial society a “<a href="http://kunstler.com/books/the-long-emergency/" target="_blank">long emergency</a>” - a process that unfolds in fits and starts over generations. Some social conflicts we witness in the world today – banking crises, war, refugees, racism - can be understood as symptoms of this long, ecologically-triggered collapse. Russian author Dmitry Orlov describes the <a href="http://cluborlov.blogspot.ca/p/the-five-stages-of-collapse.html" target="_blank">five stages</a> of collapse: Financial, commercial, political, social, and, finally, cultural. When business-as-usual becomes impossible, communities seek alternatives to currency trading; markets fail, faith in government disappears, trust of neighbours erodes, and people lose faith in common decency. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Dr. Joseph Tainter, professor of Environment and Society at Utah State University <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI" target="_blank">describes collapse</a> as a “simplification” of society, a reversal of the process by which the society became increasingly complex. “To understand collapse,” he explains, “we have to understand complexity.”</p><p></p><p>Societies evolve complex solutions to solve social problems that arise, generally from environmental limits. Eventually, the marginal benefits of these alleged solutions decline. Consider oil, military aggression, or nuclear power as solutions to problems, that later manifest unintended consequences. As technical solutions meet bio-physical limits, added investment leads to less benefit, until the society grows vulnerable to catastrophe, such as global warming, war, or radiation.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Societies collapse, according to Tainter, when technical complexities cost more than they return as benefits. This understanding of social collapse fits the state of chaos now unfolding at the nuclear plant at Fukushima.</p><p></p><h3 dir="ltr">Socialise the cost</h3><p></p><p dir="ltr">TEPCO, the company that owns the Fukushima reactors, <a href="http://faculty.publicpolicy.umd.edu/sites/default/files/fetter/files/1981-SciAm.pdf" target="_blank">ignored early warnings</a> of risk, from both inside and outside the company, because the safeguards were too expensive. Thus, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant’s cooling systems and led to a core meltdown in all three reactors.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Today, six years later, the reactor cores are melting down through the rock, and radiation levels are so intense that even robots can’t survive long enough to locate the burning fuel rods. Removal of the rods, originally scheduled for 2015, then delayed until 2017, has been delayed again, with no end in sight. Meanwhile, 300 tons of radioactive water floods into the Pacific Ocean every day.</p><p></p><p>Cleanup cost estimates have risen to several billion Euros per year and decommissioning is now expected to take about 40 years. In December, 2016, the Japanese government announced that the estimated cost of decommissioning the plant and storing radioactive waste, if they can achieve this at all, would reach over 21 trillion yen (€180 billion; US$ 200 billion). This scenario is based on no major earthquakes occurring before the 2050s.</p><p></p><p>TEPCO will likely go bankrupt before it will pay these costs, so the government has stepped in, which means the citizens pay the costs, just as they bailed out the banks after the last economic collapse. This is a core policy for large, modern corporations: Privatise the profits, socialise the costs.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">The nuclear “solution” to growing energy demand - now a massive technical and financial black hole, with negative marginal returns, draining scarce resources from struggling communities - is what industrial collapse looks like in the real world.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant Damage - DIGITALGLOBE" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/135569_241421.jpg" alt="Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant Damage - DIGITALGLOBE" /></p><p></p><address dir="ltr">Aerial view of the damage to Fukushima I nuclear power plant.</address><p></p><h3 dir="ltr">The victims</h3><p></p><p dir="ltr">The wealthy may not notice collapse in the early stages, as the first victims are the poorest and most vulnerable. The nuclear meltdown at Fukushima <a href="http://fukushimaontheglobe.com/the-earthquake-and-the-nuclear-accident/situation-of-the-evacuees" target="_blank">displaced over 150,000 people</a>. Some <a href="https://science.slashdot.org/story/15/09/26/068233/fukushima-1600-dead-from-evacuation-stress" target="_blank">1,600 died</a> during evacuation, and the survivors live in makeshift camps on meagre allotments of food and supplies. As families abandoned their homes, lifelong dreams shattered, childhoods were disrupted, families broke apart, and modest enterprises lost forever. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Women and children suffered the greatest challenges and risks due to “a yawning gender gap” in Japanese society, as Kendra Ulrich writes in “<a href="http://greenpeace.us10.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=937703e2fcff8f9413ab53836&amp;id=a3a5663058&amp;e=c22d463e0d" target="_blank">Unequal Impact.</a>” Among the 34 highly developed countries, ranked for gender wage gap, Japan <a href="http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2016/rankings/" target="_blank">stands at the bottom</a> with South Korea and Estonia. After the nuclear meltdown, single mothers faced financial and social barriers to recovery. Radiation puts fetuses and young children at the greatest risk for future health effects.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Last year, Ichiro Tagawa, 77, returned to his village of Namie and reopened the bicycle repair shop that had been in his family for 80 years. “I am so old,” he told a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/world/asia/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-disaster-towns.html?_r=0">New York Times</a> reporter, “I don’t really care about the radiation levels.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Light Painting: Nuclear Radiation Testing in Fukushima" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/135563_241409.jpg" alt="Light Painting: Nuclear Radiation Testing in Fukushima" /></p><p></p><address dir="ltr"><span>A special light painting technique reveals radioactive contamination in Fukushima.</span></address><p></p><p dir="ltr">To save money, the Japanese government has declared some towns near Fukushima “safe,” by increasing the radiation limits and then cancelling evacuee housing and insisting that citizens return to those “safe” villages. Sending people back to that environment could amount to random murder, since some will attract cancer and die from the radiation.</p><p></p><p>Corruption and cover-up have become a way of life inside TEPCO and the nuclear industry. The Japanese government and TEPCO also increased “safe” radiation limits for plant workers by about 700-times, and then ordered scientists to stop monitoring radiation levels in some areas of the plants that exceed even these new, dangerous regulations. According to Tomohiko Suzuki’s book, <a href="http://www.booksfromjapan.jp/publications/item/1176-the-yakuza-and-nuclear-power-an-undercover-report-from-fukushima-daiichi" target="_blank">Yakuza to Genpatsu</a> (The Yakuza and Nuclear Power), TEPCO subcontractors pay bribes to Japanese crime gangs, the Yakuza, to obtain construction contracts, and the Yakuza pay politicians and media to keep quiet. Workers lured into the plant include the homeless, the mentally ill, illegal immigrants, and former Yakuza debtors.</p><p></p><h3 dir="ltr">The deadly industry</h3><p></p><p dir="ltr">The story of how nuclear generated power came to be starts in the 1950s. After WWII, the US, UK, France, Russia, and China set out to build arsenals, but required more plutonium than could be furnished by their respective military programs. A US Atomic Energy Commission study concluded that commercial nuclear reactors for power were not economically feasible because of costs and risks. Dr. Charles Thomas, an executive at Monsanto, suggested a solution: A “dual purpose” reactor that would produce plutonium for the military and electric power for commercial use.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Companies profited from these dual markets, while leaving the public to assume responsibility for research, infrastructure, and risk: Privatise the profits, socialise the costs. The real purpose of a “nuclear power” industry was to provide plutonium for weapons and profit for a few corporations.</p><p></p><p>This deadly industry has now left dead zones and ghost towns around the world. The Hanford nuclear storage site in the US, Acerinox Processing Plant in Spain, The Polygon weapons test site in Kazakhstan, the Zapadnyi uranium mine in Kyrgyzstan, and countless other uranium mines, decommissioned plants, nuclear waste dumps, and catastrophes like Fukushima and Chernobyl.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">No one knows exactly <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/7578.pdf" target="_blank">how many people have died</a> due to the Chernobyl meltdown. The Russian academy of sciences estimates 200,000 and a Ukrainian national commission estimated 500,000 deaths from radiation’s health effects.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr"><img title="Abandoned Baby Shoes in Pripyat - 28 Jul, 2005" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/135567_241418.jpg" alt="Abandoned Baby Shoes in Pripyat - 28 Jul, 2005" /></p><p></p><address dir="ltr">Abandoned baby shoes in Pripyat's kindergarten.&nbsp;</address><p></p><p dir="ltr">In 1983, a Yorkshire <a href="https://youtu.be/UQmFeAGCpC0" target="_blank">television station</a> uncovered evidence that child leukemia had increased ten-times in the village of Seascale, near the Sellafield/Windscale nuclear site. It has become a deadly radioactive blotch on the landscape, leaking radioactive plutonium-24, americium-241, and caesium-137 into the surrounding environment, and sending bomb grade plutonium into the world's political environment. According to the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-26124803" target="_blank">BBC</a>, the cost of cleaning up the mess is now estimated at £70-billion, and rising annually, as one corporation or consortium after another fails to make progress, but always makes money. These cleanup costs now consume most of the UK’s “climate change” budget since nuclear power was once considered a solution to carbon emissions.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">In February, the EDF Flamanville nuclear plant in France - three-times over budget and years behind schedule - closed after an explosion and fire. France faces a €200 billion cost to decommission 58 reactors at the end of their life. Germany set aside €38 billion to decommission 17 nuclear reactors, and the UK estimates a cost between €109‒250 billion to decommission UK’s nuclear sites.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">This is the face of industrial collapse, when alleged solutions become bigger problems. Nuclear power has now become a massive liability, draining resources from communities that need schools, hospitals, and the essentials of life. Joseph Tainter, Jared Diamond, and other researchers point out that some societies – Tikopia island, Byzantine society in the 1300s - avoided collapse, not by increasing complexity with better technology, but by down-sizing intentionally, learning to thrive on a lower level of complexity.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">This is now the challenge of industrial society. Can we, and especially the rich and powerful, change our habits of consumption and growth? Can we come back to Earth?</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><h4 dir="ltr">&nbsp;References and Links</h4><p></p><p dir="ltr">James Kunstler: “<a href="http://kunstler.com/books/the-long-emergency/" target="_blank">The Long Emergency</a>”</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Joseph Tainter, the Collapse of Complex Societies: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X">Book</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI">Lecture online</a>:</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">The Dynamics of Complex Civilisations, David Korowicz, <a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6339#more">Oil Drum</a>, 2010</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Gail Tverberg: Energy Flow, Emergent Complexity, and Collapse, <a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6181">Oil Drum</a></p><p></p><p dir="ltr">“The Collapse of Civilization,” <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826501-500-why-the-demise-of-civilisation-may-be-inevitable/">New Scientist</a>, April, 2008</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">“Les civilisations sont-elles vouées à disparaître?”: <a href="http://www.babelio.com/livres/Science-Vie-Les-Cahiers-de-Science-Vie-n-109-Les-civilisa/656913">Les Cahiers de Science &amp; Vie</a>, (n. 109).</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Jared Diamond: “Ecological Collapses of Pre-industrial Societies,” <a href="http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/d/Diamond_01.pdf">Tanner Lecture</a>, University of Utah, 2000</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">“Culture and the Environment on Easter Island and Tikopia,” Ben Ewen-Campen, <a href="http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~ENVS2/S2003/Bewenca1/Ben_Second_Essay.htm">Swarthmore</a>, 2003).</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">“Nuclear refugees tell of distrust, pressure to return to Fukushima,” <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/03/11/national/nuclear-refugees-tell-distrust-pressure-return-fukushima/#.WP5cU4nyu34">Japan Times</a>, March, 2016.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Tomohiko Suzuki, “Yakuza to genpatsu: Fukushima Daiichi sennyuki,” The Yakuza and Nuclear Power: Undercover Report from Fukushima Daiichi), <a href="http://www.booksfromjapan.jp/publications/item/1176-the-yakuza-and-nuclear-power-an-undercover-report-from-fukushima-daiichi">Bungeishunju Ltd.</a>, Japan</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">“Energy/War: Breaking the Nuclear Link,” Amory Lovins, 1981; and Annual Report, Commonwealth Edison Company, 1952; at <a href="http://www.neis.org/literature/Brochures/weapcon.htm">Nuclear Energy Information Service</a>.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Sellafield, UK, £70bn clean-up costs, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cumbria-26124803">BBC</a>, 2014.</p><p></p><p dir="ltr">Nuclear Power as a false solution, Rex Weyler, Deep Green: Atomic Renaissance Interrupted, R. Weyler, <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/deep-green-atomic-renaissance-interrupted-20081203">Deep Green</a>, 2008. Nuclear Delusions, R. Weyler, <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/nuclear-delusions/blog/35617/">Deep Green</a>, 2011. Precaution and Common Sense, R. Weyler,&nbsp;<a href="https://theecoreport.com/precaution-and-common-sense/">EcoReport</a>, 2013</p>Fri, 05 May 2017 01:30:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/nuclear-weapons-power-Chernobyl-Fukushima-danger/blog/59326/#comments-holdernuclearRex Weyler0000e70c-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/rex-weyler-oh-gaia-im-a-taoist/blog/59148/Oh Gaia! I’m a Taoist!<p>I am teaching a Chinese history class for local students, introducing them to Taoist literature —&nbsp;<em>Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi, Taiping jing&nbsp;</em>— and I realized: I’m a Taoist at heart. In my twenties, I learned many of my fundamental beliefs from reading Lao Tsu.</p><p></p><p>Now, decades later, I believe the Taoist teachings help me avoid feeling depressed about the state of the world. Taoists trust the natural process of things. Taoism and modern deep ecology share a perspective about the world, how life works, what is important, and what constitutes effective action.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The “Lao Tzu” or “<em>Tao Te Ching</em>” (道德经,&nbsp;<em>see note below on translations and spelling</em>] appears to have been compiled between 600 and 300 BC. Legend tells that the “author,” scholar Lao Tzu (meaning “elder”), frustrated with society’s corruption, left his home and career in south-central China to complete his life in contemplation. A mountain Pass Keeper allegedly begged Lao Tsu to record his philosophy before he vanished, which he did in little more than a thousand characters, known today as the&nbsp;<em>Tao Te Ching</em>&nbsp;or “Virtuous Way Classic.”</p><p></p><p><img title="By Julianbce (library of Palace museum) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/135075_240177.jpg" alt="By Julianbce (library of Palace museum) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons" /><em>石濤</em><em> tao te ching, courtesy of the L</em><em>ibrary of Palace Museum&nbsp;</em></p><p></p><p>This venerable book had me with the first line: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao,” a humble beginning, reflected in 1931 by scientist Alfred Korzybski, who recognized: "The map is not the territory.” The opening stanza ends with a comparison of the “manifestations” that we see around us as opposed to the “mystery” behind it all. Such an unpretentious world view that starts with mystery appeals to me, and provides a good place to begin understanding ecology and activism.</p><p></p><p>Taoism and action</p><p></p><p>A central tenet of Taoism is “<em>wu wie</em>,” roughly meaning “doing-not-doing” or “non-contrary” action. The wise do not rush into action or take action to achieve prestige, but only act in accord with nature, a concept similar to Gandhi’s nonviolent action, or “ahimsa." In Taoism, action in harmony with nature leads to&nbsp;<em>shen ling</em>, “divine efficacy,” an effectiveness that runs much deeper than fleeting political gains. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The&nbsp;<em>Zhuangzi</em>, written about the same time as the&nbsp;<em>Tao Te Ching</em>, states: “If you want to&nbsp;nourish a bird, you should let it live any way it chooses… right action should be founded on what is suitable. The wise leave wisdom to the ants, learn from the fishes, and leave willfulness to the sheep.”</p><p></p><p><img title="By Anonymous - http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/clothing/11preqin.htm, Yongle gong bihua (Beijing: Waiwen chubanshe, 1997), p. 84., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3508731" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/135076_240175.jpg" alt="By Anonymous - http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/clothing/11preqin.htm, Yongle gong bihua (Beijing: Waiwen chubanshe, 1997), p. 84., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3508731" /><em>Yuan Taoist Temple mural</em></p><p></p><p>Like modern indigenous teachings, Taoists taught that life remains rooted in place, living gracefully, with respect, accepting a reciprocal relationship with the ecosystem in which one’s life remains embedded. To embody the meaning of the Tao, one must pay attention to the details of the local and immediate context before taking action. The “environment” is not something outside of us that needs to be fixed and certainly not “managed” by human ingenuity.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Like Taoism, ecology implies a radical restructuring of human-centred society and our relationship to the wild world beyond human constructs. Genuine solutions to our ecological crisis are not the types of solutions promoted by&nbsp;modern society — mechanical, profitable, politically expedient — but will be solutions that challenge the very foundations of economic, political, scientific, and intellectual convention.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>At the end of the fourth century CE (approximately year 3,000 in the Chinese calendar) as imperial princes fought among themselves, Taoist Bao Jingyan wrote a short treatise, “Neither Lord Nor Subject,” blaming poverty and violence on social hierarchy, on the powerful, who manipulate the weak for private gain. Fashionable society, he warned, “goes against the true nature of things … harming creatures to supply frivolous&nbsp;adornments.” He invoked a simpler era, when “all creatures lived together in mystic unity … enjoying plentiful supplies of food … their behavior not ostentatious.” Problems began, according to Bao, when people forgot the ways of nature, accumulated private property, and exalted themselves above others.</p><p></p><p>Taoism and Deep Ecology&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>“Deep ecology,” as first articulated by Arne Naess, shares with Taoism a direct communion with nature. Both start with an environmental ethic, in which the human world remains entirely embedded in an ecological context. Effective action appears as practical engagement with a sense of sacredness in the natural world, a “divine efficacy.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Arne Naess’s original “Eight Principles” of deep ecology reflect Taoist ideas: All life forms have inherent value; diversity itself contributes to the realization of these values; humans have no right to reduce this diversity; the growth of human population and dominance are not necessarily a benefit; human interference with the non-human world is excessive; social policies must therefore change; we must learn to appreciate the quality of life, not more consumption; and those who understand these principles have a right and obligation to take appropriate action. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The central theme, however, of both Taoism and deep ecology is “Self-realisation” that expands the personal identity to include all life. The “self” does not stop at the skin, and certainly not with the private ego, but includes the entire ecosystem. As Australian ethicist Warwick Fox explains, there is “no firm ontological divide between the human and non-human realms.” English anthropologist and ecologist Gregory Bateson stated this even more simply: “All divisions are arbitrary.” We make distinctions so that we can communicate, but in reality, all manifestations are connected. We talk about a “tree,” “soil,” and “atmosphere,” but ecologically these parts flow through each other in a dynamic, whole, living system.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><img title="Amazon Rainforest in BrazilClose up of a water drop on plant. Amazon Rainforest, Rio Negro, Serra de Araca, Brazil. © Markus Mauthe / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/135078_240181.jpg" alt="Amazon Rainforest in BrazilClose up of a water drop on plant. Amazon Rainforest, Rio Negro, Serra de Araca, Brazil. © Markus Mauthe / Greenpeace" /><em>Amazon rainforest, Brazil, 2012</em></p><p></p><p>In Deep Ecology and Taoism, the ego, or isolated self is a socially-reinforced delusion. When we merge our identity with the greater “Self,” the organic whole, then compassion for all living beings comes naturally. When we achieve this deeper self-realisation, as Naess pointed out, we remain connected, and no moralising is needed to protect all of life, “just as we don’t need morals to breathe.” &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The modern self tends to remain isolated from nature, fragmented. Taoism and Deep Ecology take a holistic perspective. All beings have inherent value, not defined by usefulness to humans. “Mainstream environmentalists,” says zoologist Dr. Stephan Harding, “still see nature as a machine that we need to repair.” In Taoism, indigenous cultures, and in genuine ecology, humanity exists in relationship with the other manifestations of evolution. Nature is not a thing, but a dynamic process of which humans remain an organic part. Comfortable, conciliatory environmentalism can overlook this larger sense of “Self,” adopt an anthropocentric view of the world, and fail to challenge the economic status quo that leads to ecological decline.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Feminising mystery</p><p></p><p>Ursula Le Guin crafted a good&nbsp;<a href="http://www.shambhala.com/lao-tzu-tao-te-ching.html" target="_blank">rendering</a>&nbsp;of the&nbsp;<em>Tao Te Ching</em>, using simple, direct language:&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>… do the work and let it go:</p><p></p><p>for just letting it go</p><p></p><p>is what makes it stay. [v. 3]</p><p></p><p>“I wanted a Book of the Way accessible to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful, and perhaps unmale reader,” Le Guin told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/10/21/lao-tzu-tao-te-ching-ursula-k-le-guin/" target="_blank">interviewer Maria Popova</a>, “not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening for a voice that speaks to the soul... It is the profound modesty of the language that offers what so many people for so many centuries have found in this book:&nbsp;a pure apprehension of the mystery of which we are part.”</p><p></p><p><img title="Bird Feather in the ArcticBird feather in the Arctic, Spitzbergen, Norway. © Markus Mauthe / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/135079_240179.jpg" alt="Bird Feather in the ArcticBird feather in the Arctic, Spitzbergen, Norway. © Markus Mauthe / Greenpeace" /><em>Bird feather in the Arctic, 2012</em></p><p></p><p>“Modesty is a very unfashionable word,” Le Guin told&nbsp;<a href="http://www.embracethemoon.com/perspectives/leguin.htm" target="_blank">Brenda Peterson</a>, “partly because it was demanded of women and not of men, which is why a lot of womankind flinch when you say ‘modesty.’ But when you degender it, it really is a lovely characteristic… Lao Tzu … makes mystery itself a woman. This is profound .. the most mystical passages in the book are the most feminine … so refreshing and empowering.”</p><p></p><p>People who treated the body politic</p><p></p><p>as gently as their own body</p><p></p><p>would be worthy to govern the commonwealth. [Verse 13]</p><p></p><p>“Gandhi was not a Taoist. Yet – despite his enormous activism and his probably enormous ego – I can fit him into Lao Tzu’s world, because Gandhi struck at the root. He struck at inequality. He wanted the society to make itself better. He did it by the most modest means, because he refused violence.”</p><p></p><p>‘Lao Tzu didn’t have a god. The Tao is really an action rather than a person … a guide toward not trying to be in control … do the next thing because that’s the next thing to be done. It’s simply a sense of duty and responsibility,” Le Guin says. “Lao Tzu is very relevant at a time like ours. We’re in one of those yin-yang movements, and the yang is so extreme, but it will do what all extremes do; it will suddenly turn into the opposite.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Self-satisfied people do no good,</p><p></p><p>self-promoters never grow up. [v. 24]</p><p></p><p>The modern ecology movement grew from simple observations that the technological, war-making, consumer, and financial growth society undermined the natural ecosystems that support us. Life can be a struggle, but life is not all competition. In an ecosystem, everything coexists and cooperates in a matrix of complex relationships and feedback loops. There exists a natural reciprocity among beings. Taoist ecological awareness is modest, not controlling, not managing everything. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The highest good is like water.</p><p></p><p>Water gives life to the ten thousand things</p><p></p><p>and does not strive.</p><p></p><p>Taoism teaches a larger self-realization as primal for effective action, beyond the anthropocentric attitude, and even beyond the idea of “stewardship.” A genuine, deep ecological approach radically subverts social apathy with this duty to a larger realm.&nbsp; This passage from stanza 13 of the&nbsp;<em>Tao te Ching</em>, expands the Golden Rule, found in all spiritual traditions — treat others as you wish to be treated — to include all beings:</p><p></p><p>Surrender yourself humbly; then you can be trusted to care for all things.</p><p></p><p>Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Resources and Links:&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu, translated by Gia-Fu Feng (馮家福, 1919–1985) and Jane English (1942–), with an&nbsp;<a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/180810/tao-te-ching-by-lao-tsu-trans-gia-fu-feng-and-jane-english-with-toinette-lippe-intro-jacob-needleman/9780307949301/" target="_blank">updated translation</a>&nbsp;by J. English, Vintage Books, 1989; text on line at&nbsp;<a href="http://terebess.hu/english/tao/gia.html" target="_blank">Terebess Asia</a>. This is my favourite translation because of the simple language. The Ursula Le Guin translation is excellent:&nbsp;<a href="https://books.google.hu/books?id=Hzw6kER9etoC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=Lao-tzu%27s+Taoteching&amp;hl=hu&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=-ReqUKGNLIfRtAba6IDgAw#v=onepage&amp;q=Lao-tzu's%20Taoteching&amp;f=false" target="_blank">Tao Te Ching: A Book About the Way</a>. English renderings of Chinese characters and spelling to render pronunciation remain challenging. English “Daoism” and “Taoism” are interchangeable attempts to render various dialects of the original. Keep in mind: “The name that can be named is not the eternal name.” There are 120&nbsp;<a href="http://terebess.hu/english/tao/_index.html" target="_blank">English versions</a>, at Terebess Asia; and a parallel&nbsp;<a href="http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/daodejing01.php" target="_blank">comparison of three Tao Te Ching translations</a>&nbsp;by James Legge (1891), D T. Susuki (1913), and Dwight Goddard (1919), with a guide to the original Chinese characters.&nbsp;Ursula Le Guin’s interview about her renderings at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/10/21/lao-tzu-tao-te-ching-ursula-k-le-guin/" target="_blank">Brainpickings</a>.</p><p></p><p>Interpretation of&nbsp; 道 (“Tao” or “Dao”):&nbsp;<a href="http://www.chinaknowledge.de/Literature/Science/shuowenjiezi.html" target="_blank">Shuowen Jiezi dictionary</a>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Daoism and Ecology: Ways within a Cosmic Landscape, Edited by N. J. Girardot, James Miller, and Liu Xiaogan,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780945454304" target="_blank">Harvard Univ. Press</a>.</p><p></p><p>Daoism and Ecology, James Miller:&nbsp;<a href="http://fore.yale.edu/religion/daoism/" target="_blank">Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology</a></p><p></p><p>Taoism and Deep Ecology: “The Intersection of Taoism, Deep Ecology and Praxis,” Jarrod Hyam, Oregon State University:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.siue.edu/EASTASIA/JarrodHyam_TaoAndDeepEcology_2008.htm" target="_blank">SIEU</a>&nbsp;.</p><p></p><p>Arne Naess: “The deep ecological movement: Some philosophical aspects,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&amp;fp=philinquiry&amp;id=philinquiry_1986_0008_40545_0010_0031" target="_blank">Philosophical inquiry</a>, 1986, v. 8, No 1-2</p><p></p><p>“Neither Lord nor Subject,” by Bao Jingyan, trans. by Etienne Balazs,&nbsp;<em>Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy: Variations on a Theme</em>, Yale University Press, 1964. “<a href="https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/chinas-first-political-anarchist-bao-jingyan" target="_blank">Libertarianism.org</a>”] &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>“The deep ecology movement: a western Daoism?”: Tom Levitt,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.chinadialogue.net/culture/7343-The-deep-ecology-movement-a-western-Daoism-/en" target="_blank">China Dialogue</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Stephan Harding,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.humansandnature.org/stephan-harding" target="_blank">Center For Humans &amp; Nature</a>.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><em>I Ching</em>, trans. by Richard Wilhelm, Cary Baynes, 1950, NY,&nbsp;<a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/92.html" target="_blank">Princeton University Press</a>.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><em>Cold Mountain</em>, 100 poems by Tang poet Han-shan, Trans. by Burton Watson, Columbia University Press, NY, 1970, first edition;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?keyword=0231034504&amp;utm_medium=affiliate&amp;utm_source=GwEz7vxblVU&amp;utm_campaign=10&amp;siteID=GwEz7vxblVU-08ByNrGB0CCvYN9YOHRfFQ" target="_blank">versions on Alibris.</a></p>Fri, 07 Apr 2017 15:56:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/rex-weyler-oh-gaia-im-a-taoist/blog/59148/#comments-holderabout usother issuesRex Weyler0000e628-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/biological-restoration-of-water-land-Rex-Weyler/blog/58920/Biological Restoration of water and land<p>According to the 2015 World Economic Forum <a href="http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2015/#frame/20ad6" target="_blank">Global Risks 2015 Report,</a> the water crisis is the world’s #1 risk. The problem is not only the amount of water available in the world’s rivers, lakes, and aquifers, but the pollution of those resources from human contamination, including bacteria, toxins, and nutrient loading.</p><p></p><p>Around the world, lakes are dying off through bacterial and algae blooms. Lake Erie between Canada and the US, Lough Neagh in the UK, Lake Taihu in China, to name but a few of the thousands of dead or swampy lakes around the world devastated by humanity’s commercial, agricultural, and septic runoff.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Xuzhou Steel Group’s South Eastern steel plant is located near Weishan Lake. © Lu Guang / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/134386_238537.jpg" alt="Xuzhou Steel Group’s South Eastern steel plant is located near Weishan Lake. © Lu Guang / Greenpeace" />Xuzhou Steel Group’s steel plant is located near Weishan Lake, China, 4 May, 2015</em></p><p></p><p>In 2009, Earth systems scientist Johan Rockström and colleagues published “Planetary Boundaries” in the journal Nature, showing that human activity has threatened seven essential systems – including fresh water and the disruption of the world’s nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, which effect fresh water.</p><p></p><p>Phosphorous and nitrogen are critical for organic molecules such as nucleic acids, adenosine triphosphate (ADT), and for DNA. All plants need phosphorous and nitrogen and have evolved to find and absorb these nutrients. However, nutrient loading from human sources leads to accelerated productivity in water – called eutrophication – signalled by algae blooms, oxygen depletion and dead zones. Agricultural fertilisers, phosphate soaps, and household septic systems all contribute to the nutrient cycle disruption.</p><p></p><p>Human communities, factories and livestock also contribute bacteria to the world’s water tables. Health officials are particularly concerned with coliform bacteria, often used to indicate hepatitis or giardia, since those pathogens prove difficult to detect but often exist in combination with fecal coliform. In particular, health authorities monitor water for <em>Escherichia coli</em> (<em>E. coli</em>), a source of disease.</p><p></p><p>Industrial and domestic toxic waste products including arsenic, fluoride, selenium, uranium, iron, manganese, mercury, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, pharmaceuticals and microbial pathogens are also major sources or water contamination.</p><p></p><p>Fortunately, this triple threat of nutrient loading, bacteria, and toxins – can be mitigated using organic, biological methods, generally known as “bioremediation.”</p><p></p><p>Bioremediation</p><p></p><p>Certain microbes, bacteria, fungi, and plants can remove or metabolise pollutants in soil or water, including assisting in the removal of industrial chemicals, petroleum products, and pesticides. Some compounds – certain heavy metals, such as cadmium or lead, for example – resist bioremediation. However, some studies have found that fish bone and bone char can remove small amounts of lead, cadmium, copper, and zinc from soils.</p><p></p><p>A healthy ecosystem is, in itself, a bioremedial network of organisms, processing each others’ wastes, and this process can be enhanced by design. Purely organic systems include bioswales, plant buffers, and biofilters regulated by microorganisms.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Mexican Mayan farmers visit Finca Organopónica Cayo Piedra in Matanzas province, Cuba. Organoponics is a system of urban organic gardening in Cuba. This delegation visits at least five farms using ecological farming techniques that could be replicated in Mexico and other parts of the world. © Anaray Lorenzo / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/134387_238539.jpg" alt="Mexican Mayan farmers visit Finca Organopónica Cayo Piedra in Matanzas province, Cuba. Organoponics is a system of urban organic gardening in Cuba. This delegation visits at least five farms using ecological farming techniques that could be replicated in Mexico and other parts of the world. © Anaray Lorenzo / Greenpeace" />Ecological farming Finca Organopónica Cayo Piedra, Cuba, 14, January, 2017</em></p><p></p><p>Smart farmers and communities have used bioremediation for millennia. Permaculture and simple composting employ bioremediation to metabolise unwanted bacteria or pathogens in soils. Simply replanting native species along disturbed shorelines helps take up nutrients and bacteria. Microbes and mycelium can be added to soil, to enhance the natural uptake of unwanted compounds and organisms.</p><p></p><p>Bionics to Biomimicry</p><p></p><p>In the 1950s, American biophysicist Otto Schmitt copied the nervous system of a squid to help design an electronic trigger circuit that is still used today to remove noise from signals in digital circuits. He coined the word “biomimetics” to describe the process of taking design advice from organisms and ecosystems. His colleague Jack Steele coined the term “bionics,” later used in Martin Caidin’s novel Cyborg, associated with increasing human powers using artificial body parts.</p><p></p><p>In 1997, Janine Benyus published Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, expanding biomimetics and popularising the idea of using natural systems to design commercial products. The classic example is Velcro, patented in 1955 by Swiss engineer George de Mestra, designed after the surface of common burs.</p><p></p><p>“When we look at what is truly sustainable,” wrote Benyus, “the only real model that has worked over long periods of time is the natural world.” Producing commercial products, however, is a different matter than restoring degraded ecosystems. Nevertheless, it remains feasible that nature-inspired design could help restore ecological balance.</p><p></p><p>Last year, Jesse Goldstein at Virginia Commonwealth University and Elizabeth Johnson at University of Exeter, published <a href="http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&amp;context=sociology_pubs" target="_blank">Biomimicry: New Natures, New Enclosures</a> to address these questions. They critique a “neoliberal illusion” that we help the ecosystem by creating a faster “bioeconomy,” using spider web chemistry to create bullet proof vests, or natural designs to create more powerful aeroplanes, faster computers, sharper video screens, or biotech patents.</p><p></p><p>They warn that neoliberal economics overlooks biophysical limits and the inherent unsustainability of relentless economic growth. They suggest that the bioeconomy can become another form of private accumulation, whereby patents of nature’s creations replace fences to enclose the natural commons for private profit, driven by venture capital funding, not for the restoration of nature, but for the “reproduction of capital.”</p><p></p><p>However, biotechnologies can include genuinely restorative systems, including bioremediation fields, a sharkskin design used in hospitals to repel bacteria, or a Nubian beetle technique of drinking from fog, used to collect water for buildings.</p><p></p><p>“How,” Goldstein and Johnson ask, “can we imagine a form of production that can both reproduce beautiful lives and unmake the infrastructure of our ecologically catastrophic social formation?”</p><p></p><p>Ecological restoration</p><p></p><p>To create successful biological design, we not only have to ask, “How does nature solve this physical challenge?” but also ask: “What is natural economics?” The economy of an ecosystem is non-hierarchical It is a web of shared relationships that contribute materials, energy and services to other parts of the network, as growth fluctuates within natural limits.</p><p></p><p>Lake Winnipeg in Canada suffered from high levels of phosphorus loading from the surrounding community, causing severe algae blooms. Researchers planted cattail to reduce nutrient flows. Certain plant species, such as cattail and canary grass produce sugar-like compounds that move through the roots, into the soil, and enhance nutrient collection and disease resistance. The Lake Winnipeg project has been so successful that researchers are now harvesting cattail as a heating fuel, further increasing the nutrient removal, since the plants are not left on the lakeshore to decompose.</p><p></p><p>Biologist, Dr. John Todd, has designed what he calls “Living Machines” – bioremediation fields to clean up contaminated soil and water in the US, China, and elsewhere. The system on Moskito Island in the Virgin Islands, treats domestic sewage on a terraced hillside, using solar heat, gravity, and ecological systems to take up nutrients and distribute them to plants, animals, bacteria and fungi throughout the system.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="ForestClose up of fungi in the Kellerwald forest near Edersee in the German state of Hesse. Deciduous forests, as a CO2 sink, are of importance for the climate and provide home to numerous animal and plant species. © Michael Loewa / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/134388_238541.jpg" alt="ForestClose up of fungi in the Kellerwald forest near Edersee in the German state of Hesse. Deciduous forests, as a CO2 sink, are of importance for the climate and provide home to numerous animal and plant species. © Michael Loewa / Greenpeace" />Fungi in the Kellerwald forest near Edersee, Germany, 25 October, 2013</em></p><p></p><p>In Mason County, Washington, US, mycologist Paul Stamets uses mushrooms to capture contaminants from water. Mycorrhizae fungi support plants by extending their root structures, and myco-remediation utilises this natural symbiosis to absorb bacteria, nutrients, heavy metals, and toxins. Stamets can match certain fungal species with target pollutants. Wood-degrading fungi are effective in breaking down hydrocarbon compounds and chlorinated pesticides. Oyster mushrooms will capture petroleum products and <em>E. coli</em>. Turkey tail will bind mercury pollution with selenium, forming a non-toxic compound. The Ecuadorian fungus <em>Pestalotiopsis</em> can consume Polyurethane.</p><p></p><p>The Loess Plateau, in North-central China – a 1200-metre elevation region the size of France between the Wei and Yellow Rivers – is the cradle of Chinese civilization, occupied by people for a million and a half years. However, by the twentieth century, ten thousand years of agriculture, livestock grazing, logging, and amassed dynastic wealth had degraded the land so thoroughly that the rolling hills stood bare, and gullies annually washed a billion tons of sediment into the Yellow River. The ecological devastation caused droughts, famine, and poverty.</p><p></p><p>In the 1990s, John Liu, an American who had been living in China for over 30 years, joined a Chinese government ecological rehabilitation initiative to restore the Loess Plateau economy by restoring the ecosystem. Local citizens terraced the hills to retain water, replanted trees, grew crops, and created vast ecological zones that allowed biodiversity to recover. Agriculture has grown, and family incomes in the Loess region have since tripled. Over 35-thousand square kilometres of bare land have been restored into a diverse green belt.</p><p></p><p>Liu emphasises the importance of soil carbon as a way for humanity to restore the carbon disequilibrium in the atmosphere. “CO<sub>2</sub> emissions are a symptom of systematic dysfunction on a planetary scale,” says Lui. “Human impact on the climate is not simply emission-based; it is degradation.”</p><p></p><p>The Loess project was primarily low-tech, employing people while building community cohesion, an example of genuine biological restoration that also restores human economy, health, and welfare.</p><p></p><p>“Landscape restoration,” explains Lui, “starts with restoring ecological function. This changes the socio-economic function. If the intention of human society is to extract, to manufacture, to buy and sell things, then problems arise. Real economy is understanding that natural ecological functions that create air, water, food and energy are vastly more valuable than anything that has ever been produced or bought and sold. Rather than commoditise nature, we need to naturalise the economy.”</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Resources, links:</p><p></p><p>“Thirty Years and Counting: Bioremediation in Its Prime?” <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/55/3/273/249729/Thirty-Years-and-Counting-Bioremediation-in-Its" target="_blank">Bioscience</a>, March, 2005.</p><p></p><p>“Contaminants in drinking water: Environmental pollution and health ;” John Fawell Mark J Nieuwenhuijsen” <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bmb/article/68/1/199/421245/Contaminants-in-drinking-waterEnvironmental" target="_blank">British Medical Journal</a>, 2003.</p><p></p><p>“Assessing the resistance and bioremediation ability of selected bacterial and protozoan species to heavy metals,” I. Kamika and M. Momba; <a href="http://bmcmicrobiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2180-13-28" target="_blank">BioMed Central</a>, Microbiology, Feb. 2013.</p><p></p><p>Water crisis as the #1 global risk: World Economic Forum, <a href="http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2015/#frame/20ad6" target="_blank">Global Risks 2015 Report</a>.</p><p></p><p>“Why fresh water shortages will cause the next great global crisis,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/08/how-water-shortages-lead-food-crises-conflicts" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>, March 2015.</p><p></p><p>“Removal of Escherichia coli from synthetic stormwater using mycofiltration,” Taylor, A., Flatt, A., Beutel, M., Wolff, M., Brownsona, K., Stamets, P.; <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925857414002250" target="_blank">Ecological Engineering</a><em>, May, 2014.</em></p><p></p><p>Clu-in, EPA report: <a href="https://clu-in.org/download/Citizens/a_citizens_guide_to_bioremediation.pdf" target="_blank">Citizen’s guide to bio-remediation</a></p><p></p><p>“Interview with Paul Stamets”: <a href="http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/nature/paul-stamets-mycoremediation-ze0z1410zdeh" target="_blank">Mother Earth News</a>.</p><p></p><p>Helping the Ecosystem through mushroom cultivation: Paul Stamets, <a href="http://www.fungi.com/blog/items/helping-the-ecosystem-through-mushroom-cultivation.html" target="_blank">Fungi Perfecti</a></p><p></p><p>John Todd: <a href="http://www.toddecological.com/" target="_blank">Ecological Design</a></p><p></p><p>What is Biomimicry: <a href="https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjvhqXH7q7SAhUD5WMKHd1HAqAQFggkMAE&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fbiomimicry.org%2Fwhat-is-biomimicry%2F&amp;usg=AFQjCNGai33q3Za7CSh3nSlwaIl14P0D2g&amp;sig2=cxbAPMp-4-wJXe4xS4Y6kw" target="_blank">Biomimicry Institute</a></p><p></p><p><a href="http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&amp;context=sociology_pubs" target="_blank">Biomimicry: New Natures, New Enclosures</a>: Jesse Goldstein, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Elizabeth Johnson, University of Exeter, 2015.</p><p></p><p>John Lui, documentary: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A" target="_blank">Green Gold</a>.</p><p></p><p>“Environmental Challenges Facing China – Rehabilitation of the Loess Plateau,” John D. Liu, Director of the <a href="http://eempc.org/environmental-challenges-facing-china-rehabilitation-of-the-loess-plateau/" target="_blank">Environmental Education Media Project</a>.</p>Fri, 10 Mar 2017 16:40:00 Zagricultureother issuestoxicsRex Weyler0000e54d-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/missing-the-climate-target-Paris-Rex/blog/58701/Missing the Target<p>The urgency to solve our climate crisis feels something like a ship heading off course: The longer you delay, the more you have to turn the wheel. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Consider these numbers: 2, 350, 1990. These were the original climate goals. In 1975, at the time of the first Greenpeace whale campaign, environmental economist William Nordhaus proposed that the danger threshold for a temperature increase above Earth’s preindustrial average would be 2°C. This goal was not considered entirely safe, but beyond this target we risked severe climate disruption and likely runaway heating.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="James Hansen from the US, Climate Scientist and professor, outside the Norwegian courthouse in Oslo while an unprecedented legal case is filed against the Norwegian government for allowing oil companies to drill for new oil in the Arctic Barents Sea. The plaintiffs, Nature and Youth and Greenpeace Nordic, argue that Norway thereby violates the Paris Agreement and the people's constitutional right to a healthy and safe environment for future generations. The lawsuit has the support of a wide group of scientists, indigenous leaders, activists and public figures. © Christian Åslund / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/133768_237002.jpg" alt="James Hansen from the US, Climate Scientist and professor, outside the Norwegian courthouse in Oslo while an unprecedented legal case is filed against the Norwegian government for allowing oil companies to drill for new oil in the Arctic Barents Sea. The plaintiffs, Nature and Youth and Greenpeace Nordic, argue that Norway thereby violates the Paris Agreement and the people's constitutional right to a healthy and safe environment for future generations. The lawsuit has the support of a wide group of scientists, indigenous leaders, activists and public figures. © Christian Åslund / Greenpeace" /><br />Dr James Hansen, 2016</em></p><p></p><p>The 350 figure came from several climate scientists, including Dr James Hansen, who co-authored the first NASA global temperature analysis in 1981. Hansen proposed that to remain below the 2°C target, we would have to hold the carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) content of the atmosphere below 350 parts-per-million (ppm). In 2007, Bill McKibben adopted Hansen’s target for the name of the climate activist group,&nbsp;<a href="http://350.org/" target="_blank">350.org</a>. “if we want to stabilise climate”, Hansen said in 2012, “we must reduce CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;… back to 350ppm.”</p><p></p><p>To achieve this, we must reduce human carbon emissions. In 1990, the Stockholm Environment Institute confirmed the 2°C maximum and, in 1991, the first climate COP met in Berlin with the goal of returning carbon emissions to the 1990 level. Achieving the 1990 carbon emissions, about six billion tons per year, only represents a good start. Ultimately, we have to reduce human carbon emissions from our current 10 billion tons to about 2-billion tons per year. That will require an 80% reduction in the use of fossil fuels.</p><p></p><p>1990</p><p></p><p>Some European nations have retained the 1990 emissions targets, although none have achieved this. Most other nations have abandoned the 1990 emissions date in their recent 2015 Paris “pledges”. The US and Canada move the target forward 15 years, to 2005 and only pledge to reduce emissions 17% below those levels. Neither nation has done anything significant to achieve even this pathetic goal. Claims in North America and Europe of “reducing” carbon emissions reflect, primarily, exporting those emissions, the dirtiest industries, to nations such as China, India and Mexico. If we look at emissions-per-capita, the US and Canada still lead the pack and the European Union remains well above the world average and above a pace that would lead to 1990 emission levels.</p><p></p><p>Other nations — such as Mexico, Israel and Brazil — have only pledged to hold emissions below a “business as usual” future projection, which is almost meaningless. Likewise, China will only commit to “reducing carbon intensity”, which is a similar measure of emissions versus economic growth, also meaningless in the effort to actually reduce carbon emissions. As a atmospheric scientist, Tim Garrett, said in a recent email: “The bathtub only stops filling when the tap is turned off, not when we stop cranking it open.”</p><p></p><p>Since the first COP conference in 1990, carbon emissions have increased by about 67%. In any practical sense, we can consider the original 1990 emissions target abandoned by the politicians.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>350</p><p></p><p>By 1930, primarily from burning coal, humans had pushed Earth’s CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;content above 300ppm for the first time in over 500,000 years: through four glaciation-warming cycles, most of the fire-making history of&nbsp;<em>Homo erectus</em>&nbsp;and the entire history of&nbsp;<em>Homo sapiens</em>.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><img title="Jim Bohlen and Bob Comings transfer the Greenpeace flag from the Phyllis Cormack to the Greenpeace II, the minesweeper Edgewater Fortune. Discovery Passage, coast of BC. © Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/133770_237006.jpg" alt="Jim Bohlen and Bob Comings transfer the Greenpeace flag from the Phyllis Cormack to the Greenpeace II, the minesweeper Edgewater Fortune. Discovery Passage, coast of BC. © Greenpeace" /><em>Jim Bohlens and Bob <span>Cummings</span>&nbsp;in Canada, 1971</em></p><p></p><p>When Greenpeace began in 1971, atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;stood at 325ppm. We learned of the climate threat in the mid-70s, when a colleague of James Lovelock sent us a hand-drawn graph. By 1991, atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;had increased to 355 ppm. A recent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2" target="_blank">January 2017 reading</a>, after 25 years of climate conferences reached 406.47ppm, and in April 2016 a Mauna Loa reading registered over 409ppm.</p><p></p><p>Serious ecologists still cling to the 350ppm goal and scientists know that this is what it will take to have a chance of stabilising Earth’s climate, but national policies, international conferences and some environmental groups have abandoned it in favour of promises to establish carbon taxes, improve carbon intensity or improve “business as usual” projections. While we fiddle, Earth burns.</p><p></p><p>2°C</p><p></p><p>Nevertheless, the ultimate question is whether or not we can keep the human-industrial average Earth temperature increase below 2°C. Paleoclimate&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/nature11574.epdf?referrer_access_token=DJIanCS8Z2DjuXRBMj8U8NRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0OWzb32GoXERcqSaa6ww-n5nBgp0BAlE8NhlcBKbkd3lAzHqeQ_6Xi98rHyjHlkzklfbApyLPXcLtDzTZ7DGi7XAFs5cDNedcw2RTRFxdVKsLknh-9xFKnF4SGcRvuNNbeVlvWP-bN0sSPMjHDcI0fOVOVA6qthEhQRaWwd6Yrik8ci8haKXnPpHq5eCxjJvWG6iknM7DPQiFiUy6vEqIV0W-AqFm0VgS9_qWe4rQ7uDs3b7fVPTVzX1KMaeJn0Fww%3D&amp;tracking_referrer=www.theguardian.com" target="_blank">data</a>&nbsp;tells us that there is a simple relationship between CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;content and Earth’s average temperature. There are multiple factors and feedbacks, such as methane releases and forest decline, but the CO<sub>2</sub>-to-temperature relationship remains consistent: for every doubling of CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;measured in parts-per-million, Earth will experience approximately a 3°C temperature increase (2.2°C to 4.8°C, depending on the feedbacks that are triggered, and recent feedbacks suggest the higher range). We will reach a doubling of pre-industrial CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;when we reach 560ppm.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>During the 141 years between 1850 and 1991, human industry increased atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;content by about 0.5 ppm per year. However, during the last twenty years of that stretch, we were increasing CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;content by about 1.5ppm per year. In the ten years between 2006 and the latest readings from 2017, we were increasing CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;by about 2.5ppm/year, and in the three years between 2014-17, we have been increasing CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;by over 3.5ppm/year.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>If we continue at this business-as-usual rate, increasing the atmospheric carbon at 3.5ppm/year, we will reach 560ppm by 2060. If we reduce the rate from 3.5ppm to 2.5ppm/year, we buy a couple of decades and reach that unhappy milestone in about 2078. In either case, this means a +3°C temperature increase at least, and the risk of runaway heating — due to methane releases, forest loss and other feedback factors.</p><p></p><p>If we begin immediately to phase out fossil fuels and achieve a 50% reduction by 2100, we still reach 560ppm, a +3°C temperature increase and runaway heating by about 2075. That represents an epic fail.</p><p></p><p>So, if we are serious, we require a much faster and immediate reduction in fossil fuel consumption, which honest climate scientists have been suggesting for decades. We need to reduce fossil fuel use and carbon emissions by at least 80%, and quickly, over the next 30 years, before 2050. This means cutting carbon emissions from 10 billion tons per year, to two billion tons/year by 2050.</p><p></p><p>Starting now, we need to slash global carbon emission by about about 4.5% per year for the next 30 years. That means a 450 million ton decrease this year.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>We can no longer be satisfied with flying around the world to conferences to talk about it or dither about future technologies. We can no longer pretend that we can continually grow our global economic footprint and solve the climate crisis with electric cars and windmills. The “carbon capture” technologies promised by industry for decades have failed to materialise, with no sign of success for the future. The only way to&nbsp;<em>actually reduce emissions</em>&nbsp;is to reduce fossil fuel use. Windmills and solar panels might help, but they haven’t helped so far because we’ve remained delusional about their carbon-costs (for steel, cement, mining, and so forth) and because these energy technologies have only added to our energy supply, not actually reduced fossil fuel consumption.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Representatives of several NGO's and hundreds of supporters demonstrate in Groningen against the Essent/RWE coal plant in the Eemshaven. With this action, they urge the government to take concrete steps to phase out fossil fuels. Like many scientists and politicians, Greenpeace pleads for closure of all coal plants in the Netherlands and with the outcomes of the COP21 climate conference in Paris this should be a reasonable decision. © Greenpeace / Joris van Gennip" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/133771_237008.jpg" alt="Representatives of several NGO's and hundreds of supporters demonstrate in Groningen against the Essent/RWE coal plant in the Eemshaven. With this action, they urge the government to take concrete steps to phase out fossil fuels. Like many scientists and politicians, Greenpeace pleads for closure of all coal plants in the Netherlands and with the outcomes of the COP21 climate conference in Paris this should be a reasonable decision. © Greenpeace / Joris van Gennip" />Eemshaven coal plant protest in Groingen, Netherlands, 2016</em></p><p></p><p>In isolated regions, some politicians claim we have reduced fossil consumption, but keep in mind: those regions that have significantly reduced fossil fuel use, have exported their dirty fossil fuel sectors to China, India, and elsewhere. Earth’s atmosphere does not care if the carbon molecules rise from Europe, China or India. Total global emissions is the only factor that matters.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>If every nation signing the Paris agreement met its goal, we would still be headed to 3°C or more. The Paris pledges are not remotely enough and do not represent any sort of “victory.”</p><p></p><p>Why do our societies have such a difficult time making this change? “The efforts are not commensurate with the goal,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/19/cat-in-hells-chance-why-losing-battle-keep-global-warming-2c-climate-change" target="_blank">says Dr Gavin Schmidt</a>, director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, because “the inertia&nbsp;in the system (oceans, economies, technologies, people) is substantial.” In physics, inertia is the resistance to changes in motion or direction. In human society, inertia includes the addition of 80-million new people every year, the unrelenting growth of consumption, a growing industrial economy and particularly the wasteful extravagance of the rich. The wealthiest 10% of the global population create 50% of the carbon emissions.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Roman Catholic Church forbade certain scientists from publishing their discoveries about the natural world. Ironically, after the 2015 Paris conference, Pope Francis was the only world leader clearly articulating the implications of the scientific data. ”Even to limit warming below 3°C”, he warned, “a radical transformation of capitalism will be necessary.” Today, the deniers of truth represent the Church of Money. The solutions to the climate crisis are simple but unthinkable for the devotees of profit.&nbsp;This has to change if we are to succeed in our climate goals.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Sources and links:</p><p></p><p>“Carbon Dioxide Emission-Intensity in Climate Projections: Comparing the Observational Record to Socio-Economic Scenarios.”&nbsp; Felix Pretis, Max Roser,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/Department-of-Economics-Discussion-Paper-Series/carbon-dioxide-emission-intensity-in-climate-projections-comparing-the-observational-record-to-socio-economic-scenarios" target="_blank">Oxford University</a>&nbsp;Dept. of Economics.</p><p></p><p>“No way out? The double-bind in seeking global prosperity alongside&nbsp;mitigated climate change,” T. J. Garrett, Univ. of Utah:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/3/1/2012/esd-3-1-2012.pdf" target="_blank">Earth Systems Dynamics</a>.</p><p></p><p>“Why we’re losing the battle to keep global warming below 2C”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/19/cat-in-hells-chance-why-losing-battle-keep-global-warming-2c-climate-change" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>“Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim? J. Hansen, M. Sato, P. Kharecha, et. al. (NASA, Columbia Univ., Univ. Sheffield, Yale Univ., LSCE/IPSL, Boston Univ., Wesleyan Univ., UC Santa Cruz):&nbsp;<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126" target="_blank">Cornell University Library</a></p><p></p><p>Daily CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;readings:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.co2.earth/" target="_blank">CO2 Earth</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Climate Sensitivity to doubling CO<sub>2</sub>&nbsp;= 2.2 - 4.8°C:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7426/full/nature11574.html" target="_blank">Nature</a>; summary in&nbsp;<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/may/10/climate-change-warming-sensitivity" target="_blank">The Guardian</a></p>Fri, 10 Feb 2017 15:55:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/missing-the-climate-target-Paris-Rex/blog/58701/#comments-holderclimate changeother issuesRex Weyler0000e442-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/wisdom-climate-change-neurosciece-anthropology/blog/58434/Wisdom & Foolishness<p>For Earth scientists and environmental activists, the urgent need for a dramatic shift in humanity’s relationship with the world seems painfully obvious, yet we find ourselves pushing against obsolete systems of economics and development and against a relentless commitment to a destructive path. When the wise path appears so obvious to us, why do human social systems continue to make foolish decisions?</p><p></p><p>I believe that “intelligence” arises from natural process, inherent in life itself, in all species of life and manifested in myriad forms throughout the biosphere. Intelligence appears as the quality of organisms to interface successfully, and durably, with the world in all its complexity.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><em><img title="'Brain' coral, Ashmore Reef, Australia. 01/08/1999 © Greenpeace / Roger Grace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/133068_235286.jpg" alt="'Brain' coral, Ashmore Reef, Australia. 01/08/1999 © Greenpeace / Roger Grace" />'Brain' coral, Ashmore Reef, Australia</em></p><p></p><p>We sense that humans have evolved a particularly dynamic intelligence; a capacity for reading the patterns of nature, for reasoning, logic, crafting tools, learning from the past and planning for the future. Learning to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/fire-then-and-now/blog/56890/" target="_blank">make fire</a>, over hundreds of thousands of years, may have helped advance early human cognition beyond that of our other primate relatives and the complexity of large social systems may have accelerated these cognitive powers. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Given this extraordinary intelligence that evolved with humans, we may expect that our societies could achieve ecological wisdom, understand the limits of our habitats and adjust society to avoid ecological disaster. Most successful species — algae in a pond, predators in a watershed — will overshoot habitat capacity and then collapse back into balance. We witness this in classic predator-prey relationships. Humanity faces this gnawing question: can we recognise our dilemma and avoid large-scale collapse? Will we be able to use our intelligence wisely or will we use our intelligence foolishly, for fashioning exotic entertainment, amassing wealth and power, or for short-term pleasures and frivolous gratifications?</p><p></p><p>The Conflicted Species</p><p></p><p>Terms such as “intelligence” and “wisdom” are difficult to define. We witness simple people who manifest extreme wisdom and we witness highly educated people who exhibit astounding foolishness. What are the relationships among intelligence, education, goodness and wisdom? Why do humans act individually and collectively in ways that appear foolish and self-destructive?</p><p></p><p>The early Saxon, Norse, English root for the word wisdom — 'wis'&nbsp;or 'wistuom'&nbsp;— originates from the idea of “law, judgement, or judicial precedent.” However, we all know of laws, judgments and precedents that, in retrospect, were not at all wise and often outright foolish.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The Spanish word for wisdom, 'sabiduría', comes from the verbs 'saber'&nbsp;(to know or taste) and 'durar'&nbsp;(to last), so we get the idea of durable knowledge, an experience of the world that stands the test of time. This Spanish word appears more useful; a durable wisdom is the wisdom we are looking for. Education alone isn’t enough.</p><p></p><p>Canadian ecologist William Rees, Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, who formulated “ecological footprint” analysis, is drafting a chapter for the forthcoming “Community Resilience Reader,” from the <a href="http://www.postcarbon.org/" target="_blank">Post Carbon Institute</a>. In the draft, “The Struggle Within”, on the failure of high intelligence, Rees points out that Homo sapiens are “an inherently conflicted species”. Although we are able to apply our intelligence in reasonable ways to solve complex problems, we also exhibit tendencies, especially under stress, to “act out of rage, jealousy, fear or other powerful emotions in ways that are utterly untainted by reason”.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Humans might exhibit sociopathic tendencies, lie, cheat or commit petty crimes under stress, to defend or feed themselves or their family. However, we also witness people lying, cheating and committing crimes simply to enrich themselves, gain power or even to flaunt power.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Sperm whales off the coast of Sri Lanka. 18/04/2013 © Paul Hilton / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/133072_235290.jpg" alt="Sperm whales off the coast of Sri Lanka. 18/04/2013 © Paul Hilton / Greenpeace" />Sperm whales off the coast of Sri Lanka</em></p><p></p><p>We are conflicted, Rees explains, because “the human brain evolved in stages with each new neural component becoming integrated with pre-existing structures”. We share the advanced cerebral cortex — the seat of reason, language and creativity — with other mammals (cetaceans possess the largest cerebral cortices on Earth). However, in evolutionary terms, this impressive cortex is a recent addition to the more primal brain: The limbic system, governing emotions and relationships, and the ancient reptilian brain stem that governs autonomic functions such as breathing and survival instincts such as aggression or deceit to gain some advantage.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In 1990, in <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Triune-Brain-Evolution-Paleocerebral-Functions/dp/0306431688" target="_blank">The Triune Brain</a>, Paul D. Maclean explains that the three distinct brain components function as an integrated whole, resulting in actual decisions and behaviour that arise from a mix of logic, emotions and primal instincts. “This can be a problem,” Rees points out. “Some people seem to be rational … others, exposed to the same ‘inputs’, abandon all reason to fear, anger, sorrow, etc., as suits the occasion.&nbsp; … Most people think they are acting reasonably even on occasions when others view them as ill-tempered wing-nuts.”</p><p></p><p>Rees references the work of Tony W. Buchanan on the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2265099/" target="_blank">Retrieval of Emotional Memories</a>, which shows that “long-term memories are influenced by the emotion experienced during learning as well as by the emotion experienced during memory retrieval.” This means that even when we intend to be reasonable, our thoughts, words and actions remain influenced by emotional memories, from deep within our subconscious, that may appear as foolishness to others.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>When we face a problem, and calculate a response, our thoughts are influenced by signals from the amygdala and hippocampus in the limbic system, the seat of fear and emotional memory. Blood may rush into our head and our hands may shake in the ancient “fight or flight” response.&nbsp; Our thoughts and actions can also be influenced by ancient programmed responses in the reptilian brain, which is reliable in keeping us alive but tends to be rigid and compulsive. Furthermore, these primal regions of the brain gain influence when we experience stress.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Therefore, a person who denies that global warming is real, or who believes that human society can continue to grow and exploit Earth’s bounty without limits, may simply be responding to the stress from fear about the future. We witness this in much of the wishful thinking in modern society, including the popular grasping at false solutions. The mind of the deluded citizen may be trying to calm itself down by imagining that everything is okay.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Meta-learning for survival&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Rees points out that these ancient responses exist for good reason, even if they are not always appropriate. “In the long-term evolutionary scheme of things … selection pressures may have limited the circumstances in which logic and reason prevail over seemingly ‘primitive’ but more tried and true impulses. That said, behaviours that worked well for the individual at earlier stages in human evolution … may be fatal to the common good today.”</p><p></p><p>The global ecological crisis remains a collective challenge that requires genuine collective solutions and may render personal survival instincts obsolete in certain cases. We witness in the world today how nationalism, racism, old hatreds and private egos sabotage necessary international cooperation based on the most obvious and critical evidence.</p><p></p><p>“Political discourse today is tainted by misinformation, magical thinking and appeals to the basest of human instincts,” laments Rees. “We seem to be entering a 21st century ‘endarkenment.’ … H. sapiens’ reasoning powers are not yet sufficiently sophisticated or masterful to be trusted with control over humanity’s collective destiny… denial, resistance to change, rage against ‘the other’ and like motivations have become downright maladaptive in a period of climate uncertainty, incipient resource scarcity and increasing geopolitical tension.”</p><p></p><p>Under stress, well-educated people, institutions and nations often resort to fear, old political dogma and magical thinking in response to crisis. Oxford Dictionaries declared “post-truth” to be the 2016 word of the year, describing a climate in which “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Genuine wisdom, on the other hand, seems related to not only functioning well in the world but to also helping others function well or helping the larger system function well. Genuine wisdom, durable wisdom, appears linked to common decency.&nbsp;Smart people, who can describe some aspect of the world accurately, are not necessarily&nbsp;“wise”, but people (or other creatures) who function well in the world and who help other parts of the system function well, appear wise.&nbsp; There is no wisdom where there is no goodness. Or, as philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said,&nbsp;“I&nbsp;wish that I were better and smarter. And these both are one and the same.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Ecologists, disappointed at the pace of ecological change, may benefit by accepting that genuine, large scale cultural change takes a long time and involves cultural re-learning. Activists will gain strength by stepping back from the routine cultural discourse and learning more about their own emotional responses and others’ emotional responses, a sort of meta-learning about deeper truths. This is why storytelling is so important in cultural transformation. Wise storytelling reaches people at a deeper emotional level than reciting facts and figures. We must continually seek this deeper, more durable wisdom.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>References:&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Post Carbon Institute: <a href="http://www.postcarbon.org/books_and_reports/" target="_blank">Books and Reports</a>. (Look for the upcoming book “Community Resilience Reader”).</p><p></p><p>How fire-making contributed to human cognition:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/fire-then-and-now/blog/56890/" target="_blank">Fire Then &amp; Now</a>&nbsp;Deep Green blog.</p><p></p><p>William Rees: Bio at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.postcarbon.org/our-people/william-rees/" target="_blank">Post Carbon Institute</a>.</p><p></p><p>Paul D. Maclean on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Triune-Brain-Evolution-Paleocerebral-Functions/dp/0306431688" target="_blank">The Triune Brain</a>.</p><p></p><p>Tony W. Buchanan on the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2265099/" target="_blank">Retrieval of Emotional Memories</a>.&nbsp;</p>Fri, 06 Jan 2017 11:59:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/wisdom-climate-change-neurosciece-anthropology/blog/58434/#comments-holderclimate changeother issuesRex Weyler0000e396-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/the-anthropocene-debate/blog/58262/The Anthropocene Debate<p align="center">"A hushed hundred million years from now, all that we consider to be the great works of man – the sculptures and the libraries, the monuments and the museums, the cities and the factories – will all be compressed into a layer of sediment&nbsp;not much thicker than a cigarette paper?"<br />— Elizabeth Kolbert,&nbsp;The Sixth Extinction</p><p></p><p>Two fruit flies hover around our compost bucket, normal in summer, but we are now into December, mid winter in Canada, and I have never before seen fruit flies after October. A little Anna’s hummingbird darts around the rose bush, all ablaze in pink roses. Global warming signs? Maybe: A neighbour recently found a flying fish (<em>Cheilopogon papilio</em>) washed up on the beach. We don’t generally see flying fish on Canadian beaches, and this species is rarely seen North of 26°N. We’re above 50°N. Meanwhile, naturalists identified two Tropical Kingbirds (<em>Tyrannus melancholicus</em>) on Canada’s west coast this winter, a species common in South America and rarely seen above 30°N.<br /><br /><img title="A flying fish jumps out of the water. © Will Rose / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/132556_233975.jpg" alt="A flying fish jumps out of the water. © Will Rose / Greenpeace" /></p><p></p><p>Earth’s climate and biosphere are now transforming faster than at any time in the last 65 million years. Global heating from our carbon emissions is just one of the more obvious changes, along with species loss, disappearing forests, drying lakes, and growing deserts.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>All of this has led some geologists and ecologists to claim that Earth is now entering a new geological “epoch”, linked to human activity, and therefore referred to as the “Anthropocene”: the epoch of human influence in Earth’s geology, biology, and climate. Other geologists and ecologists claim that the new designation provides another example of human arrogance. This sort of scientific debate may seem trivial, but language can shape culture and this particular discussion reveals some critical questions about humanity and ecology.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The Anthropocene is born</p><p></p><p>Some ancient creation myths — in East Asia and the Western Hemisphere, for example — imagined long Earth eras prior to human habitation but European science, even in the 17th century, could not yet imagine the epic time span of Earth’s history, as geologists clung to the Biblical “Genesis” for an accounting of Earth’s age.</p><p></p><p>However,&nbsp;geologists investigating sediment layers in the 18th century began to realise that the timescale could reach billions of years. The top layer of soil, called “quaternary” or “fourth” layer, appeared about two million years old; the deeper “tertiary” formations were about 63 million years old; the deep “secondary” formations 186 million years, and the “primary” bedrock that reached back to Earth’s beginning appeared more than four billion years old. By the mid 19th century, geologists had subdivided these divisions into shorter periods and later divided the periods into roughly equal epochs, defined by distinct changes in the geological and fossil record within the layers of rock.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Our modern “Cenozoic” (“recent life”) era, dating back to the asteroid that ended the dinosaur era, contains three periods: the Paleogene (66-23 million years ago), the Neogene (23-2.6 mya), and the modern Quantenary (2.6m-present day), the top layer of young soil and rock. These periods are further divided into eight epochs. The early epochs — the time of early mammals, primates and first hominids — are each 10-22 million years long. The later Pliocene epoch— the time of uplifting Alps, wooly mammoths and early human tool makers — is only 2.7 million years long. The Pleistocene, the time of ice ages and fire-making humans, is 2.6 million years and the most recent Holocene, since the end of the last glaciation, is a mere 11,700 years, just a baby in the world of geological epochs.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In 1864, ecologist G.P. Marsh recognised that humanity had become “ a disturbing agent”, upsetting “the harmonies of nature”. In 1873, Italian geologist Antonio Stoppani called human activity a “new telluric force ... compared to the greater forces of Earth” and first introduced the idea of an “anthropozoic era.” A century later, American biologist Eugene Stoermer first used the term “Anthropocene” to describe this epoch of human impact on Earth.</p><p></p><p>In 2000, at a climate conference in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen urged the delegates: “Stop using the word Holocene. We’re not in the Holocene any more. We’re in the Anthropocene!” Crutzen and Stoermer then collaborated on an article for the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.igbp.net/download/18.316f18321323470177580001401/1376383088452/NL41.pdf">Global Change Newsletter</a>, proposing that geologists “emphasise the central role of mankind in geology and ecology by proposing to use the term ‘anthropocene’ for the current geological epoch.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Wait a minute</p><p></p><p>Other ecologists and stratigraphic geologists have baulked at the notion, pointing out that stratigraphy has no tradition of naming geological epochs for their cause, but rather by their effects. We don’t characterise the Palaeocene by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, but rather by the thin layer of dust and the species that filled the vacant ecological niches, such as birds and early mammals.&nbsp;<br /><br /><img title="Dr David Santillo of the Greenpeace science unit during an event highlighting the need to ban microplastics aboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza in London. © Jiri Rezac / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/132559_233981.jpg" alt="Dr David Santillo of the Greenpeace science unit during an event highlighting the need to ban microplastics aboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza in London. © Jiri Rezac / Greenpeace" /></p><p></p><p>We don’t yet know the full effect of human-caused changes to Earth’s systems, and the entire holocene and “anthropocene” may simply turn out to be the end of the pleistocene period, a short, warm few thousand years, in which primates dominated, changed the atmosphere and left behind a thin layer of plastics and other chemicals, followed by a new period of several million years, characterised by a new regime of plants, animals and geological shifts.</p><p></p><p>Another complaint about “anthropocene” is that the human impact on Earth, as dramatic as it may appear to us, does not nearly approach this scale of epoch-defining geological upheaval. During the Eocene, the 22-million-year period ending 34 million years ago, for example, India collided with Asia, creating the Himalayan Mountains. Geologists Stanley Finney and Lucy Edwards wrote in a paper for the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/26/3/article/i1052-5173-26-3-4.htm">Geological Society of America</a>:&nbsp;“The stratigraphic record of the Anthropocene is minimal.” They suggested the idea may be “political rather than scientific”.</p><p></p><p>Such questions are being debated now in the halls of science, but there are deeper problems with presuming we are in an “anthropocene”, problems related, not with runaway warming but with runaway human arrogance.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Anthropocentric hubris</p><p></p><p>In the Crutzen-Stoermer&nbsp;<a href="http://www.igbp.net/download/18.316f18321323470177580001401/1376383088452/NL41.pdf">proposal</a>&nbsp;for the new ‘human” epoch, they presume this age will be overseen by “the research and engineering community to guide mankind towards global, sustainable, environmental management.”</p><p></p><p>This sort of idea has grown popular in recent years, the notion that we are going to engineer and manage Earth’s ecological systems in a kind of green-industrial renaissance. These hopes vastly exaggerate human ability. Our actual track record in “managing” ecosystems —going back 10,000 years — remains dismal. Managed timber lots are not forests; they become monoculture tree farms. Industrial agriculture mines nutrients from fast-depleted soils. The long-promised “carbon capture” technologies — which the IPCC claims are going to save us from global heating — have yet to arrive. The nuclear industry still has not figured out how to store spent radioactive fuels. Electric cars and windmills have not reduced human carbon emissions. “Efficiency” does not save resources and computers do not make us more sustainable. Greenpeace estimates that a single Apple data centre, for example, consumes as much power as 250,000 European homes.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The “green” renaissance became a fraud because we failed to do the one thing nature demands of a species that overshoots its habitat’s capacity: we have failed to reduce our consumption. We have failed to recognise that nature imposes limits.<br /><br /><img title="A man selects the electronic waste at his workshop in Bantar Gebang area, Bekasi, West Java. © Supri / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/132561_233984.jpg" alt="A man selects the electronic waste at his workshop in Bantar Gebang area, Bekasi, West Java. © Supri / Greenpeace" /></p><p></p><p>Furthermore, the impacts of human activity are, themselves, self-limiting. Global heating, population growth, toxic waste, soil loss and so forth act in systemic concert to impose even harsher limits on human enterprise. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Conjuring an “anthropocene” managed by human engineers exposes small, myopic thinking and fails to appreciate the complexity and timescale of natural systems. Bacteria dominated life on Earth for two billion years and caused the first great extinction by filling the atmosphere with oxygen, but we don’t name any time period or epoch after bacteria. “We are trying” says Brad&nbsp;Allenby, at Arizona State University, “to tie geologic time to a windstorm.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nature.com/news/define-the-anthropocene-in-terms-of-the-whole-earth-1.20427">Nature</a>&nbsp;journal, Australian Clive Hamilton, warns us to be aware of this arrogance: “The new geological epoch does not concern soils, the landscape or the environment, except inasmuch as they are changed as part of a massive shock to the functioning of Earth as a whole.”</p><p></p><p>Elizabeth Kolbert (in the quote above) and others have noted: in 50 to 100 million years, the human impact on Earth will likely appear as a thin sediment layer of trash, rare earth metals, hydrocarbon chemicals, iron and a massive plant and animal diversity loss, likely followed by a flourishing of new life forms.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>These are humbling thoughts, but humility feels like precisely the quality humankind needs to soften its impact and discover how to live in a place without destroying it.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Links and resources:&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Elizabeth Kolbert, "The Sixth Extinction"<em>,&nbsp;</em><a href="http://us.macmillan.com/thesixthextinction-1/elizabethkolbert/9781250062185">Picador, MacMillan</a>, 2015.</p><p></p><p>Paul Crutzen, Eugene Stoermer, “The Anthropocene,”&nbsp;<a href="http://www.igbp.net/download/18.316f18321323470177580001401/1376383088452/NL41.pdf">Global Change Newsletter</a>, May 2000.</p><p></p><p>Stanley Finney, Lucy Edwards, “The ‘Anthropocene’ epoch: Scientific decision or political statement?”&nbsp;<a href="http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/26/3/article/i1052-5173-26-3-4.htm">Geological Society of America</a>, March/April 2016.</p><p></p><p>Will Steffen, et. al., “The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives”,&nbsp;<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2010.0327">The Royal Society</a>, January 2011.</p><p></p><p>Clive Hamilton, “Define the Anthropocene in terms of the whole Earth”,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nature.com/news/define-the-anthropocene-in-terms-of-the-whole-earth-1.20427">Nature</a>, 17 August 2016.</p><p></p><p>David Farrier, “How the Concept of Deep Time Is Changing”,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/aeon-deep-time/505922/">The Atlantic</a>, October 31, 2016. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>John Michael Greer, “Myth of the Anthropocene”,&nbsp;<a href="http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.ca/2016/10/the-myth-of-anthropocene.html">Archdruid Report</a>, October 5, 2016.&nbsp;</p>Fri, 09 Dec 2016 15:15:00 Zclimate changeother issuesRex Weyler0000e329-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/where-is-the-hope/blog/58153/Where is the hope?<p>I’m not sure we can win with logic.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>How do we reverse species loss, climate change, toxins, general overshoot of Earth’s generous habitats? We have the science, but humanity at the large scale does not appear to have the political will. We live in a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-11-13/trump-america-s-pilot-in-chief-in-the-post-ecological-age" target="_blank">pre-ecological</a>&nbsp;political world, and public discourse seems corrupted by the mad clinging to those pre-ecological models of development and economics.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The ecology headlines this year feel disturbing — 2/3 of mammals doomed; drought in Kenya, Mozambique, US, Sri Lanka; dry rivers and water wars; Zika virus spray killing bee colonies; methane releases higher than predicted; meteorologists forced to rewrite climate predictions, for the worse; Great Barrier Reef collapsing; and American soldiers serving as a security force for oil pipeline at Standing Rock, arresting indigenous grandmothers and journalists.</p><p></p><p>Over the decades, we’ve been able to report some good news: Rivers cleaned up (partially), ozone recovering (<a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/30cc0fac6d69bef5aeb39e9e21925b75.htm" target="_blank">slowly, with some side effects</a>), a whale sanctuary (sort of), a dumping ban (that gets ignored); and today: tiger populations increasing in Asia; a mangrove saved in Madagascar; salmon returning to Elwha River in the US, after dams removed; and new agriculture regulations in Brazil that may preserve portions of Mato Grosso forest.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, we lose millions of hectares of forest every year, species loss accelerates, and toxins accumulate.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>I’m an upbeat person. I’m willing to push, and push again, against the impossible, and still keep a sense of humour, most of the time. Even so, sometimes I contemplate: Where is the Hope?</p><p></p><p>In geopolitical politics? I have my doubts. The global political process appears too corrupted, too distracted, too pre-ecological, too superficial, and too slow to actually address and solve our deeper ecological dilemma.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In climate conferences? After 30 years of climate conferences, we have the Paris agreement that does not mention fossil fuels or the need to leave them in the ground. The deal does not bind any nation to emission pledges, and - in any case- those pledges no longer appear sufficient to hold temperature increases below 3°C. When we add accelerating methane releases … well, one could be excused for feeling despair. This is where I begin to doubt we’ll win with logic. So, where is the hope?</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Time’s First Breath © Lisa Gibbons" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/132244_233164.jpg" alt="Time’s First Breath © Lisa Gibbons" />Time’s First Breath © Lisa Gibbons</em></p><p></p><p>The long emergency</p><p></p><p>History shows that transforming social structures can be painfully slow. The work helps one practice patience, which may be a good place to start finding hope. In patience. In staying calm, in feeling the world slowly and carefully.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>We may also take comfort in the historical record, that society can change. When actual change occurs, when institutions transform, it can feel rapid, but the great campaigns for racial, religious, or gender equality, have required generations, and still remain unresolved around the world. Nevertheless, we know: Society can change.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>We feel a ticking clock with our ecological dilemma, and this too can invoke despair. We hear that we only have 5 years, or, we only have a decade, or we have to change before 2050, or by tomorrow. And yet, nature works over millions of years, millions of generations, shrugs off disasters, and ultimately finds a new homeostasis.</p><p></p><p>I don’t look for hope in the belief that humanity will solve our ecological crises in my lifetime, or even in my children’s or grandchildren’s lifetimes. Nature is long. Stock plays and pipelines are short.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The wealthy world lives a lifestyle enabled by a massive energy and materials flow to them, dependent upon colonization, exploitation, resource extraction, a trail of toxins, and a political landscape of warlords and tin-pot dictators, overseen by imperialists giants. Globalized, neoliberal capitalism is dead. We are not going to grow ourselves out of this with market forces, invisible hands, and slicker machines. Nature’s rent has come due. Like wolves, who overshoot the food supply in their watershed, our grandeur does not save us.</p><p></p><p>The logic tells us this, the science and data tell us, our most rigorous researchers keep telling us, and even a few global institutions are beginning to acknowledge the ecological evidence, while mainstream public discourse drowns science and logic in a flood of pettiness and self-promotion.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Somehow, unpretentious human communities may, once again, have to do all the heavy lifting themselves, locally, with the talents they process and whatever resources they can protect. I find hope in simple people, living by simple means, working together, and restoring their habitats.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>James Kunstler gives us the term “<a href="http://kunstler.com/books/the-long-emergency/" target="_blank">long emergency</a>” to help grasp the timespan in which both ecological an social change actually occur.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="The Messenger © Lisa Gibbons" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/132245_233166.jpg" alt="The Messenger © Lisa Gibbons" />The Messenger © Lisa Gibbons</em></p><p></p><p>Waking up in the wild world&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>I find hope in artists, who shake up the mainstream culture. Artists play an essential role in social transformation, giving voice to the the deeper feelings – Rouget de Lisle’s&nbsp;<em>La Marseillaise</em>&nbsp;among French revolutionaries, Marcus Garvey and the international Pan-African civil rights movement, Franca Rame in the anti-facist movement in Italy, El General’s&nbsp;<em>O Leader!</em>&nbsp;inspiring a democracy movement in Tunisian, or the Yes Men staging mock-corporate street theatre. Much loved Canadian poet Leonard Cohen passed away recently. His song from 1988, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxd23UVID7k" target="_blank">Everybody Knows</a>” warned us:&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>"Everybody knows that the boat is leaking</p><p></p><p>Everybody knows that the captain lied” &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The artists don’t have to explain things. They seize the opportunity and cut to the heart of events directly.</p><p></p><p>Rachel Carson worked as a scientist, but her great gifts to humanity came through her powers of language and storytelling. In 1965, she wrote in The Sense of Wonder ”A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.” She spoke, of course, about the wild world, including the wildness inside ourselves that reminds us we are natural beings, related to all others, to the “four-legged, winged, and finned,” as our indigenous relatives remind us.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>“It is a wholesome and necessary thing,” Carson wrote, “for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Primarily, this is where I look for hope. I find hope in the wildness that is left in the world, and the wildness left in the human heart. The untamed instincts of of life and love. I find hope in the endless dance of plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria, even in the workings of life, hydrogen bonds, nutrients, minerals, sugars, and proteins, in sunlight transformed into life. I find hope in the magic of this and in the creativity of natural evolution.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Ebb and Flow © Lisa Gibbons" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/132247_233169.jpg" alt="Ebb and Flow © Lisa Gibbons" />Ebb and Flow © Lisa Gibbons</em></p><p></p><p>The hope one might find in the natural world is long, not the transient hope of an easy life or a political victory. It is the hope of a long miracle that outlives individuals, societies, and even species and habitats.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In the human realm, I find little hope with big institutions, governments, corporations, global economics, or conferences. I don’t find much hope in the idea that humankind will “manage” the ecosystem. That feels like short-sighted hubris “The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance,” Rachel Carson reminded us fifty years ago, “born of the Neanderthal age of biology.”</p><p></p><p>Our job, I believe is to manage ourselves, our own appetites, fears, and insecurities. Most of this cannot be organized on a global scale. An enduring humanity will likely move past the arrogance of globalized management and return to social structures built around place and community, around modesty and common decency.</p><p></p><p>I believe we need to localize, re-commit to, restore, and protect the ecosystems in which we live.&nbsp; The scattered peoples, who have lost connection to the Earth, will, once again, become indigenous eventually. I find hope in communities that have committed to a landscape, and care for it, in outcasts and simple people, disenfranchised, yet persevering and courageous.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>“He took satisfaction in the feeling of his own littleness,” Yasunari Kawabata wrote in Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. “He even sympathized with the thought that the human species, together with the various kinds of minerals and plants, was no more than a small pillar that helped support a single vast organism adrift in the cosmos — and with the thought that it was no more precious than the other animals and plants.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>I take hope in that sort of modesty, in people who can do the work without calling attention to themselves, or angling for personal benefits.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>I notice that many young couples wait to have children, have fewer children, or adopt the homeless. These are sane responses to human sprawl, and they give me hope.</p><p></p><p>Farmer-writer Wendell Berry wrote years ago in&nbsp;<em>Leavings,&nbsp;</em>“Hope must not depend on feeling good;” and he suggests one looks for hope “on the ground under your feet.” &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>When I feel despair, I go back to this ground. I feel fortunate to live in a region that still supports some wildness. I walked in the woods last week with an adult friend and some school children from our neighbourhood. We wandered down to a small waterfall that empties into the Salish Sea that reaches beyond to the wide Pacific Ocean. There along the shoreline lay hundreds of Chum salmon (<em>Oncorhynchus keta</em>), who had spawned and perished. Eagles had gathered in the trees to feed. Other, still living salmon worked their way, exhausted, against the current. I watched one fish, facing the current, struggling, beating her tired fins, advancing by a few centimeters over many minutes. This vision serves as my model. Pushing, never giving up, for life.</p><p></p><p>As great Bohemian poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “Again and again some people in the crowd wake up. They have no ground in the crowd and they emerge according to much broader laws. They carry strange customs with them and demand room for bold gestures.&nbsp;The future speaks ruthlessly through them.”<br /><br /><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>&nbsp;References:&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Pre-ecological politics: Kurt Cobb,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-11-13/trump-america-s-pilot-in-chief-in-the-post-ecological-age">Resilience</a></p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Pace of Ozone recovery:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/30cc0fac6d69bef5aeb39e9e21925b75.htm">Science Daily</a></p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Methane releases higher than predicted:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/nature19797.epdf?referrer_access_token=eMDU6rTmQkN1ys08vgu52dRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0M65pTu-meS4gM65_CHaFEROX4ZET5MoiG6-UsuBG727jOuz2AUN6zUhBgU3uSRAum5BBMVIcwr-EAgMKdS9zKlHk45uvvidwJnilfL6fN0po75Uxx1rGuiytCAPzuvCItpRT0L2YLEzCYtSYa0sZjcN4FveRVtI7VgB0g7QkH3V_JbbAGpqeQpD8hcKI5A0TMUnhxaZ5m5gunaptsar4bsGrPst6icjq0a7IktvRemPLx_xt6FFfiPjwv-GV6aGaY%3D&amp;tracking_referrer=www.theguardian.com">Nature</a>, and summary in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/05/fossil-fuel-industrys-methane-emissions-far-higher-than-thought">The Guardian</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Zika virus spray killing bee colonies:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/04/zika-mosquito-neurotoxin-kills-bees-livelihoods-beekeepers">The Guardian</a></p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Species decline:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wnf.nl/custom/LPR_2016_fullreport/">WWF</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/wild-animals-disappear-wwf-1.3823662">CBC</a></p><p></p><p>&nbsp;Lisa Gibbons art:&nbsp;<a href="http://lisagibbonsart.com/">lisagibbonsart.com</a></p>Wed, 30 Nov 2016 14:00:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/where-is-the-hope/blog/58153/#comments-holderclimate changeforestsother issuestoxicsRex Weyler0000e159-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/un-report-on-resource-limits/blog/57689/Breaching environmental boundaries: UN report on resource limits<p>This summer, the United Nations International Resource Panel (IRP), published 'Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity', a <a href="http://unep.org/documents/irp/16-00169_LW_GlobalMaterialFlowsUNEReport_FINAL_160701.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> that admits what ecologists have been saying for decades: resources are limited, human consumption trends are unsustainable and resource depletion diminishes human health, quality of life and future development.</p><p></p><p>The report shows that consumption of Earth's primary resources (metals, fuels, timber, cereals and so forth) has tripled in the last 40 years, driven by population growth (increasing at about 1.1% per year), economic growth (averaging about 3% per year over the same period) and consumption per person, worldwide.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Coal Mines at the Source of the Yellow River, 20 Jun, 2014. © Wu Haitao / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/131356_230837.jpg" alt="Coal Mines at the Source of the Yellow River, 20 Jun, 2014. © Wu Haitao / Greenpeace" />Coal Mines at the source of the Yellow River, China</em></p><p></p><p>Economic growth has helped lift some regions from poverty and created more middle-class consumers, while enriching the wealthiest nations the most. The UN report acknowledges, however, that advances in human well-being have been achieved through consumption patterns that are "not sustainable" and that will "ultimately deplete the resources − causing shortages [and] conflict".</p><p></p><p>In 1970 — when ecologists in Canada founded Greenpeace and Club of Rome scholars prepared the original 'Limits to Growth' study — a human population of 3.7 billion used 22 billion tons of primary materials per year. Forty years later, in 2010, with a population of 6.7 billion, humans used 70 billion tons. Now, in 2016, we require about 86 billion tons and the UN Resource Panel estimates that by 2050 we will require annually some 180 billion tons of raw materials, which Earth's ecosystems may not be able to provide.</p><p></p><p>Furthermore, modern technology has not made our economies more efficient, as promised. As technology has advanced, material consumption accelerated. Fossil fuel consumption has grown annually by 2.9%, metal ores by 3.5%, and non-metalic minerals by 5.3%. Since 2000, even as economic growth and population growth slowed, material demand accelerated. Frivolous consumption has increased among the rich and we now spend increasing amounts of energy to extract lower grade resources, reducing productivity.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Wires and cables brought to the Lyari River, Karachi, to be burned. 14 Aug, 2008. © Robert Knoth / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/131361_230847.jpg" alt="Wires and cables brought to the Lyari River, Karachi, to be burned. 14 Aug, 2008. © Robert Knoth / Greenpeace" />Wires and cables brought to the Lyari River, Karachi, to be burned.</em></p><p></p><p>According to Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, co-chair of the panel, "the alarming rate at which materials are now being extracted … shows that the prevailing patterns of production and consumption are unsustainable... We urgently need to address this problem before we have irreversibly depleted the resources that power our economies and lift people out of poverty. This deeply complex problem … calls for a rethink of the governance of natural resource extraction."</p><p></p><h3>Economic justice</h3><p></p><p>Meanwhile, large economic gaps remain between rich and poor nations, between North America and Europe on one hand, and all other world regions. To achieve economic justice and UN development goals, low income nations will require increasing quantities of materials.</p><p></p><p>Today, the average citizen in Africa consumes about three tonnes of material resources each year, including infrastructure. In Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, the average citizen consumes about 3-times as much, 8-10 tonnes of materials each year. In Europe and North America, average citizens consume about 20-30 tonnes of materials each year, 7-10-times the average African. The super-rich, elite, with multiple homes, airplanes, and exotic holidays, consume much more, in the range of 100-times the average African citizen, ten-times the middle-class citizen in Asia. The US, with less than 5% of world population, consumes about 30% of global materials.</p><p></p><p>Social justice goals and ecological goals sometimes appear in conflict, but the real conflict arises between the extravagant consumption of the wealthy and the subsistence consumption of the rest of the world.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Olusosum Dump Site, Lagos, 16 Nov, 2008. © Greenpeace / Kristian Buus" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/131362_230849.jpg" alt="Olusosum Dump Site, Lagos, 16 Nov, 2008. © Greenpeace / Kristian Buus" />Olusosum Dump site, Lagos, Nigeria</em></p><p></p><p>In 2008, the Global Footprint Network prepared the following chart that shows how nations measure up to the UN Human Development Index (vertical scale) and the Global Footprint Index (horizontal scale). <span>Those nations above the horizontal 0.800 line meet the UN Human Development goals; those below fall short.</span>&nbsp;Nations to the left of the vertical red line live within the budget for a per-capita fair share of Earth's resources. Those to the right use more than their fair share per person. The average person in the US uses about five times their fair share of Earth's resources. The average person in Sierra Leone uses about half of a fair share. Several Asian and South American nations come close to achieving both — meeting UN Human Development goals with a fair per-capita share of resources — but the only nation that does achieve both goals is Cuba.</p><p></p><p><em><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Human_welfare_and_ecological_footprint.jpg"><img title="UN human development vs. eco footprint © Global Footprint Network" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/131384_230896.jpg" alt="UN human development vs. eco footprint © Global Footprint Network" /></a>Nations ranked by social development and material consumption: Nations that meet the UN Human Development goals, do so with unsustainable consumption. Those with sustainable levels of resource use are not meeting the UN development goals. Only Cuba achieves both. The challenge of our age is to learn to live sustainably while meeting basic human needs. To achieve this, extravagant consumption doesn't work, and modest living is the measure of social responsibility. © Global Footprint Network. Original image <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Human_welfare_and_ecological_footprint.jpg" target="_blank">here</a>.</em></p><p></p><p>A vast proportion of consumption in rich nations is wasteful; products are designed to be wasteful and grow obsolete. According to industrial ecologist <a href="http://www.grrn.org/page/zero-waste-and-climate-change" target="_blank">Robert Ayres</a>, 99% of human-produced goods are consumed or become waste within six months.</p><p></p><p>The UN panel warns that "rapid economic growth occurring simultaneously in many parts of the world will place much higher demands on supply infrastructure and the environment's ability to continue supplying materials." If Earth cannot provide the material increases expected, then total human resource consumption will have to stabilise. How is this to be achieved?</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Coal Train in Powder River Basin in USA, 20 Oct, 2012. © Greenpeace / Tim Aubry" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/131364_230854.jpg" alt="Coal Train in Powder River Basin in USA, 20 Oct, 2012. © Greenpeace / Tim Aubry" />Coal Train in Powder River Basin, USA</em></p><p></p><h3>Economy and materials</h3><p></p><p>The imperative of industrial economy is growth, but the ecological data tells us to slow down. The conflict may be the supreme challenge of our age, almost entirely ignored by status quo politicians. The UN Resource Panel avoids the challenge by proposing twin strategies of "efficiency" and "decoupling" to allow global economic growth to continue.</p><p></p><p>Efficiency is the long-sought holy grail of technology, the belief that machines will produce the goods we want with less demand on resources. Decoupling describes the theory that more efficient machines, and wise strategies can create economic growth without consuming resources. Let's examine these beliefs.</p><p></p><p>Efficiency: In 1865, William Jevons published 'The Coal Question', showing that technological efficiencies did not reduce coal consumption but increased consumption. Historically, when we become more efficient with a resource, we use more of it. The "Jevons paradox" applied to resource use in general. Efficiency often increases consumption.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Gridlocked Motorways in New Delhi, 10 Jan 2016. © Subrata Biswas / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/131363_230852.jpg" alt="Gridlocked Motorways in New Delhi, 10 Jan 2016. © Subrata Biswas / Greenpeace" />Gridlocked Motorways in New Delhi, India</em></p><p></p><p>Energy efficient automobiles increased leisure driving, vehicle size, and suburban sprawl. Refrigeration efficiency led to larger refrigerators and more electricity consumption. In North America, according to research by <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/josswinn/bill-rees-the-vulnerability-and-resilience-of-cities" target="_blank">William Rees</a>, as modern heating systems improved efficiency by 10-30%, living and working space per person increased on the scale of 100-300%, ten times faster, increasing total energy consumption for heating. According to a 1994 study by <a href="http://www.dieoff.com/page69.htm" target="_blank">Mario Giampietro</a>, the so-called "Green Revolution", increasing food production with hydrocarbons and fertilizers, led to increased population growth, degraded land, a trail of toxins and more starving people.</p><p></p><p>Computer technology was going to solve this, making modern life more efficient, but in 1990, at the dawn of the personal computer revolution, global productivity stopped improving and, since 2000, productivity — economic production per unit of resource use or labour — declined. Computers sped up global economy and we now use more fossil fuels, paper and other materials than we did when personal computers became available.</p><p></p><p>Decoupling: The UN panel's other theory proposes: "to decouple economic growth and human well-being from ever-increasing consumption of natural resources", the panel claims, "many countries have initiated policies to facilitate decoupling," but cannot offer any evidence of success.</p><p></p><p>The global economy now needs more materials per unit of GDP than required 20 years ago. Meanwhile, lower net energy, higher energy costs for resources and growing environmental destruction per unit of economic activity undermine the hypothesis of decoupling. The UN appears to realise this since they project that annual resource extraction will increase to 180 billion tons by 2050.</p><p></p><p>Similarly, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proposes "mitigation technologies" such as carbon capture, even though these technologies have not even slowed the growth of carbon emissions. Germany, the world leader in solar installations, has seen <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/how-germany-generates-its-electricity" target="_blank">no drop in emissions since 2009</a>, while coal and LNG plants remain open. The UN agencies mean well but cling to delusions. "They bombard us with adverts, cajoling us to insulate our homes, turn down our thermostats, drive a little less," says Tim Jackson, of the UK Sustainable Development Commission. "The one piece of advice you will not see on a government list is 'buy less stuff!'"</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Energy Efficient Public Library Pompeu Fabra, Spain, 19 Jan, 2016. © Pedro Armestre / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/131365_230856.jpg" alt="Energy Efficient Public Library Pompeu Fabra, Spain, 19 Jan, 2016. © Pedro Armestre / Greenpeace" />Energy-efficient public library, Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain</em></p><p></p><h3>Metabolism</h3><p></p><p>For the poorer nations, economic growth remains important, but the blind spot of international politics remains the taboo against recognising the limits to aggregate global economic growth. We have now reached those limits and wealthy countries must embrace this ecological reality.</p><p></p><p>"Civilization has a metabolism, about 7.1 milliwatts per dollar of GDP (2005 US$)," explains ecologist Nate Hagens at the University of Minnesota. "Currently, 80% of nitrogen in our bodies and 50% of the protein comes indirectly from natural gas." A study published in <a href="http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/61/1/19.full" target="_blank">Bioscience</a> by J.H. Brown and colleagues points out that "energy imposes fundamental constraints on economic growth and development [similar to] scaling of metabolic rate with body mass in animals.</p><p></p><p>"Additional economic growth and development will require some combination of (a) increased energy supply, (b) decreased per capita energy use, and (c) decreased human population... The ruins of Mohenjo Daro, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome, the Maya, Angkor, Easter Island, and many other complex civilizations provide incontrovertible evidence that innovation does not always prevent socioeconomic collapse."</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Canary Wharf in London, 30 Nov 2011. © Steve Morgan / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/131366_230858.jpg" alt="Canary Wharf in London, 30 Nov 2011. © Steve Morgan / Greenpeace" />Canary Wharf in London, UK</em></p><p></p><p>During the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, global material use actually slowed. Historically, economic recessions provide the only examples of reduced consumption — and here we may recognise the genuine solutions to resource consumption: allow and encourage wealthy economies to stabilise and contract. The UN report recognises that "the level of well-being achieved in wealthy industrial countries cannot be generalised globally based on the same system of production and consumption."</p><p></p><p>This part, they get right. Humanity needs a new economic model that does not require the delusion of endless growth in a finite global habitat.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>References</p><p></p><p><a href="http://unep.org/documents/irp/16-00169_LW_GlobalMaterialFlowsUNEReport_FINAL_160701.pdf" target="_blank">UNEP Report</a>: Global Material Flows, Resource Productivity, 2016.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://energyskeptic.com/2016/limits-to-growth-2016-united-nations-report-provides-best-evidence-yet/" target="_blank">Energy Skeptic</a>: Limits to Growth? 2016 United Nations report provides evidence</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/natural-resource-use-tripled_us_57a05c3ae4b0693164c273a8" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a>: Consumption Of Earth's Resources Tripled In 40 Years, UNEP</p><p></p><p><a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/rise-in-plunder-of-earths-natural-resources/" target="_blank">Climate News</a>: Plunder of Resources</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.grrn.org/page/zero-waste-and-climate-change" target="_blank">Grassroots Recycling Network</a>: Waste, Recycling and Climate Change</p><p></p><p><a href="https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300" target="_blank">UN</a> Sustainable Development Goals</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY" target="_blank">Arithmetic, Population, and Energy</a>: Albert Bartlett video lecture on exponential growth</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1113" target="_blank">The Way Forward: Survival 2100</a>, William Rees, Solutions Journal</p><p></p><p>Energy efficient automobiles and suburban sprawl (<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/251/4990/154" target="_blank">Jeremy Cherfas</a>, 1991)</p><p></p><p>Refrigeration efficiency and more electricity consumption (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazzoom-Brookes_postulate" target="_blank">Daniel Khazzoom</a>, 1987).</p><p></p><p>Mario Giampietro: <a href="http://www.eco2bcn.es/eco/pdfs/Publications/MGiampietro-publications.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.eco2bcn.es/eco/pdfs/Publications/MGiampietro-publications.pdf</a></p><p></p><p>J.H. Brown, et. al., Bioscience: <a href="http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/61/1/19.full" target="_blank">http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/61/1/19.full</a></p>Fri, 21 Oct 2016 17:15:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/un-report-on-resource-limits/blog/57689/#comments-holderagricultureclimate changetoxicsRex Weyler0000e0c3-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/brent-spar-deep-green-rex-weyler/blog/57539/Brent Spar: The sea is not a dustbin<p>In August 2016, Prestel Books published <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3791382373/wwwprestelcom-21/" target="_blank">Photos That Changed the World</a>, including this image of the Greenpeace Brent Spar campaign, captured by David Sims on 16 June 1995.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Brent Spar and Greenpeace activists. 16/06/1995 © Greenpeace / David Sims" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/130696_229154.jpg" alt="Brent Spar and Greenpeace activists. 16/06/1995 © Greenpeace / David Sims" width="600" />Greenpeace approaches Brent Spar, 1995, dodging a Shell water cannon. Photo by David Sims, Greenpeace. Selected for "Photos that Changed the World," from Prestel Books.</em></p><p></p><p>The story begins in the 1950s, when Royal Dutch Shell found oil near Groningen, in Permian sandstone linked to North Sea formations. By 1971, Shell had located the giant Brent oilfield in the North Sea, 220km east of Shetland Islands. The Brent field produced a valuable, low sulphur crude, and set the standard for the European, or "Brent", oil price.</p><p></p><p>In 1976, Shell constructed the Brent Spar, a floating oil storage tank, 147 metres tall, with thick steel walls, holding up to 300,000 barrels of crude oil. The Shell team had damaged the tank during installation, and doubts remained regarding its structural integrity. Four years later, Shell constructed a pipeline from the deep sea field to the mainland, making the spar redundant. In 1991, with no use for the Brent Spar, Shell applied to the UK government to dump the installation into the North Sea.</p><p></p><p>In addition to crude oil, the giant piece of industrial garbage contained PCBs, heavy metals, and radioactive waste. Dismantling the Brent Spar on land would cost an estimated £41 million. Deep sea disposal, exploding and sinking the spar, would cost an estimated £19 million. Shell had some 400 additional platforms in the North Sea that they would eventually have to scrap. Dumping them all in the sea could save the company about £8 billion. They presented the planned dumping to the British government as a "test case".</p><p></p><p>The UK Ministry of Energy gave Shell full support to dump Brent Spar at North Feni Ridge, 250km from the northwest coast of Scotland, in 2500 metres of water. Shell claimed that sinking it would have only a "localised" effect in a region that offered "little resource value".</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Position of the Brent Spare and Feni Ridge." src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/130687_229132.jpg" alt="Position of the Brent Spare and Feni Ridge." />Shell planned to tow the spar North of the Shetland Islands to Feni Ridge for dumping.</em></p><p></p><h3>Enter Greenpeace</h3><p></p><p>Earlier, in 1978, Greenpeace had confronted the ship Gem, dumping European radioactive waste into the North Atlantic. In 1993, the London Dumping Commission, with 70 member nations, passed a worldwide ban against radioactive waste dumping at sea.</p><p></p><p>A year later, in December 1994, Gijs Thieme in the UK Greenpeace office heard about the planned disposal of the Brent Spar, and urged his colleagues to launch another campaign. The North Sea Environmental Ministers had planned a conference for 1995 in Esbjerg, Denmark, just as Shell planned to dump the Brent Spar. The Greenpeace activists seized the moment to extend the dumping ban to include installations such as the spar. Thieme, Remi Parmentier in France, and Harald Zindler in Germany planned a campaign to occupy the spar and disrupt Shell's plans. Rose Young — an American activist working with the Northern European Nuclear Information Group in the Shetland Islands — organized campaign logistics from the Shetlands. The activists based the campaign on a simple principle: "The sea is not a dustbin."</p><p></p><p>On 29 February 1995, Greenpeace vessel Moby Dick Left Lerwick in Shetland for Brent Field. A month later, on 30 April, Greenpeace activists occupied the Brent Spar, maintained their presence for three weeks, took samples from the oil storage tanks, and called for a ban of Shell service stations.</p><p></p><p>Images moved across European and world media, showing Shell security and British police spraying the protesters with water cannons, as Greenpeace relief teams flew in by helicopter. Demonstrations broke out across Europe, the German Ministry of the Environment protested the dumping plan and, on 15 May at the G7 summit, German chancellor Helmut Kohl publicly protested to British Prime Minister John Major. In June, eleven nations at the Oslo and Paris Commission meetings called for a moratorium on sea disposal of offshore installations.</p><p></p><p>Shell and the British government defied public sentiment, and on 10 June, Shell began towing the spar to the Feni Ridge disposal site. Consumers boycotted Shell stations across Europe. In Germany Shell lost some 50 percent of sales.</p><p></p><p>In May 1995, Shell succeeded in removing the spar occupiers. At the end of May, Eric Heijselaar, working in a Dutch climbing shop, got a phone call from Greenpeace: "Do you want to help us re-take the Brent Spar?" A week later, he stood on the deck of the Greenpeace ship Altair, skippered by Jon Castle, gazing out at the North Sea. Heijselaar kept a journal, and his account takes us into the maelstrom:</p><p></p><h3>Eric Heijselaar's journal</h3><p></p><blockquote><p></p><p>13/06/95: I had the 04.00 to 06.00 watch. Drove in the Lecomte to the Brent Spar at 10.30. Sea is calm. Sea? I'm sorry, North Atlantic. Bloody hell, a couple of days ago I was selling walking boots.</p><p></p><p>There's a police helicopter above us, trying to serve us an injunction. They tried to throw in onto the heli-deck. Kevin and I used the fire hose to wash it away. Faik finally managed to get rid of it without touching. You touch, you're served!</p><p></p><p>14/06/95: Last night on the bridge: Jon: "Yes Eric, I think you're the type who can do this sort of job. Would you like to give it a try with Al?" Scary stuff.</p><p></p><p>We have journalists on board, some are wearing "Don't dump the Brent Spar" stickers. From a BBC journalist: "Wow, this is more fun than Lockerbie!"</p><p></p><p>15/06/95: Al, me, and Harald will fly out with the helicopter on Friday morning. First light. How we are gonna do this with all those water cannons is not clear yet. Since the word spread that me and Al are preparing to retake the Spar, there have been a lot of sick jokes from the "heavies"on board.</p><p></p><p>21/06/95: At our first try to get onto the Spar we had all the boats in the water for a frontal attack. Harald, Al and me in the heli, right above the platform.</p><p></p><p>Water cannons prevent us from landing or getting close to the platform. Just as the pilot decides to turn back to the ship. The helicopter is hit. We swing around violently. This is my first time in a helicopter. Everybody is pale and silent. Grim faces.</p><p></p><p>Back on the ship. We decide to give it a second try. Just me and Al Baker. We take off. The pilot sees a window. He literally dives underneath the beam of water. Glad I didn't have breakfast.</p><p></p><p>We end up ten meters above the heli-deck of the Brent Spar. The mechanic wants us to jump out at this height. Al shouts what I think. "No way man!" The pilot manages to go down another five meters. Al jumps first, then me. One of the water bags hit Al on the head. He is laying face down on the deck. I already feel an itchy pain in my heels. We lay out two banners on the deck. "Save our seas"and "Greenpeace". The photo's went worldwide.</p><p></p><p>We take all the water and personal equipment below deck on the spar. We find a room that is reasonably dry. The heli is back above the Spar, throwing small containers filled with food, sleeping bags, and cooking stuff, dropped from 50 meters. Most of the stuff is smashed to bits. Only one of the sleeping bags can be used. The other is wet, full of glass, beans, and tomato sauce. Bummer. My heels are starting to hurt from the jump. The painkillers from the first aid kit only take off the rough edge. Bummer 2.</p><p></p><p>We try to get barbed wire off the railing, onto the heli-deck, to prevent them from landing to take us off. I bend over the railing with my bolt-cutters and get hit by an express train. Water is everywhere at once. Sounds stop. I'm holding on to the barbed wire. Al is gone. Washed away. This was a deliberate attempt to blow us off the Spar with water cannons. We are 50 metres above the ocean. I get the feeling that somebody just tried to kill me.</p><p></p><p>Next day, in the spar mess-room, three windows are missing. A steel cupboard is blown through a wall. Water is now going into the three rooms we just got dry. We remove the shower units in the rooms and smash the drains through the floor. Now the water can go down to the floor underneath. We start improving our water defences.</p><p></p><p>Today, we both got hit on the heli-deck. The only thing that stopped us from falling over the edge was a roll of barbed wire. These guys are completely out of control.</p><p></p><p>[Shell had rigged explosives on the spar for blowing it up at sea. Heijselaar continues:]</p><p></p><p>Al wanted to disable the explosives. I didn't. We asked Tim to get info about the possible dangers. The expert came back to him with, "It's probably safe to cut the wires." Probably?! Al thinks this is funny. I do not agree. We look at each other briefly. You get to know each other quite well in these circumstances. Al cut the first, brown wire. There were 32 wires in pairs, one brown, one white twisted together.</p><p></p><p>After about a minute we dare to breath again. Then we cut the rest. When all are cut we sit on the ground and start to giggle. The threat of a single idiot on the Shell ships pushing a button is over.</p><p></p><p>The last day: Thanks to the painkillers I was eating, I slept well most nights. Just before 18.00, I called Tim on the VHF. The Altair crew were listening to BBC world service, and we were the first item. Tim stopped our conversation abruptly. "Eric, Stand by!" Suddenly, I heard shouting. Shell did the U-turn!</p><p></p><p>Outside, the water cannons stopped for the first time in weeks. The silence was eerie.</p><p></p><p>Tears of joy. We waited some hours for the official confirmation. It was really over.</p><p></p></blockquote><p></p><h3>Shell's change of plans</h3><p></p><p>The pain in Eric Heijselaar's heel, turned out to be a broken bone, suffered from the leap out of the helicopter, but for the next few days, he kept taking pain killers as the campaign crew celebrated victory. Rose Young recalls: "Jon Castle, skipper of the Altair, announced that the Spar was altering course and going towards Norway. Unbelievable! A rainbow emerged from a grey sky, whales and dolphins emerged from the sea around the boats. Magic. I'll never forget it."</p><p></p><p>In July 1995, Norway granted permission to moor the spar in Erfjord, while Shell reconsidered its options. Three years later, in 1998, the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) passed a ban on dumping oil installations into the North Sea. Shell announced that Brent Spar would be cleaned out and used as a foundation for a new ferry terminal. In the summer of 2017, Shell will start decommissioning the remaining four Brent field production platforms on land.</p><p></p><p>The Brent Spar action survives in history as a classic Greenpeace campaign that genuinely did change the way humankind behaves in the world.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Brent Spar in Erfjord, Norway. 01/01/1998 © Robbert Slagman / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/130690_229140.jpg" alt="Brent Spar in Erfjord, Norway. 01/01/1998 © Robbert Slagman / Greenpeace" />The Brent Spar comes to rest in a Norwegian fjord, and would eventually be cleaned of toxic residues to become the foundation for a ferry terminal. Shell is still decommissioning its fleet of North Sea drilling platforms, but not by dumping them in the ocean.</em></p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em><em>&nbsp;</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Sources, links:</p><p></p><p>Prestel Books: <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3791382373/wwwprestelcom-21/" target="_blank">Photos That Changed the World</a></p><p></p><p>Pictures that Changed the World: <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/martin-luther-kings-speech-vietnam-8602632#ICID=sharebar_facebook" target="_blank">UK Mirror</a></p><p></p><p>BBC Report: <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160804-what-it-takes-to-dismantle-an-oil-rig" target="_blank">What it takes to dismantle an oil rig</a></p><p></p><p>Greenpeace, 1995: <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/history/Victories-timeline/Brent-Spar/" target="_blank">Shell reverses decision to dump the Brent Spar</a>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Rémi Parmentier: <a href="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/PageFiles/25797/odhistory.pdf" target="_blank">Greenpeace and the Dumping of Waste at Sea</a></p><p></p><p>Shell Oil: <a href="http://www.shell.co.uk/sustainability/decommissioning/brent-field-decommissioning.html#vanity-aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zaGVsbC5jby51ay9icmVudGRlY29tbQ" target="_blank">Brent Field Decommissioning</a></p><p></p><p>Short video with activist interviews: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KToV-c8uvPc" target="_blank">Brent Spar, Greenpeace vs. Shell</a></p>Fri, 23 Sep 2016 23:45:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/brent-spar-deep-green-rex-weyler/blog/57539/#comments-holderoceanstoxicsRex Weyler0000df35-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/globalisation-dark-side/blog/57141/Globalisation’s dark side<p class="p1">Although concerns about immigration appeared as factors in Britain’s exit from the European Union, the Brexit vote was also a referendum on the failures of globalisation. Traditional economists promoted globalisation based on the theory that nations can best compete in capitalist markets by specialising, exporting resources for cash, often sacrificing local manufacturing, culture and self-reliance.</p><p></p><p class="p1">In 1957, European nations formed a “Common Market,” allegedly for economic protection, but the deal primarily protected the corporate elite. By the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher in the UK, Ronald Reagan in the US and François Mitterrand in France, presided over a neoliberal takeover, privatising economies and eradicating public power. They claimed that the benefits of enriching the rich would “trickle-down” to the peasants, but of course, this did not happen.</p><p></p><p class="p1"><img title="Guarani citizen Noemi Cruz bears witness to forest destruction by industrial soy farming in Argentina for the international market. 24 Aug, 2005 © Greenpeace / Julio Pantoja" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/129418_225913.jpg" alt="Guarani citizen Noemi Cruz bears witness to forest destruction by industrial soy farming in Argentina for the international market. 24 Aug, 2005 © Greenpeace / Julio Pantoja" width="600" /><em><span class="s1"><span class="s1">Guarani citizen Noemi Cruz bears witness to forest destruction by industrial soy farming in Argentina for the international market. Photo:&nbsp;</span></span>Greenpeace / Julio Pantoja</em></p><p></p><h3 class="p1"><span class="s1">Privatisation&nbsp;</span></h3><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">European and American manufacturing declined as corporations moved to sweat shops in poor nations with cheap wages and corporate-friendly laws. A leaked World Bank memo, signed by Chief Economist Lawrence Summers, openly urged rich nations to export pollution and ecological destruction. Poor nations sank into debt and suffered from plundered resources, cultural disruption, war, loss of security and a rising income gap between rich and poor.&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p2"><span class="s1">The harsh impact of these policies finally sparked riots at the 1999 World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle, and an anti-globalisation movement emerged. By 2008, the free-wheeling investment banks, enriched by swindles and propped up by debt, collapsed, then demanded bail-outs from the working poor and middle class taxpayers.&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Brexit movement in England was, in part, a rebellion by those for whom globalisation’s “trickle” never arrived, the working poor, who suffered unemployment, austerity policies and degraded social welfare. Nations in the European Union lost economic sovereignty to the banks and corporations, who punished small nations such as Greece and Cyprus for defying their orders. Former Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, blamed “the EU’s anti-democratic institutions,” that made it “impossible to stay in the single market and keep your sovereignty.” Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan told the Guardian: “Brexit [will have a] domino effect with anti-European parties gaining a lot of support".</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Globalisation and neoliberalism eroded public health, education and social security, replacing local self-reliance and common decency with an industrial corporatocracy that undermined family and community. Globalisation appears now as a privatisation scheme, designed for the rich to seize control of economic and political power.</span></p><p></p><h3 class="p1"><span class="s1">Pollution havens</span></h3><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">In 1987, the Brundtland report introduced the idea of “sustainable development,” suggesting that market economies could continue to grow, and that market forces could be used to regulate the environmental impacts of globalisation. However, the market-driven environmental policies hastened consumption and resource depletion, increased fossil fuel consumption and global warming, enriched the rich and left a trail of toxins, dry rivers and depleted soils in the world’s poorest nations.</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">The real costs became evident in 1984, when a methyl isocyanate gas leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India killed about 4,000 citizens immediately, some 20,000 over the next two decades, and left over 100,000 people suffering from respiratory dysfunction, deformities and blindness. In 1991, Bhopal courts charged Union Carbide’s CEO, Warren Anderson, with manslaughter, but neither the American nor Indian government helped extradite him for trial. The practice of corporations exporting their environmental impact became known as the “Pollution Haven Effect.”</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">In 2013, a ten meter <a href="http://phys.org/news/2013-03-beached-whale-spain-dies-ingesting.html" target="_blank"><span class="s2">sperm whale</span></a> washed up dead on the coast of Spain with 17 kilograms of plastic garbage in its stomach. Annually, human enterprise adds some 15 billion kilograms of garbage to the oceans from consumer waste and container ship spills. Fish and marine mammals eat the plastics, which cannot be digested, their organs become blocked and they perish from starvation and gastric rupture.</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Globalisation has encouraged, and in some cases forced, nations to relax environmental laws. The result has been deforestation, the spread of harmful invasive species, a loss of global biodiversity and a diminished genetic diversity among agricultural crop varieties.&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">In 2003, David Ehrenfeld, at Rutgers University in the US, published “Globalisation: Effects on Biodiversity, Environment and Society” in the <a href="http://www.conservationandsociety.org/article.asp?issn=0972-4923;year=2003;volume=1;issue=1;spage=99;epage=111;aulast=Ehrenfeld" target="_blank"><span class="s2">Conservation and Society</span></a> journal. “The market cannot be relied on to control the environmental and other costs of globalisation,” he concluded. “The architects of globalisation have ignored the social, biological and physical constraints on their system.”</span></p><p></p><h3 class="p1"><span class="s1">Social and economic impacts</span></h3><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Warfare has been the most destructive social cost of globalisation. The suffocating global arms trade, driven by transnational corporate profiteering, undermines real security around the globe.</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Globalisation enriched a few elite in poor nations, but the net effect has been a wider income gap between the rich and poor, lost jobs, low wages, sweat shops, union-busting and diminished human rights. In debt, and under pressure from the World Bank, nations cut public services.&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">The economics have proven predominantly one-sided, favouring westernised corporations and plundering the poorer resource colonies. Building a national economy on a single resource export has proven disastrous. In the 1970s, the UK and Dutch economies experienced the North Sea oil and gas boom, giving the illusion of prosperity while eroding local manufacturing and economic security. Britain’s corporate-friendly Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, used the oil revenues to subsidise corporate expansion, wage war and enrich banking empires.&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Resource exploitation can make a nation's currency appear stronger for a while, but this makes their exports more expensive, undermines manufacturing and local economy and leaves working class citizens without jobs or security. In 1977,&nbsp;The Economist magazine coined the term “Dutch disease” to describe these effects.</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">In <span class="s2"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Plenty-Petro-States-International-Political/dp/0520207726" target="_blank">The Paradox of Plenty</a></span>, author Terry Karl explains that oil is a “resource curse” as experienced by Nigeria, Indonesia, Venezuela, Iran, Canada and other nations. Oil rich nations attract oil industry patrons, who finance friendly political candidates. These resource colony nations suffer human rights atrocities and see their environments devastated. In Canada, the petroleum-backed former government handed out over CND$14 billion in subsidies to fossil fuel companies, while losing over 340,000 industrial jobs.&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Globalisation put pressure on nations to privatise public assets, devalue their own currency to keep exports prices “competitive” and to abandon tariff structures that protect local economies. Neoliberal policies shifted taxation away from corporations and onto working class citizens. Finally, centralised global banking made the entire world vulnerable to the schemes of a few banks, as the world experienced in 2008.&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">None of this appears as an accident of history, but rather as the design of neoliberal corporatocracy.&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><h3 class="p1"><span class="s1">Trade deals<br /></span></h3><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, 1994), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP, 2016) and other trade deals were designed to serve corporate profits. NAFTA and TPP allow corporations to sue governments — in private, secret tribunals — for enforcing environmental or human rights laws that limit profits.</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">In 2013, when the Canadian province of Quebec passed a moratorium on oil and gas fracking to stop the contamination of land and water, US oil and gas company Lone Pine Resources filed a $250-million NAFTA lawsuit against Canada, claiming that the moratorium was an “arbitrary, capricious, and illegal revocation" of the company’s right to mine oil and gas. When the province of Ontario passed a Green Energy Act, Texas energy company Mesa Power sued them. When the Canadian government banned MMT, a neurotoxin linked to Alzheimer’s disease, the Ethyl Corporation demanded and won US$13 million. Canada has been sued by S.D. Myers, a US toxic waste disposal company for banning PCB exports; by the US Sun Belt corporation for passing water protection legislation; and by other corporations, for hundreds of millions of dollars. When the US rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline, Canadian company TransCanada sued for $15 billion.</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical and other corporations have launched over 600 similar lawsuits against governments around the world. Economists Joseph Stiglitz and Adam Hersh wrote in <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-trans-pacific-partnership-charade-tpp-isnt-about-free-trade-at-all-2015-10-05"><span class="s2">Marketwatch</span></a> that these trade deals “restrain open competition and raise prices for consumers … applied even where rules are nondiscriminatory and profits are made from causing public harm.”&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">This is the face of globalisation, a corporate coup d'etat against democracy. Smart nations can reverse these trends, localising rather than globalising. In 2008, Iceland presented the model by taking criminal bankers to court rather than bailing them out. They established new boards and management in the banks, capitalised them and regulated and supervised the banks to safeguard public interests. They devalued the currency, the Krona, by 60 percent, which kept wages high, limited imports and encouraged a renaissance in local manufacturing, fishing and tourism.&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Localisation is the cure for the sickness of globalisation, a first step in restoring human rights and protecting a nations’s ecosystems.&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1"><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International. The opinions here are his own.</em></span></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><h3 class="p2"><span class="s1">Notes and sources:</span></h3><p></p><p class="p2"><span class="s1">“Globalisation: Effects on Biodiversity, Environment and Society”:&nbsp;</span>David Ehrenfeld, <a href="http://www.conservationandsociety.org/article.asp?issn=0972-4923;year=2003;volume=1;issue=1;spage=99;epage=111;aulast=Ehrenfeld" target="_blank"><span class="s2">Conservation and Society</span></a> journal&nbsp;</p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">“Globalisation’s Direct and Indirect Effects on the Environment,” Carol McAusland, 2008:&nbsp;</span><span class="s3"><span class="s4"><a href="http://www.oecd.org/greengrowth/greening-transport/41380703.pdf" target="_blank">Global Forum on Transport and Environment in a Globalising World</a></span></span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">“Twelve Reasons Why Globalization is a Huge Problem”:&nbsp;</span>Gail Tverberg, 2013, <a href="https://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/02/22/twelve-reasons-why-globalization-is-a-huge-problem/" target="_blank"><span class="s2">Our Finite World</span></a>.</p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">“The Trans-Pacific Partnership charade: TPP isn’t about ‘free’ trade at all”:&nbsp;</span>Joseph E. Stiglitz, Adam Hersh, 2015, <span class="s2"><a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-trans-pacific-partnership-charade-tpp-isnt-about-free-trade-at-all-2015-10-05" target="_blank">Marketwatch</a></span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">“Environment and Globalization: Five Propositions”:&nbsp;</span>Adil Najam, et.al, <a href="https://www.iisd.org/pdf/2007/trade_environment_globalization.pdf" target="_blank"><span class="s4">International Institute for Sustainable Development</span></a>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">The Paradox of Plenty, Terry Lynn Karl, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Plenty-Petro-States-International-Political/dp/0520207726" target="_blank"><span class="s2">University of California</span></a>, 1997. &nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">“Four reasons to reject TTP”:&nbsp; <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/4-reasons-to-reject-the-tpp/" target="_blank"><span class="s2">Greenpeace USA</span></a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">“Trans-Pacific Partnership Would Harm Our Environment,” <span class="s2"><a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/compass/2015/05/far-progressive-trade-deal-trans-pacific-partnership-would-harm-our-environment" target="_blank">Sierra Club</a></span></span></p><p></p><p class="p3"><span class="s3">“TPP in Depth,” <a href="http://canadians.org/tpp-info" target="_blank"><span class="s4">Council of Canadians</span></a> &nbsp;</span></p><p></p><p class="p2"><span class="s1">“Brexit, Globalization and the Bankruptcy of the Globalist Left,”&nbsp; <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/brexit-globalization-and-the-bankruptcy-of-the-globalist-left/5519403" target="_blank"><span class="s2">Global Research</span></a></span></p><p></p><p class="p2"><span class="s1">“Brexit is a rejection of globalisation,” Larry Elliott, <span class="s2"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/26/brexit-is-the-rejection-of-globalisation" target="_blank">Guardian</a>&nbsp;</span></span></p>Wed, 10 Aug 2016 22:46:00 Zagricultureclimate changeother issuesRex Weyler0000de3a-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/fire-then-and-now/blog/56890/Fire Then and Now<p>Fire is the fundamental human technology, the foundation of everything that came after in human societies. Controlled fire transformed our diet, physiology, psychology, language, social structure, technologies, and our relationship to the rest of nature.</p><p></p><p>Some archeologists believe that fire management provided the change that distinguished us from other social mammals. Although we are enamoured by the power of modern technologies, an understanding of our relationship with simple fire informs us about genuine solutions to our ecological impasse.</p><p></p><p><em><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/128011_222703.jpg" alt="Tarsands, Greenpeace, Jiri Reznak" />Canadian tarsands: Humans have been burning fuels for a million years. Fire transformed human society, caused early forest depletion and species extinctions, and our energy use today now exceeds Earth's capacity to sustain. © Jiri Rezak.</em></p><p></p><p>The discovery and use of fire</p><p></p><p>Non-human animals are known to use natural fire. Hawks, cheetahs, and other species hunt prey disrupted by fire. Savanna chimpanzees are not intimidated by fire, behave sensibly around it, and will hunt food after a fire passes. Humans likely used fire for millions of years, before they could ignite or control it.</p><p></p><p>Fire maintenance likely began among <em>Homo erectus</em> communities, who moved from forest to savanna habitats. Fire ignition followed, and may have contributed to a cognitive advance, the use of intermediaries — tinder and kindling — to ignite a slow burning fuel. Evidence of intentional fire exists around a million years ago, in archeological sites from Chesowanja, Kenya to Yunnan Province, China.</p><p></p><p><em><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/128012_222705.jpg" alt="Firemaking tools, public commons image" />Fire use by humans preceded controlled fires, and firemaking required and augmented advanced human mental powers. Fire is the fundamental human technology. Public domain image.</em></p><p></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Three hundred thousand years ago,&nbsp;</span>fire-based technologies existed throughout Eurasia, including stone hunting tools warmed to improve working qualities and hafting glues that required fire to prepare. Fire allowed humans to seize caves previously occupied by other large, fierce mammals. Fired pottery existed 20,000 years ago, and metallurgy 5,000 years ago. During this long history of fire use, hominids distinguished themselves from all other large mammals. Meanwhile, fire revolutionized human society.</p><p></p><p>The need for fuel and fire maintenance likely led to a division of labour among early hominids. Human communities grew more stationary around the fire and hearth, transforming vocal communication, language, and eventually story-telling. During a million years of fire management, the Homo genus evolved a waking day of about 16 hours, much longer than most other mammal species, and gained survival advantages that our species enjoys to this day.</p><p></p><p>Cooking may have been fire’s greatest social impact, since it made more calories available from foods, reduced the energy cost of digestion, and freed that energy for other enterprises, tool-making, art, and social interaction. Every species is constrained by its available energy, and cooking gave humans an energy boost, which led to additional technological innovation. These developments also changed human brains, mating habits, and gender divisions of labor. Among most primates, males and females gather the same food. Once hominids controlled fire, males spent more time on wide range hunting and defense, and females and elders refined social ritual and language around the hearth. Fire contributed to food sharing and longer childhoods, and thus greater learning potential.</p><p></p><p>However, the costs of fire can be high. Cooking fires make a stationary community more vulnerable to predators or invasion, so security became a more constant labour. Fuel-foraging depleted local brush and trees. Some Neolithic settlements, such as Çatal höyök in modern Turkey, provide evidence of long distance foraging for firewood and of woodland management. Fire allowed metal technologies, which led to early mining, which required more wood-burning, and led to localized mineral depletions and deforestation.</p><p></p><p>One of humanity’s oldest surviving stories, the Epic of Gilgamesh from Sumer, at least 5,000 years old, begins in a settlement protected by kiln-fired brick walls. The story discusses forest depletion, drying marshes, social oppression, and abuse of power, all linked to the power of controlled fire. We witness here, fundamental dysfunctions that remain with society today.</p><p></p><p>Fire, extinctions, and ecological overshoot</p><p></p><p>By 50,000 BC, long before agriculture, <em>Homo sapiens</em> population growth surged, and anthropologists find evidence during this period of animal and plant extinctions, primarily caused by controlled human fire used as a hunting technique.</p><p></p><p>Around 47,000 BC, humans arrived in Australia, regularly set fire to the landscape to flush prey, and eradicated dozens of large mammals, marsupials, reptiles, and flightless birds. The burning also caused localized climate change by reducing water vapour. Declining cloud cover shifted the monsoon cycle, the Nullarbor grassland became desert scrub, and once abundant Lake Eyre became a salt flat.</p><p></p><p>When human communities advanced into the Western Hemisphere, about 75% of large mammals (mastodons, mammoths, giant beavers, bears, and tigers) vanished. Similar mass extinctions occurred when humans arrived in Madagascar, Hawaii, and in New Zealand.</p><p></p><p>How does this knowledge help us now? We can see that humanity did not require industrial fossil fuel technology to cause species collapse and climate disruption. Sheer numbers, stone tools, and a plentiful external energy source were sufficient. University of British Columbia professor Dr. William Rees, developer of "ecological footprint" analysis, explains that certain mammalian traits led our species to overshoot ecosystem resources even prior to industrial technology. Like other large mammals, humans are "K-strategists," ("K" stands for a habitat’s capacity, German Kapazität), which means we have evolved to occupy all accessible habitats and use all available resources.</p><p></p><p>Evolutionary success has costs and, without restraints, can be fatal. Nature taught us to be aggressive and rapacious, as survival skills, but didn’t teach us how to stop. We have to do that ourselves. To solve our ecological dilemma, humanity has to reverse its expansion. Continued growth for a successful species that has overshot its habitat will lead to collapse.</p><p></p><p>External energy and Food</p><p></p><p>When a plant or animal’s energy use relies directly on the sun or food, habitat capacity acts as a restraint on growth, and each species remains in dynamic homeostasis as witnessed in predator-prey cycles or in our own gardens. In 1922, Polish-American biophysicst Alfred Lotka, who developed predator-prey dynamics, published <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1085052/pdf/pnas01891-0031.pdf" target="_blank">"Contribution to the energetics of evolution"</a>, proposing that evolution was driven by the ability to access available energy. Trees grow more leaves so they can transform more energy. The sharp eyes of the hawk help it process more energy, with less energy cost.</p><p></p><p>All plants and animals other than humans rely solely on energy from the sun or food, internal, which biologists call "endosomatic" energy. The energy humans derive from fire, work animals, fossil fuels, hydro dams, or solar panels, is "exosomatic," energy retrieved from outside our bodies. The aristocracy throughout history have also gained exosomatic energy from slaves and exploitive wages for labour.</p><p></p><p>The average human requires about 2,400 food calories (kilo-calories) per day, about 3,600 megajoules (MJ) each year. In pre-fire hominid societies, each person consumed roughly this much energy from food. Fire provided humans with about 15,000 MJ of extra energy each year, 4-times more external energy than internal energy from food, a 4:1 ratio. About a billion people today still live roughly on this fire-level energy budget. In the poorer nations such as Haiti and Senegal, the average energy consumption is about twice this level, an 8:1 ratio of exosomatic energy.</p><p></p><p>However, in rich, industrial nations, the use of external energy soars. Europeans use about 40-times as much external energy as they get from food, and the average US, Canadian, or Scandinavian citizen uses about 90-times as much external energy. Among the super-rich, jet-set, multiple-home elite, this energy use can skyrocket to 1000-times as much external energy. We could solve most of our energy problems by limiting frivolous energy waste among the rich.</p><p></p><p>Most industrial nations spend 12 -16% of their energy budget to grow food. The so-called "green revolution" was really a black revolution, relying on fossil fuels for fertilizer, machinery, transport, and packaging of food. A <a href="http://www.dieoff.com/page40.htm" target="_blank">study</a> by Mario Giampietro and David Pimentel shows that food delivered to the consumer in North America requires ten-times more energy than the food contains. When we add the energy cost of storage, cooking, and waste, industrial food has a negative net energy of over 12:1. Nate Hagens, who teaches "Reality 101" at the University of Minnesota, points out that humanity’s food today is not an energy source, it is "a vast energy sink." In the natural world, spending more energy to get food than the food contains proves unsustainable.</p><p></p><p>Since 80% of our energy use comes from fossil fuels, we are essentially eating oil. To achieve this level of food production, industrial agriculture has depleted soils, spread toxins, disrupted nutrient cylces, and launched an era of rapid global heating.&nbsp; In short, humanity has used Earth’s vast energy stores to overshoot their ecological habitat.</p><p></p><p>Humanity’s destructive consumption of exosomatic energy started with the advent of controlled fire, and that basic fire economy has never disappeared. Firewood use never declined and remains an important source of energy for humans. Coal did not replace wood, but only added to our energy consumption. Oil, gas, and nuclear power did not replace coal and hydropower, but only added to our energy consumption. One might imagine "replacing" oil with renewables, but so far, renewable energy simply adds more energy. Historically, humans only stop using an energy source when it is depleted.</p><p></p><p>Learning to reduce our energy consumption — not just finding more — remains at the heart of our ecological challenge.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International. The opinions here are his own.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p><em><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/128013_222707.jpg" alt="energy use graph, by Gail Tverberg, used by permission" />World energy consumption by source: Coal did not replace wood burning, but rather added more energy for human consumption. Likewise, oil did not replace coal. Growing to consume more energy is a trait of all species, until a species overshoots its habitat. Human energy use has now increased to an unsustainable scale. Conservation has to a part of any genuine sustainable energy future. Graph by Gail Tverberg, <a href="https://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/03/12/world-energy-consumption-since-1820-in-charts/" target="_blank">Our Finite World</a>.</em></p><p></p><p>Human use of fire:</p><p></p><p>Clark JD, Harris JWK. 1985 Fire and its roles in early hominid lifeways. Afr. Archaeol. Rev. 3, 3–27, <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01117453">Springer</a>, 1985.</p><p></p><p>Discovery of Fire by Humans, J. Gowlett: <a href="http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/1696/20150164" target="_blank">Royal Society</a></p><p></p><p>Fischer-Kolwalski, M. and Haberl, H. eds. (2007) Socio-ecological transitions, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham. <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-008-9247-2" target="_blank">Springer Books</a>.</p><p></p><p>Energy for Cooking, R.M. Amaraskara: <a href="http://www.ideasrilanka.org/PDFDownloads/energy%20for%20cooking.pdf" target="_blank">Idea Sri Lanka</a></p><p></p><p>Overshoot, energy, and food:</p><p></p><p>Historic Overshoot, R. Weyler, <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/historic-human-overshoot/blog/38778/" target="_blank">Deep Green</a></p><p></p><p>Alfred J.Lotka, "<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1085052/pdf/pnas01891-0031.pdf">Contribution to the energetics of evolution</a>"; Proc Natl Acad Sci, 8, May, 1922</p><p></p><p>Energy content of food: Food and Agriculture Organization.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/y5022e/y5022e04.htm" target="_blank">UN</a></p><p></p><p>Food energy use increase,&nbsp;P. Canning, et. al: <a href="http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/136418/err94_1_.pdf" target="_blank">US Dept. of Agri.</a></p><p></p><p>Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy: Pimentel, D., Giampietro, M. <a href="http://www.dieoff.com/page40.htm" target="_blank">Carrying Capacity Network</a>, 1994.</p><p></p><p>Human appropriation of photosynthesis, Vitousek, P.M. et al. <a href="http://www.science.duq.edu/esm/unit2-3" target="_blank">Bioscience </a>, 1986.</p><p></p><p>Constraints on the Expansion of Global Food Supply, Kindell, Pimentel, Ambio, 1994. <a href="http://dieoff.org/page36.htm" target="_blank">Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences</a>.</p><p></p><p>"Eating Fossil Fuels," Dale A. Pfeiffer, <a href="https://www.organicconsumers.org/old_articles/corp/fossil-fuels.php" target="_blank">Wilderness Publications</a>, 2003</p><p></p><p>Human energy use: <a href="http://www.ejolt.org/2012/12/human-energy-use-endosomatic-exosomatic/" target="_blank">EJOLT,</a> Environmental Justice orgs.</p><p></p><p>Diet for a Small Planet, Lappé, Frances&nbsp;Moore, 1971. <a href="http://smallplanet.org/books/diet-small-planet" target="_blank">Small Planet Inst.</a></p><p></p><p>Energy and Population, Paul J. Werbos, <a href="http://www.dieoff.com/page63.htm" target="_blank">dieoff.com</a></p><p></p><p>Impact of Population Growth on Food Supplies and Environment, Pimentel et al., <a href="http://www.dieoff.com/page57.htm" target="_blank">Cornell University</a></p><p></p><p>World Energy Consumption, Gail Tverberg, <a href="https://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/03/12/world-energy-consumption-since-1820-in-charts/" target="_blank">Our Finite World</a></p><p></p><p>US Food System, <a href="http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS01-06.pdf" target="_blank">Univ. of Michigan</a></p><p></p><p>Fertilzer energy use, <a href="http://www.tfi.org" target="_blank">Fertilizer Institute</a></p>Tue, 12 Jul 2016 23:23:00 Zclimate changenuclearRex Weyler0000dd21-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/the-tesla-dream/blog/56609/The Tesla dream<p>How much will electric vehicles slow carbon emissions?</p><p></p><p>Each passing month breaks modern temperature records, citizens perish in 51°C heat in India, unseasonal fires rage in the Canadian tar sands, methane escapes from arctic permafrost, Earth approaches the +1.5°C Paris Accord "goal," and hoping to stop at +2°C appears increasingly naive.</p><p></p><p>As we observe these trends, we feel an urgent desire for solutions to global warming unleashed by human CO2 emissions. Automobile companies have finally adopted the electric vehicle (EV), led by Tesla Motors and founder Elon Musk, cult hero for technology-inspired optimism.</p><p></p><p><img title="A parking assistant working outside in Beijing's toxic air pollution, 30 Nov, 2015, © Yat Yin / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/127052_220412.jpg" alt="A parking assistant working outside in Beijing's toxic air pollution, 30 Nov, 2015, © Yat Yin / Greenpeace" /></p><p></p><p>As serious ecologists, we may reasonably ask: Will EVs slow carbon emissions, and by how much? A genuine answer requires rigorous investigation, calculation and analysis. The general public may be forgiven for avoiding any such analysis, but as ecologists, we are obliged to know what we're talking about. Good scientists observe the principle to "beware congenial conclusions."</p><p></p><p>As we investigate this analysis, we will find that genuine solutions exist, although they may not be the easy solutions we hope for.</p><p></p><h3>Embodied energy</h3><p></p><p>To know if electric vehicles will save carbon emissions, and how significantly, we must first understand "embodied energy." Every product sold – a cup of coffee, solar panel or automobile – requires energy to produce and deliver. This embodied energy includes mining, shipping and processing raw materials, and assembly and shipping of the product. Most of this energy comes from hydrocarbon fuels. There are no copper mines, steel mills or container ships run on windmills or solar panels.</p><p></p><p>Typically, the embodied energy of any vehicle accounts for 20 to 40 percent of its lifetime emissions. Hybrids and electric vehicles tend toward the high end of this range because they are complex machines. Electric trains, per passenger-kilometer, carry significantly less embodied energy, and a steel frame bicycle, of course, carries orders of magnitude less.</p><p></p><p>A kilogram of steel produces about 15 kilograms of CO2 in the atmosphere. A kilogram of plastics, rubber, or copper produces three times the emissions, about 40 to 50 kilograms of CO2. An electric-powered Tesla Model S, at about 2240 kilograms of steel, plastics, metals and rubber, produces the CO2 equivalent of about 60,000 kilometers of driving a conventional vehicle – three to four years of typical driving and fossil fuel burning – before it is purchased. That represents the embodied energy and embodied carbon emissions.</p><p></p><h3>Lithium race</h3><p></p><p>The electric car industry requires mining for nickel, bauxite, copper, rare earth metals, lithium, graphite, cobalt, polymers, adhesives, metallic coatings, paint and lubricants. Mining runs on hydrocarbons; these materials carry a large embodied CO2 cost and leave a trail of pollution.</p><p></p><p>Tesla's current planned production will require some 30,000 tonnes of graphite per year for the batteries alone, requiring six new graphite mines somewhere on Earth. EVs need cobalt, and the leading supplier of cobalt is war-torn Congo, where the mining industry has a legacy of carbon emissions, pollution, habitat destruction and civil rights violations. Tesla's lithium demand for batteries will require 25,000 tonnes a year, increasing global lithium mining by 50 percent, using water resources and typically leaving behind toxic chlorine sludge.</p><p></p><p>Lithium mining and water fraud inspired the green-washing villain in the 2008 James Bond film, Quantum Of Solace, in which a Bolivian community's wells go dry. In Chile and Bolivia, this story is shockingly real. The Aymara Indigenous People blame lithium miners for confiscating land and polluting water with chlorine. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1166387/In-search-Lithium-The-battle-3rd-element.html" target="_blank">Saul Villegas</a>, head of the lithium division in Comibol, Bolivia insists, "The previous imperialist model of exploitation of our natural resources will never be repeated in Bolivia." Villegas is attempting to limit lithium mining at a pace that avoids ecological and social disruption, but electric vehicle and mining corporations are applying pressure. "The prize is clearly in Bolivia," observes Oji Baba, from Mitsubishi. "If we want to be a force in the next wave of automobiles and the batteries that power them, we must be here."</p><p></p><p>Chile faces similar pressure. "Like any mining process," said Guillen Mo Gonzalez, leader of a Chilean lithium delegation, "it is invasive, it scars the landscape, it destroys the water table and pollutes the earth and the local wells. This isn't a green solution. It's not a solution at all."</p><p></p><p>At Stanford University, in 2010, physics student <a href="http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/" target="_blank">Eric Eason</a>, determined that known lithium reserves, some ten billion kilograms, could supply the batteries for about four billion electric vehicles. However, not all of this reserve is recoverable, and current production is used for phones, computers, camcorders, cameras, satellites, construction, pharmaceuticals, ceramics and glass. Since the demand for lithium is growing in all sectors, including Tesla's plans for car batteries and household battery units, we might assume a quarter of the world reserve, a massive mining and processing project, could supply perhaps one billion electric vehicles. This could replace the global vehicle fleet, but only once. Eason concluded that converting the world's fleet to electric vehicles ".. seems like an unsustainable prospect." Of course, there may be options that don't use lithium, but every industrial approach that increases resource consumption faces limits and carries the costs of carbon emissions, pollution, land use and social impact.</p><p></p><p>These challenges do not imply that there are no solutions to global warming, only that we must be rigorous in finding solutions that preserve human dignity and ecological integrity.</p><p></p><h3>The impact of electricity</h3><p></p><p>We know that over its lifetime, an all-electric vehicle can save some hydrocarbon fuel. However, we must account for all the costs. Electricity generation accounts for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. Most electricity (67 percent) is produced by coal and natural gas; 20 percent by nuclear, another&nbsp;<a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/nuclear-delusions/blog/35617/" target="_blank">carbon hog</a>; while renewables – hydroelectric dams, wind and solar – account for about 13 percent of electricity. We can make this renewable portion grow, but we must remember that even so-called "renewable" technologies have social and land-use impacts, and they carry an embodied carbon cost from mining, steel production, cement, manufacturing, shipping and decommissioning.</p><p></p><h3><img title="Charge Station for Electric Cars in Hamburg, Germany, 17 Feb, 2016, © Conny Boettger / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/127053_220414.jpg" alt="Charge Station for Electric Cars in Hamburg, Germany, 17 Feb, 2016, © Conny Boettger / Greenpeace" /></h3><p></p><p>According to the 2010 paper <a href="http://www.c2es.org/technology/overview/electricity" target="_blank">Energy Chain Analysis of Passenger Car</a>&nbsp;by Morten Simonsen and Hans Jakob Walnum, at the Western Norway Research Institute, "there is no substantial mitigation offered by alternative fuels and drivetrains" with the exception of purely electric vehicles powered by electricity from 100 percent low-carbon renewables. Morten and Walnum acknowledge that "electricity from 100 percent hydro-electric sources… is not currently applicable."</p><p></p><p>In some regions – Norway and western Canada, for example – hydropower makes up a large share of electricity generation, and in those regions, purely electric vehicles, over their lifetime, can save carbon emissions. However, there is more to the calculation. The Morten-Walnum study does not account for land use changes, water flow disruption, habitat destruction and the social impacts from hydroelectric dams.</p><p></p><p>In British Columbia, Western Canada, where I live, we feel fortunate to have a plentiful supply of hydroelectric power, producing considerably less carbon emissions than coal-fired electric plants. However, we also experience the impact of dams on local rivers, salmon runs, agricultural land, wilderness and rural communities.</p><p></p><p>A decade ago, some environmental groups in western Canada supported "micro-hydro" plants on wild rivers, describing these projects as "green power" necessary to supply electricity to fuel the conversion to electric vehicles. However, the micro-hydro plants, promoted by corporate interests, involved a privatisation scheme, giving wild public rivers to private corporations. The companies ripped up rivers to lay pipes through sensitive watersheds, destroyed fish habitat, strung power lines through pristine forests and negotiated purchase guarantees from the province that undermined public hydroelectricity. Grassroots citizens and Indigenous nations fought to protect some of these rivers, often finding themselves pitted against well-meaning, well-funded, albeit under-researched, environmental groups.</p><p></p><p>Some of these projects were stopped by grassroots action, but today, in the northeast corner of British Columbia, the provincial and federal governments have proposed a large dam in the Peace River Valley, again selling this as "green energy." Indigenous communities live, hunt, fish and farm in this valley, where the 60 meter high dam would flood 100 kilometers of river, wildlife corridors, agricultural land, people's homes and old growth boreal forests that serve as carbon sinks.</p><p></p><h3>Genuine solutions</h3><p></p><p>With global population growing at about 1.1 percent per year, resource consumption, waste and land use impacts are growing at about 3.5 percent per year, doubling every 20 years. That growth swallows up most of our ecological progress. Over a generation, for example, we gain 30 percent efficiency in building energy use, but triple the floor space we need to heat, cool and light.</p><p></p><p>Since 1946, the <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=99" target="_blank">world's vehicle fleet</a> has grown by 4.2 percent per year, doubling every 16.5 years. At that rate, we'll be looking for steel, plastic and lithium for two billion vehicles by 2032 and for four billion vehicles by 2050. Electric vehicles now comprise one 20th of one percent of that fleet, but even if we could change that to 75 percent by 2050, we would deplete the world's lithium supply and still have a billion gasoline vehicles, the same number we have today.</p><p></p><p>So, what are the genuine solutions? We have been approaching "sustainability" backwards, starting with the high-consumption industrial lifestyles and trying to figure out how to make the necessary plunder "sustainable." We need to start with the answer and work back, look at what Earth's systems can supply, then fashion a human lifestyle that preserves Earth's productive ecosystems. Sailing boats, neighbourhood gardens, public transport and small scale animal husbandry may fit into that genuinely sustainable scenario, but electric cars and windmills for eight, ten, or 12 billion people do not.</p><p></p><p>A few years ago, Sandy Di Felice of Toyota Canada promoted the new, luxurious Priuses, saying proudly that "Customers who embrace the products don't want a radical change to their lifestyle." But a radical change in wealthy lifestyles is exactly what we need.</p><p></p><p>We will need to change our growth economics to an ecological economics. We will need to stabilise human population and support population decline over time (primarily through universal women's rights and available contraception).</p><p></p><p>Genuine transportation solutions should avoid individual vehicles and focus on light-rail, electric public transport, bicycles and walkable neighbourhoods.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em><em>&nbsp;<span>&nbsp;The opinions here are his own.&nbsp;</span></em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Sources and links:</p><p></p><p>"There is no such thing as a truly green car": <a href="http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1091577_tesla-gigafactory-seeks-north-american-raw-materials-to-cut-pollution" target="_blank">Green Car Reports</a></p><p></p><p>Tesla battery plans require 6 new graphite mines: <a href="http://www.mining.com/web/tesla-motors-gigafactory-to-revolutionise-critical-mineral-demand/" target="_blank">mining.com</a></p><p></p><p>Energy Chain Analysis of Passenger Car: <a href="http://www.c2es.org/technology/overview/electricity" target="_blank">M. Simonsen, H. J. Walnum</a></p><p></p><p><span class="s4">"World Lithium Supply," Stanford, 2010: <a href="http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/" target="_blank">Eric Eason</a></span></p><p></p><p>In search of Lithium: Dan McDougall, 2009,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1166387/In-search-Lithium-The-battle-3rd-element.html" target="_blank">Mail Online</a></p><p></p><p>Do hybrids save energy and carbon? <a href="http://gadgetopia.com/post/5191" target="_blank">http://gadgetopia.com/post/5191</a></p><p></p><p>Growth of vehicles, doubling every 16.5 years: (<a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=99" target="_blank">IPPC</a>)</p><p></p><p>India: doubling in 10 years, 7% / yr. (<a href="http://www.umich.edu/~csfound/545/1994/wallace/monog20.html" target="_blank">Inst. of Mathematical Geography</a>)<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></p><p></p><p>China: doubling in 5 years, 14% / yr. (<a href="http://sustainabletransport.org/parking-in-chinese-cities-from-congestion-challenge-to-sustainable-transport-solution/" target="_blank">Sustainable transport</a>)<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></p><p></p><p>Electric cars, 1/20 of 1% of world fleet (<a href="http://electriccarsreport.com/2015/03/global-electric-car-market-reaches-740000-cars/" target="_blank">electric cars report</a>)</p><p></p><p>1.3 billion vehicles, 2015... expect 2 billion by 2035 (<a href="http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1093560_1-2-billion-vehicles-on-worlds-roads-now-2-billion-by-2035-report" target="_blank">green car reports</a>)</p><p></p><p>Bicycles and electric bikes, embodied energy: <a href="http://www.ibiketo.ca/blog/2009/07/13/embodied-energy-our-vehicles" target="_blank">I bike Toronto</a></p><p></p><p>Electric battery recycling: <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lithium-ion-batteries-hybrid-electric-vehicle-recycling/" target="_blank">Scientific American</a></p><p></p><p>Hydro dams and species extinctions: <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160530101121.htm" target="_blank">Science Daily</a></p><p></p><p>Ecological cost of hydro dams: <a href="https://www.wildernesscommittee.org/sitec" target="_blank">Wilderness Committee</a></p>Fri, 03 Jun 2016 20:50:30 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/the-tesla-dream/blog/56609/#comments-holderclimate changeRex Weyler0000dc2a-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/ecological-bankruptcy/blog/56362/Ecological bankruptcy<p>There may not be a single large-scale industry or multi-national corporation on Earth that is genuinely profitable if they had to account for their ecological impact. A recent UN-supported report shows that the world's 3,000 largest publicly-traded companies alone caused US$2.15 trillion (€2 trillion) of environmental damage in 2008, that the total cost is much higher, and that companies and communities downstream in the global supply chain are at risk from the environmental impacts.</p><p></p><p>For centuries, businesses have cheated on this accounting by calling ecological impacts "externalities," presumably not effecting the business. Thus, air and water pollution, toxins in the environment, or eradicated species were deemed "external" and not worth accounting for.</p><p></p><p>We now know that these ecological costs are not "external," and that if businesses were obliged to account for ecological liabilities, almost no business on Earth would be profitable without dramatically raising prices for consumers.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Earth, © NASA" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/126035_218012.jpg" alt="Earth, © NASA" /></em></p><p></p><h3>Industrial disasters</h3><p></p><p>Part of these costs are the almost daily industrial disasters, toxic leaks, spills, waste dumping, and mechanical breakdowns. In certain industrial areas of China, for example, virtually every inhabitant of "cancer villages" suffers from cancer, birth defects, or other diseases from toxic waste.</p><p></p><p>For four decades, prior to the 1960s, the Chisso Chemical Corporation in Minimata, Japan dumped mercury into the bay, killing 1,784 people and leaving over 10,000 people suffering birth defects and disabilities. During that same era, Hooker Chemical Company in the US dumped dioxins on land that they sold to the School Board, causing birth defects, miscarriages, and a general health disaster zone.</p><p></p><p>In 1984, in Bhopal, India, Union Carbide Chemical Company leaked lethal methyl-isocyanate gas, killing some 8,000 people within weeks. Industrial disasters include Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy ("mad cow disease,") from overcrowded feed lots in the UK; the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion; Exxon Valdez and other massive oil spills, the 1996 Marcopper Mining toxic dump in Calancan Bay, Philippines, that killed virtually all life in the Boac River system; the Baia Mare cyanide spill into the Someş River, killing fish in the Tisza and Danube rivers from Hungary to Yugoslavia; the 2011, Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown; and the ongoing disaster of the Canadian Tar Sands, poisoning indigenous communities, who have lived in the region for centuries. The unpaid costs of modern industry include the <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/honey-bee-collapse-a-lesson-in-ecology/blog/45357/" target="_blank">honey bee collapse</a> that effects global pollination, the massive health effects of <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/endocrine-distuptors/blog/54622/" target="_blank">endocrine disrupting chemicals</a> from the hydrocarbon chemical industry, and of course, global warming that will impact humanity and all of nature into the future.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Noori Bi, Rajgarh Colony, Bhopal 2002 Noori Bi is a &quot;gas widow&quot; who lost her family in the first few days of the tragedy. 1 Jan, 2002 © Greenpeace / Raghu Rai" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/126039_218020.jpg" alt="Noori Bi, Rajgarh Colony, Bhopal 2002 Noori Bi is a &quot;gas widow&quot; who lost her family in the first few days of the tragedy. 1 Jan, 2002 © Greenpeace / Raghu Rai" /> Bhopal victim, Noori Bi, who lost home and family.&nbsp;© Greenpeace / Raghu Rai</em></p><p></p><p>These incidents have been dramatic, and the costs obvious, but, we now know that almost every enterprise in the modern, globalised economy is leaving behind an unpaid ecological cost.</p><p></p><h3>Natural Capital At Risk</h3><p></p><p>Three years ago, the United Nations Environment Programme, TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity), the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and Trucost consulting firm produced the <a href="http://www.trucost.com/_uploads/publishedResearch/TEEB%20Final%20Report%20-%20web%20SPv2.pdf" target="_blank">Natural Capital at Risk Report</a>, showing that the world's greatest ecological impacts are costing the global economy about US$4.7 trillion (€4.1 trillion) per year in health costs, social costs, lost ecosystem services, and pollution.</p><p></p><p>The research measured industrial impact on natural capital and suggested ways that companies could internalise these costs. The report concludes that many business activities do not generate sufficient profit to cover the costs of their own natural resource use, pollution, and destructive impact costs.</p><p></p><p>Even so, the report limits impact to the monetary value on resource depletion and the loss of ecosystem services, but does not necessarily consider the impact on other species or the systemic impacts on the ecosystem itself. Still, the report shows that most international business sectors are not profitable if they had to pay these costs.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Philippine Purse Seine Fishing Operation. © Alex Hofford / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/126057_218062.jpg" alt="Philippine Purse Seine Fishing Operation. © Alex Hofford / Greenpeace" /> Ocean acidification, overfishing, and dead zones have undermined the fishing economy.&nbsp;© Alex Hofford / Greenpeace</em></p><p></p><p>The study investigated agriculture, forestry, fisheries, mining, utilities, and the production of hydrocarbons, cement, steel, paper, and petrochemicals. Each sector was further defined by region and by key environmental indicators. The data revealed region-sectors with high impacts, none of which generate sufficient profit to pay their environmental debts. In total, they represent an unpaid cost to natural capital equal to US$7.3 trillion (€6.2 trillion) per year, 13% of global economic output in 2009.</p><p></p><p>We will not be surprised by the most common environmental impacts: greenhouse gas emissions (38% of total), water use (25%), land use (24%), air pollution (7%), land and water pollution (5%) and waste (1%).</p><p></p><p>However, we might be surprised by the most ecologically destructive sectors. Hydrocarbon production appears obvious to ecologists, but food production for 7.4 billion humans is equally destructive. Cattle, wheat, and rice production all produce massive unpaid ecological impact.</p><p></p><p>Highest impact region-sectors (Tables 1, 2 in the report):</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; 1. Coal power generation, East Asia, N. America</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; 2. Cattle ranching, South America, S. Asia</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; 3. Iron, steel mills, E. Asia</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; 4. Wheat farming, Southern Asia</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; 5. Coal power generation, N. America</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; 6. Rice farming, S. Asia</p><p></p><p>The largest land use impacts come from agriculture and cattle ranching, in which high value, pristine ecosystems that supply the biosphere with services, are converted to single-purpose human food production. Modern agriculture depends heavily on hydrocarbons, fertilisers, and pesticides. These contribute to global warming, nutrient cycle disruption, and ecosystem toxicity, while soils are left depleted and polluted.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Dried up wheat field with damages of erosion near Doebeln, in Saxony, Germany. © Martin Jehnichen / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/126040_218022.jpg" alt="Dried up wheat field with damages of erosion near Doebeln, in Saxony, Germany. © Martin Jehnichen / Greenpeace" /> Depleted soils, toxins, and disruption of nutrient cycles reduce crop yields.&nbsp;© Martin Jehnichen / Greenpeace</em></p><p></p><p>Agriculture, cattle raising, and industry also deplete water resources. Water use from surface or groundwater is rarely paid for, and water is further depleted by distribution losses. Rivers, lakes, and aquifers have been depleted world wide.</p><p></p><p>As we know, greenhouse gas emissions represent a massive impact on every ecosystem on Earth, and the report estimates that this damage already costs our global economies US$2.7 trillion (€2.5 trillion) annually. We also know the sources of these emissions: The production of thermal power, steel, and cement. Coal power is particularly destructive, but the report points out that every consumer item purchased includes an embedded and unpaid carbon cost. There is, for example, a considerable carbon cost to supply and treat water. Livestock methane emissions also prove significant.</p><p></p><p>The climate change costs include reduced crop yields, flooding, disease, ocean acidification, and biodiversity loss. According to the 2006 UK Stern report, adjusted for inflation, the social cost of global warming is now over US$100 per metric ton of CO2.</p><p></p><p>Industrial pollution of the air, land, and water, add another annual $800 billion in environmental and human health costs from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates, and ocean dead zones that reduce biodiversity and undermine fisheries.</p><p></p><h3>Consumption and Natural Asset Costs</h3><p></p><p>Environmental costs are passed through supply chains to everything that we consume. Every item one buys leaves behind unpaid environmental costs. This is why reducing consumption is part of every genuine plan for sustainability.</p><p></p><p>The report shows that consumers in rich nations purchase goods and services from developing nations that endure the highest impacts of these ecological costs, and food processing produces some of the highest impacts along the supply chain, as this table shows:</p><p></p><p>Highest supply chain impacts, (Table 3 in Trucost report)</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; 1. Soybean, oilseed processing</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; 2. Animal slaughter, processing</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; 3. Poultry processing</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; 4. Corn milling</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; 5. Beet sugar manufacture</p><p></p><p>Consumers in rich nations enjoy "low" food costs only because, all along the supply chain, companies are not paying the full costs of production, leaving the environmental costs behind in poorer nations.</p><p></p><p>The report recommended that governments identify these natural capital costs and create policies that help businesses internalise them. They also warn governments and businesses to prepare for a resource-constrained world, in which all nations will face increasingly scarce natural capital, and environmental costs associated with harvesting those resources. Although often renewable, all resources are finite, and their consumption creates ecological costs.</p><p></p><p>According to a Munich Re insurance risk report, the recent US drought, for example, aggravated by global warming, led to corn and soybean crop losses of over $20 billion. In 2012, a two-day power outage in India was caused in part by drought which forced farmers to pump water for irrigation. The Trucost/UN report estimates an increased annual world cost to grain and soybean consumers of over $50 billion, plus secondary social impacts.</p><p></p><p>The alleged "profits" of modern industrial capitalism appear now as an illusion, conjured up by avoiding fundamental accounting principles. For centuries, humanity spent the assets, Earth's bounty, and called it income. The industrial model of human enterprise may now be ecologically bankrupt. Fortunately, we possess a rich history of ecological economists – Herman Daly, Hazel Henderson, John Stuart Mill, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Donella Meadows, Mark Anielski, and many others (see some links below) – who have already described the future economic system that recognises and pays its ecological costs.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><h3>Ecological Economics links:</h3><p></p><p><img title="Daly, Ecological economics. © 2006 integral ventures, LLC. All Rights Reserved" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/126037_218016.jpg" alt="Daly, Ecological economics. © 2006 integral ventures, LLC. All Rights Reserved" /></p><p></p><p>John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), proposed a <a href="http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/156248/" target="_blank">"stationary state"</a> economy: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill" target="_blank">J.S. Mill</a>.</p><p></p><p>Thomas Malthus: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Principle-Population-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199540454/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1305664390&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank">An Essay on the Principle of Population</a>, 1798; often dismissed but correct about ecological limits. <a href="http://www.mnforsustain.org/catton_w_if_malthus_was_so_wrong_why_trouble.htm" target="_blank">If Malthus Was So Wrong, Why Is Our World In Trouble?</a> William Catton, 1998; <a href="http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0803/article_729.shtml" target="_blank">Malthus marginalized</a>, Albert A. Bartlett, 1998.</p><p></p><p>Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Entropy-Law-Economic-Process/dp/1583486003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1305675699&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank">The Entropy Law and the Economic Process</a>, (1971)</p><p></p><p>Frederick Soddy: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Virtual-Debt-Frederick-Soddy/dp/0317532189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1305663762&amp;sr=1-1http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Virtual-Debt-Frederick-Soddy/dp/0317532189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1305663762&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank">Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt</a> (1926)</p><p></p><p>Donella Meadows, et. al., <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/0451057678/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1305664195&amp;sr=1-2" target="_blank">Limits to Growth</a> (D. H. Meadows, D. L. Meadows, J. Randers, W. Behrens, 1972; New American Library, 1977)</p><p></p><p>Herman Daly, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Steady-State-Economics-Second-New-Essays/dp/155963071X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1305664097&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank">Steady-State Economics</a> (1977, 1991); Essay by Daly: <a href="http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/152885/" target="_blank">From a Failed Growth Economy to a Steady-State Economy</a></p><p></p><p>Mark Anielski: <a href="http://www.genuinewealth.net/" target="_blank">Genuine Wealth</a>&nbsp;website and book <a href="http://dev.newsociety.com/bookid/3965" target="_blank">The Economics of Happiness</a>.</p><p></p><p>Hazel Henderson, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Paradigms-Progress-Hazel-Henderson/dp/1881052745" target="_blank">Paradigms in Progress</a>, (1995)</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/users/ida" target="_blank">Solutions magazine</a>, Ida Kubiszewski, editor, forum for biophysical economics.</p><p></p><p>Gail Tverberg: <a href="https://ourfiniteworld.com/author/gailtheactuary/" target="_blank">Our Finite World</a></p><p></p><p>Degrowth economics, Serge Latouche, <a href="http://mondediplo.com/2004/11/14latouche" target="_blank">Le Monde diplomatique</a></p>Wed, 04 May 2016 12:00:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/ecological-bankruptcy/blog/56362/#comments-holderagricultureclimate changeoceansother issuestoxicsRex Weyler0000db4c-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/war-and-money/blog/56140/War and Money<p style="text-align: center;">"Who is doing this? Who is killing us? This great evil. How did it steal into the world?<br />We were a family. How did it break up and come apart?"<br />– Private Witt's thoughts, The Thin Red Line, by Terrence Malick.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Records from the first century portray Jewish peasants – men, women, and children – marching on the governor in Caesarea, protesting atrocities of the Roman army, prostrating on the ground, and offering their lives <em>en masse</em>. Since the dawn of warfare, there have been peace movements. World War I, a century ago, was supposed to be "The war to end war," but the world has since remained in the grip of almost perpetual warfare. In 1971, inspired by the Quakers, Greenpeace's first campaign confronted nuclear weapons testing in Alaska, but we certainly cannot claim to have abolished militarism.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Gaza, mother and son, Ezz Zanoun APA images" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/125183_216029.jpg" alt="Mother and son, bombed out home in Palestine, Ezz Zanoun, APA images" />Mother and son, bombed out home in Palestine, Ezz Zanoun, APA images</em></p><p></p><p>In Europe and Asia, over 100 million people perished in World War II, but the war never actually ended. The American and European victors partitioned the oil-rich Middle East, followed by continual war to this day. India broke apart into India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and escalated to war in 1967. The US, France, Russia, and China fought over Korea and Vietnam, leading to war that spilled into Cambodia and Laos, resulting in some ten million deaths. The Korean War has not ceased, and the nation remains divided, on constant military alert.</p><p></p><p>Indigenous people fought colonizers throughout history, and even after the world wars, in the 1950s, African communities fought liberation wars against European and American armies in Guinea, Mozambique, Senegal, Angola, Zambia, Zaire, South Africa, Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda, and the Congo. War has raged in Iraq and Iran, Cyprus, Afghanistan, Central and South America, Chechnya, Kosovo, and now in North Africa, Syria, and Ukraine. Most often, the smaller wars erupt as surrogate wars among the superpowers: The US and NATO, Russia, and China.</p><p></p><p>The horrors of war in the industrial era feel almost unspeakable: The Nazi holocaust in Germany, the rape of Nanjing, the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the disappeared in Argentina and Guatemala, indigenous cultures devastated, starvation, homelessness, and floods of refugees.</p><p></p><h3>The Thucydides Trap</h3><p></p><p>In the fourth century BC, Sparta, the dominant Greek power, feared the rise of Athens. In his book, The Peloponnesian War, Greek historian Thucydides, pointed out that Sparta's actions to restrain Athens only increased Athenian fear, and the Athenian response increased Spartan fear. This cycle of hostility among competing superpowers became known to historians as the "Thucydides Trap," mutual fear escalating to war.</p><p></p><p>In the 1950s, British anthropologist and ecologist Gregory Bateson refined the Thucydides trap, which he called "schismogenesis," cycles of mutual fear and dysfunction. Bateson noticed in his work with the Iatmul people of New Guinea that rivalries could escalate, but that a ceremony called "Naven" – involving transvestism and comic theatre – would diffuse conflict and restore peace. He wondered if this lesson could be applied to modern nation-states. Diplomatic solutions depend on breaking the cycle of hostile feedback loops. Bateson advised western nations with some positive effect during the Russian-American nuclear arms race.</p><p></p><p>Nevertheless, today, the major imperial powers – the US, EU, China, and Russia – appear locked in the divisive, dysfunctional cycle of fear that Thucydides and Bateson described, although modern warfare has acquired some new twists. Today, smaller nations and rebel groups fight surrogate battles on behalf of imperial patrons. Modern warfare is also fought with computers, witnessed in cyber-attacks among Iran, the US, Russia, and China. War has always been about greed, acquiring land or resources, but modern warfare also appears as a currency conflict, fought for control of the entire global economy.</p><p></p><p>We can witness this financial warfare in the relationship between the US and China, the worlds two largest militaries. Both nations maintain fragile financial systems that show signs of impending collapse, propped up with fiat currencies, banking fraud, and increasingly tenuous monetary schemes.</p><p></p><p>Since the end of World War II, the US has been the dominant economic empire. The 1944 Breton Woods Conference hosted by the US, with 43 invited allies, established the US dollar as the global trade reserve currency, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and currency exchange rates based on gold. Since then, all large, international trade – in oil, gold, critical resources, and currencies – has been conducted in US dollars, forcing all participating nations to hold dollars, thus inflating the US dollar value.</p><p></p><p>In 1971, the US abandoned the gold standard, which allowed the bankers to create US currency out of thin air, further devaluing the dollar. These schemes have given the US unfair economic advantage over all other nations, but those nations are fighting back.</p><p></p><h3>The currency war</h3><p></p><p>The modern currency wars appear as a classic Thucydides trap. The US, fearing the rise of other nations, has used their economic advantage to <a href="https://www.sovereignman.com/podcast/this-is-how-world-war-iii-starts-it-will-be-financial-18939/" target="_blank">restrict trade,</a>&nbsp;destroy competing institutions, and overthrow weak nations. Other nations responded in 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, the first BRIC meeting, when Brazil, Russia, India and China discussed trade among themselves without the US dollar.</p><p></p><p>China organized currency swaps, free of US dollars, among the BRIC nations, with the Asian Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and later with South Africa, Iran, Pakistan, and Mongolia. China also established an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to rival the IMF and World Bank. "The AIIB," said China's Finance Minister Lou Jiwei, with diplomatic understatement, "is a milestone in the reform of global economic governance system."</p><p></p><p>The US and Japan declined to join the Asian bank, but some G8 members – France, Germany, Britain, Italy, and Russia – joined, along with Australia, India, South Korea, Indonesia, and Brazil. The member nations are now proposing a "basket of currencies" to replace the US dollar as the global reserve currency.</p><p></p><p>Since these economic moves threatened the US monopoly, the escalation of fear was underway. The US retaliated by claiming regulatory jurisdiction over the Bank of China because it had a branch in New York. The US coerced allies to join sanctions against Russia and Iran, and they blacklisted one of China's largest telecom companies, ZTE.</p><p></p><p>China responded by expanding its global pay network, UnionPay, competing with western banks, Maestro, Visa, and Mastercard. Then, in 2015, China began dumping billions in US Treasure bonds. China knows that the US dollar is artificially over-valued, and expects that US assets will eventually decline in value. The US debt has reached over $19 trillion dollars, the nation runs a $1 trillion annual deficit, and faces over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities. The US debt is growing faster than its economy, and although this enriches western bankers, the US is technically bankrupt, buttressed by the requirement that other nations hold their inflated currency. China, however, cannot dump all their US Treasury debt onto the world market at once without crashing the dollar too fast, and losing value themselves, so they are moving slowly.</p><p></p><p>However, the Asian Infrastructure bank, non-Dollar/Euro international bank machines, and the non-dollar trade in oil, disrupts the US petro-dollar monopoly. This makes the US bankers and elite even more nervous, and this currency war has spilled over into real war, in which people die, nations collapse, resources are squandered, and Earth's fragile ecosystems suffer.</p><p></p><h3>The shooting war</h3><p></p><p>The US invaded Iraq in 2003, based on the deceit about "weapons of mass destruction." Once this pretence proved false, people wondered about the real reason. The obvious answer is "oil," which is true, but not that simple. In looking for the cause of war, ask: "Who benefits?"</p><p></p><p>The underlying reason for the US invasion of Iraq appears now to be a response to the threats against their petro-dollar monopoly. In the 1990s, OPEC, Russia, Iran, and Iraq, began negotiating future oil contracts in Euros and Roubles. In 2003, the <a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9698.htm">Financial Times</a> reported, "Saddam Hussein in 2000 insisted Iraq's oil be sold for Euros." The ability to buy and sell oil in Euros, Roubles, or Yuan would reduce worldwide demand for US dollars, expose the inflated dollar, and begin the inevitable decline of value in US assets. US bankers and elite investors wanted to avoid this.</p><p></p><p>After the Iraq invasion, the western bankers and oil companies got what they wanted, for a while. They overturned the Iraq/Russia oil deal in Euros and retained their petro-dollar monopoly. The western banks got to finance another $2 trillion in war debt, the weapons and engineering companies – Lockheed, Boeing, Halliburton – got their fat multi-billion, no-bid contracts, and the private war-making outfits – Blackwater, Xe, Unity Resources, CACI International, L-3 Services – got fat contracts for doing the dirty work of killing civilians and torturing prisoners.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Citizen petitions for peace, Iraq War, Peter Nicholls, Times UK" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/125184_216031.jpg" alt="Iraq war, Peter Nicholls, Times UK" />Citizen petitions for peace, Iraq War, Peter Nicholls, Times UK</em></p><p></p><p>Hundreds of thousands died, communities collapsed, children starved, trillions in resources were squandered, while the disintegration of Iraq and US financing of Syrian rebels has given us the charming spectacle of ISIS. Nevertheless, the corporations and banks profited, and the US dollar clung to its reserve monopoly.</p><p></p><p>The US, acting out the cycle of fear as Sparta did 2,400 years ago, now has 1,000 military bases around the world. Counting the off-book expenses, they spend some trillion-dollars annually on warfare to maintain their tenuous power.</p><p></p><p>Creating peace has always been left to the people. Here are some organizations that are helping:</p><p></p><p>Society of Friends, the "Quakers," who inspired the early Greenpeace campaigns: <a href="http://www.quaker.org/">quaker.org</a></p><p></p><p>The Fellowship of Reconciliation, Interfaith Peace Organization in the US: <a href="http://www.forusa.org">forusa.org</a></p><p></p><p>Amnesty International, peace and human rights: <a href="http://amnesty.org/">amnesty.org</a></p><p></p><p>Doctors without Borders: <a href="http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/">doctorswithoutborders.org</a></p><p></p><p>Control Arms Campaign, to diminish the arms trade. <a href="http://www.controlarms.org/en">controlarms.org</a></p><p></p><p>African Great Lakes Initiative: <a href="http://aglifpt.org">aglifpt.org</a>&nbsp;with a great film about their Rwanda Healing Project.</p><p></p><p>Alternatives to Violence, peace and violence-response training: <a href="https://avp.international" target="_blank">avp.international</a><a href="http://avpinternational.org/"><br /></a></p><p></p><p>Halo Trust, to eliminate land mines: <a href="http://www.halotrust.org">halotrust.org</a></p><p></p><p>Human Rights Watch: <a href="http://www.hrw.org">hrw.org</a></p><p></p><p>Seeds of Peace, teaching conflict resolution: <a href="http://www.seedsofpeace.org">seedsofpeace.org</a></p><p></p><p>Orgnaization for World Peace: <a href="http://theowp.org/">theowp.org</a></p><p></p><p>Millennium People's Assembly, advocating a permanent UN Global People's Assembly: <a href="http://www.ourvoices.org">ourvoices.org</a></p><p></p><p>Peace Boat, in Japan: <a href="http://www.peaceboat.org/english/">peaceboat.org</a></p><p></p><p>See also, <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/military-spending-real-cost-health-education-climate/blog/56061/" target="_blank">Military spending is going up. Don't let it take us down</a>&nbsp;by Jen Maman.</p><p></p><p>And please add your local peace groups in the comment section below. Thank you.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/124979_215517.jpg" alt="Peace Sign on Ship, Greenpeace" /></p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p>Fri, 15 Apr 2016 18:40:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/war-and-money/blog/56140/#comments-holderother issuesRex Weyler0000d98b-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/how-does-social-change-happen/blog/55691/How does social change happen?<p style="text-align: center;">"We live mythically and integrally"<br />— Marshall McLuhan</p><p></p><p>Changing the world remains a complex challenge, with no infallible formula for success. Nevertheless, we possess the record of those who have tried, from the 3000-year-old Taoist <em>I Ching</em>, to Karl Marx's <em>Das Kapital</em>, Brigitte Berger's 1971 <em>Societies in Change</em>, and recently, <em>The 8 Laws of Change </em>by Stephan Schwartz in the US.</p><p></p><p>The <em>I Ching</em> describes Taoist principles of following nature's patterns in one's pursuit of social influence. The value of patience as well as perseverance, and the warning to "adapt to the times but remain firm in your direction," provide timeless wisdom for citizens.</p><p></p><p>Some early Greenpeace activists were influenced by the <em>I Ching</em>, and more directly by the Quakers, Mahatma Gandhi, <a href="http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/contemporary-04.html" target="_blank">Chipko</a> in India (the original tree-huggers), and American activist Saul Alinsky. The Quakers had confronted repression with pacifist moral dignity and sailed ships into nuclear test zones, inspiring the first iconic Greenpeace action.</p><p></p><p>Gandhi borrowed Quaker tactics in his campaign to liberate India from British colonization. Gandhi's march to the sea represents quintessential social activism: inspiring thousands to participate in a meaningful commitment, exposing an oppressors' violence, winning the battle for moral authority, and — most importantly — reframing the status quo story, not with words, but with symbolic, non-violent action.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Mahatma Gandhi spinning yarn on a charkha." src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/123180_211224.jpg" alt="Mahatma Gandhi spinning yarn on a charkha." />Mahatma Gandhi spinning yarn on a charkha.</em></p><p></p><p>As a young antiwar activist in the 1960s, I met older radical Ira Sandperl at the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence, in California, which he had founded with pacifist folksinger Joan Baez. One evening, Sandperl asked me, "Do you want to know the secret to organizing?"</p><p></p><p>"Yes," I replied.</p><p></p><p>"Be organized," he said.</p><p></p><p>Sandperl talked about attention to details, articulating clear goals, and organizing the work that must be done to achieve those goals. Never turn down a volunteer, he would advise. The work to do is practically infinite, so if a movement does not have a job for someone who wants to contribute, the alleged leaders are not performing their job as organizers.</p><p></p><p>The Quakers and Gandhi practiced a creative non-violence that included absolute respect for one's adversary, to the point of not even insulting them. Saul Alinksy, whose <a href="https://archive.org/stream/RulesForRadicals/RulesForRadicals_djvu.txt" target="_blank">Rules for Radicals</a> influenced Greenpeace tactics, took a somewhat different view. "Ridicule," he believed is one of the activist's "most potent weapons."</p><p></p><p>"Go after people and not institutions," he advised. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Alinsky became a brilliant tactician, more aggressive than the Quakers or Gandhi, more willing to embarrass a perpetrator. In Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi has said that "The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in … mental attitudes and values.</p><p></p><p>We do not have to assume that one style is correct and the other wrong. Tactics must reflect circumstances, and as ecologists, we might understand the value of diversity. In any case, the tactics of The Quakers, Gandhi, Chipko, Baez, Sandperl, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Alinksy reflect a common understanding that the agent of change has to shift the culture's prevailing moral story.</p><p></p><h3>Classical theories of Social Change</h3><p></p><p>Philosophers have attempted to explain social change, driven by evolution, conflict, natural cycles, economy, technology, and so forth. Their theories have generally failed to provide a recipe for change.</p><p></p><p>Evolutionary social theory assumed that social change reflects biological evolution, an inevitable advance through predictable stages from simple to complex, from so called "primitive" to metaphysical, then scientific and industrial culture.</p><p></p><p>Historians Oswald Spengler (<em>Decline of the West</em>, 1918) and Arnold Toynbee (<em>A Study of History</em>, 1956) assumed societies moved through a rise, decline and collapse cycle. Vilfredo Pareto observed that social change often occurs when one elite group grows decadent, and another elite simply replaces them. Conflict Theory suggests that powerful elites maintain the status quo until oppressed groups rise up in struggle. We know, however, that conflict itself does not guarantee change and can even obstruct change.</p><p></p><p>Karl Marx and others believed that economic forces drove social change, and for Marx specifically, class conflict over control of production infrastructure. Technological theories suggest that innovation creates new conditions to which societies adapt.</p><p></p><p>Each of these ideas may identify a possible agent of change, but the theories over-generalize. Social change is not simply biological evolution, not linear, not purely cylcical, nor driven only by class conflict or innovation.</p><p></p><p>Marx and Frederick Engels did accurately observe that neither individuals nor institutions come into being independently. Societies reflect nature in this regard: They are living systems, dynamic and complex, and no part of the system exists except in relationship with other forces. The relationship between nature and society was observed more accurately by Taoists and indigenous communities that honoured and learned from the dynamic patterns of nature.</p><p></p><h3>Systems</h3><p></p><p>When Marshall McLuhan wrote in <a href="http://robynbacken.com/text/nw_research.pdf" target="_blank"><em>Understanding Media,</em></a> "We live mythically and integrally," he referred to society as a living system, evolving within a web of complexity, with no single change driver. Biological evolution itself is not linear, nor cyclical. Evolution often consists of chaos, bursts of growth, transformation, collapse, disruption, randomness, and novelty.</p><p></p><p>Systems cannot be managed by any subsystem. Living systems change with vast, interacting inputs and feedbacks. When one disturbs a system in flux, inputs can have unintended consequences. We might observe, for example, that advanced technology provides benefits for some people, while contributing to ecological deterioration. Living systems don't behave as we might wish.</p><p></p><p>The 2007 book <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Getting-Maybe-How-World-Changed/dp/067931444X" target="_blank"><em>Getting to Maybe</em></a><em>: How the World was Changed</em>, by Frances Westley and others, discusses three classes of problems within systems. Some problems, such as riding a bicycle, appear relatively simple and easily replicable. Other challenges — building an energy infrastructure, are complicated, tricky, but a practitioner gets better with practice. However, some dilemmas — raising a child or changing a social policy — are complex. There exists no infallible recipe for shifting a complex system. <em>Getting to Maybe</em>, observes that when one sets out to change a complex system, expect:</p><p></p><p>1. you will be changed by the process</p><p></p><p>2. the goal may change along the way</p><p></p><p>3. relationships, not individuals, do the changing, and…</p><p></p><p>4. the system may not change in the way you intend.</p><p></p><p>When working with complex social systems, change agents must influence the larger context — the cultural story — and then let that context find its new state of dynamic homeostasis, which is not a state that will be designed, engineered, or managed by anyone.</p><p></p><p>Actions reverberate, theoretically forever, throughout the entire system. Every action represents participation in a dynamic network, and that action will influence the entire system in ways not predicted or intended by the actor, including feedback on the actor. In modern politics and media theory, we call this "blowback."</p><p></p><p>Successful social innovators will study patterns of behaviour in living systems. Social systems, like biological systems, remain in a dynamic, shifting balance, until homeostasis is so disrupted that the system passes through a "state shift."</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Soviet Whaling Action in North Pacific. 26 Jun, 1975 © Greenpeace / Rex Weyler" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/123417_211836.jpg" alt="Soviet Whaling Action in North Pacific. 26 Jun, 1975 © Greenpeace / Rex Weyler" />Greenpeace whale campaign, 1975 (R. Weyler, photo)</em></p><p></p><h3>Change the Story</h3><p></p><p>The<em> <a href="http://www.stephanaschwartz.com/PDF/The%20Power%20-%208%20Laws%20B&amp;W.fin.pdf" target="_blank">8 Laws of Change</a></em> by Stephan Schwartz reflect these characteristics of dynamic living systems. Schwartz observes that (rule 1) successful change agents work in networks, sharing a "common intention," and although they share goals, they (2) remain unattached to "cherished outcomes."</p><p></p><p>Schwartz reports that successful change agents (3) accept long-term, generational change, and (4) do not covet fame, credit, or power. They (5) respect all other contributors, even adversaries, and (6) practice absolute non-violence, equality, fairness, and leadership without arrogance or control.</p><p></p><p>Finally, (rules 7 and 8), Schwartz describes how effective activists, make a personal, life-affirming choice to live with integrity, in both private and public action. They practice personal introspection and become a living model for the principles they espouse. They walk the walk.</p><p></p><p>The Greenpeace documentary, <a href="http://howtochangetheworldmovie.com/" target="_blank"><em>How to Change the World</em></a>, articulates five "rules" for change. Writer, director Jerry Rothwell explains: "This isn't intended to be a definitive prescription, but these were the themes that I noticed among the original Greenpeace activists."</p><p></p><p>"The revolution will not be organized," recalls the nature of complex systems. Goals, yes. Cherished outcomes? You're dreaming.</p><p></p><p>"Let the Power Go" suggests that modesty, in the face of complexity remains appropriate. "Put your body where your mouth is," and "Fear Success" are other ways of saying "integrity" and "modesty." Greenpeace co-founder, and 1940s pacifist Ben Metcalfe used to warn the younger activists: "Fear success." Why? Success brings notoriety, money, and power, that can corrupt the best intentions. Fear success, because with success, your own weaknesses will be exposed. The convincing agent of change must overcome his or her own attractions to the spoils of victory.</p><p></p><p>Finally, if all else is in order, "Plant a Mind Bomb." In the early television era, Greenpeace cofounder Bob Hunter used this term, mind bomb, to describe what today we might call a "meme" or "going viral." All the great social transformers — Gandhi, the Suffragists, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, Aung San Suu Kyi, Chipko, Greenpeace — understood, often intuitively, that their actions had to disrupt the cultural myths that protected the status quo.</p><p></p><p>The new story is not necessarily written in words. It is written by actions. Placards and banners prove far less effective than visible personal sacrifice at the precise point of the injustice, as witnessed in Gandhi's well-trained volunteers accepting brutal beatings on their march to the sea. In one afternoon, the Indian people captured the moral high ground, and the British exit became inevitable.</p><p></p><p>This is the power to unsettle the taboos and deceits that keep the power structure justified in the public mind, whether in 1916 or 2016. Effective social change tactics require extraordinary creativity and social awareness, but once the cultural spell is broken, the system has already begun its transformation.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><h3>Links and resources</h3><p></p><p>Change in complex systems:</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.chelseagreen.com/thinking-in-systems" target="_blank"><em>Thinking in Systems</em></a>, Donella Meadows, 2008.</p><p></p><p>"<a href="http://www.ecoliteracy.org/article/seven-lessons-leaders-systems-change" target="_blank">Seven lessons for leaders in systems change</a>," Center for Ecoliteracy.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.generalsystemantics.com/SystemsBible.htm" target="_blank"><em>The Systems Bible</em></a>, John Gall, 2003</p><p></p><p><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/understanding-media" target="_blank"><em>Understanding Media</em></a>, Marshall McLuhan, MIT Press, 1964</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.oikos.org/mind&amp;nature.htm" target="_blank"><em>Mind and Nature</em></a>, Gregory Bateson, E.P. Dutton, New York,1979;</p><p></p><p>"<a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/how-do-systems-get-unstuck/blog/52587/" target="_blank">How do systems get unstuck?</a>" Deep Green, April 2015</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.joannamacy.net/books-dvds/284-coming-back-to-life-the-updated-guide-to-the-work-that-reconnects.html" target="_blank"><em>Coming Back to Life</em></a>, Joanna Macy, 1998</p><p></p><p><em><a href="http://howtochangetheworldmovie.com/" target="_blank">How to Change the World</a></em>, Greenpeace documentary</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Some useful books on social change:</p><p></p><p><em>Rules for Radicals</em>, Saul Alinsky, 1969</p><p></p><p><em>Societies in Change</em>: Brigitte Berger, 1971</p><p></p><p><em>Development as Freedom</em>, Amartya Sen, 1999</p><p></p><p><em>The Tipping Point</em>, Malcolm Gladwell, 2000</p><p></p><p><em>Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed</em>, Frances R. Westley, 2006</p><p></p><p><em>The Revolution Will Not Be Funded</em>, Women of Color Against Violence, 2007</p><p></p><p><em>The 8 Laws of Change </em>by Stephan Schwartz, 2015</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Influential novels about social change:</p><p></p><p><em>Animal Farm</em>, George Orwell</p><p></p><p><em>The Color Purple</em>, Alice Walker</p><p></p><p><em>The Melancholy of Resistance</em>, Lazlo Kraznahorkai</p><p></p><p><em>To Kill a Mockingbird</em>, Harper Lee</p><p></p><p><em>The Poisonwood Bible</em>, Barbara Kingsolver</p><p></p><p><em>Slaughterhouse Five</em>, Kurt Vonnegut</p>Fri, 04 Mar 2016 15:25:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/how-does-social-change-happen/blog/55691/#comments-holderabout usother issuesRex Weyler0000d895-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/paris-deal-climate-change-global-warming-unfccc-ipcc/blog/55445/Evaluating the Paris Deal<p>Hope and failure coexist in the Paris climate agreement. One may want to curse or cheer the deal, but it is history now, and we have to get on with it. The agreement provides an opportunity to assess our ecological progress and prepare to be effective in the future.</p><p></p><p><img title="Dried Out Farmland in Inner Mongolia. 10 Jun, 2013 © Qiu Bo / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/122385_209268.jpg" alt="Dried Out Farmland in Inner Mongolia. 10 Jun, 2013 © Qiu Bo / Greenpeace" /></p><p></p><h3>The journey to Paris</h3><p></p><p>The road to a Paris climate agreement began two centuries ago in Paris, at the French Academy of Science, when Joseph Fourier researched ice age cycles and determined that atmospheric gases trap solar heat. A generation later, in 1896, Swedish chemist Svente Arrhenius calculated that doubling atmospheric CO2 would increase Earth's average temperature by 5-6°C.</p><p></p><p>Governments at the time showed no visible interest, as cheap energy from coal, oil, and gas fuelled the Industrial Revolution and accelerated population growth, consumption, and waste, especially carbon dioxide. By the 1950s, scientists understood complex climate feedbacks, including methane release and forest cover, and warned of a methane release from melting permafrost.</p><p></p><p>The emerging environmental movement caught on quickly. In 1964, Murray Bookchin, warned in <em>Ecology and Revolutionary Thought</em>, that "carbon dioxide … will lead to rising atmospheric temperatures … more destructive storm patterns, … melting of the polar ice caps… rising sea levels, and the inundation of vast land areas." A Science Advisory Committee report to US president Lyndon Johnston stated, "The melting of the Antarctic ice cap would raise sea level by 400 feet," and warned of "marked changes in climate, not controllable through local or national efforts."</p><p></p><p>In 1979, over a century after Fourier had identified the risk, the United Nations convened the world's first Climate Conference in Geneva. In that same year, British scientist James Lovelock sent the nascent Greenpeace Foundation a hand-drawn graph of atmospheric CO2 rising. We pinned the graph to the wall at our first office in Vancouver and opened a climate file.</p><p></p><p>In 1988, the hottest on record at that time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of a 2-5°C average temperature increase during the next century, and urged governments to reduce carbon emissions. The following year, the petroleum industry began funding the climate denial campaign to cast doubt on the previous 150 years of science. The fight was on.</p><p></p><h3>Siberia speaks</h3><p></p><p>The IPCC met in Kyoto in 1990, the year intended to serve as the baseline for future carbon emissions reductions, but that is not how things turned out. Two years after Kyoto, in Rio, the nations formally recognized the risk and agreed to a "framework" for a deal. That framework appeared a quarter-century ago. Compare the pace of climate action to the pace at which human enterprise built a nuclear bomb after discovering the science that made it possible.</p><p></p><p>In 1995, as the Antarctic ice shelves began breaking up, the UN sponsored the first Conference of the Parties (COP 1) in Berlin. Two years later, the parties agreed to a Kyoto Protocol for action, but the emission targets remained too weak to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gases. The US refused to ratify the deal, Canada withdrew, the UK and Australia missed their targets, and global carbon emissions continued to increase. Throughout the 1990s, nations signed about 15 international climate agreements every month, thousands of deals, none of which slowed total carbon emissions.</p><p></p><p><img style="float: right; margin: 5px;" title="methane levels, graph" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/122275_208987.jpg" alt="methane levels, graph" width="336" height="420" />Then, in 2008, the International <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1246.short" target="_blank">Siberian Shelf Study</a> recorded methane — which traps 70-times the heat of CO2 within a 20 year period — rising from the arctic shelf, as scientists and ecologists had warned, and which threatened runaway global heating. The study estimated some 1,400 billion tons (Gt) of carbon locked in Arctic permafrost methane, and that a "highly possible" sudden release of 50 Gt would increase atmospheric methane by a factor of twelve. The following year, Woods Hole scientists predicted warming of 5 to 7°C this century, at which point runaway heating would be well underway.</p><p></p><p>When scientists first understood global warming, in the 1880s, human industry emitted some 50 million tons of carbon annually. As delegates assembled in Paris, in December 2015, global carbon emissions had grown by 200-times and reached over 10 billion tons annually. Japan's Meteorological Agency recorded December temperatures at 1.4 C above 1890, reflecting a strong El Niño year and continued greenhouse gas accumulation. Methane from melting permafrost had pushed the atmospheric gas heat forcing to an equivalent of 485 parts per million (ppm) of CO2, compared to pre-industrial 280ppm. For the first time in recorded human history, the North Pole <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/12/30/freak-storm-has-pushed-north-pole-to-freezing-point-50-degrees-above-normal/" target="_blank">could be observed melting</a> in mid-winter.</p><p></p><h3>Paris</h3><p></p><p>In Paris, after 36 years of climate meetings, world governments targeted a maximum warming to 2°C, and even mentioned an "effort" to limit warming to 1.5°C. Nations submitted voluntary pledges to contribute to this effort. Predictably, the governments involved, and many environmentalists, celebrated the Paris deal as an historical moment. Time will tell, but governments are in the business of being popular, and as serious ecologists, we have a responsibility to be realistic.</p><p></p><p>The Paris "deal" is not actually a deal, as it remains non-binding. Since the 1990 Kyoto climate meeting, global emissions have increased by 67 percent. Government climate promises have a poor historic track record.</p><p></p><p>Secondly, talk about a 1.5° or 2°C warming limit may be delusional. To remain below 2°C, humanity can emit no more than about 771 Gt of carbon (2,900 Gt of carbon-dioxide). We have already emitted about two-thirds of that, emissions are still growing at about 2% per year, and at this rate, we would reach the carbon limit around 2040. The 2°C warming may already be baked into the cake.</p><p></p><p><img title="The Curuai lake is almost completely dry during one of the worst droughts ever recorded in the Amazon region. 27 Oct, 2005 © Greenpeace / Daniel Beltrá" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/122377_209240.jpg" alt="The Curuai lake is almost completely dry during one of the worst droughts ever recorded in the Amazon region. 27 Oct, 2005 © Greenpeace / Daniel Beltrá" /></p><p></p><p>If every nation signing the Paris agreement actually met its goal, we would still reach the limit around 2050, well on our way to 3°C or more. According to <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/8/top_climate_expert_crisis_is_worse" target="_blank">Kevin Anderson,</a> Deputy Director of Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, at the University of Manchester, the combined pledges will result in a 4-6°C temperature increase, a 40-50% decline in agriculture, more droughts and violent storms, sea rise, and flooding. We already observe signs of potential runaway heating at 1°C, so at 2°C or more, we risk losing our ability to change the trend.</p><p></p><p>Furthermore, the pledges are not effective until 2020, so the nations are committing to five years of doing nothing. <a href="http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/climate/scientists-assess-the-cop21-11122015/" target="_blank"><span class="s7">Steffen Kallbekken,</span></a> Director of the Centre for International Climate and Energy Policy, explains, "by the time the pledges come into force in 2020, we will probably have used the entire carbon budget consistent with 1.5°C warming."</p><p></p><p>In the 1960s, when scientists warned political leaders, Earth's temperature was warming at about + 0.3°C/century. Today, fifty years later, Earth's temperature is warming at the rate of about +1.4°C/century. If this was our child, in bed with a fever, would we not feel the urgency and question our strategy?</p><p></p><p><img title="Flooding In Prague. 4 Jun, 2013 © Jan Rovenský / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/122403_209302.jpg" alt="Flooding In Prague. 4 Jun, 2013 © Jan Rovenský / Greenpeace" /></p><p></p><h3>Overshoot</h3><p></p><p>The greater challenge, of course, is that global warming is a symptom, just as a child's temperature is a symptom. We need to understand and treat the underlying cause.</p><p></p><p>Global warming, species decline, desertification, nutrient cycle disruption, and so forth are symptoms telling us humanity has overshot the capacity of Earth's ecosystem to provide resources and process our waste. To reverse any of these trends, human enterprise, particularly the rich industrial nations, have to stop growing and ultimately must contract both population and consumption trends.</p><p></p><p>Pope Francis emerged as the leader who most clearly understood the deeper dilemma: "Even to limit warming below 3°C," Francis said, "a radical transformation of capitalism will be necessary." No governments, and few environmental groups, appear willing to accept this conclusion. Capitalism demands growth, but when a species overshoots its habitat, nature will insist that it stop growing, and nature doesn't negotiate.</p><p></p><p>As Albert Bates wrote in <a href="http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-12-03/paris-scherzo" target="_blank">Paris Scherzo,</a> "The Paris climate conference is really an economic conference, perched on the brink of a market crash in the fossil fuel sector." Some observers credited the Paris agreement with signalling the "end of the fossil fuel era," but the fossil fuel industry was already in decline, chasing the dregs of expensive, low-net-energy tar sands crude oil and shale gas, and fighting trillion-dollar wars to hang onto the declining mideast oil fields. M. King Hubbert had predicted this as the end of the fossil fuel era in the 1950s. The fossil fuel era will end, and we will build more renewable energy systems, but the fossil fuel producers show no signs of slowing down production.</p><p></p><p><img title="Coal Fired Power Plant in The Rhenish Lignite Mining Area. 26 Dec, 2014 © Bernd Lauter / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/122386_209266.jpg" alt="Coal Fired Power Plant in The Rhenish Lignite Mining Area. 26 Dec, 2014 © Bernd Lauter / Greenpeace" /></p><p></p><p>Most nations in Paris did not promise to reduce emissions at all, but rather promised to improve "emissions efficiency," which means emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or economic activity. So, if a nation's economy is growing at 4% per year, and they reduce carbon emissions growth to 3% per year, they can claim to be improving "emissions efficiency," even though their carbon emissions would still double in about 23 years. Some nations measure emission targets against "business as usual," based on their own expected growth rate, and in both cases, emission can continue to rise.</p><p></p><p>Bolivia and Costa Rica, however, showed that they understand the deeper challenges. Bolivia pledged to end illegal deforestation by 2020 and to double their renewables to 80% of national supply by 2030. They formally rejected neoliberal capitalism, including carbon market schemes that help rich nations hog the carbon budget. Instead, they proposed a strict carbon budget consistent with the 2°C goal, with most of that budget available to the world's developing nations.</p><p></p><p>Costa Rica used a "business as usual" formula that equalled a real 25% reduction from 2012 emissions, and they expect to be carbon neutral by 2021, partially through reforestation. However, Bolivia and Costa Rica together comprise about 1.3% of global carbon emissions, so even if they reduced their emissions by half, global emissions would keep growing.</p><p></p><p>China, the emissions champion, producing about 24% of world carbon, promised to cut emissions versus GDP by 60% of 2005 levels. However, for two decades, China's GDP has doubled roughly every eight years, and both China and the International Monetary Fund project growth to continue. China's emissions could double by 2030, when they claim the emissions might level off. China makes no promise of reducing actual emissions.</p><p></p><p>The US, Europe, and their NATO allies Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, comprise another quarter of world emissions, and they've pledged to try to reduce emissions, albeit with plenty of loopholes and exclusions. The US pledged to reduce domestic emissions 26% versus 2005, within ten years, not including their military, aviation, and transport emissions. Canada promised a 30% reduction by 2030, but new Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returned home from Paris and began hedging on tar sands pipelines for the sake of the struggling Canadian economy. Australia pledged 26% emissions reduction by 2030, but the <a href="http://www.afr.com/business/mining/coal/un-climate-conference-2015-coal-exports-may-still-be-still-viable-post-paris-20151219-glrmu4#ixzz3wV8vBRC6" target="_blank">Australian Financial Review</a> stated that coal exports would continue "rising quite significantly," undermining that pledge.</p><p></p><p>The EU pledged a 40% reduction in domestic emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, a more ambitious target. The EU has already reduced emissions by 20% since 1990, although this reduction is partially due to economic recession and it excludes military, deforestation, and land use changes. The EU provides a tenuously hopeful sign, but not nearly enough to avoid a 2°C warming.</p><p></p><p>The language of "domestic reductions" provides another loophole. Although the earlier Copenhagen draft included aviation and shipping emissions, equal to Britain and Germany combined, the Paris agreement exempts both and exempts military emissions. Global militarism remains the world's largest fossil fuel consumer, and maritime shipping is the 6th largest emitter. According to the <a href="http://www.sailtransportnetwork.org/node/956" target="_blank">Sail Transport Network,</a> just 16 of the largest ships, from the world fleet of some 90,000 large cargo ships, emit as much pollutants as all the world's cars. They get a pass.</p><p></p><p><img title="Bulk Carriers Moored off Hay Point at Great Barrier Reef. 13 Dec, 2013 © Dean Sewell / Greenpeace " src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/122388_209270.jpg" alt="Bulk Carriers Moored off Hay Point at Great Barrier Reef. 13 Dec, 2013 © Dean Sewell / Greenpeace " /></p><p></p><h3>Tech dreams</h3><p></p><p>The Paris agreement attempts to cover up these failures by invoking future geo-engineering technologies, sometime after 2050, to pull carbon back from the atmosphere. Kevin Anderson calls this take-back scheme a "fantasy," and Canadian energy geologist David Hughes says, "The IPCC realizes it is politically incorrect to tell people the truth. The outrageous assumption of massive amounts of CCS [carbon capture and storage] is just a convenient technofix to balance the books in its scenarios, even though it is likely impossible."</p><p></p><p>Naomi Klein called the agreement "scientifically inadequate," noting that the deal, even if achieved, would lead to a 3-4°C warming. <a href="http://newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2015/12/12/cop21-paris-deal-epi-fail-on-planetary-scale/" target="_blank">The New Internationalist</a> calls the Paris agreement an "epic fail," and a "disaster" for world's most vulnerable people. The agreement only mentions indigenous groups in a comment about indigenous ecological knowledge, without any commitment to protect that knowledge by protecting those communities. The UK, Norway, US, and EU all objected to any binding indigenous recognition.</p><p></p><p class="p2">Earth's advocates have nothing to apologize for by addressing these troubling realities. Asking for better is not asking for perfection, and exposing the loopholes in the Paris deal is not "pessimism," but realism. For the environmental movement, the Paris experience simply sends us back to work. We know a better world is possible. A realistic path for getting there remains the challenge. Patting ourselves on the back may not help.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p>Fri, 05 Feb 2016 07:45:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/paris-deal-climate-change-global-warming-unfccc-ipcc/blog/55445/#comments-holderclimate changeRex Weyler0000d67b-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/Mother-Earth-Indigenous-World-Wisdom-Gathering/blog/54907/The critical state of Mother Earth, 2015<p>In September of this year, Chief Phil Lane Jr. (Ihanktonwan Dakota and Chickasaw Nations) asked me to help prepare a document for presentation at the Indigenous World Wisdom Gathering, during the climate conference in Paris. The gathering is being held at Chateau Millemont, west of Paris. The opening statement of the Sacred Circle of Millemont was presented in this video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_UQHQUqClg&amp;feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Convening the People.</a> For the full document, please see <a href="http://www.fwii.net/profiles/blogs/critical-state-of-our-mother-earth-cop21-unprecedented-unified-ac" target="_blank">"The Critical State of Mother Earth"</a> at Four Worlds International.</p><p></p><p>For environmental activists, the Indigenous perspective may prove valuable. Some people find the full story of ecological destruction depressing. Of course, these feelings are legitimate, but I notice that most Indigenous cultures do not find this news depressing because they already know, firsthand, that industrial society is destroying the richness of the world their ancestors inhabited, the world that sustains our lives. These communities have suffered five centuries of European colonisation and ecological deterioration. They know that embracing the truth of our predicament helps reveal the genuine path to recovery.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Ta'ah, Grandmother, Tsleil Waututh nation. © Zach Emery" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/120343_203453.jpg" alt="Ta'ah, Grandmother, Tsleil Waututh nation. © Zach Emery" />Ta'ah, Grandmother, Tsleil Waututh elder, who participated in Greenpeace action to stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline and oil tankers in British Columbia, Canada. Photo by Zach Emery.</em></p><p></p><p>The introduction to the Millemont document and the proposed actions at the end provide a sense of this Indigenous perspective. Here is Chief Phil Lane's introduction:</p><p></p><p><em>Very Beloved Relatives,</em></p><p></p><p><em>More than 40 years ago during the early years of North American's "new" ecological consciousness, my grandfather, Vine Deloria Sr. had a conversation with one of his elder cousins on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. As his cousin loved to learn new words in English, he asked my grandfather to explain to him what the word "ecology" meant. "Well," my grandfather said, "you know, we have places where you can go and learn to read and study books. Then you learn how to write about what you have read about. Finally you learn to talk about what you have learned to read and write about!</em></p><p></p><p><em>"This is how our young people of today learn about life. Some people have learned this way for many, many years. After they have read enough books, written about what they have read about and talked about what they have written about, they are given a piece of paper that says they are a Doctor or a Wise Person of Life. These Doctors and Wise People of Life then get jobs where they earn a lot of money, so they can read, write, and talk some more. They even have invented machines that can look at things that are very small and make them look big. There are other machines they have invented that can look at things far away and make them look close.</em></p><p></p><p><em>"They even put different parts of Mother Earth in containers and pour them back and forth so they can find out more about the truth of Mother Earth. Anyway, they have spent a lot of time and money and studied Mother Earth for many, many years. From all this work they have made a new discovery. They found out that everything is interrelated. They found out that when you pollute the air which all living things breathe and pollute the water which all living things drink, you pollute all living things. What do you think about that?"</em></p><p></p><p><em>My Grandfather's elder cousin smiled knowingly and shook his head. "I was wondering when they would get around to this understanding! Just look at what we do to our beloved Mother Earth. We cut her hair where it should not be cut and rip up her skin where it should not be ripped up, and then we drill holes inside her and suck all of her blood out and put things inside of her and blow her bones up."</em></p><p></p><p><em>Then he looked deeply into the eyes of my grandfather, shook his finger and said, "And what would happen if you did that to your mother? She would die! And this is exactly what is going to happen to all of us if we do not learn to respect and understand the Spirit and Sacredness of our Mother Earth."</em></p><p></p><p><em>Fast forward more than forty years and it is clear to see that what our wise elders and visionaries have prophesied for so many years is now upon us. Our sacred Mother Earth – who gives life to all living things – is critically wounded, degraded, poisoned, and depleted by the activity of our Human Family. Colonialism, industrialism, consumerism, warfare, and a lack of spiritual understanding are primary drivers of this growing, relentless assault on our beloved Mother Earth. Our ancestors have long understood and wisely shared, that these destructive forces are, in turn, driven by greed, selfishness, ignorance, fear, and materialism.</em></p><p></p><p><em>In recent decades we have heard repeatedly, from the best of our world's scientific, educational, social, and environmental institutions, that our collective human activity is threatening the future generations of our children and rapidly destroying our Mother Earth.</em></p><p></p><h3>A tsunami of evidence</h3><p></p><p>The 2009 Planetary Boundaries report in the science journal Nature, showed that human activity has pushed nine critical systems – biodiversity, temperature, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, land use, fresh water, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosols, and chemical pollution – near or beyond critical tipping points. They found that four systems – climate change, species loss, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles – have already crossed the safe, tipping point boundaries.</p><p></p><p>In 2012, Nature published "Approaching a State Shift in Earth's Biosphere," by 22 international scientists, warning that human activity is forcing a planetary-scale transition, far beyond simple global heating, with the potential to transform Mother Earth "rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience." Canadian co-author, biologist Arne Mooers, said: "humans have not done anything really important to stave off the worst. My colleagues … are terrified."</p><p></p><p>Dr. William Rees, creator of "ecological footprint" analysis at the University of British Columbia, has compiled data to show that humanity has overshot Earth's productive capacity, using at least 50% more resources annually than Earth systems can replenish. In "The Way Forward" in Solutions Journal, Rees warns: "Climate change is just one symptom of generalised human ecological dysfunction. A virtual tsunami of evidence suggests that the global community is living beyond its ecological means." Rees points out that the human community is now living "by depleting natural capital and overfilling waste sinks." He warns that genuine solutions require that we change our economic system to "replace a culturally constructed economic growth fetish."</p><p></p><p>The effects of overshooting global habitats are now well known, including the critical case of climate disruption. The current crisis of forced migration and war refugees is partly due to degraded ecosystems that cannot support human communities. Over 1.2 billion members of our human family lack adequate water every day. Over 2.3 billion people, 1/3 of our human family, lack fresh, clean drinking water.</p><p></p><p>Warfare is the greatest single source of ecological destruction. The wealthy industrial nations spend some $2 trillion each year on weapons and military destruction, at the cost of millions of lives, destroyed communities, and devastated ecosystems. Imagine if these resources were instead expended on uplifting our human family.</p><p></p><h3>Taking Action</h3><p></p><p>All of this may appear to us overwhelming. Where do we begin? How do we change these dangerous trends? The Indigenous traditions can teach us about genuine solutions. Those solutions will involve a new modesty, not the ability to manage nature, but to become students of nature. Ecologists and environmental activists may find an important perspective in the following Indigenous recipe for change, which starts with recognising the sacredness of all life. This action plan was presented by Chief Phil Lane and others to The Sacred Circle of Chateau Millemont, December 2015, in Millemont, France:</p><p></p><p>1. Restore the sacred: We must remind ourselves and our Human Family, through living, sacred prayers, songs, ceremony and our ancient prophecies, that Mother Earth is our sacred provider of life, not to be treated as an endless storehouse, a limitless dump for our waste, and to satisfy our appetite for the material dimension of life. This includes preserving and protecting sacred sites world-wide and returning heirloom sacred objects that have been taken from their rightful owners. To ensure that these sacred sites and objects may again be used for their original cultural and spiritual purposes.</p><p></p><p>2. Youth Participation: Support the global emergence of the "Seventh Generation", as promised, by fostering youth participation, leadership, and wisdom in all decision making processes impacting all life on Mother Earth.</p><p></p><p>In the personal dimension, we can spend time with the natural world, let our feet touch the soil, and practice ceremony that honors Mother Earth.</p><p></p><p>3. Reduce consumption: This reduction of consumption must start in the rich nations, among the wealthy and comfortable, to restore the values of simplicity and humility. Our Human Family can live much happier and more rewarding lives with less consumption of Mother Earth’s body and energy.</p><p></p><p>4. Restore women’s rights to stabilize human population: We’ve grown past Mother Earth’s capacity, and our human population simply cannot keep growing. Our ancient relatives knew that their communities had to fit their habitat. Natural patterns of creation were practiced that resulted in extended families in balance with the natural world.</p><p></p><p>Today, over a billion of our human relatives are hungry daily, and 10 million of these relatives starve to death every year. We must stabilize the population of our Human Family. It’s essential to ensure women everywhere have equal rights and respect. Wherever women have rights over their own reproduction, and where contraception is freely available, the birth rate naturally declines. Universal education, social justice, and ecological justice allow communities to limit their own population growth.</p><p></p><p>5. Transition to sustainable energy sources: We must take every action to reduce and eliminate hydrocarbon energy use — coal, oil, gas — and build the renewable energy infrastructure: solar, wind, and hydro power, where it is acceptable and is approved through a process of free, prior and informed consent. Conservation will be an important part of any genuine energy transition, using energy modestly and carefully, to minimize rather than maximize energy consumption.</p><p></p><p>Nation states everywhere on Mother Earth need to remove all taxes and tariffs on solar technology and other proven alternative energy sources. In addition, nation states must increase carbon taxes, eliminate subsidies to the petroleum industry, and use those revenues to subsidize renewable energy research and installation.</p><p></p><p>6. Restore natural ecological function on a planetary scale: Reverse the decline of forests, coral reefs, wetlands, and other productive ecosystems. We must replant, restore, and protect the wild forests to provide natural species diversity to grow again, and to supply human communities with materials and energy for modest lives that are connected to productive living systems. To achieve this, we require a paradigm shift in economics, a shift from growth and extraction to preservation of the real wealth: our natural ecosystems. Rather than attempt to monetize nature, we must do the opposite and naturalize the economy.</p><p></p><p>7. Permit only organic and traditional farming: End the industrial farming methods that have destroyed soils and spread toxins throughout our environment. For our people, organic farming is traditional farming.</p><p></p><p>8. Build a strong infrastructure for public transportation: Eliminate cars and restore efficient public transportation systems, light-rail, electric trains, and trolleys. Rebuild our communities so people can access their needs by walking and bicycle.</p><p></p><p>9. Build Peace: War is the greatest consumer of oil and energy, the greatest contributor to ecological destruction, and the most destructive force among the Human Family. War benefits only the powerful, the wealthy, and the weapons industry. We must make peace a global priority, refuse to fund war machines, refuse to participate in war-making, and stop glorifying war. Eliminate the weapons industry that lives off the misery of the victims among our relatives. The realization of world peace can only be established on the full spiritual awareness of the Oneness of the Human Family and the elimination of prejudice in all forms, including anything that causes a human being or society to feel superior to another.</p><p></p><p>10. Restore and Promote the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: The industrial economies have consistently pushed Indigenous communities from their productive land. By restoring the rights of all Indigenous communities, of all members of the Human Family, who know how to live in harmony with the natural world, we take a major step forward in healing our Mother Earth. This includes the full legal implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and make the principle of free, prior and informed consent a universal standard for all members of the Human Family!</p><p></p><p>11. Clean Toxic Waste: All Nation States and Multinational Corporations responsible for generating toxic waste – including nuclear, petroleum, chemical, agricultural, and any other toxic waste – immediately develop a global plan to eliminate those toxins from all ecosystems, air, land, and water, by 2020.</p><p></p><p>12. Implement universal gender equality: The realization of full equality among women and men is a prerequisite of peace. The denial of such equality is an injustice against half of the world’s population and promotes harmful attitudes and habits among men, from the family to the workplace, into political life and international relations. Ultimately, any gender discrimination, including gender violence, leads directly to a destructive relationship with Mother Earth. There are no grounds — moral, practical or biological — upon which such denial can be justified. Only when women and men are equally included in full partnership, in all fields of human endeavor, will we be able to create the moral and psychological climate to fully realize international peace.</p><p></p><p>13. Seventh Generation decision-making: Facilitate decision-making by leaders, so that decisions remain beneficial for seven generations into the future, a policy known by Indigenous people as "Seven Generations" decision-making. In the Ihanktowan Dakota Traditions, the thirteenth tepee pole is the women's pole, around which the hide or canvas is wrapped. The other twelve poles are erected first, and then the thirteenth pole is lifted into place and the skin of the tepee is unwrapped around the others, covering all. Without this pole, of course, there is no shelter.</p><p></p><p>Scientific evidence shows that the toxic pollution of industrial culture is poisoning the wombs of woman-kind , infecting our future generations, causing disease, diabetes, obesity, birth defects, and cancers. This is chemical violence. These toxics are breaking the thirteenth pole, harming our women and all women, endangering unborn children, so that there may not be a seventh generation. Short term decision-making for money is the opposite of seventh generation decision-making.</p><p></p><p>14. Proclaim and implement Bioregional Marine Sanctuaries throughout Mother Earth as soon as possible.</p><p></p><p>Bioregional Marine Sanctuaries are named areas of Earth, Water and Air where natural animal populations are protected and restored to more than 50% of historic levels as soon as possible. Water quality and forest biomass levels are also protected and restored to very high levels.</p><p></p><p>Bioregional Marine Sanctuary boundaries generally correspond to natural features, such as watershed topography, vegetation types, oceanic continental shelves and margins. All rivers, creeks, lakes, ponds, estuaries and aquifers are included.</p><p></p><p>15. Fully understand and recognize we are One Human Family: Since we are all part of the Sacred Circle of Life, we are all Indigenous Peoples of Mother Earth. This makes every Human Being responsible for the wellbeing of one another and for all living things upon our Mother Earth. Historically, governments and corporations, after 21 years of climate conferences, have accomplish nothing to solve the climate challenge and have, in fact, subsidized the petroleum energy industry that increases climate change. We hold these governments and corporations responsible to make genuine progress, but we do not rely on them to restore the harmony and balance of life. The majority of the work to protect and restore the sacredness of life remains with each and every one of us.</p><p></p><p>16. Unprecedented, unified action: To reverse climate change and bring our Human Family back into harmony with the natural world requires unprecedented, unified action. Therefore, whether or not the nation states, multinational corporations, or international development agencies are willing or able to participate with us at this time, Indigenous Peoples and other members of the Human Family are moving forward with increasing strength and unity to rebuild and reunify all peoples and nations of Mother Earth, through the Natural Laws and Guiding Principles inherent in our Indigenous World View and Legal Order, based on a spiritual, enduring, and eternal foundation.</p><p></p><h3>The New vision is an ancient vision</h3><p></p><p>Finally, the Sacred Circle of Chateau Millemont Wisdom Gathering adds this closing statement:</p><p></p><p><em>It is clear that piecemeal ecology isn't working. We must recognise, as our wise Elders who walked the Path before us, that we are all parts of a dynamic, interrelated, living system. Our reckless industrial activity now disrupts these natural systems at their fundamental core. We are unraveling the very web of nature itself. Our Mother Earth is resilient and will endure, but our careless actions are destroying life for millions of other species and ultimately for ourselves. We must remember that the "Hurt of One is the Hurt of All, and the Honor of One is the Honor of All!"</em></p><p></p><p><em>We have critical decisions before us. Will we continue to walk the destructive path that has brought us to these growing global challenges, or will we choose to walk the life enhancing, principle-centred path of protecting and restoring the Human Family, our future generations, and our beloved Mother Earth?</em></p><p></p><p><em>The path we choose has clear consequences and the choice is ours. Our Mother Earth is in a Critical State. We can choose to urgently take unprecedented unified action to protect and restore our beloved Mother Earth, or we will witness the end of life as we know it, for ourselves and our future generations. As the age-old realisation of the Oneness of the Human Family and all life returns with greater understanding, it is clear to see that by choosing to walk the Red Road of love, forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation, and by standing up for our beloved Mother Earth, we will fully realise the fulfilment of the prophecies, long foretold by our Wise Elders and Spiritual Leaders.</em></p><p></p><p><em><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/120319_203409.jpg" alt="Phil Lane, Rueben George, with Brazilian Indigenous leaders, Rio, 2012" />Chief Phil Lane, Jr. (middle, left), Tsleil-Waututh Sundance Chief Rueben George, and Brazilian Indigenous leaders at the Rio Climate Conference, 2012. Photo courtesy of Phil Lane.</em></p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p>Fri, 04 Dec 2015 15:30:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/Mother-Earth-Indigenous-World-Wisdom-Gathering/blog/54907/#comments-holderclimate changeRex Weyler0000d55e-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/endocrine-distuptors/blog/54622/Endocrine disruptors and human health<p><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/119356_201458.jpg" alt="" /></p><p></p><p>A friend of mine worked in the petroleum industry for much of her professional career, now consults on ecological business practices, and in the year 2000 found herself in a conversation with the Global Head of Shell Chemicals. They discussed the risks to human health posed by petroleum compounds, and when he outlined industry safety precautions, she asked him, "So, what keeps you awake at night?"</p><p></p><p>Without hesitation, perhaps in a moment of unguarded honesty, the scientist responded, "Endocrine disruption."</p><p></p><p>Certain synthetic, hydrocarbon-based chemicals – PCBs, bisphenols, dioxins, and so forth – can mimic the body's endocrine hormones and disrupt cell messaging and response. The endocrine system in mammals – including the pancreas, ovaries, testes, pituitary, pineal, thyroid, hypothalamus, and adrenal glands – secretes hormones that regulate the body's metabolism, growth, tissue function, healing, sexual function, fetal development, sleep, emotions, and mood.</p><p></p><p>The chemicals that disrupt this system are so common now – found in thousands of products, landfills, oil spills, household goods, and chemical effluents – that they have exposed almost everyone on Earth. Their effects are linked to developmental dysfunction ranging from learning disabilities to diabetes and depression. Recent studies reveal effects from combinations of these compounds even at very low doses.</p><p></p><p>The Shell scientist felt concern about these chemicals because the hydrocarbon and chemical companies remain potentially liable for the massive modern epidemic of endocrine system dysfunction in human health. When my friend asked him, "What could be done about it?" he hung his head and whispered to her, "Nothing - and I only hope I am dead by the time it is figured out."</p><p></p><h3>The disruptors</h3><p></p><p>Rachel Carson introduced the danger of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) over fifty years ago in Silent Spring, and she identified three critical points: Human health has an <em>ecological</em> context, the effects of these toxins are <em>intergenerational</em>, and they potentially impact every living creature because they work at the cellular level.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Endocrine disruptor diagram, European Parliamentary Research Service (http://epthinktank.eu/2012/07/05/health-threats-from-endocrine-disruptors-a-scientific-and-regulatory-challenge/)" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/119287_201246.jpg" alt="Endocrine disruptor diagram, European Parliamentary Research Service (http://epthinktank.eu/2012/07/05/health-threats-from-endocrine-disruptors-a-scientific-and-regulatory-challenge/)" width="600" />Endocrine Disruptors mimic hormones, image by <a href="http://epthinktank.eu/2012/07/05/health-threats-from-endocrine-disruptors-a-scientific-and-regulatory-challenge/" target="_blank">European Parliament Research Service</a>.</em></p><p></p><p>EDCs that chemically resemble the body's hormones, trick receptor cells with false messaging, and can result in cancer, birth defects, and other developmental disorders. They bioaccumulate in organisms through the food chain, building up in large carnivores, including humans. These petroleum chemicals are carbon-based organic molecules that are naturally adept at building new versions of themselves. They act in combination to create health effects, and merge to create new compounds with new effects.</p><p></p><p>Carson understood and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Speaking-Earth-Environmental-Speeches-Moved/dp/0813537274" target="_blank">warned</a> that EDCs are passed to fetuses in the womb, which may be the most pervasive human and wild animal health risk. "These exposures now begin at or before birth," she said, "and – unless we change our methods – will continue through the lifetime of those now living."</p><p></p><p>A <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110114081653.htm" target="_blank">2011 US study</a> found EDCs in 99% of pregnant women. This is a recipe for an epidemic of endocrine related disabilities, which we now witness in heavily industrialized societies. "Exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals during early development can have long-lasting, even permanent consequences," writes Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Liège in Belgium. "The science is clear."</p><p></p><p>Many of these compounds are well known, while others can be obscure. Industry creates hundreds of new chemicals every year.</p><p></p><p>DDT: Revealed in the 1940s to harm humans, birds, insects, fish, and marine invertebrates. DDT is typically found in the eggshells of large birds, as described by Carson, and appears in higher concentrations in carnivores through bioaccumulation. DDT interferes with reproductive development, increases risk of obesity, and causes other developmental dysfunction. DDT is banned for agricultural use, but is still used as an insecticide, primarily in Africa and Asia.</p><p></p><p>PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls) are gasoline byproducts, refined with chlorine, and used as a coolant or lubricant. The health risks have been known since 1933 when US chemical workers developed skin acne from contact. Monsanto acquired the rights and <a href="http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/136/4/389.abstract" target="_blank">downplayed</a> the risks. General Electric used PCBs in electronic products and by 1977 had dumped over 500,000 pounds of PCBs into New York's Hudson River. The poisoning of thousands of Japanese citizens in the 1960s led to a global ban in 1977, but they persist to this day in Earth's ecosystem. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2475949/" target="_blank">Studies</a> show that PCBs interfere with the endocrinefunctions of the liver and thyroid; increase obesity and <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393510800131X" target="_blank">diabetes</a> risk in children exposed in utero; and increase the risk of skin, liver, and brain cancers.</p><p></p><p>PBDEs (Polybrominated diphenyl ethers) are flame retardants found in plastic cases for electronic gear, computers, military weapons, clothing, textiles, carpets, and many household items. <a href="http://www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/ehc002.htm" target="_blank">Evidence</a> suggests they act as neurotoxins and are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2118052/" target="_blank">associated</a> with learning disabilities. The European Union banned some PBDEs in 2006.</p><p></p><p>Bisphenol A (BPA): Commonly found in plastic bottles, food containers, dental materials, the linings of metal food cans, infant formula cans, and in heat-treated cash register receipts used at grocery stores and restaurants. Animal <a href="http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=182555" target="_blank">studies</a> have found that even low levels of BPAs can cause elevated rates of diabetes, mammary and prostate cancers, decreased sperm count, early puberty, obesity, and neurological problems. Prenatal exposure to BPAs, even at levels below safety standards, can cause physical and neurological problems. The 2011 University of California study found BPAs in 96% of pregnant women. Still, the US and World Health Organization have not banned them.</p><p></p><p>Bisphenol S (BPS) appear in plastics and personal care products, and commonly in household dust. Most <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/" target="_blank">plastic products</a>, even those promoted as "BPA free," often contain BPS.</p><p></p><p>Phthalates appear in toys, flooring, medical equipment, cosmetics, and air "fresheners." They have been linked to the increase in <a href="http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/113/8/ehp.113-a542a.pdf" target="_blank">male birth defects</a>. Europe and California have banned them from toys. The US Food and Drug Administration has documented "effects on the development of the male reproductive system and production of normal sperm in young animals," and has "cautioned" against exposing male babies to phthalates, but has not banned them.</p><p></p><p>Hundreds of endocrine disruptors exist in household goods, our food, air, water, and soil. Alkylphenols, found in fuel additives, lubricants, fragrances, tires, adhesives, and other products – imitate estrogen. Perfluorooctanoic acid – found in carpets, cleaning products, microwave popcorn bags, and coated cookware – can alter thyroid hormone levels, increase pregnancy terms, and bring on early puberty in girls. Dioxins, furans, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, all common in oil spills, can mimic human hormones.</p><p></p><p>Syngenta's Atrazine weed killer contaminated some 2,000 water districts around the world, for which the company paid $105 million to settle a class action lawsuit. University of California professor <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/99/8/5476.long" target="_blank">Tyrone Hayes</a> resigned from Syngenta after finding that Atrazine "is a potent endocrine disruptor with ill effects in wildlife, laboratory animals, and humans. Atrazine chemically castrates and feminizes wildlife and reduces immune function… induces breast and prostate cancer, retards mammary development, and induces abortion in laboratory rodents … studies suggest that Atrazine poses similar threats to humans.</p><p></p><p>Endocrine disruptors have been linked to infertility in deer and declines in the populations of otters, sea lions, and other marine mammals. According to the Endocrine Society, EDCs are <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150928124400.htm" target="_blank">linked to</a> rising diabetes, obesity, and cancer rates.</p><p></p><h3>Deadly beauty</h3><p></p><p>Many sunscreens contain oxybenzone, which blocks UV radiation, but also appears to have <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21392107" target="_blank">estrogenic effects</a> in humans.</p><p></p><p>Even painting your nails can expose you to endocrine system effects. Thousands of nail polish products contain triphenyl phosphate (TPHP), a plasticizer linked to hormone irregularities and obesity. A Duke University and Environmental Working Group (EWG) <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412015300714" target="_blank">study</a> demonstrated that TPHP can directly enter the body when polish is applied, both by breathing and skin absorbtion. In the study, <a href="http://www.ewg.org/research/nailed/nail-polish-chemical-doubles-furniture-fire-retardant" target="_blank">Nailed</a>, by Dr. Johanna Congleton at EWG and Dr. Heather Stapleton at Duke, found TPHP in eight out of 10 nail polishes that did not disclose TPHP on their labels. EWG reports that about half of the 3,000 tested nail polishes and treatments list TPHP, and data suggests that most others may also.</p><p></p><p>The petroleum and chemical companies knew all along that these compounds were toxic waste, yet they found ways to build them into consumer products. "The evidence is more definitive than ever before," says Andrea Gore, Professor of pharmacology at the University of Texas. "EDCs disrupt hormones in a manner that harms human health. Hundreds of studies are pointing to the same conclusion."</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Links:</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150928124400.htm" target="_blank">Chemical exposure linked to rising diabetes, obesity risk</a></p><p></p><p>The Endocrine Society report on endocrine disrupting chemicals, September, 2015, <a href="http://press.endocrine.org/doi/10.1210/er.2015-1093" target="_blank">Endocrine Review</a>:&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>"Low dose mixture effects of endocrine disrupters: implications for risk assessment and epidemiology,"&nbsp; Andreas Kortenkamp, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2605.2007.00862.x/abstract?systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+be+disrupted+on+24th+October+2015+at+10%3A00-10%3A30+BST+%2F+05%3A00-05%3A30+EDT+%2F+17%3A00-17%3A30++SGT++for+essential+maintenance.++Apologies+for+the+inconvenience" target="_blank">International Journal of Andrology</a>; Volume 31, Issue 2, p. 233–240, April 2008.</p><p></p><p>"Endocrine disruption and human health effects — a call to action,"&nbsp; Richard M. Sharpe, MRC Centre for Reproductive Health, University of Edinburgh, <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/51655592_Pediatrics_Endocrine_disruption_and_human_health_effects_A_call_to_action" target="_blank">Nature Review Endocrinology</a> v.7 , 633–634 (2011); doi:10.1038/nrendo. 2011.165</p><p></p><p>"<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/" target="_blank">National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals</a>". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110114081653.htm" target="_blank">Science Daily</a>: "99% of pregnant women in US test positive for multiple chemicals including banned ones;" 163 chemicals, including many endocrine disruptors; University of California, 2011.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412015300714" target="_blank">Nail polish as a source of exposure to triphenyl phosphate</a>, Dr. Emma Mendelssohn, Dr. Heather Stapleton, et. al, <em>Environment International, </em>v. 86, January 2016, Pages 45–51</p><p></p><p class="p3"><span class="s3"><a href="http://www.treehugger.com/health/new-study-finds-endocrine-disruptor-nail-polish.html" target="_blank">Endocrine disruptor nail polish</a></span><span class="s4">, Treehugger.&nbsp;</span></p>Fri, 06 Nov 2015 16:00:00 ZtoxicsRex Weyler0000d40c-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/ecology-and-money/blog/54284/Ecology and Money<p>On Friday, September 17, the US Federal Reserve blinked in the face of unrelenting, global economic malaise. This private bank, which possesses the monopoly to print US money, had promised to raise interest rates a paltry 1/4-percent, after seven years of near-zero interest intended to revive the US economy. Corporations had used the free money to buy their own stocks, fattening their own net worth and boosting the US stock markets, but this "growth" was an illusion. Faced with mounting debt, crashing international markets, and national defaults in Europe, the bankers lost their nerve.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Allotments in the Avanchets estate, Geneva, Switzerland. © Yan Arthus-Bertrand" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/117947_198208.jpg" alt="Allotments in the Avanchets estate, Geneva, Switzerland. © Yan Arthus-Bertrand" />A foodscaped neighbourhood: Ecological economics is possible, but it will be nothing like industrial economics. Avanchets estate, Geneva, Switzerland. © Yan Arthus-Bertrand</em></p><p></p><p>One may fairly wonder: Who cares? And what does a 1/4-percent interest have to do with ecology and the state of the world?</p><p></p><p>Money is something quite distinct from real wealth: water, soil, fish, forests, and productive ecosystems. Money in our modern world is ephemeral, based on faith, hyped like snake oil, and relentlessly eroding in value as banks print more. Central Banks — US Federal Reserve, People's Bank of China, Bank of Japan, and the European Central Bank — create money from thin air, on a whim, allegedly to stimulate national economies. Pumping paper currency into an economy enriches bankers and corporate insiders, but lowers the currency value, punishes wage earners, and sets the economy up for a fall.</p><p></p><p>When paper currency first appeared in China a millennium ago, money represented a receipt for something real — gold, silver, livestock, wheat — held by someone for the owner. But when bankers realized they could write receipts without actually holding the goods, everything changed. For centuries, financial schemers have created speculative value and sold it to gullible citizens. Roman bankers reduced the silver in "silver" coins, eventually to zero. Two thousand years later, Enron Corporation shuffled assets and liabilities through shell companies and sold the bogus stocks to their victims. From 17th century tulip bulbs to modern mortgage-backed security derivatives, without the real wealth of a productive ecosystem, the global economy becomes a giant Ponzi scheme.</p><p></p><p>Since the economic collapse of 2008, world banks have created some 10 trillion dollars (Euros, Yuan, Rubles, etc.) and loaned this money to governments and corporations. Debt-based currency is fake energy. The presumed value only becomes real if the economy grows, and someone can pay the debt from future profits. Bankers, governments, and most people, want their economies to grow, so if an economy won't grow, bankers reduce interest rates to make the fake energy cheaper to borrow. But what happens when economies become so sluggish that interest rates drop to zero, and still the economy won't respond? For the banks, this means a loss of profit. For the public, free money sounds too good to be true, and it is. There is a dark side to this game.</p><p></p><p>Once interest rates hit zero, bankers and governments lose their primary tool to stimulate the economy. The US government debt now stands at over $18 trillion, so even a meagre 1/4-percent would mean $45 billion more, annually draining from US public coffers to the banks. The bankers would love to get this money, but they fear crashing the economy and exposing the ephemeral nature of their overvalued currencies and stocks. The US Federal Reserve Bank is now stuck in this trap, unable or too fearful to raise the prime rate a quarter-percent above zero. The banks have lost control. The economy will not behave as their theories had predicted. Now, we approach closer to the connection between money and ecology, because the greatest error in industrial economic theory — capitalist and socialist — is that they failed to account for Earth's contribution, conditions, and limits.</p><p></p><h3>A thought experiment</h3><p></p><p>In the fifteenth century, European aristocrats — experiencing land and resource constraints at home — gained access to the western hemisphere, Africa, and the South Pacific, which they viewed as resources colonies. In 1667, British King Charles II granted to his cousin Prince Rupert sole rights to some five million square kilometres of North America, which of course he presumed to confiscate from the Inuit, Naskapi, Cree, Ojibwa, and other nations, who lived there. The charter's language provides a vivid account of the wealth that these oligarchs coveted:</p><p></p><p>"We have given … all those Seas Bayes Lakes Rivers Creekes and Soundes … Lands and Territoriyes … with the Fishing of all Sortes of Fish Whales Sturgions and all other Royall Fishes … and all Mynes Royall … Gold Silver Gemms and pretious Stones …"</p><p></p><p><img title="Map of major fur trade routes. © 2001. Government of Canada with permission from Natural Resources Canada" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/117948_198210.jpg" alt="Map of major fur trade routes. © 2001. Government of Canada with permission from Natural Resources Canada" /></p><p></p><p>They wanted the stuff. Charles and Rupert raised investment for ships, and their first haul of pelts from Hudson's Bay fetched £1,380 in London (£3 million in modern currency). The European occupation of the Western Hemisphere, Africa, and the south Pacific was not a campaign for democracy, "progress," or religious freedom; it was a conquest for plunder. Twice in history the human population growth rate turned negative: During the Eurasian epidemics in the last days of Roman imperialism, and again during the genocide and occupation of the Western Hemisphere.</p><p></p><p>European oligarchs grew extremely rich from the looting, which has not ceased. At the most fundamental level, the last three centuries of Western economic "growth" was made possible by plundering the wealth of the Western Hemisphere, Africa, the oceans, and the rest of Earth's biophysical stores. That orgy is now over. The virgin forests, ocean bounty, and mineral bonanzas that enriched the global elite are depleted or gone.</p><p></p><p>So here is the thought experiment: Imagine that humans could find another pool of resources comparable to the Western Hemisphere, a new continent, islands, and oceans. You might imagine harvesting a productive, Earth-like planet. If the industrial economists could lay claim to a new productive ecosystem, there would be no stock market malaise or hand-wringing over a quarter-percent of interest. Borrowing rates and stock markets would soar in a massive competition among Exxon, Cargill, Gazprom, Sinopec, and other corporate monsters, to exploit the new storehouse. Investors would swarm to get in line for the bonanza.</p><p></p><p>However, there is no new continent to discover or ocean to plunder. There is no accessible new planet to scour. We've reached Earth's limits, and we have to make human economies work here.</p><p></p><p>New technology does not save us from these realities. Since the 1987 Bruntland Report and 1992 Rio summit, faced with life on a depleted Earth, market economists have placed great hope in "sustainable growth," the notion that economic growth can be "decoupled" from ecological impact. However, none of this "decoupling" has actually occurred. Remember when computers were going to save paper? Computers have actually helped increase paper consumption by six-times, from about 50 million tons annually in 1950 to 300 million tons today. Meanwhile, we lost 600 million hectares of forest, human population has almost tripled, and we've changed Earth's climate by burning up the hydrocarbons. During this computer era, industrial productivity growth — the measure of growing return on materials, energy, and time — has declined by fifty percent.</p><p></p><p>Ingenuity does not create materials or energy. Ingenuity focused on wealth and possessions only helps us plunder Earth more quickly. Efficiency doesn't save us either. Historically, when humans become more efficient with a resource, they used more of it, not less (see <a href="http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/153953/" target="_blank">Jevon's paradox</a> and the Rebound Effect.) Fancy batteries that require a massive mining industry and leave a trail of waste, are not energy sources; batteries are energy sinks. New technologies can make life more pleasant, entertaining, and efficient for those who can afford them, but new technology does not solve humanity's challenge to live within Earth's capacity. That requires modesty and contraction.</p><p></p><h3>Overshoot</h3><p></p><p>During the August financial collapse, investment advisor Monty Guild told his subscribers, "Panic over Chinese stock markets and the Chinese economy is irrational… With US economic fundamentals continuing to strengthen, we … view the current correction [as] a buying opportunity."</p><p></p><p>This is cheer-leading for a doomed paradigm, the eternal promise of "growth," a modern version of insisting in the 16th century that the Sun circled a stationary Earth. Real fundamentals are not "job growth" or "low inflation," and certainly not the tortured statistical versions fed to the public by governments and stock salesmen. The real fundamentals of economy are found in ecology.</p><p></p><p>Economy requires a living Earth that provides materials, energy, and nutrients, the trees, fish, water, rare earth metals, iron, silicon, platinum, phosphorous, and soil, powered entirely by sunlight.</p><p></p><p>Hydrocarbons represent 500 million years of stored sunlight, and industrial humanity has burned through the best half of that storehouse in a century, enriching a few, while filling the atmosphere with ancient carbon. With cheap energy stores depleted, bankers and stock promoters attempt to sustain the growth delusion with debt, with fake energy. However, investment advisors now warn clients that they should prepare for a "low return world," for a while, until growth recovers. On the other hand, biophysical reality suggests that we exist in a low return world forever, based on the rate at which plants, windmills, and solar panels can transform solar energy into biomass and electrical energy.</p><p></p><p>Every global economy on Earth is now resource-constrained. Forests have been reduced by half, fish and marine mammals depleted, and fresh water, soil fertility, and essential phosphorus stores depleted. We have been warned. Simplicity and modesty appear as fundamentals of every spiritual tradition on Earth, and for very good reasons. Babylon fell into its own depleted soils. Thomas Malthus (who was not wrong) warned of the coming clash between growth and a finite Earth over a century ago. <a href="http://www.donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf" target="_blank">Limits to Growth</a>, by Donella Meadows and colleagues, published in 1972, and confirmed in scores of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse" target="_blank">updated reviews</a>, warned of surging consumption in a dwindling biosphere. William Catton published <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/63fae3tq9780252008184.html" target="_blank">Overshoot</a>, explaining this crisis in clear language, 35 years ago. In 2009, Nature journal published <a href="http://www.stockholmresilience.org/21/research/research-programmes/planetary-boundaries.html" target="_blank">"Planetary Boundaries"</a> by Earth systems scientist Johan Rockström and colleagues, showing that human activity has pushed seven essential systems – biodiversity, temperature, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, land use, fresh water, and ozone depletion – near or beyond critical tipping points. In 2012, <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html" target="_blank">Nature</a> published "<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html">Approaching a State Shift in Earth's Biosphere</a>," by 22 international scientists warning that human sprawl and consumption could "transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience." William Rees, at the University of British Columbia, created the "ecological footprint" analysis to measure human impact compared to Earth's capacity, and summarized the results in "The Way Forward" in <a href="http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1113" target="_blank">Solutions Journal</a> in 2012: "A virtual tsunami of evidence suggests that the global community is living beyond its ecological means... by about 50 percent."</p><p></p><p>How much evidence do we need? Disappearing species, forests, and soil? Melting glaciers and expanding deserts? A billion hungry humans and nine million starving to death annually?</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Solidified coal ash at a wet ash pond belonging to the Yuanbaoshan Power Plant, Inner Mongolia. 12 Aug, 2010. © Zhao Gang / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/118126_198630.jpg" alt="Solidified coal ash at a wet ash pond belonging to the Yuanbaoshan Power Plant, Inner Mongolia. 12 Aug, 2010. © Zhao Gang / Greenpeace" width="600" />Coal ash river in China, Greenpeace photo: There is no economy on a depleted Earth.</em></p><p></p><h3>The Quads are Coming</h3><p></p><p>The faltering modern economies are not entirely unique in human experience. All dominant empires and economies in history have collapsed, typically following ecosystem collapse, as witnessed in Mesopotamia, Assyria, Maya, and so forth. There are no wheat fields on depleted soil, and there is no industrial growth on a depleted Earth.</p><p></p><p>Since the year 2000, to prop up financial markets with fake energy, the global consolidated debt grew from about $87 trillion to over $200 trillion today (<a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/economic_studies/debt_and_not_much_deleveraging" target="_blank">McKinsey</a>). Bankers make trillions from this debt, but the world is not any richer or better off.</p><p></p><p>Furthermore, during this debt frenzy, corporations used virtually free money to pump their own stocks and pay themselves bonuses and dividends. Private investors and pension fund managers, chased this fake growth, by buying into the stock markets, creating a massive financial bubble, but an entire year of wealth growth vanished during a few days in August. Some three trillion Euros (dollars, yuan, rubles, yen) of speculative wealth simply disappeared, returning into the thin air from which it had been conjured. And the blood-letting is far from over. The "big one" growls in the shadows, and even the swindlers know it is coming.</p><p></p><p>Financial bubbles represent fake value, based on the fake energy of debt. Insiders and a few clever investors make a lot of money during a financial bubble, but the global economy does not get any richer, and when the financial bubble bursts, the gullible lose, while the insiders have long since moved on to new schemes. When the insiders get caught still holding the fake assets, as they did in 2009, they demand to be "bailed out" by the citizens, "to avoid a worse catastrophe." In our modern resource-constrained world, the stock markets have grown less about investing or allocating available funds, and more about gambling. The stock markets resemble a giant casino, where insiders always win, a few lucky or clever players may win occasionally, but most players lose. The net flow of cash in global markets is to the wealthiest players.</p><p></p><p>Atop this house of cards sits a "derivatives" market worth an estimated — and completely presumptuous — quadrillion US dollars! Just when we're getting our heads around "trillions," here come the quads. This massive figure — a million-billion dollars or Euros or Yuan, representing $140,000 from every single person on Earth — does not reflect economic growth; it reflects economic inflation, speculation, and debt.</p><p></p><p>Derivatives are naked bets. They have nothing to do with "investing" in worthy enterprises or stimulating economies. Derivatives allow super-rich casino patrons to bet for or against certain rates, indices, or the likelihood that Greece or Japan will default. Meanwhile, this entire casino game rests on the delusion that human enterprise can continue to grow forever on a finite Earth.</p><p></p><p>This delusion is fading as surely as the belief in a flat Earth faded with the evidence five centuries ago. An ecological or biophysical economics is not an impenetrable mystery. Energy physicist Howard Odum outlined the fundamentals of a biophysical economics in <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/real-wealth/blog/38182/" target="_blank">"Energy, Ecology, and Economics"</a> in the 1970s. Herman Daly, a former Senior Economist at the world bank, described an ecological economy in 1977 with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Steady-State-Economics-Edition-Herman-Daly/dp/155963071X" target="_blank">Steady State Economics</a>. Since then, thousands of economists and ecologists have contributed to the rich study of an ecological or biophysical economics, based on Earth's capacity to supply material and energy flows and to process human waste. Gail Tverberg (<a href="http://ourfiniteworld.com/2015/09/29/low-oil-prices-why-worry/" target="_blank">Our Finite World</a>), Mark Anielski (<a href="http://www.anielski.com/resources/economics-happiness-book/" target="_blank">Economics of Happiness</a>), and Charles Hall (<a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Energy-Wealth-Nations-Understanding-Biophysical/dp/1441993975" target="_blank">Energy and the Wealth of Nations</a>) are three good examples. The time has long since arrived whereby growth economics may be tossed into the recycling bin. Real economy will be driven by solar income, and real economists will help restore and protect our one and only Earth.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Notes, References::</p><p></p><p>1. <a href="http://www.donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf" target="_blank">Limits To Growth</a>, Donella Meadows, et. al., Universe Books, 1972.</p><p></p><p>2. Johan Rockström, et. al., "<a href="http://www.stockholmresilience.org/21/research/research-programmes/planetary-boundaries.html" target="_blank">Planetary Boundaries</a>," Nature, v. 461, September 23, 2009.</p><p></p><p>3. Anthony D. Barnosky, et. al., "Approaching a state shift in Earth's biosphere," <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html" target="_blank">Nature</a>, v. 486, June 7, 2012.</p><p></p><p>4. William Rees, "The Way Forward: Survival 2100," <a href="http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1113" target="_blank">Solutions</a>, v. 3, #3, June 2012.</p><p></p><p>5. William Catton, Overshoot: the ecological basis of revolutionary change; <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/63fae3tq9780252008184.html" target="_blank">University of Illinois Press</a>; 1982.</p><p></p><p>6. R. Weyler, "Real Wealth: Howard Odum's Energy Economics," <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/real-wealth/blog/38182/" target="_blank">Deep Green</a>, Dec. 2011</p><p></p><p>7. Howard Odum,"<a href="http://www.mnforsustain.org/energy_ecology_economics_odum_ht_1973.htm" target="_blank">Energy, Ecology, &amp; Economics</a>," 1974, Mother Earth News.</p><p></p><p>8. Herman Daly, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Steady-State-Economics-Edition-Herman-Daly/dp/155963071X" target="_blank">Steady State Economics</a>; first edition, 1977; new addition, Island Press, 1991. The classic; amazingly relevant today.</p><p></p><p>9. C. Hall and K. Klitgaard, <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Energy-Wealth-Nations-Understanding-Biophysical/dp/1441993975" target="_blank">Energy and the Wealth of Nations</a>, Springer, 2011. Expands the work of Odum and others; important emphasis on net-energy.</p><p></p><p>10. Gail Tverberg, <a href="http://ourfiniteworld.com/2015/09/29/low-oil-prices-why-worry/" target="_blank">Our Finite World</a>, "Low Oil Prices - Why Worry": a good analysis of economy, vital commodities, and the current global recession.</p><p></p><p>11.&nbsp;Mark Anielski:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.anielski.com/resources/economics-happiness-book/" target="_blank">Economics of Happiness</a>, and "genuine wealth."</p>Tue, 06 Oct 2015 14:45:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/ecology-and-money/blog/54284/#comments-holderclimate changeoceansother issuesRex Weyler0000d2c9-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/how-to-change-the-world-film-review/blog/53961/How to Change the World: Film review<p><img title="How to Change the World Film" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/116769_194917.jpg" alt="How to Change the World Film" /></p><p></p><p>Greenpeace has been documented in hundreds of books, films, television specials, magazine articles, blogs, university courses and doctoral dissertations. On 9 September, in some 600 cinemas in the UK and US, Picturehouse and Met Films release their new Greenpeace documentary, <a href="http://grnpc.org/Ig2Hx">How to Change the World</a>. This film, by director Jerry Rothwell, may be the best, most insightful film document yet made about the motivations, inspirations, challenges, and ultimate success of Greenpeace, which introduced non-violent, direct action to restore and preserve Earth's ecosystems.</p><p></p><p>The film has been seven years in the making. Rothwell uncovered hundreds of hours of original 16mm film footage from the 1970s, and selected historic, previously unseen moments from the creation of Greenpeace.</p><p></p><p>Since its beginning, Greenpeace has been a large, extended family. Nevertheless, the film is based on the written memoirs of Greenpeace co-founder Bob Hunter. He was certainly not alone in conceiving of an "ecology movement" on the scale of the peace and civil rights movements, but it is appropriate that this film follows his story.</p><p></p><p>Friends and family remember Hunter, who passed away in 2005, as a visionary. He saw the shape of an ecology movement before most people had ever heard the word. He wrote groundbreaking journalism, coined the term "mind bomb" to describe using media to inculcate ideas into human culture at the largest scale, and he helped fashion the Greenpeace tradition of creative direct action.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Rex Weyler, John Cormack, and Bob Hunter on board the Phyllis Cormack. 1 Jun, 1975 © Greenpeace / Rex Weyler" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/116771_194919.jpg" alt="Rex Weyler, John Cormack, and Bob Hunter on board the Phyllis Cormack. 1 Jun, 1975 © Greenpeace / Rex Weyler" />Rex Weyler, John Cormack, and Bob Hunter on board the Phyllis Cormack. 1 Jun, 1975. Photo Credit: Ron Precious<br /></em></p><p></p><p>His two early books The Storming of the Mind and The Enemies of Anarchy provide brilliant analysis of the 1960s global social revolution and the impact of emerging electronic media. He chronicled Greenpeace's early years in Warriors of the Rainbow, won a Canadian governor general's award for Occupied Canada, and provided an intimate exploration of youthful angst in his novel, Erebus.</p><p></p><p>I worked with Hunter for a decade as a journalist and Greenpeace activist. He was not an organizational man, but he possessed genuine leadership, a talent for encouraging participation, devising dramatic protests, and making activism fun.</p><p></p><p>How to Change the World premiered at the Sundance film festival this spring, where it won the special jury award for editing and the candescent award for best social change documentary. The film earned top ten audience favourite honours at Hot Docs 2015, and best feature honours at both the Sebastopol and EcoFilm festivals.</p><p></p><p>Starting in 1971, the film follows the small band of friends from Vancouver, Canada, sailing into nuclear test zones, blockading Russian whaling ships, disrupting the Canadian harp seal slaughter, and launching the modern environmental movement.</p><p></p><p>The extended family is often in dispute with itself, ridiculed and mocked by outsiders, and nearly torn apart by competing egos. Through all of this, we witness the challenges of changing society, the resistance of the status quo, and the very human frailties of the heroes and heroines.</p><p></p><p>Later this fall, the film will appear on Sky networks in the UK, on Netflix in the US, and other cable networks internationally.</p><p></p><p>For more information about this film, please visit <a href="http://grnpc.org/Ig2Hx" target="_blank">http://howtochangetheworldmovie.com</a></p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p>Wed, 09 Sep 2015 12:22:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/how-to-change-the-world-film-review/blog/53961/#comments-holderabout usRex Weyler0000d1e1-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/the-ninth-extinction/blog/53729/The ninth extinction<p>Earth's living community is now suffering the most severe biodiversity crisis in 65 million years, since a meteorite struck near modern Chicxulub, Mexico, injecting dust and sulfuric acid into the atmosphere, and devastating 76% of all living species, including the dinosaurs.</p><p></p><p>Ecologists now ask whether or not Earth has entered another "major" extinction event, if extinctions are as important as general diversity collapse, and which emergency actions we might take to reverse the disturbing trends.</p><p></p><p><img title="Underwater Life in Dry Tortugas National Park. 16 Aug, 2010 © Todd Warshaw / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/116008_193157.jpg" alt="Underwater Life in Dry Tortugas National Park. 16 Aug, 2010 © Todd Warshaw / Greenpeace" /></p><p></p><p>In 1972, at the first UN environmental conference in Stockholm, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, linked the collapse of "organic diversity" to human population and industrial growth. In 1981, he published Extinction, explaining the causes and consequences of the biodiversity crisis and providing response priorities, starting with stabilizing human population and growth.</p><p></p><p>This summer, Ehrlich, Gerardo Ceballos (University of Mexico), and their colleagues, published "Accelerated modern human–induced species losses" in <a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253" target="_blank">Science Advances</a>. "The study shows," Ehrlich explains, "that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event." To demonstrate that Earth is experiencing a "mass extinction event" depends on showing that current extinction rates far exceed normal "background" extinction rates. To be absolutely certain, Ehrlich and Ceballos used the most conservative estimates of current extinctions, which they found to be about 10-to-100-times faster than the background rate.</p><p></p><p>There are three points worth keeping in mind: (1) most extinction rate estimates from biologists range from 100 to 1000 times faster than background, (2) this modern extinction rate is accelerating with each passing year; and (3) the general diversity collapse, even among species that don't go extinct, remains equally serious for humanity. Biodiversity decline is now higher than any time since the Chicxulub asteroid impact. This time, however, humans are the asteroid.</p><p></p><p>I've used the term "ninth extinction" because the so-called "five major extinctions" occurred in the last 450 million years, but three earlier extinctions are significant and teach us something important about ecology and our potential role in emergency response.</p><p></p><p>Ancient toxic waste</p><p></p><p>Some 3.5 billion years ago, as Earth cooled enough to sustain complex molecules, anaerobic bacteria formed, single-cell marine organisms living without oxygen and extracting energy from sulphur. Within a few hundred million years, some bacteria and algae learned to collect solar energy through photosynthesis, releasing oxygen into the sea. About 2.5 billion years ago, free oxygen became life's first global ecological crisis.</p><p></p><p>Oxygen is toxic to anaerobic bacteria. Some species perished at only 0.5% oxygen, while others survived up to 8% oxygen. Oxygen eventually saturated the oceans, leaked into the atmosphere, and oxidized methane, triggering a global cooling, the "Huronian glaciation," which led to more extinctions.</p><p></p><p>The evolutionary success of photosynthetic bacteria and algae triggered impacts similar to our own: crowded habitats, toxic waste, atmospheric disruption, temperature change, and biodiversity collapse. Sound familiar? The die-off continued until certain organisms evolved to metabolize oxygen, and the ecosystem regained a new dynamic equilibrium. We could help our situation by encouraging organisms that metabolize carbon dioxide, namely plants, but we are reducing forest cover, adding to the crisis.</p><p></p><p>Ediacaran Extinction</p><p></p><p>In Newfoundland, Canada, in1868, Scottish geologist Alexander Murray, found unusual disc-shaped organisms, <em>Aspidella terranovica</em>, in rock formations that pre-dated known animal forms, so most palaeontologists doubted they represented a new fauna. However, in 1933, more specimens appeared in Namibia, and in 1946, jellyfish fossils from this era appeared in the Ediacara Hills of Australia. These organisms, now known as the "Ediacaran" fauna, had no shells or skeletons, so they left only rare fossil impressions.</p><p></p><p>Oxygen metabolism allowed organisms to use nitrogen, and to transform more energy, allowing complex morphologies, cell nuclei, and symbiotic relationships within cells and among organisms. For another billion years, cells diversified, learned how to replicate by dividing (mitosis), then by sex (meiosis), and how to cooperate to form multi-cellular plants and animals. By 650 million years ago, Ediacaran life had diversified into unipolar, bipolar, and radial organisms, including worms, sponges, and jellies.</p><p></p><p>This abundance collapsed about 542 million years ago, possibly associated with meteorite impacts and an oxygen drop. Over 50% of the species probably perished. Typically, however, this extinction opened ecological niches for the explosion of life forms that followed.</p><p></p><p>Life tries again</p><p></p><p>Organisms that survived the Ediacaran collapse diversified during the so-called "Cambrian explosion." Life had already evolved for three billion years, before the appearance of crustaceans, arthropods (insects), Echinoderms (starfish, urchins), molluscs, and our own ancestors, the chordates. Earth had been warming, but burgeoning marine plant life captured carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere, causing a cold period, and around 488 million years ago, some 40% of the Cambrian species disappeared.</p><p></p><p>Typically, we measure extinction events by the numbers of species or families that disappear, but in this case, some phyla — fundamental life forms — perished. The extent of Cambrian phyla diversity remains controversial among biologists. In 1989, Harvard palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould published A Wonderful Life, in which he proposed numerous extinct Cambrian Phyla.</p><p></p><p>Some unusual Cambrian creatures may be earlier stages of existing forms, but some phyla likely perished at the end of the Cambrian. These early animals remain difficult to classify, so modern taxonomy incorporates "stem groups" of partially formed phyla. Cambrian oddities such as <em>Odontogriphus</em> and <em>Nectocaris</em> — may be stem groups related to molluscs. Or maybe not. <em>Nectocaris</em> possesses an arthropod-type head on a body with fins, similar to the chordates. <em>Aysheaia</em>, a lobopod with walking appendages, may represent a stem group related to later arthropods. The stunning Cambrian <em>Pikaia</em> — with a rudimentary backbone, no clear gills, unique muscle styles, and tentacles — could be an extinct phyla. <em>Vetulicolia</em> — a worm-like animal with insect features, vertebrate, no eyes, and no legs or feelers — probably represents an extinct phyla.</p><p></p><p>Losing phyla may be a unique quality of this Cambrian extinction event. After three billion years, and three major extinctions, life's fundamental forms settled into the roughly 90 phyla that endure to this day: 35 animal forms (many rare; Placozoa, for example consists of a single known species), 12 plant forms, 14 fungi, and 29 bacteria, plus the more obscure microorganisms archaea and protista. Most of the species we discuss and protect — birds, fish, reptiles, mammals — arise from a single phyla, the chordates, and occasionally insects, molluscs, worms, and corals.</p><p></p><p><em><a title="Ninth Extinction Graphic - View Full Size" href="https://secured-static.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/artwork/climate/2015/Ninth-Extinction-full.jpg"><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/115971_193079.jpg" alt="Earth history, diversity curve, and extinction events, drawing by Rex Weyler." /></a>Life's history on Earth, showing the rise of Family diversity, with the 8 major extinction events prior to the current biodiversity collapse caused by human activity. (Expanded scale for the last 500-million years) <a title="Ninth Extinction Graphic - View Full Size" href="https://secured-static.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/artwork/climate/2015/Ninth-Extinction-full.jpg" target="_blank">Click to view full-sized.</a></em></p><p></p><p>Modern Extinctions</p><p></p><p>After the Cambrian collapse, species diversity did not significantly increase for 300 million years, as life filled the marine habitats and moved onto land. Dozens of serious diversity collapses occurred during this time. The "Lau Event," 420 million years ago (mya), caused by climate change, erased about 30% of the species. During the Carboniferous period, 305 mya, a booming rainforest captured carbon and set off a global cooling that triggered widespread extinctions.</p><p></p><p>The approximately 90 essential life forms, however, endured through these disruptions and through the modern "5 major extinctions":</p><p></p><blockquote><p></p><p>Ordovician: 440 million years ago (mya), 85% species, 25% families perish, all marine, possibly caused by a solar gamma ray burst that depleted ozone protection.</p><p></p><p>Devonian: 370 mya, 83% species, 19% families perish, all marine, likely caused by volcanos, meteorite, or both.</p><p></p><p>Permian, the big one: 250 mya, 95% marine, 70% terrestrial species, and 54% of the families perished, the largest known diversity collapse in Earth history, likely caused by volcanic eruptions that increased carbon-dioxide and warming.</p><p></p><p>Triassic, 210 mya, 80% marine, 35% terrestrial species, 23% families gone, likely caused by volcanic eruptions releasing carbon and sulphur dioxide, triggering more warming.</p><p></p><p>Cretaceous: Demise of the dinosaurs, 65 mya, 76% species loss, caused by the meteorite that struck near Chicxulub, Mexico.</p><p></p></blockquote><p></p><p>The three ancient extinctions, and five modern extinctions, bring us to the current diversity collapse, primarily caused by human expansion on Earth.</p><p></p><p>The Human Asteroid</p><p></p><p>Massive biodiversity reductions, even among animals that do not go extinct, destabilize an ecosystem. "There are examples of species all over the world," Paul Ehrlich explains, "that are essentially the walking dead." Certain plant and animal populations may become so small that they may not recover, or may lose symbiotic function in the ecosystem. Depleted pollinators or prey species can create cascading extinctions. According to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/29/earth-lost-50-wildlife-in-40-years-wwf" target="_blank">World Wildlife Fund</a> and the Zoological Society of London, Earth has lost half its wild animals in 40 years, through habitat loss, hunting, poaching, climate change, toxins, and invasive species.</p><p></p><p>At Seahorse Key, formerly the largest bird colony on the Gulf Coast of Florida, thousands of herons, spoonbills, egrets, and pelicans have abandoned the rookery, possibly in response to low-flying drug-enforcement aircraft. Bird species are <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-birds-abandon-eggs-nests-florida-island-085544094.html" target="_blank">declining</a> in most habitats, and over 12% are threatened with extinction.</p><p></p><p>Amphibians suffer the highest extinction and depletion rates [<a href="http://herpconbio.org/McCallum/amphibian%20extinctions.pdf" target="_blank">McCallum, 2007</a>). Over a quarter of all reptiles are at risk, and 37% of freshwater fish (<a href="http://www.iucn.org/?4143/Extinction-crisis-continues-apace" target="_blank">IUCN</a>). Over 100 mammals have gone extinct in the era of European expansion, and today, 22 of the 30 surviving large mammal carnivores are listed as "endangered" by the World Conservation Union, including African wild dogs, Black rhinos, and the few surviving Mountain Gorillas.</p><p></p><p><img title="Spirit Bear in Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada. 16 Oct, 2007 © Andrew Wright / www.cold-coast.com" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/116009_193159.jpg" alt="Spirit Bear in Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada. 16 Oct, 2007 © Andrew Wright / www.cold-coast.com" /></p><p></p><p>About 1.7 million species have been classified by taxonomists, and about 15 thousand are added to this list each year. Biologists estimate that there may be 30-40 million species, plus perhaps billions of microbe species.</p><p></p><p>The conservative Ehrlich/Ceballos study confirmed that the extinction rate was up to 100-times the background rate, but most studies estimate much higher: A <a href="https://news.brown.edu/articles/2014/09/extinctions" target="_blank">Brown Univ. study</a> in 2014 estimates that current extinctions are 1000-times faster than background. A study from S.L. Pimm, and colleagues in <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6187/1246752" target="_blank">Science</a> journal estimates 1000-times higher. A study by Pimm and Jurriaan de Vos, published in <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.12380/abstract" target="_blank">Conservation Biology</a> suggests current extinction rates are 1,000 times higher than background and heading toward 10,000 times higher.</p><p></p><p>Thus, by any reasonable measure Earth is undergoing a major biodiversity collapse, almost entirely caused by human activity. "If it is allowed to continue," Gerardo Ceballos warns, "life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on."</p><p></p><p>Ehrlich, identified the fundamental cause over forty years ago: Human sprawl. Ehrlich and colleagues <a href="http://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/1986_Vitousek.pdf" target="_blank">calculated</a> in 1986 that humanity was using about 40 % of Earth's Net Primary Productivity. Today, with 7.1 billion humans, we are using over half of Earth's productivity, and the other 30-million species survive on the left-over habitats. If human population reaches 11 billion, we will likely require about 80 %, although such a scenario may not be biophysically possible.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Vertabrate biomass, human v. wild. © Ron Patterson" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/116124_193462.jpg" alt="Vertabrate biomass, human v. wild. © Ron Patterson" width="600" />Land and air vertebrate biomass on Earth; chart from <a href="http://peakoilbarrel.com/fossil-fuels-human-destiny/" target="_blank">Ron Patterson</a>,"Fossil Fuels and Human Destiny."</em></p><p></p><p>The history of life on Earth teaches us that successful life forms — bacteria, forests, or tool-wielding primates — typically grow beyond the capacity of their habitats, change those habitats, and set the stage for their own decline. Are we smarter than the bacteria? Will humanity find ways to slow down, limit our own growth, and preserve wild nature? Our track record is not promising. Our desires, economic and religious doctrines, and polluting technologies all work against the necessary changes. We need a large-scale ecological renaissance in human affairs, a shift in awareness that will allow human enterprise to accept limits on its own expansion.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Resources for intensity of the mass extinctions:</p><p></p><p><a href="https://rock.geosociety.org/Store/detail.aspx?id=SPE356" target="_blank">Catastrophic Events and Mass Extinctions</a>: Proceedings of the fourth meeting on mass extinctions and global catastrophes, ed. Christian Koeberl and Kenneth G. MacLeod, 2002.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://paleobiol.geoscienceworld.org/content/31/2_Suppl/192.abstract" target="_blank">Mass extinctions and macroevolution</a>, David Jablonski, <em>Paleobiology</em>, 2005, v. 31.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://us.macmillan.com/thesixthextinction-1/elizabethkolbert" target="_blank">The Sixth Extinction</a>, Elizabeth Kolbert, Picador, 2015</p>Thu, 13 Aug 2015 17:30:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/the-ninth-extinction/blog/53729/#comments-holderclimate changeoceanstoxicsRex Weyler0000d04a-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/joni-mitchell-tribute/blog/53322/Joni Mitchell: A tribute to the artist<p>On 31 March, 2015, Joni Mitchell – who helped launch Greenpeace with a 1970 benefit concert, and emerged as one of the greatest songwriters and performers of the last 50 years – experienced a brain aneurysm. Friends found her unconscious at her home in Los Angeles. She regained consciousness in the ambulance and entered intensive care at UCLA Medical Center. She was alert and communicating before and after treatment.</p><p></p><p>"Joni is a strong-willed woman," her friend Leslie Morris said, "and is nowhere near giving up the fight." The public may send messages to Mitchell at <a href="http://weloveyoujoni.com/" target="_blank">We Love You, Joni!</a>. Joni is now at home in Los Angeles and undergoing daily therapies. Although her condition is serious, a recovery is expected.</p><p></p><p>Vulnerable young artist</p><p></p><p>I first heard Joni Mitchell's music in the summer of 1969, when Stephen Stills introduced her at the Big Sur Folk Festival in California. A year later, I saw her at the Isle of Wight festival in England, with some 600,000 other music fans drawn by stars of 1960s music: The Doors, The Who, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell.</p><p></p><p>By Saturday, when Mitchell played, fans outside the fence – who could not afford the £3 (about £30 or €40 today) weekend ticket – had grown restless. They stormed the corrugated iron barriers and broke through, as Mitchell sang her new song "Woodstock … we are stardust, we are golden…"</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Joni Mitchell, Isle of Wight Pop Festival Britain, 1970 © BRIAN MOODY/REX" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/114379_189584.jpg" alt="Joni Mitchell, Isle of Wight Pop Festival Britain, 1970 © BRIAN MOODY/REX" />Joni Mitchell, Isle of Wight Pop Festival Britain, 1970. © Brian Moody/Rex</em></p><p></p><p>A young <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C30obnDrCw" target="_blank">man rushed onto the stage</a> shouting that the festival should be free. A visibly shaken Mitchell – 26, and just beginning her career – stopped her performance. "Look, I've got feelings, too," she pleaded in a trembling voice. "It's very difficult to lay something down before an audience like this. Please be respectful." The vulnerable young artist broke down into tears and left the stage, but returned to perform her current radio hit, "Big Yellow Taxi," singing, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." She then left the stage, weeping in her manager's arms. The scene felt heartbreaking.</p><p></p><p>A year later, Mitchell headlined the concert in Vancouver, Canada that launched Greenpeace.</p><p></p><p>Canadian Prairie Girl</p><p></p><p>Joni Mitchell was born Roberta Joan Anderson, on 7 November, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta, where her Norwegian father instructed young World War II pilots at the Canadian airbase. Her Scots/Irish mother inspired a love for literature, her father urged her to study piano, and she taught herself guitar from a Pete Seeger instructional record.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Joni Mitchell youth in Saskatoon, Canada. © Blu-rayDefinition.com" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/114380_189586.jpg" alt="Joni Mitchell youth in Saskatoon, Canada. © Blu-rayDefinition.com" />Joni Mitchell youth in Saskatoon, Canada. © Blu-rayDefinition.com</em></p><p></p><p>Polio struck her at the age of nine, and in the hospital, she performed songs for other patients. She recovered, but the polio limited her dexterity, and she found normal guitar fingerings difficult. She devised alternative tunings to make complex chords easier to play. By 1961, she was performing in Saskatchewan nightclubs and attending art school. In 1962, Joni played her first paid gig at the Louis Riel folk/jazz club in Saskatoon.</p><p></p><p>In 1964, at the age of 20, she left home to become a folk singer in Toronto, and wrote her first song, "Day After Day," on the train ride east. She became a well-loved phenomenon in Toronto clubs, met Michigan folk-singer Chuck Mitchell, married him, and began touring with him in Michigan, at the Rathskeller in Detroit and the The Folk Cellar in Port Huron. She appeared on the CBC folk music show, "Let's Sing Out."</p><p></p><p>By 1967, her marriage had dissolved, and Joni moved to New York City, performing as a solo artist at Cafe Au Go Go, the Gaslight, and other clubs. She learned more sophisticated guitar tunings from American musician Eric Andersen, and other artists began performing and recording Joni's songs. Tom Rush recorded "Urge For Going," Buffy Sainte-Marie covered "The Circle Game," and Judy Collins had a top ten hit with "Both Sides Now."</p><p></p><p>Joni Mitchell became known for her wide-ranging contralto voice; her use of modal, chromatic, and pedal tone harmonies; exotic guitar tunings; and extraordinary, lyrical songs. Throughout her career, Mitchell wrote songs in over fifty different guitar tunings that supported her unique harmonies.</p><p></p><p>As Mitchell's fame spread, Joan Baez attended her show in New York, and at a Florida club, she met David Crosby, who invited her to Los Angeles and convinced Reprise Records to record her first album, <em>Song to a Seagull</em>, produced by Crosby, with Stephen Stills, playing bass.</p><p></p><p>A year later, in 1969, she released her second album, <em>Clouds</em>, which earned her first Grammy Award. The collection includes hit songs "Chelsea Morning" and "Both Sides Now," the haunting chromatic "Songs to Aging Children Come," and the anti-Vietnam-War anthem "The Fiddle and the Drum." Later that year, she sang harmony vocals on David Crosby's first solo album and on James Taylor's inaugural album, <em>Mud Slide Slim</em>. She would help launch Taylor's career at the Greenpeace concert.</p><p></p><p>Stop the bombs</p><p></p><p>In Vancouver, Canada, in June 1970, the fledgling Greenpeace organization made plans to sail a boat into the US nuclear test zone in the Aleutian Islands. To raise money, co-founder Irving Stowe decided to stage a benefit concert, and wrote a letter to Joan Baez. Although Baez could not attend, she sent a check for $1,000, recommended he call Joni Mitchell and stalwart anti-war activist Phil Ochs, and gave Stowe their phone numbers. Both agreed to perform, and the date was set for 16 October, 1970 at the Vancouver Coliseum.</p><p></p><p><img style="float: left; margin: 5px;" title="Amchitka CD, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor © Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/114382_189590.jpg" alt="Amchitka CD, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor © Greenpeace" />A week before the concert, Mitchell phoned Stowe at his home and asked if she could bring a guest. Stowe covered the phone and whispered to his family, "She wants to bring James Taylor. Who's James Taylor?" His fourteen year-old daughter Barbara thought he meant James Brown. "He's that black blues singer!" she said. Stowe nodded, and spoke into the phone, "Yeah, sure. Bring him."</p><p></p><p>The next day, they visited a record store and discovered that James Taylor had just released his second album, <em>Sweet Baby James</em>, already at the top of the charts, with hit song "Fire and Rain." The local producer added British Columbia band Chilliwack, with a hit single of their own, "Lydia Purple." There was no public advance notice of the mystery guest, James Taylor, but tickets sold out quickly.</p><p></p><p>Phil Ochs, opened the show and spoke directly to the <em>raison d'etre</em> of the evening with his song "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore." Chilliwack got the crowd into a rock-'n'-roll frenzy. James Taylor stunned the crowd with his cryptic "Carolina On My Mind" and "Fire and Rain." Joni Mitchell appeared visibly nervous, still uncertain about her headline status, but her popular songs "Chelsea Morning" and "Big Yellow Taxi" brought shrieks of joy from the audience. James Taylor joined her for an encore, singing Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man." Irving Stowe raising the peace sign and delivered flowers to Mitchell on stage. After expenses, the event netted $17,000. This money, and the attention from the concert, lifted the nascent Greenpeace to a new stature. Attendance at the meetings swelled, and money poured in.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Joni Mitchell, Amchitka benefit, 1970. © George Diack, Vancouver Sun" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/114381_189588.jpg" alt="Joni Mitchell, Amchitka benefit, 1970. © George Diack, Vancouver Sun" />Joni Mitchell, Amchitka benefit, 1970. © George Diack, Vancouver Sun<br /></em></p><p></p><p>In 1973, after the first two Greenpeace anti-nuclear campaigns, Joni Mitchell returned to Vancouver and appeared at an opening of her photographs, with Graham Nash, at the Gallery of Photography in North Vancouver. Greenpeace was still a modest group, planning the first whale campaign. We told Mitchell about our plans, and she promised to help if she could. Three years later, in 1976, after two successful whale campaigns confronting Russian whalers, Joni appeared at the "California Celebrates the Whale" benefit concert in Sacramento, with legendary jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius, and world music percussionist Bobbye Hall, signalling a new direction in her extraordinary musical career.</p><p></p><p>Beyond folk-rock</p><p></p><p>At the time of the Sacramento whale concert, Mitchell was recording the spectacular <em>Hejira</em> album with Pastorius on bass and Hall on percussion. The innovative artist was blazing a new musical trail, inspired by classical and chamber jazz and rock-inspired jazz-fusion, driven with Latin and African rhythms.</p><p></p><p>She had recently released three jazz-inspired albums. <em>For the Roses</em> included Hall on percussion, Tom Scott from the jazz-fusion band L.A. Express on woodwinds and reeds, and Wilton Felder from Jazz Crusaders on bass. Some of these same musicians played on <em>Court and Spark</em>, with rock musicians David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Robbie Robertson, plus famed flamenco and bolero guitarist José Feliciano. The album sold over 2 million copies, earned "Best Album of the Year" from Village Voice, reached #1 on the Cashbox Album Charts, and won her second Grammy Award. The following album, <em>Hissing of Summer</em> <em>Lawns</em>, released in 1975, featured jazz pianist/percussionist Victor Feldman on congas and vibes, with John Guerin on the new Moog synthesizer.</p><p></p><p>Joni toured with L.A. Express, and released a live double album from their shows at the Los Angeles Universal Amphitheater. The eighteen songs included jazz-influenced re-workings of her popular hits, "Big Yellow Taxi," "Woodstock," "Carey," and "Both Sides Now."</p><p></p><p>She appear on the Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder Review with Joan Baez, and then in 1976 performed at the Band's famous The Last Waltz concert, singing a version of "Coyote" in an unusual C9 tuning with extended chords, pushing the musicians, and raising the energy of the star-studded event.</p><p></p><p><em><img title="Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan. Rolling Thunder tour 1975. © AP" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/114384_189594.jpg" alt="Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan. Rolling Thunder tour 1975. © AP" />Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Rolling Thunder tour. © AP <em>1975</em><br /></em></p><p></p><p>In 1977, Mitchell released the spacey, improvisational, <em>Don Juan's Reckless Daughter</em>, again mixing rock forms with jazz, accompanied by Pastorius, legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter, and percussionists Manolo Badrena and Alex Acuña.</p><p></p><p><img style="float: right; margin: 5px;" title="Joni Mitchell with Charles Mingus in 1978. © Sue Mingus" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/114383_189592.jpg" alt="Joni Mitchell with Charles Mingus in 1978. © Sue Mingus" />Upon hearing this recent work, jazz legend Charles Mingus <em>(right, photo by Sue Mingus, 1978.)</em> asked Mitchell to work with him. Mingus died during the recordings, but Mitchell completed the album, <em>Mingus</em>, released in June 1979, which rose to #17 on Billboard album charts. She then toured the Mingus material, accompanied by Pastorius, Shorter, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, pianist Herbie Hancock, and percussionists Peter Erskine, Don Alias, and Emil Richards. The tour included <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEw1k_BjKpo" target="_blank">a duet with the Persuasions</a> on Motown classic, "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?".</p><p></p><p>In 1982, Joni married Larry Klein, bassist on the album&nbsp;<em>Wild Things Run Fast</em>, who co-produced five albums with her and won Grammys for his work on <em>Turbulent Indigo</em> (1994) and <em>Both Sides Now </em>(2000). In 1983, they toured Japan, Australia, Ireland, UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, and the US, producing the live video/DVD, <em>Refuge of the Roads</em>. Mitchell and Klein divorced in 1994, after 12 years of marriage, but continued to work together musically.</p><p></p><p>I last saw Joni in Vancouver, in 1998, when she toured with Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, a stunning show by perhaps the three greatest songwriters of the rock era. Mitchell played with a jazz-based band, including Klein, sang "Black Crow" and "Amelia" from <em>Hejira</em>, an adaptation of the William Butler Yeats poem "The Second Coming," and performed an encore of "Big Yellow Taxi" (with a Dylan impersonation) and "Woodstock." The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Mitchell in 1997. In 2005, she released <em>Songs of a Prairie Girl</em>, a compilation of her songs that referenced Saskatchewan, and in 2007 she released her last studio album, <em>Shine</em>, with James Taylor playing guitar on the title track.</p><p></p><p>As of this writing, she remains at home in Los Angeles. She is not yet walking, but appears to be improving daily. Since her hospitalization, musical performers around the world have offered <a href="http://jonimitchell.com/" target="_blank">tributes</a> to Joni Mitchell, one of the seminal musicians of our age, and an enduring advocate for the natural world.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p>Thu, 02 Jul 2015 10:00:00 Zabout usother issuesRex Weyler0000cef2-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/global-warming-update/blog/52978/Global Warming Update<p>March 2015 was the <a href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201503" target="_blank"> warmest March</a> in a 136 years of records, and CO<sub>2</sub> levels are now higher than they have been in 800,000 years. If you are an environmental activist, or someone who cares and wants to help, you may find yourself confronting a denialist campaign that sows doubt and confusion. Here is some useful information about the current state of global warming.</p><p></p><p><em><img style="vertical-align: middle;" title="Dried Out Farmland in Inner Mongolia. 06/10/2013 © Qiu Bo / Greenpeace" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/113432_187382.jpg" alt="Dry Farmland in Mongolia" width="600" height="400" />Farmer Zhang Dadi in his dry corn field in Mongolia. Global warming has stricken farmers around the world. © Qiu Bo / Greenpeace.</em></p><p></p><p>Doubt: Petroleum interests and paid denialist employ scientific doubt to rationalize non-action, but this is a trick. Scientific knowledge is built on doubt. Every process in nature involves multiple influences, no observer knows all the factors, and everything science knows is framed by a margin of doubt. Nevertheless, science has observed enough to know that global warming is real, and that the primary cause is human activity.</p><p></p><p>The fundamental hypothesis: In 1896, using known observations of energy radiance and conduction, Swedish chemist Svente Arrhenius introduced the fundamental postulate: "If the quantity of carbonic acid [CO<sub>2</sub>] increases … the temperature will increase." CO<sub>2</sub> in the atmosphere absorbs reflected light, adding heat to the Earth system.</p><p></p><p>Greenhouse effect: Greenhouses store heat because light changes when reflected. Solar energy enters and passes through a greenhouse glass, or our atmosphere, at "short" wavelengths (0.1 - 4 microns or millionths of a meter). Once reflected, light is polarized and has a longer wavelength (4-50 microns). Carbon dioxide absorbs light at around 15-microns, other gases, such as methane, absorb at other wavelengths, and this absorbed light energy adds heat to the Earth system.</p><p></p><p>"Global warming" defined: Temperature is always fluctuating, but Climatologists have defined "Global warming" as a relatively large change in a short time, specifically: 0.4°C in one century. Earth's temperature has increased by 0.8°C in one century, a state of global warming. (<a href="http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2015/01/16/global-temperature-in-2014-and-2015/" target="_blank">Goddard</a>)</p><p></p><p>Weather vs. Climate: Weather is local and short term; climate is regional or global, and long term. A cold winter is weather, and does not indicate the direction of climate change.</p><p></p><p><em><span class="Value"><img title="Forest and Mine Site. 09/15/2009 © Greenpeace / John Woods" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/113431_187380.jpg" alt="Forest and Mine Site. 09/15/2009 © Greenpeace / John Woods" />The Canadian tar sands open-pit mine in Alberta is one of the major contributors to Global warming, releasing carbon to the atmosphere, while removing the Boreal Forest</span>. 09/15/2009 © Greenpeace / John Woods</em></p><p></p><p>Do humans contribute to global heating? Yes. We contribute to heating because we produce CO<sub>2</sub> and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and because we reduce carbon-sequestering plant life. The tars sands in Canada does both, producing vast amounts of carbon while destroying forests.</p><p></p><p>Human carbon emissions. World carbon emissions through Fossil fuels, cement, land-use change, and other sources were about 1 billion tons / year a century ago. Those emissions are now about 10 billions tons / year (9.9 billion tons in 2013, <a href="http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/CO2-Now/global-carbon-emissions.html" target="_blank">CO2Now</a>). You may hear of "carbon dioxide emissions" around 35 billions tons, and this is because a ton of carbon produces about three-and-a-half tons of CO<sub>2</sub>.</p><p></p><p>Rate of change: These emissions are now about 61% higher than they were in 1990 (the Kyoto Protocol reference year), and still increasing at about 2.5% per year, on track to double in 28 years.</p><p></p><p>Sources of CO<sub>2</sub>: Carbon emissions are dominated by China, the US, Europe, and now India. The primary sources are coal, oil, gas, and cement manufacturing. Meanwhile, carbon uptake by plant life is reduced through deforestation and ocean acidification.</p><p></p><p>CO<sub>2</sub> in atmosphere: Before the industrial revolution, some two hundred years ago, atmospheric carbon-dioxide fluctuated around 280 parts per million (ppm). Today, by March 2015, CO<sub>2</sub> has reached 401.5 ppm (<a href="http://co2now.org/current-co2/co2-now/" target="_blank">Scripps</a>), a 43% increase in two centuries.</p><p></p><p>Rate of CO<sub>2</sub> increase has, itself, been accelerating. In the 1950s, atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> was increasing at about 0.5 ppm per year; by 1970, by 1 ppm per year, and is now increasing by 2.1 ppm / year.</p><p></p><p>Are humans the primary cause of global heating? Yes, this is extremely likely. For anything to heat or cool, a force is necessary, called a "radiative forcing," measured in watts per square meter, (w/m<sup>2</sup>). Smaller forcings include ozone, water vapour, carbon soot, sulfates, land use changes, Earth's albedo (reflective quality), and reduced ocean CO<sub>2</sub> absorption due to acidic water. Intermittent volcanic aerosols have a cooling effect. These smaller forcings somewhat offeset each other. There are three larger forcings, shown here as changes between 1880 and 2011:</p><p></p><blockquote><p></p><p>1. Human gases: + 3.10 w/m<sup>2</sup> (heating)</p><p></p><p>2. Solar variations: + 0.12 w/m<sup>2</sup> (heating)</p><p></p><p>3. Human aerosols: - 1.60 w/m<sup>2</sup> (cooling)</p><p></p></blockquote><p></p><p>This chart below (<em>James Hansen, NASA</em>) shows the result of adding all these forcings, large and small, heating and cooling: a + 1.5 w/m<sup>2</sup> heating effect, primarily caused by human greenhouse gases. We do not know of any forcing greater than the human greenhouse gases, and to this we must add the human reduction in carbon-sequestering ground cover. If anyone believes there is a source of global heating greater than human activity, ask them to state what that forcing is. Of course, unknown factors may exist, but the available information shows us that humans stand out as the primary cause of modern global heating since 1750.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/113433_187384.jpg"><img title="Global climate Forcings. © James Hansen, NASA " src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/113433_187384.jpg" alt="Global climate Forcings. © James Hansen, NASA " width="570" /></a></p><p></p><p>Feedback and runaway: The danger civilization faces is that we can easily lose control of global warming. The heating itself causes feedbacks within the ecological system, which in turn increase heating. These include:</p><p></p><blockquote><p></p><p>1. Methane&nbsp;from melting permafrost, a more potent greenhouse gas than CO<sub>2</sub>.</p><p></p><p>2. Albedo: Ice melt reduces reflection, and increases heat absorption.</p><p></p><p>3. Water&nbsp;Vapour: Warming adds moisture, a greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere.</p><p></p><p>4. Forest loss: Each year, we lose about 15 million hectares of forests.</p><p></p><p>5. Acidic seas: reduces aquatic life and carbon capture.</p><p></p><p>6. Fires: A hotter climate increases fires that release CO<sub>2</sub> and reduce forest cover.</p><p></p></blockquote><p></p><p><img title="California's Lake Oroville. © Justin Sullivan, Getty Images" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/113413_187326.jpg" alt="California's Lake Oroville. © Justin Sullivan, Getty Images" /></p><p></p><p>The effects: NASA, the UN, and scientific agencies around the world have observed and reported on the effects of global warming. The picture above (<em>Justin Sullivan, Getty Images</em>) shows the effects of drought on California's Lake Oroville. Here are some of the observed effects of global warming:</p><p></p><blockquote><p></p><p>Heat: Earth's average temperature has increased by 0.8°C in one century.</p><p></p><p>Arctic: average temperature increase is about twice the global average.</p><p></p><p>Ocean temperature has increased to depths of 3,000 meters.</p><p></p><p>Rate of warming has nearly doubled in the last 100 years.</p><p></p><p>Warmest years: Of the last 12 years, 11 rank among the warmest since 1850.</p><p></p><p>Ice melt: Glaciers and polar ice melting in Northern and Southern hemispheres.</p><p></p><p>Sea level has risen about 20 cm in a century, and the rate of rise is increasing.</p><p></p><p>Extreme weather: more intense tropical storms, heat waves, drought.</p><p></p><p>Precipitation has increased in eastern Americas, northern Europe, and Asia.</p><p></p><p>Drying and drought in Southwest US, Mexico, Mediterranean, southern Africa.</p><p></p><p>Species: Diversity loss due to climate changes and habitat destruction.</p><p></p><p>Agriculture disruptions, such as reduced yields from warmer and wetter climates.</p><p></p><p>Ocean Acidification: The oceans are about 30% more acidic compared to the pre-industrial era, killing off sea life and reducing vital coral reef ecosystems.</p><p></p></blockquote><p></p><p>Historic Climate Change: Denialists use past fluctuations to proclaim that modern warming is not caused by human activity, cherry-picking isolated data to misrepresent global warming. Here is a brief history of Earth's changing climate:</p><p></p><p>Young Earth: Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago as molten rock, and cooled over the next 3 billion years. Volcanoes released gases: hydrogen, carbon dioxide, sulfates, and nitrogen. Water condensed, bacteria formed, and photosynthesis produced oxygen, which poisoned bacteria, the first major extinction. This comprised about half of Earth's history.</p><p></p><p>First warming: About 2 billion years ago, some bacteria learned to breath oxygen; released CO<sub>2</sub>, and Earth heated up, the first global warming, and new extinctions.</p><p></p><p>Plant boom, 550-470 million years ago (mya): As CO<sub>2</sub> increased and oxygen levels dropped, plant life recovered, captured carbon, and Earth cooled. Ninety percent of Earth's history had passed.</p><p></p><p>Animal boom, 450-350 mya: The plant die-off released CO<sub>2</sub>; fish, amphibians, and reptiles released more CO<sub>2</sub>; and Earth warmed.</p><p></p><p>Land plants, 385 - 265 mya: The boom in land plants captured carbon, and Earth cooled. This boom of life created the hydrocarbons, oil and coal, that we now burn.</p><p></p><p>Land animals, 265-65mya: Again, the plant die-off and animal boom released CO<sub>2</sub>, and Earth warmed. By 100mya, CO<sub>2</sub> content reached 2,000 ppm, and the average temperature was about 11°C hotter than today.</p><p></p><p>Ice ages: 65 million years ago, an asteroid hit Earth near Yucatan, Mexico. Earth has generally cooled since then, punctuated by warming fluctuations and ice ages. Forests captured carbon, and humans evolved. By the time humans controlled fire, about 99.9% of Earth history had passed.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/113436_187393.jpg"><img title="Temperature and CO2, over 400,000 years. © M. Ernst, Woods Hole Research Center" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/113436_187393.jpg" alt="Temperature and CO2, over 400,000 years. © M. Ernst, Woods Hole Research Center" width="570" /></a></p><p></p><p>Modern warming: The chart above (<em>ice core data, M. Ernst, Woods Hole Research Center</em>), shows that for the last 400,000 years, Earth's temperature (brown) and CO<sub>2</sub> levels (blue) have fluctuated in lock-step, CO<sub>2</sub> levels between 200-300 ppm, and temperature between 9°C cooler and 3°C warmer than today. About 3,200 years ago, CO<sub>2</sub> and temperature spiked, causing worldwide flooding as recorded in human cultural stories. About 250 years ago, industrial advancement increased coal and oil use, releasing CO<sub>2</sub>, and heating Earth. CO<sub>2</sub> levels have now reached 400ppm, and temperatures have risen almost 1°C. The data suggests that Earth may be headed for severe temperature increases, due to this CO<sub>2 </sub>build up in the atmosphere.</p><p></p><p>The Future: If humans act wisely — if we reduce consumption, stabilize population, and abandon hydrocarbon energy — we could reverse the modern warming that we have set in motion. If we fail, we face runaway heating.</p><p></p><p>A <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roulette-0519.html" target="_blank">2009 MIT study</a> estimated that there is now a 90% chance that by 2100, CO<sub>2</sub> levels will reach 550ppm and Earth's temperature will reach 5.2°C above pre-industrial temperatures.</p><p></p><p>At those temperatures, melting permafrost will release enough methane to send Earth into a Mesozoic-scale heating, as Earth experienced a hundred-million years ago. Organisms could live in that environment, but humans would have a difficult time, to say the least. Sea rise will wipe out thousands of cities and displace billions of people. Few really want to face this. I do not enjoy writing about it. Avoidance, denial, despair, and anger are completely natural reactions.</p><p></p><p>Nevertheless, to avoid these outcomes, caring citizens must speak up and help inspire the large-scale and realistic actions that will reverse carbon release into Earth's atmosphere and halt the warming trend.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Additional sources:</p><p></p><p>Human greenhouse gas forcing: David Biello, in <em>Scientific American</em>, Nov. 30, 2009: <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=what-explains-past-climate-change-09-11-26" target="_blank">www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=what-explains-past-climate-change-09-11-26</a>; Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate (1979): <a href="http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~brianpm/download/charney_report.pdf" target="_blank">"Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment."</a> US National Academy of Sciences: <a href="http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~brianpm/download/charney_report.pdf" target="_blank">www.atmos.ucla.edu/~brianpm/download/charney_report.pdf</a>. V. Ramanathan, M.S. Lian, and R.D. Cess (1979): <a href="http://www.ramanathan.ucsd.edu/publications/ram%2520lian%2520and%2520cess%2520jgr%25201979.pdf" target="_blank">"Increased Atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> .. Radiative Energy Balance and Surface Temperature."</a></p><p></p><p>Agriculture disruptions, Example: coffee yields in Columbia; <em>NY Times</em> (March 9, 2011. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/science/earth/10coffee.html" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/science/earth/10coffee.html</a>.</p><p></p><p>Global Temperature: Columbia University: <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/" target="_blank">Global Temperature</a> and <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2015/20150116_Temperature2014.pdf" target="_blank">Temperature 2014-15</a></p><p></p><p>Sea Rise: By 2100: 0.5 - 1.2 meters: <a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/10/sea-level-in-the-5th-ipcc-report/" target="_blank">IPPC</a> 2013; Changing rate: <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/SeaLevel/" target="_blank">Columbia Univ</a>.</p><p></p><p>Runaway warming: Rapid, non-linear change: <a href="https://2risk.wordpress.com/tag/non-linear-climate-change/" target="_blank">R. Jones, Victoria Univ.<br /></a></p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Abrupt Non-Linear Climate Change: <a href="http://www.oecd.org/env/cc/2482280.pdf" target="_blank">S. Schneider, OECD</a></p><p></p><p>Ocean Acidification: <a href="http://www.interacademies.net/10878/13951.aspx" target="_blank">InterAcademy Panel</a>, 105 science academies recommended CO<sub>2</sub> emissions reduced by 50% from 1990 levels by 2050.</p><p></p><p>Recent News Articles:</p><p></p><p><a href="http://reut.rs/1FTGw7R" target="_blank">Heat Wave Deaths in India</a></p><p></p><p><a href="http://wapo.st/1HIuOdZ" target="_blank">New Arctic Ice Mass Destabilized</a></p><p></p><p><a href="http://bayareane.ws/1FTGr4d" target="_blank">California Redwoods Stressed by Drought</a></p><p></p><p><a href="http://bit.ly/1Kk6K1p" target="_blank">Insurance Company Divests Coal Due to Global Warming</a></p>Fri, 29 May 2015 09:00:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/global-warming-update/blog/52978/#comments-holderclimate changeRex Weyler0000cd6b-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/how-do-systems-get-unstuck/blog/52587/How do systems get unstuck?<p>Human enterprise appears stuck, like an addict, in habitual behaviour. We have plenty of data alerting us to global heating, declining species, disappearing forests, and rising toxins in our ecosystems. Yet, after decades of efforts to reverse these trends and some notable achievements — whaling moratorium, ocean dumping ban, renewable energy projects — the key trends appear evermore troubling. <a href="#F1">[1]</a></p><p></p><p>In December, 2014, I attended a gathering hosted by the International Bateson Institute (IBI) and Centro Studi Riabilitzione Neurocognitiva Villa Miari, a clinic for paralysis patients in Schio, Italy. We observed therapeutic methods employed at Centro Studi to help us consider links between these methods and a efforts to address the ecological paralysis apparent in our social systems. "How Do Systems Get Unstuck" is a long-term, collaberative research project of the Bateson Institute.</p><p></p><p><img title="Arctic oil drilling rig Polar Pioneer. Photo by Vincenzo Floramo" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/112242_184679.jpg" alt="Arctic oil drilling rig Polar Pioneer. Photo by Vincenzo Floramo" /></p><p></p><p>The Institute is named after genetics pioneer William Bateson and his son, anthropologist and systems theorist Gregory Bateson. Gregory once famously remarked in <em>Steps to an Ecology of Mind</em> that "The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think." He suggests that if we are going to resolve our ecological challenges, we must rethink, not only our social systems, but our habitual ways of thinking.</p><p></p><p>At Schio, we asked: Can the healing of paralysis in the body, a healing that requires a full-systemic reformation, provide us with ideas about how to approach the challenge of changing human society?</p><p></p><p>Clinic founder Dr. Carlo Perfetti has developed paralysis rehabilitation therapies based on systems theory, particularly on the ecological and physiological work of Gregory Bateson <a href="#F2">[2]</a> and Pyotr Anokhin <a href="#F3">[3]</a>. Dr. Perfetti devised systemic therapies that treat the whole person, consider the patient's mental context, memory, physical environment, setting, language, and other factors.</p><p></p><p>Healing takes place with active patients, fully involved in the process, with mental states and an environment that will influence the outcome. We now know that the actual actions of organisms follow continuous internal feedback, analysis, comparison to goal, response to environment, and readjustment. Most of this process remains subconscious.</p><p></p><p>Living beings appear comprised of co-evolving systems, sub-systems, and super-systems that interact, adjust to conditions, and reach states of dynamic homeostasis that endure over time through internal feedbacks and self-regulation. Biological and social evolution are not linear processes, but rather co-evolving, self-referencing processes. Knowing this may help us understand how to influence social transformation.</p><p></p><p>A real, living system — including a society at risk — must coordinate and integrate a range of inputs from interacting components. This feature of systemic change, Integration, matches Gregory Bateson's first criterion of mind and nature: They are both an aggregate of interacting components. <a href="#F4"> [4]</a> Contrary to the traditional Cartesian assumption that these components could be isolated and analyzed in linear sequence, we understand now that living organisms, ecosystems, or societies, operate as an integrated whole. How can this help us change society?</p><p></p><p><img title="Anti-Nuclear protest, Rocky Flats, Colorado, 1978. Photo by Rex Weyler" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/112245_184689.jpg" alt="Anti-Nuclear protest, Rocky Flats, Colorado, 1978. Photo by Rex Weyler" /></p><p></p><p>One characteristic of system integration reveals that no single component can control the system. A ruling dictator can dominate a society, but cannot control the outcome of that dominance, which may be revolution. Humans can influence global weather with geo-engineering, but cannot control the weather system's response to that interference. Likewise, an activist may protest against injustice, but cannot control the society's response to that protest. Smart protesting, then, would take this integration of systems into account.</p><p></p><p>This sort of analysis may seem a bit too intellectual for serious activists. Why not simply confront the system and let the chips fall where they may? Well, we've tried that. Being right does not guarantee success. We may need to think more deeply about how systems actually change.</p><p></p><p>Action in a system — as pointed out by Bateson — is triggered by recognizing a significant difference. Furthermore, the message of this difference is sent by code through the system. <a href="#F5">[5]</a> When Greenpeace boards a Shell Oil ship heading for the Arctic, this is a coded message. Simply reciting global heating data would not be as effective. Speaking in dramatic code, delivering the "mind bomb," has been the core of Greenpeace strategy from the beginning and dates back to Gandhi and civil rights activism. If the coded message is clever enough, no explanation is necessary. Boarding an oil drilling rig or blocking a whaling ship speaks for itself.</p><p></p><p>The "significant difference" communicated to the system by these actions might be: Peace vs. War or a sustainable human future vs. an overheated planet. This difference must be clear or the system will not respond. Systems change because the whole system recognizes the "significant difference," which creates what health science calls a "motivation" for change. However systems experience multiple and often contradictory motivations. I may want to lose weight, but I love almond croissants! We want a sustainable world, but we don't want to give up private cars. To change, all systems must confront contradictory motivations.</p><p></p><p><img title="Tightrope Walker: Climate action at the Gorner Glacier in Switzerland Photo by Christian Schmutz" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/112247_184693.jpg" alt="Tightrope Walker: Climate action at the Gorner Glacier in Switzerland Photo by Christian Schmutz" width="600" /></p><p></p><p>The system has to chose an action, among countless options, that will help it achieve a new dynamic equilibrium. In physical and social systems, many of these choices remain subconscious and the effects will be complex and non-linear. The system undergoes continuous feedback to measure behaviour against a goal, which itself may undergo change during this process.</p><p></p><p>Memory and expectation also impact this complex process. One of the patients undergoing treatment at Centro Studi had been a former basketball player. While the patient recalled the memory of a sports movement from his youth, the practitioner moved the patient's arm, connecting memory to current action. The system's own memory can serve as a model or visualization of action. Components of the system can respond to this visualization at both conscious and subconscious levels. Similarly, we might see that understanding culture is critical in social change, because culture carries the images from these social memories.</p><p></p><p>The dark side of memory, of course, is that habitual action may hinder change. Habitual memory may keep a society stuck, but deep within our social memory, there may exist experiences that can serve as models of genuine change. We may witness this in modern social change movements that learn from ancient, indigenous, pre-industrial societies.</p><p></p><p>Exploratory adaption</p><p></p><p>In a 2015 study, at McGill University in Canada, M. Szyf and E Abouheif <a href="#F6">[6]</a> manipulated an environmental factor (DNA methylation) to achieve size variations in ants with identical gene sequences. The study shows that genes may not directly determine a physical characteristic, but rather express tendencies in response to environmental conditions.</p><p></p><p>Recent studies in "social genomics" show that gene expression also responds to social environments. According to a review paper by S. W. Cole at the UCLA School of Medicine, the human genome possesses "social programs to adapt molecular physiology to the changing patterns of threat and opportunity ancestrally associated with changing social conditions." <a href="#F7">[7]</a> The larger environment of a system provides a framework for integrating responses to stress.</p><p></p><p>Change in nature is neither random, nor determined, but remains dynamic and exploratory. Under environmental stress, a cell explores new ways to shape physiology. A 2014 study by Erez Braun <a href="#F8">[8]</a> at the Network Biology Research Laboratories, in Haifa, Israel, found that biological cells allow for flexibility of response, redesigning for new environments using "exploratory adaption."</p><p></p><p>Braun exposed cell populations to environmental stress that they had not encountered during their evolutionary history. Rather than selecting from random mutations, new cell states emerged, not strictly determined by the genome, but through an exploratory process to discover alternatives. We might want to compare his findings with the case of a successful human species that finds itself in a world so altered by its own success that its survival appears at risk.</p><p></p><p>We may realize, for example, that the goals of a society, as a semi-bounded system, are not necessarily the goals of any individual. A society, similar to a body, may be compelled to survive, and thrive in ways that remain unconscious to individuals and groups. Under stress, the internal language of the system may explore for alternatives that are not "chosen" by individuals. Different components may experience the stress signals differently, and may have divergent and contradictory goals. Any number of these contradictions could be a source of paralysis in a social system.</p><p></p><p>Although we we may not be able to precisely match the functions of cells, organisms, and societies, we may observe patterns that connect intention to outcome, and we may glimpse some explanations for social "stuckness." The systemic perspective suggests that isolated efforts of piecemeal ecology — segregated sanctuaries, local bans on toxins, carbon taxes, and so forth — may not slow the large-scale overshoot of human activity.</p><p></p><p>It is possible that to influence the path of the larger society, an individual or group may find it useful to speak in metaphors, parables, stories, legends, and archetypes that aid the adaptive explorations of that society. This may help explain why reciting data about global warming, or posting millions of social media rants, fails to move society at a deep enough level to inspire genuine change. If we understand how living systems actually change, we may avoid well-intentioned but insufficient and counter-productive actions.</p><p></p><p>In 2009, for example, the popular Avatar film may have had more impact than environmental groups in helping turn society toward sustainability. Boycotting climate conferences may say more than going and protesting. Agents of change in society could benefit from re-examining their strategies to address the systemic nature of change.</p><p></p><p><img title="Protest at Cop15 Climate Conference in Copenhagen, 2009. Photo by Kristian Buus" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/112248_184696.jpg" alt="Protest at Cop15 Climate Conference in Copenhagen, 2009. Photo by Kristian Buus" /></p><p></p><p>Change agents have to play a role as teacher or guide, helping the whole system — person or society — play creatively with their potential to reorganize the system to a new state, which may be a return to a remembered state. A body, or a society, is not a machine and cannot be "fixed" as a machine. The "patient" including a society in distress, experiences change as a whole, integrated system.</p><p></p><p>Relationships</p><p></p><p>We are attempting to discover new ways of thinking, new language and actions that might help society free itself from habitual behaviour. When the context changes, and a learned trait no longer serves the system, how does the system discover a new context? Can we learn lessons from healing modalities that will inform us about ways to influence modern, industrial societies facing ecological crisis?</p><p></p><p>In the spirit of "exploratory adaption," we may certainly attempt to make these sorts of comparisons. The environmental movement, frustrated by the pace of genuine ecological progress, after a half century of environmental action, may at times appear somewhat like the family of an alcoholic, gazing upon the limits of its habitual strategies.</p><p></p><p>Integration of components stands out as an obvious, initial feature of an effective change agent's method, learning to amalgamate, blend, and employ all potentials of the system. Treat the whole system, not the symptoms. Accept the fact that the system-in-full will have to participate, and that the system's worldview, sensations, feelings, memory, stories, and expectations will influence the effectiveness of any action.</p><p></p><p>In systems, relationships comprise the change, not individuals. Relationships are what endure in nature, not individuals or components. Our language, as Gregory Bateson observed, is biased toward things, against relationships. We say "the table is hard," conferring "hardness" upon the table, but this "hardness" can only be experienced when the table stops some momentum. Hardness is only one half of a relationship. Likewise, our language and thinking about change, has to be a language of relationships, not things. A river is not a thing. A river is a process. Likewise, a body, a forest, or a society is a process, not a thing.</p><p></p><p>Society does not necessarily transform in the course of single human lifetime any more than a body transforms in a single cell's lifetime. Agents of change must influence the context and then let that context find its new state of dynamic homeostasis. No one controls the outcome of an action.</p><p></p><p><img title="Villagers from Mahan, India, being arrested along with Greenpeace activitsts and volunteers for protesting coal mine plans" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/112241_184681.jpg" alt="Villagers from Mahan, India, being arrested along with Greenpeace activitsts and volunteers for protesting coal mine plans" /></p><p></p><p>In the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, the term karma means action. The response to actions are not isolated in time, but reverberate throughout the entire system. Karma does not mean that my ego will be reborn as a new version of me, but rather that every action is a participation in a living, dynamic system, and that action will influence the system in ways not intended by the actor, including feedback on the actor. In modern politics and media theory, we call this "blowback." This is system feedback, helping the system analyze and redirect its actions.</p><p></p><p>Feedback means that we are engaged, at every step of transformation, in two-way storytelling, in messages coded and launched into the system, which then get variously interpreted and fed back as messages that influence actions of other components. Thus, the effective change agent works with metaphor, and we hear this in the parables of sages and poets. Gandhi didn't recite poverty-line statistics or the Gini coefficient; he went into the poorest communities and helped, encouraged the poor to help others, and staged public events that exposed injustice.</p><p></p><p>When a cell encounters a novel change in its environment, it responds with "exploratory adaption." When an adaption succeeds, it sends it's new coding into the pool of information that represents its new culture. Metaphor is the storytelling version of this exploration.</p><p></p><p>Data won't change things. Sensations change process. A new story is the context that initiates change. The effective information — by a rehabilitation practitioner or change agent — is coded for a deeper reading by the system.</p><p></p><p>If the change agent, however, presumes control, he or she becomes a dictator and ultimately fails. Absolute power does not exist. To work, the agent of change must play in the field of possibility, in the larger mystery that represents the complex forces that will result in a successful future state.</p><p></p><p>Humility and modesty are the means to show respect for this mystery. Theory or vision without humility, becomes doctrine, and rigid doctrine always collapses under change. We may benefit as change agents if we acknowledge our humble place in the network of co-evolving systems.</p><p></p><p>Thus, in healing, with genomes under stress, or with effective activism, one may witness a modest guidance, gentle touch, probing questions, a compassion that respects the entire system. The change agent takes an appropriate role, improvising, seeking a way to help the larger cause. We witness in these circumstances a sort of common decency.</p><p></p><p><img title="Anti-nuclear rally in Washington DC, 1980. Photo by Rex Weyler" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/112240_184683.jpg" alt="Anti-nuclear rally in Washington DC, 1980. Photo by Rex Weyler" /></p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>References:</p><p></p><p><a name="F1"></a>[1] Johan Rockström, et. al., "Planetary Boundaries," <em>Nature</em>, v. 461, September 23, 2009. Anthony D. Barnosky, et. al., "Approaching a state shift in Earth's biosphere," <em>Nature</em>, v. 486, June 7, 2012. William Rees, "the Way Forward: Survival 2100," in <em>Solutions</em>, v. 3, #3, June 2012.</p><p></p><p><a name="F2"></a>[2] Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature, E.P. Dutton, New York,1979; and Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Jason Aronson Inc., New Jersey, London, 1972.</p><p></p><p><a name="F3"></a>[3] "La Teoria del Sistema Funzionale Nella Psicofisiologia di P. K. Anochin" (The Theory of Functional System in the Psychophysiology of P. K. Anokhin) M.G. Imperiali, et. al., Catterdra di psicologia, Universita di Roma.</p><p></p><p><a name="F4"></a>[4] Gregory Bateson, "Criteria of Mental Process," Mind and Nature, Bantam, New York, 1980, p. 102.</p><p></p><p><a name="F5"></a>[5] Bateson, Mind and Nature, p. 102.</p><p></p><p><a name="F6"></a>[6] S. Alvarado,R.Rajakumar, E.Abouheif, M. Szyf, "Epigenetic variation in the ​Egfr gene generates quantitative variation in a complex trait in ants," Nature Communications 6, Article n.6513, March 11, 2015.</p><p></p><p><a name="F7"></a>[7] S. W. Cole, "Social Regulation of Human Gene Expression,"<em>Am J Public Health</em>, 103:S84–S92. doi:10.2105/ AJPH.2012.301183; 2013.</p><p></p><p><a name="F8"></a>[8] Erez Braun, "The unforeseen challenge: from genotype-to-phenotype in cell populations," Rep. Prog. Phys. 78.</p>Thu, 23 Apr 2015 21:30:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/how-do-systems-get-unstuck/blog/52587/#comments-holderclimate changeother issuesRex Weyler0000ca6c-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/are-limits-to-growth-real/blog/51820/Are limits to growth real?<p>In 2002, global warming denialist and anti-environmental gadfly Bjørn Lomborg consigned the 1972 book, <em>The Limits to Growth,</em> to "the dustbin of history." However, 42 years of data now appear to vindicate the book’s premise, that the human enterprise must accept some limits on economic growth.</p><p></p><p>Research <a href="http://www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/files/mssi/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf" target="_blank">published</a> in 2014 by Dr. Graham Turner at the University of Melbourne shows that four decades of data track closely to the <em>Limits</em> "Business As Usual" (BAU) scenario, which they warned could lead to resource constrained economies and large-scale economic collapse in this century. The <em>Limits</em> authors did not make predictions; rather, they outlined possible futures and explained how those scenarios could arise, and what the consequences might be.</p><p></p><p>In outlining the BAU scenario, the <em>The Limits to Growth</em> researchers concluded: "If the present growth trends in world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity."</p><p></p><p>The Melbourne study shows that their warning is reasonable. The study makes particular note of peak oil and the decline in "Net Energy" available to society after the rising energy costs of extracting low-grade, marginal, highly polluting hydrocarbon reserves. We witness this today in the Canadian tar sands and in the shale gas fracking industry.</p><p></p><p>The Denial Chorus</p><p></p><p>Growth economists and pundits ridiculed <em>The Limits to Growth</em> within a week of its publication.&nbsp; Yale economist Henry C. Wallich, dismissed the book in <em>Newsweek</em> magazine as "a piece of irresponsible nonsense."</p><p></p><p><em>New York Times</em> economist Peter Passel attacked the <em>Limits</em> book by conjuring false claims that all the study's simulations "invariably end in collapse" and that the book predicted depletion of critical resources by 1990. The book, however, made no such predictions, and on the contrary, offered sound suggestions to avoid collapse. These facts did not deter the denialists.</p><p></p><p>"There are no great limits to growth," U.S. president Ronald Reagan declared in 1985, "when men and women are free to follow their dreams … because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder."</p><p></p><p>This inspiring Reaganism serves as the official corporate rebuff to any talk of environmental limits. Lomborg claimed: "Smartness will outweigh the extra resource use." Dreams. Imagination. Smartness. Humans, the theory went, are just too clever to be restricted by biophysical limits.</p><p></p><p>In 2008, in Canada, <em>Ottawa Citizen</em>, columnist Dan Gardner attacked Canadian writer Margaret Atwood for even mentioning <em>The</em> <em>Limits to Growth</em> book in an interview. "You mean the one that said world supplies of zinc, gold, tin, copper, oil and natural gas would be completely gone by 1992?" barked the columnist. "You mean that report?" The glitch in Gardner's harangue, of course, is that the Club of Rome book says no such thing.</p><p></p><p>The <em>Limits to Growth </em>authors provide a table (p. 56 in my edition) in which they display three columns of numbers to explain potential depletion rates of commodity reserves:</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; 1. A static index, showing how long known reserves could last at 1972 rates of consumption.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; 2. An exponential index, showing depletion at increasing consumption rates.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; 3. An optimistic index, allowing for future resource discoveries and new technologies.</p><p></p><p>The denialists cherry-pick the middle column, the fastest possible depletion, and then misrepresent this as a "prediction." In the 2011 BBC documentary, "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace," filmmaker Adam Curtis repeats the erroneous claim that the <em>Limits</em> authors "Predicted an imminent global collapse," presumably because, according to Curtis, they believed nature was a machine that operated like a computer. They did not. The <em>Limits</em> authors recognized the complexity of biological systems, they understood that the map is not the territory, and they carefully explained that "resource availability ... will be determined by factors much more complicated than can be expressed by either the simple static reserve index or the exponential reserve index."</p><p></p><p>Jean-Marc Jancovici, environmental consultant to the French global warming study, <em>Mission Interministérielle de l'Effet de Serre</em>, refers to <em>Limits to Growth</em> and the IPCC report on climate change as "documents that 99% of the people that quote them never read."</p><p></p><p>Ecologists and social planners will benefit from understanding that resource depletion does not imply that we will "run out" of those resources, but rather that as we deplete finite reserves, we find ourselves spending more money and energy to retrieve lower quality reserves, with greater ecological impact, exactly as we are now doing in the tar sands and fracking fields.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In his <em>Ottawa Citizen</em> attack, Gardner ridicules Margaret Atwood for suggesting that eventually "Things unconnected with money will be valued more – friends, family, a walk in the woods." Ms. Atwood makes a valid and important point: We might indeed achieve happier lives with less stuff. In 1979, Norwegian ecologist Arne Naess explained this as: "Richer ends, simpler means."</p><p></p><p>Cassandra revisited</p><p></p><p>In 2007, as the world economy soared, <em>The Wall Street Journal </em>reported commodity shortages in "New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears," an essay referring to nineteenth century economist Thomas Malthus, who had warned of limits on a finite planet. Although the business journal documented cases of scarce energy, water, land, and resources, they clung to the denialist dream: "Powerful voices have warned that human activity would overwhelm the earth's resources. The Cassandras always proved wrong. Each time, there were new resources to discover, new technologies to propel growth."</p><p></p><p>We might note, that these authors misread the Cassandra myth. In the Greek story, Apollo lusts after Cassandra, beautiful daughter of Trojan king Priam, and bestows upon her the gift of prophecy. However, she spurns the deity’s advances, so Apollo takes revenge with a curse that no one will believe her. This is not a tale about erroneous predictions; it is a tale about blundering humanity ignoring the truth and mocking the visionary.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In addition to sleeping through the classics, certain economists may also have skipped calculus and natural science classes. High school biology students know that bacteria in a petri dish or fruit flies in a jar will grow until they exhaust available nutrients, and then perish. Wolves in a watershed will grow beyond the capacity and then die back. A similar fate befell humans on Easter Island and Reindeer on St. Matthews Island. There are zero cases in nature of endless growth. None.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In real ecosystems, growth has only two possible futures: 1. Dynamic stability (oscillation within limits) or 2. collapse. "All growth after maturity," explains Dr. Albert Bartlett, late emeritus professor of physics at Colorado University, "is either obesity or cancer."</p><p></p><p>In 1900 the grand banks around Newfoundland provided habitat and nutrients to support 10-15 tons of commercial fish per square-km. Now, that figure has dropped to less than 1.5 tons, a 90 percent reduction in ocean productivity, triggering economic disaster in Atlantic fishing communities.</p><p></p><p>In 2008, after decades of denial, the International Energy Agency admitted that hydrocarbon "energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable." The data is now irrefutable, but geologists had warned of peak oil production in the 1950s, and <em>The Limits to Growth</em> had alerted humanity four decades ago. Meanwhile, most hydrocarbon reserves must stay in the ground to avoid disastrous global warming according to a <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/nature14016.epdf?referrer_access_token=q78KijsBZx4SxFdccSZx09RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MEzzy4wDRQte5fViQxiPJjJIfgcjxiQpfQtqwAkMQY0AP2bzxR0FDUmnQ4P3U8w9N8Kzdo2AjYw-CF2qcphQT3" target="_blank">study by Christophe McGlade</a> and colleagues at University College London, and published by <em>Nature</em>.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In 2009, <em>Nature</em> published "Planetary Boundaries" by Earth systems scientist Johan Rockström and colleagues, showing that human activity has pushed seven essential systems – biodiversity, temperature, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, land use, fresh water, and ozone depletion – near or beyond critical tipping points.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In 2012, <em>Nature</em> published "<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html" target="_blank">Approaching a State Shift in Earth’s Biosphere</a>," by 22 international scientists, warning that human activity is risking a planetary-scale transition, "with the potential to transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience."&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Dr. William Rees, at the University of British Columbia, creator of "ecological footprint" analysis, wrote in "the Way Forward" in <a href="http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1113" target="_blank"><em>Solutions Journal</em></a>: "A virtual tsunami of evidence suggests that the global community is living beyond its ecological means."</p><p></p><p>We live on a vast planet, whose bounty appears at times almost infinite, but human enterprise has reached the scale of the Earth itself, and we now witness a big difference between "smartness" and the physical requirements of economy such as energy, trees, and fish. And because global society remains severely unjust, with rich nations consuming most of these dwindling resources, we have to simultaneously reduce wasteful consumption in those rich nations and share Earth's bounty more equitably.</p><p></p><p>We cannot make nature's limits disappear with wishful thinking. Cassandra, remember, really did see the future. The fools around her brought down Troy.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>References:</p><p></p><p>Donella Meadows (D. H. Meadows, D. L. Meadows, J. Randers, W. Behrens), <em>Limits to Growth</em> 1972; New American Library, 1977; and the 30-Year Update (Meadows, Randers; Chelsea Green, 2004).</p><p></p><p>Turner, G. (2014) 'Is Global Collapse Imminent?', MSSI Research Paper No. 4, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, The University of Melbourne.</p><p></p><p>Christophe McGlade, Paul Ekins, "The Geographical Distribution of Fossil Fuels unused when limiting global warming to 2C," <em>Nature</em>, v. 517, January 2015.</p><p></p><p>John Rockström, et. al., "Planetary Boundaries," <em>Nature</em>, v. 461, September 23, 2009</p><p></p><p>Anthony D Barnosky, et. al., "Approaching a state shift in Earth's biosphere," <em>Nature</em>, v. 486, June 7, 2012.</p><p></p><p>Williams Rees, "The Way Forward: Survival 2100," <em>Solutions</em>, v.3, #3, June 2012.</p>Sat, 17 Jan 2015 22:46:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/are-limits-to-growth-real/blog/51820/#comments-holderabout usagricultureclimate changeforestsnuclearoceansother issuestoxicsRex Weyler0000c631-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/coal-darkness-in-lignite-era/blog/50737/Coal: Darkness in the Lignite era<p>Coal, known as "King coal" or "black gold" for its historic economic influence, is also known as the "dirtiest fuel," the most carbon-intensive and toxic hydrocarbon. The industry has promoted "clean coal," but since they have exhausted Earth's premium mines, coal actually gets dirtier every year.</p><p></p><p>Coal, like oil, represents the organic remains of ancient photosynthesis. Oil is primarily the residue of marine algae trapped in ocean sediment, whereas coal originated from land plants buried under soil. During photosynthesis, plants reduce atmospheric carbon-dioxide (CO2) to produce glucose, the basis of all complex organic molecules in plants and animals.</p><p></p><p>In most cases, when organisms die, bacteria oxidize the carbon molecules back to CO2. In exceptional cases, in low-oxygen environments, the molecules remain preserved as hydrocarbons with the solar energy locked inside. When we burn coal, oil, or gas, we release ancient solar energy. We get warm, cook food, make steel, and race automobiles, with ancient sunlight. However, when we burn coal and oil, we also release the carbon back into the atmosphere. And there, as we now know, lies the rub.</p><p></p><p><img title="A shepherdess watches over her flock of sheep that graze near a coal power plant in Jepara, Central Java. 12/26/2012 © Kemal Jufri / Greenpeace" src="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/105972_170632.jpg" alt="A shepherdess watches over her flock of sheep that graze near a coal power plant in Jepara, Central Java. 12/26/2012 © Kemal Jufri / Greenpeace" width="600" height="400" /><em>A shepherdess watches over her flock of sheep that graze near a coal power plant in Jepara, Central Java. 12/26/2012 © Kemal Jufri / Greenpeace</em></p><p></p><p>Draining the Dregs</p><p></p><p>Most modern coal deposits, about 56%, originated with the first land plants about 300 million years ago. We call this historic period the "Carboniferous" precisely because marine and land plants reduced massive volumes of carbon from the atmosphere and thereby <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1012083519667" target="_blank">changed Earth's ecological regime.</a> We won't be surprised that Earth's temperature dropped precipitously during this period as CO2 left the atmosphere to become carbohydrates and proteins in living organisms. Younger coal deposits formed in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, 100 to 200 million years ago. During this period, however, as land animals and dead organic matter returned carbon to the atmosphere, Earth warmed again. About 64 million years ago, the now famous asteroid hit Earth in the Yucatan, changed the ecological order again, and Earth cooled until humans started mining and burning that ancient sunlight.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.eolss.net/sample-chapters/c08/E3-04-01-01.pdf" target="_blank">Humans discovered coal about five millennia ago</a> in China, where inhabitants used the black rock for heating and metallurgy, particularly smelting copper. Later Greek and Roman empires mined and burned coal. The Aztecs in Mexico burned coal and carved it for ornaments.</p><p></p><p>In hydrocarbon deposits, pressure over time progressively concentrates the energy. Peat, the precursor to coal, contains about 7,500 BTUs (British thermal units) per pound, about the same as wood. Imagine burning a pound of wood in a wood stove. That's how much energy a pound of peat, represents.</p><p></p><p>A pound of top-grade coal, anthracite or premium bituminous coal, provides twice that much energy, up to 16,000 BTUs. This is why coal was considered valuable, because it delivered more energy per pound than wood.</p><p></p><p>Coal, even high-grade coal, emits almost twice the carbon per unit of energy as natural gas and 30 percent more than gasoline. Coal coke, refined from coal and used to make steel, is even worse. However, as with most other resources, humans "high graded" coal, taking the easy to extract, highest energy coal first. The best historic anthracite and bituminous coal is gone. The production of anthracite peaked in the UK in 1913, in the US in 1914, and in Germany in 1958. High-grade anthracite now represents about 1% of global coal reserves. <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/human-chain-Vattenfall/blog/50326/" target="_blank">Coal companies are left to scour the lower-grade dregs</a> – the sub-bituminous and brown lignite – with deadly consequences.</p><p></p><p>Lignite contains no more energy-per-pound than peat, and sometimes less, down to 4,000 BTUs per pound. This means that for the same amount of energy received from high grade anthracite, lignite releases two-to-four-times the carbon into the atmosphere.</p><p></p><p>There is no such thing as "clean coal," a promotional slogan with no relationship to physical reality.</p><p></p><p>In sickness and health</p><p></p><p><img title="Miner with Black Lung in Appalachia. 10/26/2008 © Greenpeace" src="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/105968_170621.jpg" alt="Miner with Black Lung in Appalachia. 10/26/2008 © Greenpeace" width="600" height="400" /><em>Miner with Black Lung in Appalachia. 10/26/2008 © Greenpeace</em></p><p></p><p>While heating Earth's atmosphere and turning oceans acidic, coal kills humans.</p><p></p><p>In the unusually cold winter of 1952, London residents burned significantly more coal, and during an atmospheric inversion in December, a black smog covered London. A citizen fell over dead every thirty-six seconds, 12,000 dead over five days. Some 100,000 people sought treatment for respiratory ailments.</p><p></p><p>Today, the World Health Organization estimates that 1-million people die annually from coal-polluted air and water. Millions suffer from coal-induced pneumonia, bronchitis, asthma, and heart failure. US health authorities estimate that US workers loose 5 million work days each year from coal-related illness. Globally, those illnesses lead to hundreds of millions of lost days.</p><p></p><p>Coal miners have seen the worst of it. Black Lung disease, pneumoconiosis, slays thousands of miners every year, and leaves the living with lifetime lung ailments. Historically, and even now, coal mine workers suffer gas poisoning, explosions, mine collapses, suffocation, and equipment accidents. In the US, about one thousand coal miners die annually. China officially reports about 6,000 deaths annually, but unofficial estimates suggest thousands more, some 300 deaths per week, year-round.</p><p></p><p>Every species, habitat, ecosystem, river valley, and the atmosphere itself also suffer. Earth suffers. Coal burning industries release some 100-million tonnes of solid waste, annually, into Earth's atmosphere and water, including fly ash, flue-gas, sludge, mercury, uranium, thorium, and arsenic. Imagine a hundred-million truckloads of toxic waste dumped into Earth's ecosystems every year, 200 trucks per minute. Year-round.</p><p></p><p>Coal and Water</p><p></p><p><img title="Toxic Fly Ash in Water in Maharashtra. 02/28/2014 © Zishaan Latif / Greenpeace" src="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/105967_170619.jpg" alt="Toxic Fly Ash in Water in Maharashtra. 02/28/2014 © Zishaan Latif / Greenpeace" width="600" height="400" /><em>Toxic Fly Ash in Water in Maharashtra. 02/28/2014 © Zishaan Latif / Greenpeace</em></p><p></p><p>As global warming leaves Earth ecosystems dryer, coal mining and processing consume and pollute those diminishing water supplies. A <a href="http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/04/identifying-global-coal-industry%E2%80%99s-water-risks" target="_blank">World Resources Institute report</a> warns that coal now threatens the world's water resources.</p><p></p><p>During its full life cycle – mining, transport, use, and disposal – one tonne of coal will consume about 8,000 liters of water. The world produces 7.8 billion tonnes annually, requiring some 60 trillion liters, 22 million Olympic swimming pools, of water.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, coal plants, withdraw, divert, and pollute much more water than they consume. A typical coal plant, with a once-through cooling system, withdraws between 70 and 180 billion gallons of water annually. This process disrupts fish and amphibian nurseries and aquatic food webs.</p><p></p><p>When coal mines expose pyrite, which is common, the sulfur in pyrite reacts with oxygen and water to create sulfuric acid, turning lakes and rivers acidic, even long after a mine closes. In the 1980s, along the Myntdu River, on the India-Bangladesh border, scores of fishing villages abandoned historic livelihoods when fish could no longer survive in the acidic river. In the Pennsylvania coal fields, in the US, four thousand kilometers of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers are so acidic, they cannot support fish.</p><p></p><p>Mountaintop removal shoves rocks, millions of tons, into river valleys. In the US, the practice has buried over 3,000 kilometers of Appalachian streams, displaced communities, and obliterated watershed biodiversity.</p><p></p><p><img title="Aerial photograph documenting mountain top removal mining atop Cherry Pond Mountain. 03/30/2012 © Wade Payne / Greenpeace" src="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/105966_170616.jpg" alt="Aerial photograph documenting mountain top removal mining atop Cherry Pond Mountain. 03/30/2012 © Wade Payne / Greenpeace" width="600" height="400" /><em>Aerial photograph documenting mountain top removal mining atop Cherry Pond Mountain. 03/30/2012 © Wade Payne / Greenpeace</em></p><p></p><p>Coal-fired power stations, especially in the age of low-grade brown lignite, disrupt downstream agriculture with both acid and the chemical opposite, <a href="http://extension.oregonstate.edu/umatilla/mf/sites/default/files/pnw597-e.pdf" target="_blank">alkaline run-off.</a> Coal plants release mercury, which accumulates in fish, disrupts reproduction and growth, enters the human community, and causes neurological defects in infants and cardiovascular health problems for adults.</p><p></p><p>India appears to face the highest water risk, as some 70% of coal-fired capacity in India is located in water stressed regions, with plans calling for more. Coal-related water-stress has impacted communities in <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/Exposed-Coal-mining-at-the-source-of-Chinas-Yellow-River/" target="_blank">China,</a> US, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa, Egypt, and Pakistan.</p><p></p><p>Facing the Limits</p><p></p><p>Coal-power companies have proposed 1199 new coal-fired power plants in 59 countries, while actively dodging environmental laws. The Australian government led by Tony Abbott abolished the country's climate laws before approving Australia's largest coal mine. Eskom power company in South Africa has proposed exempting themselves from emission standards. A <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/Press-Centre-Hub/Publications/License-to-Kill/" target="_blank">Greenpeace study</a> found that pollution from Eskom's coal-fired power plants already causes an estimated 2,200 premature deaths annually, at a social cost of some 30 billion rand, including costs to treat mercury's neurotoxic effects on children.</p><p></p><p>Eskom's proposed non-compliance would allow them to emit an additional 210 tonnes of mercury annually, 560,000 tonnes of particulates, 2.9 million tonnes of nitrogen-oxides, and 28 million tonnes of sulfur-dioxide, a plan that amounts to random murder of citizens.</p><p></p><p>Earth's productive capacity has limits, and pushing those limits has consequences. The remaining low-grade coal reserves will deliver sickness, death, and ecological destruction. There are better ways to stay warm.</p><p></p><p>Environmental groups have articulated alternatives for decades: Conservation and renewable energy. This is not complicated. Earth has reached the genuine biophysical limits that ecologists have warned about since the 19th century. Digging after the dirty dregs of hydrocarbons amounts to civilization's suicide. If common sense should prevail, we would close coal mines, build out renewable energy systems, and ditch the wasteful lifestyles that drive energy demand.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p>Wed, 24 Sep 2014 11:00:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/coal-darkness-in-lignite-era/blog/50737/#comments-holderabout usclimate changeRex Weyler0000c1b5-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/water-a-lake-with-a-thousand-faces/blog/49589/Water: A Lake with a Thousand Faces<p>I live on a lakeshore. It's face changes not only day-to-day, but moment to moment, menacing and dark, then ethereal with silver light dancing everywhere, then solemn again, like glass, then lively with trout feeding at the surface. This spring, I saw a new face.</p><p></p><p>In April, we experienced a very unpleasant smell and taste in the lake water. For days, no trout hit the surface. I paddled out in the canoe and ran my fingers through the algae bloom. I had not witnessed this face before, and it startled me. A biologist friend and I collected water samples, looked at droplets under our microscopes, and began to identify the organisms living in our lake.</p><p></p><p>If you have not seen this sort of thing, imagine: A fraction of a drop of water, pressed flat between two pieces of glass, a tiny damp smudge, and within this world, little bacteria, diatoms, and dinoflagellates swim around as if alien sea monsters in the mid-Pacific.</p><p></p><p>We found primarily Volvox algae, which is non-toxic, but which depletes lake oxygen as it dies off. Repeated algae blooms can kill lakes or transform them to swamp conditions. We found smaller traces of toxic cyano-bacteria, <em>Nostoc sp.</em>, which can kill other lake species. These clues all indicate a lake going through an ecological transition.</p><p></p><p>The Volvox bloom tells us that our lake is processing a load of nutrients, typically phosphates and nitrates, which typically flow from human settlements. The annoying smell and taste indicate the decomposing, low-oxygen conditions. This is a rural lake with forested park on about half the shoreline, a few small farms, and less than a hundred homes in the 6-square-kilometer watershed. Yet, here we witness the human impact, even in modest numbers, on Earth's delicately balanced ecosystems. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Similar fresh water crises play out globally in virtually every inhabited watershed on Earth.</p><p></p><p>Peak Water</p><p></p><p>You probably know the sobering statistics: About three-thousandths, 0.3%, of all fresh water on Earth exists in lakes and rivers; 30% exists in soil moisture and ground water; and 70% remains locked up in ice. The ice, we know, is receding, transforming into saline ocean water or fresh groundwater. Meanwhile, human usage depletes this groundwater, the lakes, rivers, and aquifers.</p><p></p><p>Today, on Earth, over a billion people have no access to clean, fresh water. &nbsp;In wealthy industrial and post-industrial nations, consumers unwittingly use massive water resources with every purchase they make, such as the 650 gallons necessary to produce a typical cotton t-shirt, or the 139 gallons of water to prepare a single 16-ounce cup of fancy logo coffee. Producing a pound of beef in industrial ranching requires over 2-thousand gallons of water.</p><p></p><p>North Americans use some 100 gallons of water per person each day (over 120 gallons in Los Angeles), while in Chad, Niger, Ghana, and Gambia, the average person uses as little as one gallon, and are fortunate if their water is clean and safe.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Industrial projects such as the Canadian tar sands, shale oil fracking, and pesticide-based agriculture pollute the water tables, rivers and lakes. About half the world's fresh water is polluted. Furthermore, increasing global temperatures transform water to vapor at a faster rate, drying lakes and aggravating the water crisis.</p><p></p><p>The Aral Sea, in Kazakhstan, drained for cotton production and drying under increased heat, has dropped 16 meters and shrunk in size by 70%. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/world/middleeast/its-great-lake-shriveled-iran-confronts-crisis-of-water-supply.html?nl=todaysheadlines&amp;emc=edit_th_20140131&amp;_r=5" target="_blank">Lake Urmia</a> in Iran has dropped over 10 meters and shrunk to about half its size. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2543513/Chinas-largest-freshwater-lake-twice-size-London-completely-dries-drought.html" target="_blank">Poyang</a>, once the largest freshwater lake in China, has virtually dried up due to drought and water diversion. Lake Chad, between Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad, has dropped 10 meters and lost 95% of its area, as regional governments fight over the remnants.</p><p></p><p>In the US, the The 450,000 km² Ogallala Aquifer, providing irrigation in the US for a century, but depleting faster than it is replenished for decades, is now dry in some regions, and would take tens of thousands of years to replenish by natural rain cycles. The Colorado River now runs dry long before it reaches the sea. Owens Lake in Southern California, once covering 280-square-kilometers, up to 18 meters deep, is now nearly dry, diverted to supply water to Los Angles. The California drought this summer shut down power systems, left communities without local water, and set in motion a warming feedback cycle when those communities began to truck water in from far away, burning hydrocarbons to move water.</p><p></p><p>This story is replicated, with variations, on thousands of lakes, rivers, and aquifers around the world. Hotter global temperatures increase droughts, while the world's human population consumes fresh water faster than Earth's natural hydrological systems can replenish it. Every day, we deplete Earth's shrinking water reserves, and some regions have already reached what <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/jul/06/water-supplies-shrinking-threat-to-food" target="_blank">Lester Brown</a> identifies as "peak water."</p><p></p><p>The capitalist, industrial response: sell it!</p><p></p><p>In 2006, Europe's largest bank, Swiss UBS, wrote "Water scarcity: The defining crisis of the 21st century?" The following year they bought UK's Southern Water with JP Morgan and Australia's Challenger Fund. In 2008, Credit Suisse warned investors of the "depletion of freshwater reserves [due to] "pollution, disappearance of glaciers, and population growth," and advised: "One way to take advantage of this trend is to invest in companies geared to water generation."</p><p></p><p>We know that companies do not actually "generate" any water, but rather lay claim to it. They see water shortages as an opportunity to privatize water and sell it to those who can afford it. "Water is the oil of the 21st century," DOW Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris told <em>The Economist</em> in 2008. According to a report by <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-water-barons-wall-street-mega-banks-are-buying-up-the-worlds-water/5383274" target="_blank">Global Research</a>, water is now a $425 billion annual industry. Five food and beverage giants – Nestlé, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Anheuser Busch, and Danone – consume almost 575 billion liters of water per year. In a pattern we have come to recognize, the industrial solution makes the core problem worse. A single liter of bottled water requires 3 liters of water to produce and leaves a trail of plastic throughout the world.</p><p></p><p>Multinational banks and investment firms – Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Barclays, HSBC, and others – are buying water rights. Meanwhile, industry-friendly governments support their claims by outlawing common acts such as collecting rainwater.</p><p></p><p>In Bolivia, in the 1990s, the World Bank, the US firm Bechtel, and the Bolivian government teamed up to privatize water, raise water rates, and outlaw citizen water collection. These actions led to an uprising in 2000, an all-out revolution, and ultimately a change of government.</p><p></p><p>In 2003, Goldman Sachs and partners acquired the former French water-treatment and chemical company Ondeo Nalco for $4.2 billion, and in 2008, a Goldman Sachs report called water "the petroleum for the next century" an opportunity for investment and profit. In 2008, Goldman Sachs bought a US$50 million share of China Water and Drinks Inc., which supplies allegedly purified water to Coca-Cola.</p><p></p><p>In 2007, Citigroup, HSBC, and partners bought Yorkshire Water in the UK, and Citi is now investing in India's water infrastructure market. "Water," said Citigroup economist Willem Buitler in 2011, "will, in my view, become … the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals." Among the profitable uses of water, Citigroup includes hydraulic fracking. A typical fracked oil well requires 3 to 5 million gallons of water, 80% of which becomes too polluted to reuse. Fracking companies now outbid farmers – and thirsty communities – for water rights.</p><p></p><p>Preserving Earth's water</p><p></p><p>The alternative to turning water into a commodity is for communities to protect and preserve their scarce water cycles. Turning water into a commodity, the corporate response, is not going to save lakes, replenish drained aquifers, or reverse global warming. Communities will have to limit their own water use and protect water sources. Meanwhile, to stabilize Earth's climate we need to phase out fossil fuels quickly.</p><p></p><p>In our community, the algae bloom alerted us to collect data and begin the long process of mitigating and reversing our impact on the lake. Perhaps, if the residents in our watershed can reduce our phosphate and nitrogen flow, we can save our lake from becoming an algae swamp. Others have not been so successful. Algae blooms killed Lake Erie, between Canada and the US, and likewise Green Lake in Washington State, Blue Lake and Fern Ridge Lake in Oregon, Lough Neagh in the UK, Lake Taihu in Jiangsu China, and so forth around the world: thousands of dead or swampy former lakes.</p><p></p><p>As I write this, I'm watching cutthroat trout hit the lake surface, and this gives me some comfort. Fortunately for our community, we can take actions to reduce the nutrient flow from our homes and help restabilize our lake. We can avoid phosphate soaps and nitrate fertilizers, allow manure to compost well before spreading on gardens, isolate manure from the water run-off, upgrade and maintain septic fields, and so forth. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The wind has picked up, and the lake's face changes once again, all rippley and grey now. The trout have gone back to their cool holes. Show me! The lake seems to say. Talk is cheap.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p>Mon, 16 Jun 2014 20:16:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/water-a-lake-with-a-thousand-faces/blog/49589/#comments-holderclimate changeother issuesRex Weyler0000bca6-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/civil-disobedience-why-direct-action-is-necessary/blog/48294/Civil Disobedience: Why direct action is necessary<p>On Monday, February 24, Greenpeace International's Executive Director Kumi Naidoo presented a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE_a2u29NNw&amp;feature=share" target="_blank">lecture</a> at the Oxford Martin School in the UK on civil disobedience. History shows us that civil disobedience is often necessary when the relatively weak face the relatively strong. When power is out of balance, as in most cases of social justice advocacy, civil disobedience may be one of the few tactics left for citizens.</p><p></p><p><img title="Kumi Naidoo speaking at the Oxford Martin School" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/95899_154217.jpg" alt="Kumi Naidoo speaking at the Oxford Martin School" width="600" /></p><p></p><p>Two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire invaded Judea, established a puppet government, and placed Roman icons in temples as part of a campaign to eradicate the people's culture. Rome assassinated those who resisted with strength, using public displays of violence, which intimidated others. In response, the Jerusalem community marched to Caesarea on the coast to confront the Roman governor in an act of peaceful civil protest. The people – men, women and children – offered themselves up <em>en masse</em> to be killed. This show of peaceful commitment so confounded the Romans – ironically avoiding state power by submitting to it – that Rome relented and removed the offending symbols from the temples.</p><p></p><p>And thus, the weak have confronted the strong throughout history: The Quakers, Gandhi, the Chipko movement, the suffragettes, labour movements, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Greenpeace, and countless others. Peaceful confrontation, not just words, creates social change.</p><p></p><p>In 1846, American poet Henry David Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax because of his opposition to slavery and the American war on Mexico. After police arrested Thoreau, his colleague, writer Ralph Waldo Emerson visited him in jail and asked, "Henry, what are you doing in there?" Thoreau – who knew that Emerson shared his opposition to slavery and war – famously replied, "Waldo, what are you doing out there?"</p><p></p><p>Moral beliefs require action. When private citizens confront the injustice of governments, empires, bankers, royalty, or corporations they face an opponent who typically profits from the injustice and who will use its power to preserve the inequality for its benefit. For example, the peace and social justice movements typically face governments and corporate interests who: (1) Possess most of the money; (2) possess a monopoly on official violence, the police, military, and jails; (3) control most of the media; (4) possess the ability to spy and infiltrate; and (5) who gain public support by intimidation or by selling access to power or money. All of these practices are typical of powerful regimes from ancient kingdoms to modern alleged democracies.</p><p></p><p>In such circumstances, the relatively weak must find tactics of confrontation that avoid the opponents' strengths, avoid their own weakness, take advantage of the people's limited strengths, and which simultaneously illuminate the issue (peace, women's rights, ecology, economic justice.)</p><p></p><p>Although the people may not possess the money and institutional power, they may possess: (1) moral truth, righteousness; (2) each other, strength of numbers; (3) creativity; (4) the real wealth of a sharing community; (5) genuine moral leadership; (6) commitments to work for the moral truth without personal gain; and (7) they possess the power to tell their story.</p><p></p><p>This last tool, the power of narrative, can be used to expose the fraudulent story of the colonizers, plunderers, and oppressors. In our time, this fraudulent narrative, told by the corporate elite, includes not only a delusion of economic justice, but for example, also the outright deceit of climate denial funded by wealthy corporate owners, who profit from a hydrocarbon economy that causes the warming. So, the relatively weak, the people, must find a way to offset this institutional power.</p><p></p><p><img title="Non-violent direct action does not work without moral truth. But it always works when it possesses moral truth, because the narrative is shifed. - Rex Weyler" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/95901_154230.jpg" alt="Non-violent direct action does not work without moral truth. But it always works when it possesses moral truth, because the narrative is shifed. - Rex Weyler" width="600" /></p><p></p><p>Simply explaining injustice – explaining the moral injustice of slavery, or gender bias, or ecological devastation – is not enough. Why? Because the powerful benefit from the injustice. The logical or moral truth does not necessarily matter to oppressive regimes. Today, for example, we hear 99.9% of the scientists explaining the very simple biophysical reality of global warming, and yet the elite appear eager to follow the advice of 0.1% of the scientists – typically funded by oil interests to conjure up nominal evidence to deny the truth.</p><p></p><p>Thus, as a tactic, logic itself is limited. The truth needs public outcry. This was the case in Gandhi's India, in Mandela's South Africa, and in today's global ecological crisis.</p><p></p><p>However, the moral and biophysical truth does matter to the common people. The activist, who wishes to change society, must find a means to enter the large-scale public discourse where truth can gain traction. The people must tell their story, and the dynamics of narrative requires drama, characters, encounters, and visible commitment. Thus, we witness Gandhi making salt at the seashore, Rosa Parks refusing to move from her seat on the bus, the Quakers sailing boats into nuclear test zones, or Greenpeace sailing boats into whaling fleets or Arctic oil grounds.</p><p></p><p>When Greenpeace began, in 1970, people had been writing and talking about ecology for decades. Rachel Carson had written <em>Silent Spring</em>, which had stirred interest, but had not yet moved masses. At Greenpeace, we wanted to create an ecology movement on a global scale. Explaining ecology was not enough. We had to engage with the public discourse on a scale greater than writing an article explaining the dangers of toxins or species extinction.</p><p></p><p>Greenpeace had to help create a new narrative that would expose the errors of the status quo narrative. The narrative of the industrial, financial, and imperial powers claimed that these powers "created wealth" while in fact the status quo was destroying the real wealth of our productive ecosystems and our communities. The new narrative had to show, not tell, the world's people that we could create a new society based on compassion not only for humanity, but for all of life. The new narrative had to expose how the industrial narrative degraded our world, and offer a new world based on a more modest place in nature's patterns and processes.</p><p></p><p>In the 1970s, we knew we were on the right path, that we possessed or at least approached a moral truth, the importance of ecological balance. Protecting Earth's productive ecosystems would help ensure long-term social stability. Industrialism faced very real biophysical limits. These limits would not be universally popular, but they were universally true.</p><p></p><p>So, rather than try to explain ecology, in 1975, we sailed a small fish boat, the <em>Phyllis Cormack</em>, out into the middle of the ocean to confront Russian and Japanese whaling fleets on the whaling grounds. We blockaded the whalers and returned with images of the slaughter, blood and guts in the water, brave young men and women protecting the whales, and the decaying machinery of industrial plunder.</p><p></p><p><img title="Killed whales alongside Russian factory ship Dalniy Vostok. 06/26/1975 © Greenpeace / Rex Weyler" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/95734_153902.jpg" alt="Killed whales alongside Russian factory ship Dalniy Vostok. 06/26/1975 © Greenpeace / Rex Weyler" /></p><p></p><p>A new narrative was born. The modern environmental movement emerged, not because we possessed the logic, but because we told a more truthful story with non-violent direct action. The world's people responded not to facts, but to images of destruction and bravery. The moral truth became manifest through narrative, and this is one purpose of non-violent direct action.</p><p></p><p>If we lived in a society that was governed by logic and common decency, then these actions might not be necessary, but we do not live in such a society. We live in a society governed by money and power, hoarded by a tiny elite – the 1% – to the detriment of most people and all of nature.</p><p></p><p>When Greenpeace first sailed a ship into a nuclear test zone, we employed a tactic borrowed from the Quakers. Gandhi and Rosa Parks were our models. The Chipko people, the original tree-huggers, were our models. We simply applied the tactic of non-violent direct action to ecology. We showed people the beauty and magnificence of whales, of seals, of forests and rivers. Once we shifted the global public narrative – as did Gandhi, Mandela, or the Quakers – we entered a field of battle in which our strengths mattered, truth mattered, moral righteousness mattered, and the power of masses of people mattered.</p><p></p><p>Non-violent direct action does not work without moral truth, but it always works when it possesses moral truth, because direct action shifts the narrative. From history, we know some truths about power. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The powerful tend to leverage their power into more power for themselves. Power never relinquishes power willingly. Power clings to power. Power covets more power. So the people, the relatively powerless, must find a way to engage the powerful in a sphere that employs its modest strengths: Public displays of moral integrity.</p><p></p><p>The industrial and financial elite could argue with us – which they do to this day – but once we had shifted the narrative to a genuine story rather than the fraudulent story of the status quo, they could not undo what we had done, they could not un-tell the story. The British could not undo the images of their own brutality in India, exposed by Gandhi. The racists in America or South Africa could not undo the images of their injustice and brutality. Direct action shifts the story forever.</p><p></p><p>Another reason that direction action proves necessary is that the status quo can and will simply deny its crimes against humanity and nature. For example, in 1978, on good evidence, photographs of waste drums, Greenpeace discovered that the United Kingdom, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands were dumping toxic and nuclear waste at sea. Although the London Dumping Convention had banned "high-level" waste dumping at sea, when confronted with the truth, the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) denied the crime, claiming that the waste was "low-level." They simply lied.</p><p></p><p>A 300-foot freighter, the <em>Gem</em>, served as the nuclear garbage scow, so on July 11, 1978, the new Greenpeace ship <em>Rainbow Warrior</em> followed the <em>Gem</em> to their dumpsite near the Sea of Biscay. At the site, the <em>Gem</em> slowed to two knots and began to drop black drums of waste into the ocean. Greenpeace launched small, inflatable boats, positioned them under the dumping platform, and filmed the procedure from the bridge of the <em>Rainbow Warrior</em>. When a 600-pound nuclear waste drum hit a Greenpeace boat, the cameras captured the sequence on film. When we returned to London and showed those films, revealing the danger to the Greenpeace crew, the public demanded change and the UKAEA were forced to admit that the drums contained plutonium, the most toxic substance known. Non-violent direct action had exposed the lie, and regulators finally enforced their laws. This would not have happened without direct action.</p><p></p><p><img title="Greenpeace inflatable preventing vessel GEM to dump barrels radioactive waste. North Atlantic. 07/01/1978 © Greenpeace / Tony Marriner" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/95735_153907.jpg" alt="Greenpeace inflatable preventing vessel GEM to dump barrels radioactive waste. North Atlantic. 07/01/1978 © Greenpeace / Tony Marriner" /></p><p></p><p>Although Greenpeace adheres to a strict philosophy of non-violence against person or property, we have often grown frustrated at the deceit and slow pace of change. We have sometimes been reminded of the words spoken by a despondent Mark Anthony from the third act of Shakespeare's <em>Julius Caesar</em>:</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><em>O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,<br /> That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!</em></p><p></p><p>Yet, again and again, we have remained meek and gentle. Greenpeace has a 43-year record of peaceful direct action. To be successful in telling a narrative of moral truth, we must remain absolutely peaceful, and this has remained a strength of direct action. Moral integrity, we know, does not always win, but has a chance to win when wielded with peacefulness. When practiced with compassion direct action gains strength beyond the measure of money and violence.</p><p></p><p>When the powerful over-react to peaceful civil disobedience with arrests and violence, they only expose their own moral failure. When Russia arrested the Arctic 30 and charged them with piracy they exposed their own intolerance and corruption. On February 18, when Russian police attacked members of the punk band Pussy Riot with whips, they displayed their own brutality for all the world to witness. Within 24 hours, the band had released a <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-olympics-pussyriot-20140218,0,1991575.story">music video</a> – "Putin Will Teach You How to Love" – showing the attack. Once again, the powerful elite over-reacted to civil disobedience and exposed their own lack of moral integrity.</p><p></p><p>I have spent time in jail for my actions; I have been mocked, threatened, and spied upon, and these are my proudest moments. These are the times when I have known that I have some power to offset the power of violence and money. These are the moments when I know that my modest actions have exposed the injustice, the deceit of the official narrative, and the destruction of unrestrained industrial and corporate power.</p><p></p><p>Once the new narrative exists in the global discourse, any violent response – jail, beatings, increased oppression – only serves to expose the corruption of power. We learned this from Gandhi and the Quakers. We learned this from Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela.</p><p></p><p>If logic, common sense, and common decency worked alone to change society, we would not need direct action. However, history shows that common decency requires action and moral logic needs visible evidence. These values require a narrative to come alive in people's lives. The people, who want to create a more just world, must engage with direct action because otherwise the truth does not prevail.</p><p></p><p><img title="If logic, common sense, and common decency worked alone to change society, we would not need direct action. People must engage with direct action because otherwise the truth does not prevail. - Rex Weyler" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/95903_154228.jpg" alt="If logic, common sense, and common decency worked alone to change society, we would not need direct action. People must engage with direct action because otherwise the truth does not prevail. - Rex Weyler" width="600" /></p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p>Thu, 27 Feb 2014 14:50:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/civil-disobedience-why-direct-action-is-necessary/blog/48294/#comments-holderabout usother issuesRex Weyler0000b9da-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/the-value-of-ancient-forests/blog/47578/The value of ancient forests<p>I live in a forest, and know that I am fortunate. I watch flicker and siskin in the cedars. I hear thrush and vireo in the veiled vastness. Cutthroat trout inhabit the lake, wolves howl on winter nights, and raccoons venture out with their families for my scraps. But I know the forest I live in is rare and under assault. Those cedar and fir, hemlock and spruce, could be converted to money, the great driver of this modern world.</p><p></p><p>The value of forests is an ancient tale. We may recall that humanity’s earliest stories – Ramayana, Gilgamesh, Raven and People – take place in the forest, with awe for its mysterious immensity. Raven hops from its forest home to find humans inside a clamshell on the beach. Rama enlists the forest animals to help vanquish the world’s evil. When King Gilgamesh falls a tree, the forest guardian Humbaba calls out, “Who is this that has violated my woods and cut down my cedar?”</p><p></p><p>Today, the once legendary cedar forests of Lebanon and Sumer are a desert. In Western Europe, India and China, ancient forest are largely gone, reduced to scattered remnants. Forests have protectors and champions, but Earth still loses ancient forest every year to human enterprise, and now, to the new human-mediated climate.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.unep.org/maweb/en/Condition.aspx" target="_blank">Almost half of Earth’s forests</a> – the once great forests that stood on Earth eight thousand years ago, at the dawn of human agriculture – are entirely gone. However, that measure accounts only for land area – approximately six billion hectares of forest reduced to three and a half billion. Many of the remaining forests survive only as tree farms, secondary growth, skeletal forests with declining plant and animal species. These remnant forests hold considerably less of their original <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/IntactForestLandscapes_TechNote/" target="_blank">biomass and carbon</a>,&nbsp; in ecosystems fragmented by roads and resource development. When we account for this, we find that humanity has degraded or destroyed about 70-percent, with only 30 % left as <a href="http://www.intactforests.org/world.map.html" target="_blank">intact forests</a>.</p><p></p><p>The world’s remaining forests survive principally in five regions: Two boreal forests in Russia and Canada, and three tropical forests in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Amazon basin. Meanwhile, global wood consumption is projected to double over the next 30 years. Those who turn forests into money may not notice until the forests are gone, until Raven has no home, forest creatures have no refuge, and Humbaba has nothing left to defend.</p><p></p><p>Forestry fail</p><p></p><p>Annually, we lose about <a href="http://www.fao.org/forestry/fra/fra2010/en/" target="_blank">13 million hectares</a> of forest, 10 million in the tropics alone. I am struck by the fact that the combined brainpower of humanity’s schools of forestry, doctors of forestry, doctors of forest engineering, forestry consultants, and Nobel-prize-winning resource economists have not yet figured out how to achieve a sustainable yield of forest products. On the contrary, the world’s forestry schools appear resigned to overseeing the complete destruction of the ancient forests.</p><p></p><p>This failure remains particularly disturbing since genuine sustainable forestry is practiced around the world by small communities and foresters. One such forester, the late Merv Wilkinson, a friend and mentor of mine, logged his 36-hectare (90-acre) forest on Vancouver Island in Canada for 73 years, 1938 to 2011. Wilkinson’s forest held more standing timber on the day he passed away than when he started. His formula remained staggeringly simple:</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">“Cut below the growth rate.”</p><p></p><p>Perhaps someone should burn that into the chalk boards of all the forestry schools.</p><p></p><p>Not long ago, certain technology-optimists believed we were going to preserve the forests by going digital, but this belief has evaporated. Today, human enterprise uses six-times the paper we used in 1960 at the dawn of the computer age. Computer technology increased the worldwide consumption of just about everything, including paper.</p><p></p><p>Pulp, paper, lumber, and agriculture companies pursue the vestige ancient forests night and day, 365-days per year. Giant agriculture companies level forests for soil that they will deplete in a decade of over-production and pesticide use for genetically engineered crops that further degrade ecosystems. These companies remove forests to grow biofuels, soybeans, and palm oil, which is used in ice cream, granola bars, and cosmetics for the world’s rich consumers. Forests disappear for ranching, industrial projects, urban sprawl, resource sprawl, and energy sprawl. But now, a new human impact has arrived. Global heating is now adding to forest loss.</p><p></p><p>Throughout human history, degraded forests became scrub brush or grassland. Humans occupied those lands, farmed, grazed cattle, and paved roads. Some former forests became depleted further to become desert. Now, with a planet quickly heating and human enterprise expanding, this process has accelerated. Each year, as Earth loses forests, we gain six million hectares of desert.</p><p></p><p>Ecological feedback</p><p></p><p>Deforestation now accounts for <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5">10-15 percent</a> of humankind’s greenhouse gas emissions, a major contribution to global heating impact. Reducing forest cover decreases carbon sequestration, increases local temperatures, and puts more pressure on fragile or fragmented forests. Heat and drought make forests more susceptible to insects and fire. In western Canada, as boreal forest temperatures have increased, over nine million hectares of pine forest have been decimated by beetles, which for the first time on record now swarm over the northern Rocky Mountains to attack trees on the eastern slope.</p><p></p><p>The increase in frequency and intensity of forest fires, from Australia and <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/Multimedia/Photos/Forests/Indonesia/Palm-Oil-Companies-Must-Accept-Responsibility-for-Indonesian-Fires/" target="_blank">Indonesia</a>, to Russia and the US, releases carbon that had remained sequestered for centuries. Forest fires now contribute about a third as much carbon to Earth’s atmosphere as the burning of fossil fuels.&nbsp; Globally, forests and their soils still harbor over 650 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to nearly 80 years of global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Deforestation magnifies climate change impacts in tropical forests by fragmenting the remaining forest, making it drier and more vulnerable to drought-induced fire. The more vulnerable a forest to climate change, the more vulnerable the carbon stocks are to being lost to the atmosphere. This increases the risk of runaway climate change and losses of biodiversity and ecosystem services, such as clean water and breathable air. Keeping forests intact is seen as key to maintaining their resilience to climate change impact.</p><p></p><p>Above a 2°C global temperature rise, cosidered a critical threshold, we could witness dramatic shifts in forest ecosystems, but the trajectory is not linear. This non-linear response is due to the interaction between ecological tipping points. Climatologists now recognize that when one element tips – forest die-off or methane release, for example – other critical factors can be pushed beyond their delicate balance, adding to the feedback loop.</p><p></p><p>Fragile forest ecosystems</p><p></p><p>Human enterprise has generally approached forests as if they were free stores of lumber and agricultural soil for purely human priorities. The failure of industrial forestry stems from seeing forests as a collection of trees, rather than recognizing them as complex ecosystems. Ecologist <a href="http://www.abebooks.com/Shadows-Sun-Davis-Wade-Island-Press/2757618763/bd" target="_blank">Wade Davis</a> has documented an exhaustive survey of the Carmanah Valley forest on Vancouver Island, on Canada’s west coast, which revealed 15,000 species, including 500 species previously unknown to science, in the forest canopy alone. Davis reports that on a typical rainforest floor, each square meter of soil may host 2,000 earthworms, 40,000 insects, 120,000 mites, 120-million nematodes, and millions of protozoa and bacteria.</p><p></p><p>In an historic lecture, late ecologist Gregory Bateson pointed out that the survival unit in evolution is not a species, but rather a system of relationships among species. Such a system remains dynamic, with balances shifting within the limits of available energy and resources. Each species in a forest feeds on others, digests and recycles nutrients, and becomes food for other species.</p><p></p><p>Forest fungi, for example, play a critical role in keeping forest ecosystems healthy. All life forms require nitrogen to create proteins, but nitrates are rare in acidic and heavily leached rainforest soils. Fungi help solve this problem for the entire system of a forest. Clear-cut logging, on the other hand, can obliterate the fungal networks to such a degree that replanted tree farms may produce only stunted trees in degraded ecosystems.</p><p></p><p>A common mushroom that we see in the forest is only the fruit of the fungus, the reproductive phase. Most of the real work of forest fungi goes on in the dark, below the surface. Fungi produce mycelia in the vegetative phase, tiny filaments that spread throughout the soils, absorbing nutrients and accelerating decay. When certain mycelia encounter the right species of tree root, it draws the sugar it needs from the tree, and pays back the tree by helping the roots absorb nutrients, including nitrogen and phosphate.</p><p></p><p>Together, the fungus and root form mycorrhizae, and the tree root may also host nitrogen-fixing bacteria. In the northern rainforests of Canada, the roots of an old growth Douglas fir tree may form symbiotic relationships with as many as forty different mycorrhizae. Meanwhile, the mushroom fruit stage emits odors that attract shrews, rodents, and voles, who eat mushrooms and truffles and then carry the fungal spores throughout the forests, scattered in their waste droppings.</p><p></p><p>These fungal-tree-animal-mineral relations are typical of myriad dynamic, fragile systems that constitute a forest. Worldwide, forest loss deprives humanity and all species of vital ecosystem services. Forests provide oxygen, water filtration, air purification, soils, food, and shelter for everything that lives. For the human community, forests provide building materials, paper, medicines, fuel, and places of refuge, places of discovery, peace, solitude, education, myth, and spiritual insight. Forests, along with oceans, are also Earth’s primary climate regulator and sustainer of biodiversity.</p><p></p><p>Canadian economist Mark Anielski estimates that environmental services from Canada’s boreal forest are worth about $160 per hectare per year, $93 billion per year in Canada. Deutsche Bank economist Pavan Sukhdev has estimated that humanity is losing 2-5 trillion dollars of natural capital annually from deforestation.</p><p></p><p>So, for both ecological and economic reasons, intact primary forests require priority protection. Human civilization teeters on the brink of the greatest natural disaster in our history: runaway global heating. The real value of the world’s forests rests in their integrity as engines of biodiversity, the source for the clean air we breathe, and as climate regulators. The ancient forests are 70% gone or degraded. The remnant forests must be saved, and industrial society must harvest wood products from existing tree farms and already disturbed forests.</p><p></p><p>In the recent past, some environmentalists have celebrated deals that preserve a quarter or a third of some stand of ancient forest. There may exist some political logic in saving anything we can, but our aim, and our demands need to be more bold. To preserve the integrity of Earth’s interconnected forest ecosystems, we must preserve every remaining square centimetre of our planet’s ancient forests.</p><p></p><p>“We live at the edge of the clearcut,” as Wade Davis reminds us. We either defend the last remnants of Earth’s ancient forests, or we will lose them to the profiteers. The choice is ours.&nbsp;</p>Fri, 20 Dec 2013 06:34:00 Zabout usclimate changeforestsRex Weyler0000b865-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/gazprom-vs-greenpeace-arctic-30/blog/47205/Gazprom vs. Greenpeace Arctic 30<p><img title="Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. " src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/87959_141830.jpg" alt="Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. " width="600" /></p><p></p><p>Russia's overreaction to the Greenpeace Arctic protest — and their ludicrous waffling on the actual charges — will not work out well for Russia. Their extraordinary response will more likely help the global climate movement meet its goals.</p><p></p><p>Public dissent against abusive authority appears as old as any remembered human history. The Sumerian story of King Gilgamesh begins with public complaints that the king exploited young men for war and young women for his lust, failing in his role as the "people's shepherd." In <em>Antiquities</em>, Jewish historian Josephus recounts peasant protests against Roman abuse, governor Pilate sending assassins and how this overreaction incited men, women and children to offer their lives <em>en masse</em> by laying prostrate in the city square.</p><p></p><p>In our era, Gandhi liberated India from colonialism with peaceful resistance; Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and American freedom marchers overturned a racist culture; Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela faced down thugs in Burma and South Africa.</p><p></p><p>In all these cases, exploitative authority overreacted to public protest with police violence, as we have witnessed more recently at Gezi Park in Istanbul, Ramses Square in Cairo and this October in New Brunswick, where Canadian police sent snipers, dogs and Taser-wielding officers to break up an Indigenous Mi'kmaq protest against fracking.</p><p></p><p>These cases form the historic context of Russia's arrest of 30 journalists, seafarers and Greenpeace International activists, originally charged with piracy, now also being charged with "hooliganism." These charges appear frivolous since the record shows that the Greenpeace protest was a peaceful demonstration of concern, staged for the benefit of every human and every other species on Earth. The Greenpeace team — now known around the world as the "Arctic 30" — devoted their time and talents to Greenpeace to help warn Russia's Gazprom and other world oil companies that their planned plunder of Arctic hydrocarbons threatens the planet's climate. This, of course, is neither piracy nor hooliganism nor any other crime.</p><p></p><p>Historically, overreaction by authorities — violence, arrests, jail — galvanises social movements, empowers individuals and strengthens organizations. When the French government detonated a bomb under the Greenpeace ship <em>Rainbow Warrior</em> in 1985, killing photographer Fernando Pereira, Greenpeace received a wave of global support, while France inherited a murder on its record and a stain on its historic reputation.</p><p></p><p>Since Greenpeace was founded in Canada in 1971, conscientious, skilled people have stepped forward to defend Earth's ecological health, standing up for the whales, the forests, the atmosphere and oceans. Greenpeace has attracted navy veterans, fishers, farmers, scientists, journalists, lawyers and now webmasters and videographers.</p><p></p><p><img title="Faiza, member of the #Arctic 30" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/89401_144251.jpg" alt="Faiza, member of the #Arctic 30" width="600" /></p><p></p><p>"Whenever we do something to protect our planet, it is never for personal gain or wealth or stardom," said Canadian seaman Paul Ruzycki from his jail in Russia. "On the contrary, we have nothing personal to gain, but everything personal to lose including our freedom, family and friends." Ruzycki comes from a seafaring family. He is a skilled blacksmith, welder, artist and fiddler. He has spoken out against overfishing, reckless logging, nuclear testing and the slaughter of whales. He is typical of the global citizens who comprise the Arctic 30.</p><p></p><p>Families of the Arctic 30 have become active in their home countries. In Italy, the mother of crewmember Cristian D'Alessandro has gathered over 100,000 signatures on a <a href="http://www.change.org/it/petizioni/cristian-torni-a-casa-%C3%A8-solo-colpevoledipacifismo" target="_blank">petition</a> to free her son. The family of the British freelance journalist Kieron Bryan has set up a <a href="http://www.freekieron.org.uk/" target="_blank">website</a> to tell their son's story and gain his release. In Moscow, the wife of Russian freelance photographer Denis Sinyakov has <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-russian-court-order-greenpeace-and-environmental-activists-and-journalist-over-arctic-oil-protest/1758019.html" target="_blank">picketed</a> the government with her husband's journalist colleagues.</p><p></p><p>"I have been in prison for 22 days for a crime I did not commit," British digital media specialist Alexandra Harris told the court in Russia. "I have not seen any document showing my involvement in such a crime. The only thing that happened was peaceful protest and I believe the video evidence and Greenpeace’s long history will prove this." <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/16/greenpeace-arctic-30-families-appeal-release" target="_blank">Alexandra's parents</a> have asked the UK government to help secure their daughter's release.</p><p></p><p>Russia has received letters from <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/greenpeace-arctic-30-eleven-nobel-2463131" target="_blank">Desmond Tutu</a>, ten other Nobel Peace Prize laureates, the <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/the-mothers-of-the-disappeared-want-the-arcti/blog/47004/" target="_blank">Madres de Plaza de Mayo</a> in Argentina, Olympic medalist John Carlos, and Italian actor and playwright Dario Fo. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/16/us-russia-germany-greenpeace-idUSBRE99F0LI20131016" target="_blank">German Chancellor Angela Merkel</a>, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hillary-clinton-calls-for-outcry-over-jailed-greenpeace-activists-8873840.html" target="_blank">former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton</a> have expressed concern about Russia's inappropriate persecution of the Arctic 30. Greenpeace supporters have sent 1.5 million emails to Russian consulates and embassies, calling for the Arctic 30's freedom. <a href="http://tcktcktck.org/2013/10/throw-crew-lifeline-pressure-russia-release-arctic-30/58207" target="_blank">Avaaz</a> has collected a million signatures.</p><p></p><p>The Netherlands — flag state of the seized Greenpeace ship <em>Arctic Sunrise</em> — has filed an <a href="http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=181717#.UmWiWFCbPis" target="_blank">action against Russia</a>, asking the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg to order the release of the Greenpeace ship and crew. The legal case states that the Greenpeace ship and crew were engaged in a "peaceful protest against Gazprom's Arctic oil platform, the <em>Prirazlomnaya</em>."</p><p></p><p>From around the world, we now hear the cry, "Free the Arctic 30" and "Save the Arctic." The world has not forgotten why these 30 people contributed their time and skills to Greenpeace and risked their freedom to speak out: Simply to save the Arctic from plunder and to save Earth from climate disaster. They are neither pirates nor hooligans. They are now global heroes and heroines. The longer they remain in jail, the more heroic they become in the eyes of the world.</p><p></p><p>The captain, crew, journalists and activists on board the <em>Arctic Sunrise</em> risked their freedom for all of us. They acted on their conscience and performed the time-honoured role of peaceful social opposition to what they perceive as injustice. They opened the public discourse about the fate of Earth's climate. For this, they will experience a freedom that no detention centre can lock away.</p><p></p><p><em>Rex Weyler is an author, journalist and co-founder of Greenpeace International.</em></p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/getinvolved/Free-Our-Activists/"><em><img title="#FreeTheArctic30" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/89552_144558.jpg" alt="FreeTheArctic30 Banner" /></em></a></p>Thu, 31 Oct 2013 12:00:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/gazprom-vs-greenpeace-arctic-30/blog/47205/#comments-holderabout usclimate changeRex Weyler0000b209-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/gezi-park-historic-defense-of-democracy/blog/45577/Gezi Park: A historic defence of democracy<p style="text-align: center;">"Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out <br />the exact amount of injustice and wrong that will be imposed upon them."<br />– Frederick Douglass, American ex-slave civil rights leader.</p><p></p><p>The citizens of Istanbul now appear in control of Gezi Park, protecting one of the last and most treasured green spaces in Istanbul from conversion to a shopping mall.</p><p></p><p>The protest, which began to save the park, became a rally for genuine democracy in Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government responded with police violence – beatings, pepper spray, water cannons, and tear gas – but could not stop the protests from spreading to over 70 Turkish cities, exposing Erdogan's persecution of opposition and media censorship.</p><p></p><p>When governments turn to violence to bully their own citizens, the system breaks down when people resist with courage. The Gezi Park uprising has become a model of genuine democracy for the world, a line of defiance in the battle to preserve nature and democracy.</p><p></p><p>When governments over-react</p><p></p><p>Last fall, the Turkish government closed roads into Istanbul centre, and announced plans to convert Gezi Park to a shopping mall and military artillery barracks. When construction began in May, Taksim Solidarity activists blockaded bulldozers. Sırrı Süreyya Önder, a Peace &amp; Democracy Party deputy, joined the blockade, invoking parliamentary immunity.</p><p></p><p>Erdogan dismissed protesters as "marginal extremists". At dawn on 30 May, police raided the park with tear gas and water cannons. They drove about 1,000 citizens from the park, and then burned their tents and possessions.</p><p></p><p>Calls went out on social media, and 10,000 people arrived at Gezi Park. Police attacked again, injuring hundreds of citizens and three reporters from Reuters, the <em>Hürriyet Daily News</em>, and <em>Birgün</em> newspaper. Citizens opened their homes to injured protesters. By evening, 100,000 people had re-occupied the park. That night, the public occupied the historic Bosphorus Bridge that links Europe to Asia.</p><p></p><p>The uprising spread beyond Istanbul to Ankara, Izmir, and over 70 Turkish cities. Izmir police detained 29 people for sending Twitter messages. The Turkish Doctors' Union reported 4,177 people injured during protests and two deaths.</p><p></p><p>On Tuesday, 4 June, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç apologised for police violence and met with opposition leader Önder, who called the uprising "historic" and announced that "the democratic process would start". The following day, Arınç met with the original protest group platform, Taksim Solidarity, which delivered the public's demands: Cancel the Gezi park demolition, release arrested citizens, ban tear gas, and allow free public assembly and free expression.</p><p></p><p>Solidarity</p><p></p><p>Sirin Bayram, a woman who has worked for Greenpeace, wrote to me from Istanbul about inspiring acts of public support: "A bus driver saw police and a water cannon behind him in the street, heading for Gezi Park. He stopped his bus and blocked them. We were proud of him, because, of course, he lost his job. At the courthouse in Istanbul, lawyers made a protest by clapping their hands. The government arrested over 75 lawyers, for clapping!"</p><p></p><p>Bayram described working at the park to collect support for the protesters. "A little boy came to the park with some rice his mother had cooked for his lunch. He said 'My big sisters and brothers in the park need this more than me.' He put the rice on the table and he left. This put tears on our faces and kept us strong."</p><p></p><p>The Greenpeace office in Istanbul stands on Istiklal Street, leading to Gezi Park. Police officers confronted demonstrators with tear gas and water cannons directly below the office, which remained open night and day, providing shelter to injured protestors. Doctors and medics arrived to offer medical assistance.</p><p></p><p>On Saturday, 8 June, protesters witnessed an unprecedented expression of solidarity as Turkey's rival football fans – from Fenerbahce, Galatasaray, Besiktas, and other sports clubs barred from watching matches together because of stadium violence – walked through Istanbul arm-in-arm, wearing each others' team colours.</p><p></p><p>Censorship in Turkey</p><p></p><p>The citizens of Istanbul have now occupied Gezi Park and Taksim Square, staged music and political speakers, and insisted on a new era of genuine democracy in Turkey. Twenty-two year old protester Yesim Polat told <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/06/20136513414495277.html">Al Jazeera</a>, "Prime Minister Erdogan thinks that he is a sultan. He thinks he can do whatever he wants."</p><p></p><p>Turkey once represented a modern, secular state that offered religious freedom. Erdogan and his conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) advocate a return to an Islamic state. Once elected in 2003, Erdogan began arresting opposition voices, Kurdish leaders, and journalists, and harassing private couples for kissing in public.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2013/04/201342104340948788.html">Mustafa Akyol</a>, a columnist with the <em>Hürriyet</em> newspaper, told Al Jazeera that journalists are being arrested under a abuse of Turkey's anti-terrorism law. "The great majority of the journalists in jail are people who wrote positive things about the PKK."</p><p></p><p>In January 2013, Erdogan's police arrested 11 journalists attending an opposition political party meeting, and sentenced five of them to jail, increasing the number of jailed journalists in Turkey to 75. Prior to Gezi Park, freedom of the media had virtually vanished in Turkey.</p><p></p><p>Parks and People</p><p></p><p>From Amsterdam's Vondelpark and California's People's Park in the 1960s, to Prague's Wenceslas Square and Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, to Cairo's Tahrir Square in 2011, protecting public parks has provided the backdrop for democracy around the world.</p><p></p><p>In 1970, a group of citizens in Vancouver, Canada – the "Don't Make a Wave Committee," which later became Greenpeace – rallied to save a park entrance in Vancouver. At that time, the Four Seasons Hotel chain announced a plan to construct six towers at the entrance to Vancouver's magnificent, 400 hectare Stanley Park, a waterfront meadow that opened onto a lagoon, where swans nested in the bulrushes and families gathered for picnics.</p><p></p><p>Two of the Don't Make a Wave group, Greenpeace co-founders Rod Marining and Bob Hunter, met to make a plan. Hunter, a newspaper columnist, had described his "mindbomb" theory, which became a key Greenpeace strategy. "The holistic revolution won't be like storming the Bastille," Hunter would say, "but a storming of the mind." Hunter believed that campaigns to change in the world should create images that could change people's way of thinking. Today, we call this a "meme" but in 1970, this was a "mindbomb," an image that would travel on the global media and shift public perception.</p><p></p><p>In May 1971, during a light spring snow, Marining and his allies occupied the park entrance, pitched tents on the land, and put up signs calling the encampment "All Season's Park".The camp included indigenous activists, Québéquois separatists, hippies, and several early Greenpeace founders. Ben Metcalfe, the first Greenpeace media officer, organised a group of citizens to bring food and wine to the occupiers. Nurseries in Vancouver donated plants. Protesters laid sod over construction roads and planted trees. Images of "All Seasons Park", with families in tents in the snow, became one of the earliest Greenpeace mindbombs.</p><p></p><p>The story appeared on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ukUAo456BE">Vancouver television</a> and in newspapers. Occupiers demanded a public referendum, and Vancouver citizens voted 56% in favour of keeping the park entrance, but the by-law required 60% for approval. The stand-off continued until the wealthy father of a protestor offered to purchase the property for $4m. The entrance to Stanley Park was saved, and remains a part of Vancouver and Greenpeace heritage to this day.</p><p></p><p>Gezi Park and the World</p><p></p><p>Today, Gezi Park has become a mindbomb for the world. The protest over a park became a referendum for democracy. "We are here for our freedom," Nihan Dinc, a 26-year-old publicist, told Al Jazeera. "We are here for a space to breathe."</p><p></p><p>Journalist Pepi Escobar explains in an <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-060613.html"><em>Asia Times</em> story</a> why Gezi Park is significant beyond Turkey. Escobar describes the Syria revolution as a "proxy war" between NATO and a new Russia/China alliance. Turkey sits at a strategic point between Europe and Asia, where NATO and western oil companies want a pipeline from the United Arab Emirates, through Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey, into Europe. Escobar explains that NATO and the US want Turkey to support their military efforts in Syria to win the pipeline war. However, "Turkey has been plunged into the … Gezi/Down-with-the-Dictator maelstrom," Escobar writes, "and the last thing an embattled Erdogan will be thinking about is to further empower a bunch of 'rebel' losers."</p><p></p><p>But Gezi Park is important for another reason: The people of Istanbul have shown the world that citizens can stand up to military and police violence with peaceful solidarity.</p>Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:30:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/gezi-park-historic-defense-of-democracy/blog/45577/#comments-holderabout usother issuesRex Weyler0000b12d-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/honey-bee-collapse-a-lesson-in-ecology/blog/45357/Honey Bee Collapse: A Lesson in Ecology<p style="text-align: center;" align="center">"In the last four years, the chemical industry has spent $11.2 million on <br />a PR initiative <span style="text-align: left;">to say it's not their fault, so we know whose fault it is."<br />― Jon Cooksey, writer, director: <a href="http://howtoboilafrog.com/" target="_blank">How to Boil a Frog</a></span>.</p><p></p><p>We know what is killing the bees. Worldwide Bee Colony Collapse is not as big a mystery as the chemical companies claim. The systemic nature of the problem makes it complex, but not impenetrable. Scientists know that bees are dying from a variety of factors – pesticides, drought, habitat destruction, nutrition deficit, air pollution, global heating, and so forth. The causes of collapse merge and synergise, but we know that humanity is the perpetrator, and that the two most prominent causes appear to be pesticides and habitat loss.</p><p></p><p>Biologists have found over 150 different chemical residues in bee pollen, a deadly "pesticide cocktail" according to University of California apiculturist Eric Mussen. The chemical companies Bayer, Syngenta, BASF, Dow, DuPont, and Monsanto shrug their shoulders at the systemic complexity, as if the mystery were too complicated. They advocate no change in pesticide policy. After all, selling poisons to the world's farmers is profitable.</p><p></p><p>Furthermore, wild bee habitat shrinks every year as industrial agri-business converts grasslands and forest into mono-culture farms, which are then contaminated with pesticides. To reverse the world bees decline, we need to fix our dysfunctional and destructive agricultural system.</p><p></p><p>Bee collapse</p><p></p><p><em>Apis mellifera</em> – the honey bee, native to Europe, Africa and Western Asia – is disappearing around the world. Signs of decline also appear now in the eastern honey bee, <em>Apis cerana</em>.</p><p></p><p>This is no marginal species loss. Honey bees – wild and domestic – perform about 80% of all pollination worldwide. A single bee colony can pollinate 300 million flowers each day. Grains are primarily pollinated by the wind, but the best and healthiest food – fruits, nuts, and vegetables – are pollinated by bees. Seventy out of the top 100 human food crops, which supply about 90% of the world's nutrition, are pollinated by bees.</p><p></p><p>Tonio Borg, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy, calculates that bees "contribute over €22bn ($30bn US dollars) annually to European agriculture." Worldwide, bees pollinate human food valued at over €265bn ($350bn). The bee collapse is a challenge to human enterprise on the scale of global heating, ocean acidification, and nuclear war. Humans could not likely survive a total bee collapse.</p><p></p><p>Worker bees (females) live about 6 weeks in summer, and several months in the winter. Colonies produce new worker bees continuously during the spring and summer, and then reproduction slows during the winter. Typically, a bee hive or colony will decline by 5-10% over the winter, and replace those lost bees in the spring. In a bad year, a bee colony might lose 15-20% of its bees.</p><p></p><p>In the US, winter losses have commonly reached 30-50% and in some cases more. In 2006, David Hackenberg, a bee keeper for 42 years, reported a 90% die-off among his 3,000 hives. <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0004071" target="_blank">US National Agriculture Statistics</a> show a honey bee decline from about 6 million hives in 1947 to 2.4 million hives in 2008, a 60% reduction.</p><p></p><p>The number of working bee colonies per hectare provides a critical metric of crop health. In the US, among crops that require bee pollination, the number of bee colonies per hectare has declined by 90% since 1962. The bees cannot keep pace with the winter die-off rates and habitat loss.</p><p></p><p>Europe responds, US dithers</p><p></p><p>In Europe, Asia, and South America, the annual die-off lags behind the US decline, but the trend is clear, and the response is more appropriate. In Europe, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8306970/Einstein-was-right-honey-bee-collapse-threatens-global-food-security.html" target="_blank">Rabobank</a> reported that the annual European die-offs have reached 30-35% and that the colonies-per-hectare count is down 25%.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>A <a href="http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/beehealth.htm" target="_blank">European Food Safety Authority</a>&nbsp;(EFSA) scientific report determined that three widely used pesticides – nicotine-based clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam – pose&nbsp;"high acute risks" for bees. The nicotinoid pesticides – used in soils, on foliage, and embedded in seeds – persist at the core of the toxic pesticide cocktail found in bee hives.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>A <a href="http://issuu.com/greenpeaceinternational/docs/bees-in-decline/3" target="_blank">Greenpeace scientific report</a> identifies seven priority bee-killer pesticides – including the three nicotine culprits – plus clorpyriphos, cypermethrin, deltamethrin, and fipronil. The three neonicotinoids act on insect nervous systems. They accumulate in individual bees and within entire colonies, including the honey that bees feed to infant larvae. Bees that do not die outright, experience sub-lethal systemic effects, development defects, weakness, and loss of orientation. The die-off leaves fewer bees and weaker bees, who must work harder to produce honey in depleted wild habitats. These conditions create the nightmare formula for bee colony collapse.</p><p></p><p>Bayer makes and markets imidacloprid and clothianidin; Syngenta produces thiamethoxam. In 2009, the world market for these three toxins reached over $2bn. Syngenta, Bayer, Dow, Monsanto, and DuPont control nearly 100% of the world market for genetically modified pesticides, plants and seeds.</p><p></p><p>In 2012, a German court criminally charged Syngenta with perjury for concealing its own report showing that its genetically modified corn had killed livestock. In the US, the company paid out $105m to settle a class-action lawsuit for contaminating the drinking water for over 50 million citizens with its "gender-bending" herbicide Atrazine. Now, these corporate polluters are waging multi-million-euro campaigns to deny responsibility for bee colony collapse.</p><p></p><p>In May, the European Commission responded, adopting a two-year ban on the three necotinoid pesticides, and later added the non-neonicotinoid fibronil. Scientists will use the two years to assess the recovery rate of the bees and a longer-term ban on these and other pesticides.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, the US dithers and supports the corporations that produce and market the deadly pesticides. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to allow the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, in spite of a US Department of Agriculture report warning about the dangers of the bee colony collapse.</p><p></p><p>Also in May, US president Obama, signed the now infamous "Monsanto Protection Act" – written by Monsanto lobbyists – that gives biotech companies immunity in federal US courts from damages to people and the environment caused by their commercial compounds.</p><p></p><p>Solutions exist</p><p></p><p>Common sense actions could restore and protect the world's bees. Experienced bee keepers, apiculturists, farmers, the European Commission, and the <a href="http://issuu.com/greenpeaceinternational/docs/bees-in-decline/3" target="_blank">Greenpeace report</a> have outlined these solutions. In summary:</p><p></p><ol><p></p><li>Ban the seven most dangerous pesticides</li><p></p><li>Protect pollinator health by preserving wild habitat, and</li><p></p><li>Restore ecological agriculture</li><p></p></ol><p></p><p>Ecological Farming is the over-arching new policy trend that will stabilise human food production, preserve wild habitats, and protect the bees. The nation of Bhutan has led the world in adopting a 100% organic farming policy. Mexico has banned genetically modified (GM) corn to protect its native corn varieties. In January, eight European countries banned GM crops, and Hungary has burned over a 1,000 acres of corn contaminated with GM varieties. In India, scientist Vandana Shiva and a network of small farmers have built an organic farming resistance to industrial agriculture over two decades.</p><p></p><p>Ecological, organic farming is, of course, nothing new. It is the way most farming has been done throughout human history. Ecological farming resists insect damage by avoiding large monocrops and preserving ecosystem diversity. Ecological farming restores soil nutrients with natural composting systems, avoids soil loss from wind and water erosion, and avoids pesticides and chemical fertilisers.</p><p></p><p>By restoring bee populations and healthier bees, ecological agriculture improves pollination, which in turn improves crop yields. Ecological farming takes advantage of the natural ecosystem services, water filtration, pollination, oxygen production, and disease and pest control.</p><p></p><p>Organic farmers have advocated better research and funding by industry, government, farmers, and the public to develop organic farming techniques, improve food production, and maintain ecological health. The revolution in farming would promote equitable diets around the world and support crops primarily for human consumption, avoiding crops for animal food and biofuels.</p><p></p><p>Ecosystems</p><p></p><p>The plight of the bees serves as a warning that we still may not quite understand ecology. Ecological farming is part of a larger paradigm shift in human awareness. The corporate denialists appear just like the Pope's shrouded inquisitors in 1615, who refused to look through Galileo's telescope to see the moons of Jupiter. Today's denialists refuse to recognise that Earth's systems operate within real limits. However, the state religion in this case is money, and the state religion won't allow it. The denialists cling to the presumed right to consume, hoard, and obliterate Earth's great bounty for private profits. But hoards of money won't reverse extinction, restore lost soils, or heal the world's bee colonies.</p><p></p><p>A great reckoning awaits humanity if we fail to awaken from our delusions. Earth's delicately balanced systems can reach tipping points and collapse. Bees, for example, work within a limited range of marginal returns on the energy they exert to collect nutrition for their colonies. When winter bee deaths grow from 10% to 50%, the remaining bees are weakened by toxins, and the wild habitats shrink, that thin, ecological margin of energy return can be squeezed to zero. Surviving bees expend more energy than they return in honey. More bees die, fewer reach maturity, and entire colonies collapse. This crisis is a lesson in fundamental ecology.</p><p></p><p>Rachel Carson warned of these systemic constraints 50 years ago. Ecologists and environmentalists have warned of limits ever since. Bee colony collapse now joins global warming, forest destruction, and species extinctions among our most urgent ecological emergencies. Saving the world's bees appears as one more necessary link in restoring Earth to ecological balance.</p>Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:00:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/honey-bee-collapse-a-lesson-in-ecology/blog/45357/#comments-holderabout usagricultureRex Weyler0000ae4c-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/population-and-ecology/blog/44620/Population and Ecology<p>World &nbsp;governments, the public, and the UN now recognize that the human population number matters in achieving ecological sustainability for human communities.</p><p></p><p>For forty years, since the first United Nations environment meeting in Stockholm in 1972, environmentalists have debated whether we should include human population growth among the urgent challenges of &nbsp;human consumption, industrial toxins, species loss, global warming, and so forth.</p><p></p><p>This debate appears to be resolved. Clearly, human population figures have an impact on the health of natural ecosystems. Virtually every nation in the world seeks more commodities for its citizens, and a growing population multiplies the effect of this growing per-capita resource consumption. We could make all the right moves regarding energy systems, transportation, and recycling, and still overshoot Earth’s capacity with unsustainable numbers of humans. It is a good sign that the United Nations now recognizes this.</p><p></p><p>UN special session on population</p><p></p><p>Next year, in September 2014, the United Nations will convene a <a href="http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2013/ga11342.doc.htm" target="_blank">special session on human population</a>. The U.N. General Assembly finally intends to implement a population stabilization plan devised &nbsp;twenty years ago at the U.N. population conference in Cairo. The original strategy, adopted by 180 nations, cited women’s rights, birth control, and economic development as keys to stabilizing population growth. This strategy remains valid, but is useless if not implemented with meaningful targets and actions. It may also prove useless if we do not re-define “economic development” to focus on better lives for the world’s poor, less wasteful consumption among the rich, and less concentration of wealth among the super-rich.</p><p></p><p>Since the Cairo conference, the world's population has grown from 5.7 billion to 7 billion people. We add about 75 million people each year – the equivalent of five cities the size of Beijing each year – but we fail to match this growth with new infrastructure, shelter, food, water, or health care. Adding more people simply puts more strain on Earth’s limited and dwindling resources. As we add more people, we lose some 16 million hectares of forest each year, gain 6 million hectares of desert, lose 26-billion tons of topsoil, deplete aquifers, and drain rivers. These trends are not sustainable.</p><p></p><p>The additional humans are crowded into existing cities and depleted countryside. About ten million people starve to death each year, over a billion people go hungry, and some 2 billion have no access to clean fresh water.</p><p></p><p>Lip service or real action?</p><p></p><p>The danger with UN meetings – as we witnessed with climate conferences – &nbsp;is that no substantive action will follow. Kenya lead the movement for a UN population meeting, but Kenya's deputy U.N. ambassador Koki Muli warned that there will be no final document from the 2014 population session. The assembly may dodge the real changes that need to occur, choosing to avoid controversial issues such as universal women’s rights, girl’s education, abortion rights, and access to contraception.</p><p></p><p>Historical evidence shows that wherever women have rights over their own reproduction and where families have access to birth control, the fertility rate declines. Growth advocates claim that industrial development leads to lower population growth, but that is not always the case. Prior to 1964, population and GDP grow together. Since then, in Europe, fertility rates have dropped, but not in the US or Saudi Arabia where cultural resistance undermines family planning. However, in the 1970s, fertility rates fell in Spain and Italy, not because of increased wealth, but rather following the advent of women’s rights and available contraception. In Columbia, fertility rates dropped from 6 to 3.5 children per family in 15 years after contraception was made widely available.</p><p></p><p>The U.N. is correct to focus on these measures, but to be successful, the U.N. must be willing to confront cultural resistance with education. The Cairo conference recognized the need for comprehensive population policies that include family planning, gender equality, and sex education for both young women and men. However, they also noted that such policies will conflict with cultural habits. The Cairo conference recognized that practices such as abortion should be treated as a public health issue to ensure safe motherhood.</p><p></p><p>The U.N. Population Fund's executive director, <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/newsmakers.asp?NewsID=83" target="_blank">Babatunde Osotimehin</a>, believes the UN has to work with individual communities to reverse out-dated cultural practices such as contraception bans and female genital mutilation.&nbsp; That organization has been working with UNICEF, the UN’s children fund, to encourage communities to stop the practice. In 2012 they met directly with 1,800 communities to overcome “major obstacles related to culture,” according to Osotimehin. They have worked to educate communities in family planning and contraception, which Osotimehin calls “the most important intervention you can give to liberate a women’s energy and life.” Finally, according to Osotimehin, “the world is listening.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Change in attitudes</p><p></p><p>With present practices, the UN estimates we are on pace for 10 billion people by 2050, and possibly 12 to 14 billion by 2100. That would mean twice as many humans in a world even more depleted of resources. Since we have not been able to feed or supply basic living standards for 7 billion, these figures appear frightening. However, attitudes are beginning to change.</p><p></p><p>In the US, the Center for Biological Diversity conducted a <a href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/track/hire-ppp-track.html" target="_blank">Public Poll</a> a found that 60 percent of Americans now equate human population growth to wildlife extinctions; 57 percent understand the link to climate change. These represent marked changes from even a decade ago.</p><p></p><p>Real world environmental crises are driving these changes in attitude. In the US, for example, the nation is on track to lose 15 million hectares (36 million acres) of forest to urban sprawl by 2050. In Florida, due to over-pumping of water, salt water is now intruding into the primary aquifer, which supplies water for 19 million people.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Water shortages now appear in most parts of the world, rich and poor – US plains, Beijing, Madras, Mexico – simply because of over-consumption, too many people demanding too much of a limited resources. Since 1960, for example, the Aral Sea has shrunk to about 10 percent of its original area.</p><p></p><p>Population, consumption &amp; technology </p><p></p><p>During the 1970s, American ecologists Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren published a now-famous formula to account for human ecological impact on the Earth’s systems: I = PAT, indicating that ecological Impact (I) &nbsp;is equal to &nbsp;Population (P) times Affluence (A), or average consumption, times a factor for Technology (T).</p><p></p><p>Stated simply, the human impact on the planet is proportional to a certain population consuming a certain amount of resources per person, using particular technologies, such as coal, hydrocarbons, automobiles, nuclear power, and so forth. The point is: population is a factor, not to be ignored.</p><p></p><p>This formula has been useful, but one obvious flaw in this formula, we now know, is that the “Technology” factor is non-linear, meaning that a simple change in technology can create a large, exponential leap in ecological impact. Consider for example the exponential impact of deep sea drilling after the British Petroleum oil-well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, or the exponential impact of a disaster such as the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. A nuclear war would be the ultimate exponential impact.</p><p></p><p>Another reason we must consider the exponential impact of technology is that the living ecological system may also respond with its own multiplying effects. Every time we disturb nature, we set in motion a sequence of system responses, which then have their own impact, usually beyond our control or influence. We witness this with global heating. Carbon in the atmosphere heats Earth’s air, land, and water, but the heating itself creates feedbacks that include: Melting permafrost that releases methane, which increases heating; melting ice that reduces Earth’s reflective qualities (albedo), retaining more heat; dying forests that absorb less carbon; increased wildfires; and so forth.</p><p></p><p>The formula should more accurately be I = PATS; the ecological impact of humanity is related to population and per-capita consumption, as well as to technology and systems feedbacks, which can be non-linear, or exponential, factors.</p><p></p><p>The wealthy nations and wealthy consumers have, of course, the greatest impact, but sheer numbers do count. There are ways that we can stabilize human population without unpleasantly imposed restrictions, namely with universal women’s rights, education, and available contraception. We can hope that in 2014, the United Nations adopts these policies and takes serious action.</p><p></p><p>Rex Weyler</p><p></p><p>======================&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>Mon, 06 May 2013 00:33:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/population-and-ecology/blog/44620/#comments-holderother issuesRex Weyler0000aa2e-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/global-heating-revisited/blog/43566/Global Heating Revisited<p>We have zero years to solve our addiction to hydrocarbon energy.</p><p></p><p>How many times have we heard: We have a decade, or we have three years, or we have until 2020? In the 1980s, ecologists used to say, “We have to solve this by 2000”, which is now a decade behind us. We don’t have 10 years or 3 years, or any years. We are already far behind any sort of timeline that might have kept Earth’s temperature from rising +2°C from the pre-industrial era. We are now gambling our progeny’s future with runaway heating that could ravage human agriculture, devastate the remaining forests, increase extinctions, and flood every coastal city on Earth.</p><p></p><p>Global heating</p><p></p><p>In the late 19th century, when Swedish chemist Svente Arrhenius predicted the impact of CO<sub>2</sub>, he warned that the radiation absorption would add “heat” to Earth’s atmosphere. In the 1970s, when ecologists learned from scientists about the risk of human carbon-dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) emissions, we spoke of “global heating.” The phrase “global warming” became popular in the 1980s, although “heating” is the correct scientific term. Then, in 2003, the petroleum industry public relations machine came up with “climate change” to convince the public that the impact was natural and non-urgent.</p><p></p><p>It is time we return to the physically precise term, “global heating,” because that is what we are doing: We are heating Earth’s atmosphere, land, and oceans, and simultaneously turning the entire Earth ecosystem acidic. We should avoid the ambiguous euphemism “climate change” and speak clearly: “Global heating.”</p><p></p><p>Among modern society’s greatest villains, stand the little band of industry-funded “dissenters” – paid-off marginal scientists and mercenary ecology imposters – who spin a mythology that global heating is normal “climate change,” not real, or that it is caused by some force other than human carbon-dioxide. Geoscientists <a href="http://www.jamespowell.org/index.html">James L. Powell</a> documented 13,950 peer-reviewed, scientific climate articles from the last 20 years and found that 99.83 % of these articles accept the unambiguous data that confirms global heating caused by human carbon effluents. The impostors perpetrate crimes against humanity and all of nature by denying these facts.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Sun vs. carbon</p><p></p><p>Recently, another “dissenter” has claimed that global heating is caused by changes in solar radiance. This claim defies the actual data, which remains clear as a bell. Heating and cooling result from what energy scientists call “forcings,” direct heat, dissipation of heat, insulation that retains heat, and so forth.</p><p></p><p>Annually, NASA’s Dr. James Hanson and others publish updates on the well-documented forcings that impact global temperature. The latest summary of these forcings is contained in a <a href="http://veracityvoice.com/?p=16466">paper by Dr. Andrew Glikson</a> at Australian National University: “No Alternative to atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> draw-down: A geological perspective.”</p><p></p><p>Heat, or energy transference, is typically measured in <em>watts</em>, about ¼ of a calorie of energy transferred in one second. Global heating forcings are measured in <em>watts per square-meter</em> (Watt/m<sup>2</sup>) of Earth’s surface. Glikson’s paper documents the actual forcings – both cooling and heating – that have impacted Earth’s temperature over recent centuries. Here is the summary:</p><p></p><p>Change in Radiative forcings, 1800 to Present:</p><p></p><p>1. Heating:&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Solar irradiance: Compared to pre-industrial solar energy, the sun’s&nbsp;energy output has fluctuated between zero and + 0.3 Watt/m<sup>2</sup> over the last two centuries, yielding a slight heating effect that could account for about 5% (or less) of the observed temperature increase.</p><p></p><p>Human Greenhouse gases: The heat forcing from human carbon and other gases has risen from approximately zero in 1800 to + 3.1 Watt/m<sup>2</sup> today, rising annually, and which accounts for about 95% (or more) of Earth’s temperature increase over the last two hundred years.</p><p></p><p>2. Cooling:&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Volcanoes have had an intermittent cooling effect, by releasing aerosols, particles of ash and sulfur-dioxide that scatter and absorb sunlight. The cooling impact – most recently from the El Chicon and Pinatubo eruptions in 1982 and 1991 – is localized, intermittent, and short lived. On average, volcanoes have had a slight cooling effect.</p><p></p><p>Human aerosols rise from burning tropical forests, coal and oil, and now exceed the impact of volcanic aerosols. The effect has reached about -1.6 Watt/m<sup>2</sup>, a cooling, which has mitigated the impact of heating from human greenhouse gases.</p><p></p><p>Determining the Net Forcing is a simple matter of adding and subtracting. The effects of volcanoes, solar fluctuations, and human land use changes, net out to virtually zero. Human greenhouse gases and human aerosols are the only energy forcings that have serious temperature impact, and the math is simple enough for grade-school children:</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; + 3.1 Watt/m<sup>2</sup> heating from human greenhouse gases</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <span style="text-decoration: underline;">– 1.6 Watt/m<sup>2</sup></span> cooling from human aerosols</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; + 1.5 Watt/m<sup>2</sup> net heating.</p><p></p><p>So how much heat is this? Consider a typical 1500-watt space heater that can be used to heat a room. Earth’s surface area is 510 trillion square-meters. Multiply this by 1.5, and we see the net heat forcing is about 765 trillion watts. This is the equivalent of placing 500 billion such electric space heaters across Earth’s surface, land and sea, 30 meters apart, running 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>This is the global net forcing that has resulted from human industrial activity, from the build-up of CO<sub>2</sub> in the atmosphere. The net impact of fluctuating solar radiance remains trivial regarding the temperature increase from these gases since 1800.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>No confusion. No controversy. No hidden data. And none of this is particularly complex science. Svente Arrhenius roughly predicted these results over a century ago. James Lovelock estimated similar results in the 1960s. The denialists huff and puff like 16th century church patriarchs, who refused to accept that Earth orbited the Sun.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Feedbacks</p><p></p><p>Unfortunately, our dilemma is even more complex. The heating creates feedback mechanisms that cause more heating. Since 1800, atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> concentration has risen from approximately 280ppm (parts per million) to approximately 400ppm, but since the extra heat is melting the permafrost and releasing methane (CH<sub>4</sub>), and since methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas, climate scientists must calculate the “carbon-dioxide-equivalent” (CO<sub>2</sub>-e) that includes the methane impact.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In fact, scientists must consider all the amplifying feedbacks caused by warming, including at least:</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1. Methane release from melting permafrost</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2. Albedo loss, changes in Earth’s reflective properties from ice melt</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 3. Vegetation loss from droughts and deforestation</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 4. Fires, increasing due to heating, and</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 5. Warmer water that sequesters less CO<sub>2</sub></p><p></p><p>Using the more appropriate CO<sub>2</sub>-e figure, since 1800, atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub>–e concentration has risen from 280ppm to 470ppm, a 68% increase in the heat-trapping capacity of these gases in Earth’s atmosphere. The build-up of these gases, however, has not been linear, but rather exponential. This means that not only are the gases accumulating, but the rate of accumulation is increasing. We’re not just speeding down the highway toward a cliff, we are accelerating, as we see by looking at the annual greenhouse gas increases over the last millennium:</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1000 -1750: 279 to 275 ppm (– 4 ppm) . . . . . . . . . .&nbsp; ~ 0.0 ppm / year</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1750-1850:&nbsp; 275 to 285.5 ppm (+10.5 ppm)&nbsp; . . . . . .&nbsp; + 0.1 ppm / year</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1850-1950:&nbsp; 285.5 to 313 ppm (+ 27.5 ppm) . . . . . .&nbsp; + 0.3 ppm / year</p><p></p><p>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1950-2012:&nbsp; 313 to 470 ppm (CO<sub>2</sub>-e, +157 ppm) . .&nbsp;&nbsp; + 2.5 ppm / year&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Thus, we see, that most of the change has occurred since 1950, and since these changes have unleashed feedback mechanisms, the increase in greenhouse effect will likely continue even if we reduce fossil fuel use. According to the <a href="http://globalchange.mit.edu/files/document/MITJPSPGC-Outlook2012.pdf">2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) projections</a> – without urgent, worldwide policy changes – the greenhouse gas accumulation rate will more than triple to + 8 ppm / year by 2100.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>These data have led climate scientists to re-examine the temperature increases expected over this century. Past projections have been conservative and have tended to be linear, but since the gas build-up is non-linear, exponential; and since observed temperature increases, <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20121226_GreenlandIceSheetUpdate.pdf">ice melts</a>, <a href="http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n6/full/ngeo1480.html?WT.ec_id=NGEO-201206">methane releases</a>, and so forth also appear exponential; projected temperature rise has been adjusted upwards in recent studies.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Runaway global heating&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>A comprehensive study of future temperature increase, the MIT <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roulette-0519.html">Integrated Global Systems Model</a> (A.P. Sokolov, P.H. Stone, et. al., <em>American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate</em>, 2009) doubled the earlier 2003 estimates.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The MIT group ran 400 variations of the model, changing certain input parameters, including variations in physical conditions, human activity, economic policy, and so forth. The projections indicate a median probability by 2100 of CO<sub>2</sub> concentration reaching 550 ppm and a median probability of Earth heating by 5.2 degrees Celsius (°C), with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 °C, compared to the 2003 estimates of 2.4°C.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The lower bound, or minimum projected heating, is now + 2.4°C by 2100, with a “very small probability” it will be this low, and only with drastic, immediate, global policy changes that reduce our reliance on oil and gas.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>So there you have it: The United Nations goal of restricting Earth’s heat increase to + 2°C by 2100, has already failed. A century of science and two decades of “climate meetings” have failed. The world’s governments and corporations have failed. As we exceed the + 2°C threshold, we risk runaway heating as the feedback mechanisms kick in. As we approach the median probability of Earth heating by +5.2 °C, we almost certainly activate runaway heating.</p><p></p><p>To global heating, we can add the greatest species collapse in 65 million years. Earth has undergone changes of this magnitude before, and will endure, but human culture has not. Throughout the Holocene, the last 12 millennia, humanity developed agriculture, urban life, and industrial technology in a relatively stable climate. In the last 200 years, we have destabilized Earth’s climate; flooded our lands, air and water with toxins; turned the oceans acidic; and obliterated millions of species. Our progeny now face an uncertain and troubling future.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>As an ecologist in the 1970s, I believed that humanity would respond to the ecological imperative as it responded to the social imperative; that we would develop an ecological society just as we developed ideas of democracy, civil rights, and women’s rights. Perhaps our natural optimism bias and good intentions led us to believe circumstances would improve, but the data shows us something quite the opposite. It now appears that our optimism was misplaced. The ecology movement may have one last chance, but the stakes are now much higher, and our actions – to succeed – will have to be similarly more rigorous.</p>Sat, 05 Jan 2013 15:52:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/global-heating-revisited/blog/43566/#comments-holderclimate changeRex Weyler00009c5e-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/oil-wars/blog/40030/Oil Wars<p>When you hear politicians claim that the next war is “not about the oil,” rest assured: It’s about the oil.</p><p></p><p>Although the revolts in the Middle East involve genuine disputes within the nations – Egypt, Libya, Syria – the superpowers – US, NATO, China, Russia – exploit these conflicts as surrogate wars over the Middle East’s valuable energy resources.</p><p></p><p>In April, in a first of a series of meetings, the five members of the UN Security Council – China, Russia, France and the US, all states with nuclear weapon arsenals on their soils – insisted that Iran abide by the UN's Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Israel has refused to sign. Israel likely possesses nuclear weapons capability, which they refuse to confirm or deny.</p><p></p><p>These nations, along with their ally Israel, do not want Iran to join the nuclear weapons club. They insist that Iran abide by the UN's Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). Some observers find this hypocritical of the nuclear powers, which makes this a hard sell to the Iranian people and to the rest of the world.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, families of slain Iranian scientists have <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/08/15/world/middleeast/ap-iran-nuclear.html?_r=2&amp;ref=world">sued the US, Britain, and Israel</a> for an alleged undeclared clandestine war inside Iran, assassinating nuclear scientists, blowing up nuclear facilities, and terrorizing the population. According to the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/computer_malware/stuxnet/index.html">New York Times</a>, the US and Israel authored the Stuxnet virus that disabled Iranian nuclear plants.</p><p></p><p>For its part, Iranian President Mahmoud&nbsp;Ahmadinejad has inflamed conflict by disparaging Israel, denying the Holocaust, and disputing Israel's right to exist. Iran is also allegedly linked to Hezbollah attacks on Israeli civilians such as the killing of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last July.</p><p></p><p>Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo wrote an&nbsp;<a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/peace/iran-crisis-open-letter/">open letter&nbsp;to Ahmadinejad and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu</a>, urging them to abandon nuclear technology all together and join the world in the development of renewable energy. Greenpeace – founded in 1971, as a peace group sailing boats into nuclear test zones – has always recognized that war is both a human rights and environmental issue.</p><p></p><p>“The high handed posturing of Iran’s principle accusers, requires some scrutiny,” wrote Naidoo. "Together they stand for four decades of bad faith. Under the NPT they promised to disarm… They have not done so!”</p><p></p><p><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/38885_73381.jpg" alt="Lebanon protest 2003" /><br /><small>Photo 03/15/2003: Greenpeace Lebanon activists hold signs reading 'Oil kills' during a protest against the US-led war in Iraq.</small></p><p></p><p>The persistent war-making against Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria is about one primary goal – a goal shared by the US, Russia, China, and the European nations – to control the world’s dwindling oil supply.</p><p></p><p>Resource wars</p><p></p><p>Oil company cheerleaders proclaiming huge supplies of oil are dead wrong. Peak oil is as real as rain, and it is here now. Not 2050. Not 2020. Now.</p><p></p><p>Oil production has been&nbsp;flat since 2005. This is not by choice. The producers cannot increase production because new fields cannot keep pace with declining production from old fields. Every producing oil field on Earth is in decline (unless it is brand new), and peak discoveries are well behind us. The graph below, from Exxon Mobil, shows peak oil occurring now and peak discoveries 50 years ago.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://www.beyondoilnyc.org/growing_gap.png" alt="Exxon Mobile chart, from 'The Oil Drum'" /></p><p></p><p>Because of oil field depletion, maintaining world oil production at its current level into the future would require bringing a new Saudi Arabia (3-billion barrels annually) into full production every three years. There exists on Earth not one single promising oil field that remotely approaches those requirements.</p><p></p><div style="padding: 5px; margin-left: 5px; float: right; width: 290px;"><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/38884_73378.jpg" alt="SaveTheArctic" width="280" /> <small>Photo 02/25/2012: Actor Lucy Lawless and Greenpeace New Zealand activists on the second day of their protest to stop a Shell-contracted drillship from departing Port Taranaki for the remote Arctic, where its exploratory oil drilling programme threatens to devastate Alaska's coastline.</small></div><p></p><p>During the last century human society burned the best half of recoverable hydrocarbons, representing 500-million years of captured sunlight. Idle societies squandered this energy on drag races, traffic jams, private jets, sprawling homes, and overheated office buildings. But more than any other single wasteful enterprise, the great industrial empires squandered this one-time storehouse of high-quality fuel fighting over that very fuel.</p><p></p><p>We won’t “run out of oil” because, simply, we’ll never get it all, but peak oil is here, the world’s largest and best reserves are still in the Middle East, and the world’s military regimes – which run on petroleum – know this.&nbsp;</p><p></p><h3>Blood and Oil&nbsp;</h3><p></p><p>In 2010, the US Military Joint Forces Command&nbsp;<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/peak-oil-production-supply">predicted</a>&nbsp;the end of “surplus oil production capacity” and warned, “the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10-million barrels per day.” The US military is concerned. At full strength in Iraq &amp; Afghanistan, the US deployed about 190,000 soldiers, using about 10 million gallons of fuel per day, equivalent to the amount of fuel consumed each day by a city of 20 million people.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Oil has fueled and driven warfare for the last century. In 1912, on the eve of the First World War, Winston Churchill said flatly, “You have got to find the oil ... purchased regularly and cheaply in peace, and with absolute certainty in war.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Oil proved to be the primary strategic resource during World War II. During the war, the US built the world’s longest pipeline – from Texas to the Atlantic – and produced about 6.3 billion barrels of oil. By comparison, Germany produced a mere 200 million barrels, about 3% of US production, much of it from expensive “synthetic oil” produced from coal.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Desperate for fuel, Germany entered North Africa and Russia in 1941 to reach the Baku oil fields in the Caspian foothills. German War Production Minister, Albert Speer, conceded in his post war interrogation that oil “was a prime motive” for these invasions. Predicting victory at Baku, Hitler declared, “Now I have oil! Proceed to India!” But Hitler’s army literally ran out of gas. German supply trucks got half their normal fuel mileage in the roadless, muddy terrain. Rommel abandoned empty, fuel-gobbling tanks in the Egyptian desert west of El Alamein. “We have the bravest men,” he declared, “but they are useless without enough petrol.”</p><p></p><p>Japan was also desperate for oil to fuel their imperial wars in Asia. They made fuel from potatoes and pine roots, invaded the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) to seize the oil fields, and ditched planes and pilots at sea for lack of fuel to return home.&nbsp; Japan also ran out of gas. Once American and British ships cut off Japan’s fuel line from Indonesia, the Pacific war was over. The bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were motivated by American experimental zeal and a weapons race, not by military necessity.</p><p></p><h3>Privatizing Warfare</h3><p></p><p>The new Middle-Eastern conflicts – Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iran – are still about the oil. Today, America is occupying foreign oil fields and securing pipeline routes to feed its petrol habit and reap profits. NATO allies, equally desperate for the last dregs of Earth’s once great store of hydrocarbons, play along with the U.S.</p><p></p><p>Prior to the 1990 Gulf War I, Halliburton president and rightwing henchman Dick Cheney revealed, “We're there because … that part of the world controls the world supply of oil, and whoever controls the supply of oil … would have a stranglehold on ... the world economy.”</p><p></p><p>So there you have it. All this bloodshed is over dwindling oil reserves. Meanwhile, war has become the largest business on Earth, worth trillions of dollars, Euros, Rubles, and Yuan every year. Most citizens think of war as a terrible dysfunction of society, but to the modern private military profiteer, war is an opportunity to get rich.</p><p></p><p>The US military began to privatize war production in 1985 with the “Logistics Civil Augmentation Program” and first used the private army to construct, maintain, and secure two petroleum pipelines in Southwest Asia.</p><p></p><p>In 2005, US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld said, “It is clearly cost-effective to have contractors for a variety of things that military people … cannot be deployed to do.” It now appears that those privatized tasks included torture, sexual abuse, political assassinations, and murder of private citizens. Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh revealed Rumsfeld memos that “encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners.”</p><p></p><p>In 2002, Rumsfeld lied to the US public and Congress, claiming: "We know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons.” This pretense justified a US invasion that has left nearly 1 million people dead or wounded, mostly private Iraqi citizens. Former, Iraqi Health Minister Ali al-Shemari reported 100 bodies-per-day going through the Bagdad morgue.</p><p></p><p>The civilian deaths included outright murder by US private “security” firms such as Blackwater. Private firms CACI, and Titan Corp. were central to the Abu Ghraib prison torture in 2003 and 2004. However, unlike military personnel, the private companies avoided prosecution for those crimes.</p><p></p><p>When a company like Blackwater – and its founder Erik Prince – get caught, they simply sell off the company and disappear. Blackwater employees faced US federal court charges of murdering innocent Iraqi citizens, illicit weapons-smuggling, money laundering, tax evasion, and war crimes. In 2010, Prince – who proudly compared his killing spree to the Christian Crusades – sold his companies, negotiated a $42 million fine with the US government, and moved to Abu Dhabi. The $42 million “fine” represented less than 1% of their government fees, at public expense, a minor cost of doing the dirty business.</p><p></p><p>According to a US Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act lawsuit over 1999 DynCorp actions in Bosnia, both DynCorp and Halliburton – ex-US-Vice-President Dick Cheney’s former company – “were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior and were illegally purchasing women, weapons, forged passports and participating in other immoral acts,” that allegedly included child abductions. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0512270176dec27,0,1632557.story">The&nbsp;Chicago Tribune</a>&nbsp;reported in 2005 that lobbying groups representing “thousands of firms, including ... DynCorp International and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, both of which have been linked to trafficking-related concerns,” attempted to stall legislation that would ban human trafficking by US contractors.</p><p></p><p>The survivors of war also pay a price for their proximity to the death, destruction, cruelty, and tragedy. In March 2008, US Army psychiatrist, Colonel Charles Hoge, told the U.S. Congress that almost one-third of troops on their third deployment suffer mental-illness. A study in the US Archives of Internal Medicine showed a similar one-third of returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans suffered psycho-social disorders, post-traumatic stress, depression, homelessness, and marital problems, including domestic violence. In 2007, 121 US soldiers killed themselves, and over two thousand others tried and seriously mutilated themselves.</p><p></p><p>The civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have also felt these socially debilitating effects of war. In Afghanistan, ten thousand villages and their fields and surrounding environments have been obliterated, energy and water infrastructure has been destroyed, and water has been contaminated with toxins and bacteria. People have been left sick, homeless, hungry, and without resources.</p><p></p><h3>Natural costs of war</h3><p></p><p>On top of all this, the environment itself is a victim of war. Afghanistan forests have been destroyed directly by bombings and fire, and indirectly by refugees in need of firewood and armies selling lumber to buy guns and supplies.&nbsp; Migratory bird populations have dropped by 85%.&nbsp; Mountain leopards have lost habitat, are now endangered, and have been slaughtered by refugees, who trade them for food or safe passage.</p><p></p><p><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/38888_73387.jpg" alt="Paul Horsman surveying Burning Oil Wells 1991" /><br /><small>Photo 09/19/1991: Greenpeace campaigner Paul Horsman surveying burning oil wells, Al Burgan oilfield, Kuwait.</small></p><p></p><p>War pollutes air, soil and water with toxins such as cyclonite, rocket propellants, and depleted uranium ammunition which causes kidney damage and cancer. The children of modern war victims – civilians and soldiers – show an increase in birth defects from depleted uranium, chemicals, and nerve agents. Abandoned landmines throughout the Middle East kill and maim men, women and children.</p><p></p><p>During the 1991 Gulf War, the fleeing Iraqi army spilled one million tons of crude oil into the Persian Gulf, killing some 25,000 migratory birds and causing smog, acid rain, and toxic fumes. When water treatment plants were destroyed, raw sewage flowed directly into the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, increasing Typhoid fever tenfold.</p><p></p><p>Death, maiming, slavery, sexual abuse, depression, homelessness and the destruction of both civil society and our ecosystems: These are the costs of war not paid by the profiteers. War remains the greatest ecological disaster and human rights tragedy on Earth.</p><p></p><p><em>Deep Green is Rex Weyler's column reflecting on the roots of activism, environmentalism, and Greenpeace's past, present, and future. The opinions here are his own.</em></p>Fri, 19 Oct 2012 17:56:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/oil-wars/blog/40030/#comments-holderabout usnuclearother issuesRex Weyler0000a53b-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/rachel-carson-and-the-birth-of-modern-environ/blog/42299/ Rachel Carson - And the birth of modern environmentalism<p style="text-align: left;"><img title="Tongas National Forest" src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/55114_104021.jpg" alt="Tongas National Forest" /></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">"The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, <br />born of the Neanderthal age of biology."<br />― Rachel Carson.</p><p></p><p>Fifty years ago, on September 27, 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, a culture-crashing exposure of chemical pollutants and their impact on Earth's ecosystems. Carson's book examined thirty-five birds species threatened with extinction due to chemical biocides, including organo-chlorines such as DDT.</p><p></p><p>Prior to Carson's book, chemical companies had disregarded the impact of toxins on living ecosystems. Carson's work brought caring about nature back to the western industrial world. Her book alerted society to its relationship with our habitat, awakened our higher angels, and launched the modern environmental movement.</p><p></p><p>Of course, the chemical corporations of her age vilified her. Today, polluters and their paid mouthpieces have spun out a new Rachel Carson smear campaign, blaming her for malaria deaths because, allegedly, we haven't sprayed enough organochlorines around the world, when, in fact, Carson supported responsible disease control, with restraints on agricultural use, which only helped malaria mosquitoes grow immune to pesticides.</p><p></p><h3>An attractive sort of person</h3><p></p><p>Rachel Carson was born in the spring of 1907, on a family farm in Pennsylvania, in the United States. Her mother instilled love and curiosity for nature, with daily reading and exploring the Allegheny River valley forests. At 10, Rachel published her first story, "A Battle in the Clouds," in a local magazine.</p><p></p><p>In 1925, she graduated as the top student at her high school. She entered Pennsylvania College for Women, graduated with honors, and earned a scholarship to Johns Hopkins University, where she completed a master's degree in zoology.</p><p></p><p>As her aging parents grew ill, Carson left the university to care for them. When her father died, she abandoned her doctorate project to support her mother. Her biology mentor Mary Scott Skinker found Carson a government job writing educational radio broadcasts about nature. When she took the civil service exam in 1936, she outscored all applicants and became only the second woman ever hired by Bureau of Fisheries.</p><p></p><p>In 1937, when her older sister died, Rachel became the sole breadwinner for her mother and two nieces. Later, when a niece died suddenly, Rachel adopted her five-year-old son. Rachel Carson was an attractive sort of person, who put compassion and caring before her own career, and still shook the world with the breadth and significance of her life's work.<br />Bringing nature to the people</p><p></p><p>Rachel Carson loved literature and wrote skillfully, but found her passion in the living world. "Biology," she wrote to a friend, "has given me something to write about. I will try in my writing to make animals in the woods or waters, where they live, as alive to others as they are to me."</p><p></p><p>In 1941, Carson published her first book, Under the Sea Wind, a narrative journey along the ocean floor. She completed a "sea trilogy," by publishing two more books about ocean life. In 1951, The Sea Around Us won a US National Book Award, and in 1955 she published The Edge of the Sea, about intertidal marine ecology.</p><p></p><p>Carson won the Burroughs Medal for natural history writing for Under the Sea, and two honorary doctorates. A documentary film based on the book won the 1953 Best Documentary Oscar. With international speaking engagements and eager editors, Carson left her government job to write full time.</p><p></p><p>Olga Owens Huckins, an avid bird researcher in Massachusetts, wrote to Carson complaining that DDT spraying had devastated her bird sanctuary. Carson agreed to help. At first, editors appeared disinterested in pesticides, but Carson persisted. She was now on a crash course with the chemical industry.</p><p></p><h3>A revolution of consciousness</h3><p></p><p>After World-War II, the US military funded research into synthetic pesticides, and chemical companies sought markets for the compounds. In 1957, the US Department of Agriculture attempted to eradicate fire ants with DDT mixed with fuel oil, a precursor to Agent Orange used by the US military during the Vietnam War. The US government agency produced a film, "Fire Ants on Trial," which Carson called "flagrant propaganda."</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, researchers found the carcinogenic herbicide aminotriazole in the U.S. cranberry harvest. Carson attended the US Food and Drug Administration hearings, and witnessed how chemical industry lobbyists attacked data, attacked scientists, and promoted "expert" testimony to contradict her research.</p><p></p><p>The Audubon Society had traced declining bird populations to pesticide use and recruited Carson to help. Through personal connections with government scientists, Carson gained access to confidential data, unpublished scientific literature, and interviews with scientists researching pesticides. Over four years, she consulted with biologists, chemists, entomologists, and pathologists, gathering data for her book.</p><p></p><p>Working with medical researchers, Carson documented individual incidents of pesticide exposure, human sickness and environmental impact. Cancer researcher Wilhelm Hueper classified pesticides as carcinogens. Ironically, at this time, Carson discovered a cancerous cyst, underwent a mastectomy, and began radiation therapy.</p><p></p><p>Carson biographer Mark Hamilton Lytle recalls that Carson "self-consciously decided to write a book calling into question the paradigm of scientific progress." After Silent Spring, chemical companies no longer enjoyed a free pass to introduce toxins into the environment. Carson's book changed the course of history, and some people were not happy about it.<br />Industry attacks backfire</p><p></p><p>When Silent Spring appeared in 1962, the chemical industry attacked her data, her analysis, her personality, and her scientific credentials. The chemical industry sponsored articles promoting pesticide use and anonymous attacks on Carson, foreshadowing the computer trolls who now attack important environmental articles. A pro-industry review referred to her as a "hysterical woman," typical of the sexist attacks.</p><p></p><p>Carson biographer Linda Lear reports in Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature, that former Secretary of Agriculture and Mormon fundamentalist Ezra Taft Benson suggested to President Dwight Eisenhower in a letter that since Carson was attractive but unmarried, she was "probably a Communist."</p><p></p><p>DuPont (DDT and 2,4-D manufacturer) and Velsicol Chemical Company (chlordane and heptachlor manufacturer) – threatened lawsuits against Houghton Mifflin, The New Yorker and Audubon magazine, in attempts to suppress Silent Spring.</p><p></p><p>The chemical company American Cyanamid proved particularly aggressive. Company biochemist Robert White-Stevens wrote, "If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth."</p><p></p><p>American Cyanamid became known for environmental abuses in the US where its wastewater pools accumulated toxins, carcinogens, and teratogens, which cause birth defects and deformities. American Cyanamid abandoned toxic waste sites in New Jersey, such as the 575-acre Bridgewater site that leaked benzenes and other chemicals into the Raritan River and on residential sites.</p><p></p><p>In Silent Spring, Carson recounts laboratory animal tests in which "DDT has produced suspicious liver tumors. Scientists of the Food and Drug Administration who reported the discovery of these tumors were uncertain how to classify them, but felt there was some 'justification for considering them low grade hepatic cell carcinomas.' Dr. Hueper now gives DDT the definite rating of a 'chemical carcinogen.'"</p><p></p><p>The chemical lobbyists retaliated with insults. In one of his more livid moments, Robert White-Stevens called Carson, "A fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature." Erroneous attacks claimed that Carson sought elimination of all pesticides, including those used for disease control, deceits still repeated today. Carson, however, encouraged sensible chemical disease control. She wrote clearly about this in Silent Spring (p. 266):</p><p></p><blockquote>"No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story – the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting."</blockquote><p></p><p>Since indiscriminate agricultural use of DDT had strengthened the malaria mosquitoes, Carson wrote that "pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible." In retaliation, Monsanto distributed brochures mocking Carson and parodying Silent Spring. However, in the end, the chemical industry campaign backfired. Their attacks on Carson's book increased public awareness regarding pesticides and public health. In 1963, a television special, "The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson" reached some 15 million people. The book inspired a congressional review, a US President's Science Advisory Committee report that backed Carson's scientific claims, and inspired the US Environmental Protection Agency. US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas called Silent Spring "the most important chronicle of this century for the human race."</p><p></p><p>As her book changed the course of history, Rachel Carson struggled with her cancer and radiation therapy. In the spring of 1964, the cancer reached her liver, and she died on April 14 at her home in Silver Spring, Maryland.</p><p></p><p>Rachel Carson's courage ignited an ecological awareness that burns to this day. She reminded the world:</p><p></p><blockquote>"For each of us, as for the robin in Michigan, or the salmon in the Miramichi, this is a problem of ecology, of interrelationships, of interdependence. We poison the caddis flies in the stream and the salmon runs dwindle … We spray our elms and following springs are silent of robin song, not because we sprayed the robins directly but because the poison traveled, step by step, through the now familiar elm-leaf-earthworm-robin cycle. These are matters of record, observable, part of the visible world around us. They reflect the web of life-or death-that scientists know as ecology."</blockquote>Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:41:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/rachel-carson-and-the-birth-of-modern-environ/blog/42299/#comments-holdertoxicsRex Weyler0000a2bc-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/nature-a-system-of-systems/blog/41660/Nature: A System of Systems<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/51465_90017.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="450" /><br /><br />"The major problems in the world are the result of <br />the difference between how nature works and the way people think."<br />— Gregory Bateson, <a href="http://www.anecologyofmind.com/thefilm/">An Ecology of Mind</a>.</p><p></p><p>Piecemeal ecology does not work.</p><p></p><p>Forty years have passed since the founding of Greenpeace and the first UN environment meeting in Stockholm, fifty years since the groundbreaking <em>Silent Spring</em> by Rachel Carson, and 115 years since Svante Arrhenius warned that burning hydrocarbons would heat Earth’s atmosphere.</p><p></p><p>Today, we have more environmental groups and less forests, more “protected areas” and less species, more carbon taxes and greater carbon emissions, more “green” products and less green space. These failures are not necessarily the fault of environmental groups, who have helped slow down the destructive impacts the industrial juggernaut, but the failures do demonstrate that all our collective efforts are not yet remotely enough.</p><p></p><p>For example, observing the “<a href="http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/360/1454/289.full.pdf+html" target="_blank">Living Planet Index</a>” of species diversity, we find that after 1980 – even with the creation of new endangered species regulations, parks, and protected areas – terrestrial and marine species have declined. For the last thirty years, even with a massive increase in wilderness groups, species diversity has plummeted and the rate of decline has accelerated.</p><p></p><p>Likewise, as we gain 30% energy efficiency in heating buildings, we double the average space-per-person and then add more people, resulting in 300% more space to heat. The Rio+20 Conference proved once again that government conferences change nothing. After thirty years of climate deals, we have more CO<sub>2</sub> emissions each year, not less. After forty years of international ocean dumping bans, the oceans are more toxic and more acidic, not less.</p><p></p><p>Paper parks &amp; false hopes</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">“...leave a margin, a sanctuary, where some of life’s beauty can take refuge.”</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">-- Roman Gary, <em>The Roots of Heaven.</em></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">In July 2011, Camilo Mora, from University of Hawaii and Dalhousie University, and Peter F. Sale, from the UN University in Ontario, Canada, published “Ongoing <a href="http://www.int-res.com/articles/theme/m434p251.pdf" target="_blank">global biodiversity loss</a> and the need to move beyond protected areas.”</p><p></p><p>Their report shows that since 1965, land based “Protected Areas” (PAs) have grown by 600% to 18 million square-kilometers. Marine PAs have grown by 400% to about 2.1 million sq-km. However, in both cases – on land and in oceans – biodiversity has declined, and the rate of decline has increased.&nbsp; Since 1974, terrestrial biodiversity has plummeted by about 40% and since 1990, in twenty years, the marine index has declined by 21%.</p><p></p><p>Mora and Sale site problems with the size and management of the protected areas, failure to protect enough area for home ranges and dispersal, and growing threats to large scale ecosystems. Such threats trace back to growing human populations and consumption demands on environments.</p><p></p><p>The authors support the establishment of protected areas but warn that these areas alone will not stop biodiversity decline without larger, systemic programs. Mora points out that most protected areas are really just “paper parks” in name only, but not truly protected.</p><p></p><p>Sale says flatly, “Protected areas are a false hope in terms of preventing the loss of biodiversity.” He points out that the 2010 global biodiversity protection agreement signed in Nagoya, Japan pledged to preserve 17 % of land area and 10 % of oceans. Sale says it is “very unlikely those targets will be reached,” due to the growth of human demand for every available resource. Furthermore, “Even if those targets were achieved, it would not stop the decline in biodiversity.”</p><p></p><p>In “paper parks,” plants and animals disappear to poachers, development, and industrial pressure for logging and mining. Often, without adequate enforcement, industrial developers simply ignore protection rules. Similarly, in the 1980s, environmentalists fought for and won international bans on pelagic whaling and toxic dumping, yet we continue to fight to enforce the bans as they are routinely ignored by whalers and the toxic waste industries.</p><p></p><p>Furthermore, park boundaries cannot restrain pollution and global warming impacts. Typically, when a forest or coral reef is protected, the neighbouring area is overharvested by industry and often decimated, breaking natural ecosystem links. Finally, this study points out that ecosystems require appropriate scale to allow for variations in ecological diversity, richness, abundance, synergies, and co-dependence.</p><p></p><p>Even so, Mora, Sale and many other biologists and ecologists have warned that we cannot stop biodiversity decline without putting limits on human population and consumption growth. “There is a clear and urgent need for additional solutions,” the authors warn, “particularly ones that stabilize ... the world’s human population and our ecological demands.”</p><p></p><p>Ecosystems</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">“The hard part about change is, well...you actually have to change.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">&nbsp;Jon Cooksey, director, <a href="http://howtoboilafrog.com/themovie/" target="_blank">How to Boil a Frog</a>.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">In practice, human efforts to protect and restore Earth’s ecological health have focused on a “species” or a “habitat” or some thing that needed protection. But this has failed to account for the fundamental nature of living systems. Earth’s ecology is not a collection of things. Rather, Earth’s ecology operates as interlocking, co-evolving systems, driven by feedbacks and interactions. The systems remain always dynamic, never completely stable, and always correcting for instability, the way a hummingbird adjusts in flight or a human bicycler maintains balance.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Every subsystem in Nature interacts with others. Nothing exists alone in nature. Nothing survives alone in Nature. We talk about a “tree” and “soil” and “atmosphere,” for convenience, but none of these exist as they do without the others. There is no absolute division among these elements of the system. Indeed, biological and physical sciences do not describe “things.” Science describes relationships. “All division of the world into things,” warned Gregory Bateson, “is arbitrary.”</p><p></p><p>Global environmental strategies to date reveal isolated efforts but systemic failures. As planners and implementers of ecological wisdom, we have not yet grasped the complexity of systems, the rules, demands, and feedback mechanisms of complex living systems.</p><p></p><p>In short, human environmentalism has yet to embrace Earth’s biosphere as a living process. The biosphere itself exists nested in a geosphere and solar system, which generate materials and energy and information for all the subsystems. Deep within the biosphere, communities, families, organisms, organs, and cells represent finer subsystems.</p><p></p><p>An ecosystem represents a living system at the highest level of complexity we can imagine, and far beyond our ability to fully describe, manage, or predict. An ecosystem is not a thing. It is a web of relationships, a dynamic co-evolution of systems and subsystems, all nested within each other. Each subsystem draws matter, energy, and information across boundaries from more fundamental systems; decodes information and makes decisions; and passes new information, products, and waste, back into the larger systems. Nature works as a continuum. Ecosystems are not “managed” by any of the parts, and as far as human science knows, no ecosystem ever will be.</p><p></p><p>Ecosystems evolve patterns of relationship, which we call “rules,” but do not pre-determine outcome. Rather, the rules of nature’s “game” create trends and variations on themes. The variations and patterns that can repeat and replicate themselves become “alive” but they are never just “things.” Every subsystem within an ecosystem – from cell to society – remains a co-dependent process, interconnected with other dynamic processes.</p><p></p><p>In living systems, the continually altering flows of matter, energy, and information, reach states that ecologists call “dynamic equilibria” during which system instabilities oscillate within mutually supportive limits – a body, a forest, a neighbourhood of species –&nbsp; for long periods of time. During such equilibria, randomness among the interactions give rise to new patterns, radical novelty, called by systems analysts “emergent behaviour,” a new pattern, which can influence the system to new directions.</p><p></p><p>Since co-evolving systems include random factors – as do chess games or hurricanes – they are not entirely predictable, even if one knows the rules. Thus – and this our society needs desperately to embrace – systems themselves evolve, and new relationships almost always include unintended consequences. Each subsystem – organ, body, society – within an ecosystem co-creates a complex web of processes with its neighbouring subsystems. Nature is a web of relationships. Our ecological efforts need to recognize and protect these complex relationships.</p><p></p><p>One strength of the human species is our acute ability to learn. Our society appears steeped in denial, but we can learn from our ecological mistakes. Our “solutions” to the challenges of ecology on a crowded planet have not yet been successful. “We’re winning a lot of battles,” Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo said at the 40th anniversary of Greenpeace, “but we’re still losing the war.” Sadly, this is true. Every day, our planet is poorer, with less forests, less species, less fresh water and arable soil, and more desserts, more toxins, and more CO2 in the atmosphere. To reverse this, we need to learn about the systems in which we live.</p><p></p><p>A recent ad campaign from International Business Machines (IBM) imagines innovations to create “a smarter planet.” But Nature has news for IBM. The planet is already far smarter than any human engineer. We cannot manage Nature. Rather, we need to apprentice ourselves to Nature, to learn how Nature solves dilemmas and sorts out imbalances.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>For every species other than humans, the biggest environmental issue on Earth <em>is</em> Humanity. If we don’t change our ways, seriously and thoroughly change, then nature will eventually leave us behind and carry on without us.</p>Wed, 22 Aug 2012 16:55:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/nature-a-system-of-systems/blog/41660/#comments-holderother issuesRex Weyler0000a2ba-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/zeitgeist-shift/blog/41658/Zeitgeist Shift<p><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/33701_66086.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="340" /></p><p></p><p>Did Earth rumble after the Rio+20 climate conference? Or was that the roar of a billion citizens letting go the expectation that polite dialogue and political process would restore Earth’s ecological balance?</p><p></p><p>In any case, the global Zeitgeist shifted, at least within environmental discourse. Future historians may mark the period from BP’s 2010 oil spill disaster, through Fukushima, to the 2012 Rio failure as a state shift in ecological awareness.</p><p></p><p>Fifty years ago, in 1961, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, launching a new public discourse about ecology that reached an early zenith in 1972 at the first UN ecology conference in Stockholm. Today, we have armies of environment groups, swarms of ecology PhD graduates, Environment Ministers, conferences, science summits, green products, green travel, banners and blockades. But we are less sustainable than we were in 1961.</p><p></p><p>After fifty years of environmental efforts, the most troubling trends – Earth’s temperature, species diversity, soil health, toxic dumps, shrinking forest, expanding deserts – appear worse. The testimony of our collective failure blows around us like a chilling polar wind. It is too late to save the 25,000 species that blinked from existence, or the 300,000 people who perished from climate-change impact, last year, and will again this year. We have not yet turned the empires of humanity back toward the paradise from which they were born.</p><p></p><p>Why?</p><p></p><p>Moving Beyond Hope </p><p></p><p>After Rio, a collective “gulp” rose among ecological scientists, journalists, bloggers, and commentators. Maybe we can’t stop global heating or bee colony collapse. Maybe the systems feedbacks are more complex than our engineering can fathom. Maybe it’s time for adaption.</p><p></p><p>The new mood arises from many events – BP, Fukushima, Occupy, Arab Spring, Rio+20, and so forth – but Rio signaled a tipping point for believers in the political process. UK’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg pronounced the agreements “Insipid.” &nbsp;Former Irish president and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, called the results “a failure of leadership.” Ecology groups walked out. Indigenous leaders held their own meetings and called the official Rio “green economy” plan “a new wave of colonialism.”</p><p></p><p>Writer/farmer Sharon Astyk wrote in <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2012/06/22/yet-another-last-chance-to-step-up-that-we-blew-ho-hum/" target="_blank">Scienceblog</a>, “Most of these events are about feeling good about pretending. …[The] fundamental policy changes that would be necessary … aren’t even on the table… caring is not enough.” </p><p></p><p>At a rally in Canada to save a river from another dam, scientist David Suzuki said: “In elevating the economy above everything else, we fail to ask the most elementary questions: What is an economy for? How much is enough? Are there no limits? We're not asking the critical questions.”</p><p></p><p>George Monbiot lamented in <a href="http://www.monbiot.com/2012/06/18/the-mendacity-of-hope/" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>, that the “promise to save the world keeps us dangling, not mobilising… Hope is the rope on which we hang.” University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen went even farther in <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/09/hope-is-for-the-lazy/" target="_blank">Counterpunch</a>: “to be a hope-peddler today is … laziness… We have to believe in something beyond hope.”</p><p></p><p>Urgent critiques of business-as-usual are attracting larger audiences. “My beef with the whole ‘solutions,’ thing,” writes James Kunstler in <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/james-howard-kunstler-on-why-technology-wont-save-us-20120712" target="_blank">Rolling Stone</a>, is that “the subtext to that particular meme is, ‘Give us the solutions that will allow us to keep running our stuff the same way.’ … The mandates of reality are telling us something very different.”</p><p></p><p>After Rio, ecology writer Chris Hedges wrote “<a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/time_to_get_crazy_20120702/" target="_blank">Time to get Crazy</a>,” warning that “Civilizations in the final stages of decay are dominated by elites out of touch with reality… [The] failure to impose limits cannibalizes natural resources and human communities. … It all will come down like a house of cards.”</p><p></p><p>Annie Leonard – whose “Story of Stuff” remains one of the most-watched (relevant) videos on the Internet – released “<a href="http://www.storyofstuff.org/" target="_blank">The Story of Change</a>,” in which she critiques “green” consumerism: “Can shopping save the world? No. Put down your credit card and exercise citizen action.” She notes that successful social change campaigns focus on: 1. big ideas (like “changing economic priorities”); 2. working together; and 3. direct action.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>“When will ordinary people rise up?” asks <a href="http://www.stwr.org/the-un-people-politics/when-will-ordinary-people-rise-up.html" target="_blank">Share the World's Resources</a>, a UN consultation group. “Leaders and policymakers [are] paying merely lip service.” They now advocate “public uprisings and mass occupations.”</p><p></p><p>Bill McKibben, who helped introduce global warming science to the public in 1989, observed that Rio “accomplished nothing.” Like others, McKibben has embraced direct action and last year, he helped organize a mass protest of tar sands pipelines in the US, leading to 2,000 arrests. After Rio, in <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719" target="_blank">Rolling Stone</a> magazine, McKibben demonstrated why 80-percent of the known hydrocarbon reserves will have to remain in situ if we have any hope of keeping global heating below 2C°. He advocates divestment from oil corporations – similar to anti-apartheid strategies successful in South Africa, but laments, “we may have waited too long.”</p><p></p><p>The fact that two of the examples cited above appeared in Rolling Stone music magazine is itself an indication that a zeitgeist shift is underway. We hear a return to urgency, to fundamental values, indigenous voices, limits to economic growth, and genuine ecology as the context for any authentic or enduring solutions for humanity.</p><p></p><p>Gulp! Fifty years of “environmentalism” and we are less sustainable. So what do we do now?</p><p></p><p>Make fun, make trouble</p><p></p><p>Artists usually lead social zeitgeist changes. Rouget de Lisle’s La Marseillaise rallied Eighteenth-century French revolutionaries just as Tunisian hip-hop artist El General’s O Leader! became the soundtrack for an uprising that toppled a regime and sparked a democracy movement. Virginia Wolff anticipated modern psychology and women’s rights; the Yes Men brought street theatre back to activism, and Adbusters magazine aroused the Occupy movement. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Accepting bad news honestly appears part of the new mood. In the US, Justin Ritche and Seth Moser-Katz post the <a href="http://www.extraenvironmentalist.com/" target="_blank">Extraenvironmentalists</a> podcast, which they call “Doom without the Gloom,” the tough love news with a sense of irony. “Is sustainability a farce,” they ask, “when associated with a way of life that is out of touch with reality?”</p><p></p><p>Twenty-four-year-old singer Cold Speck from Etobicoke, Canada writes “doom soul” music, realism with rhythm. “We fall from a dying tree,” she sings in <a href="http://www.twentyfourbit.com/2012/06/video-cold-specks-hoxton-hall-session/" target="_blank"><em>Winter Solstice</em></a>, and her claim in the song Holland, “We are many, we are many” rings convincingly. A fresh spirit moves globally, seeks a new way to live. The youth feel it instinctively. Witness eleven-year old Ta’kaiya Blaney warn “if we do nothing, it will all be gone,” from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkjIkuC_eWM" target="_blank"><em>Shallow Waters</em></a>, a song she wrote and sang in the indigenous camp at Rio.</p><p></p><p>How to Boil a Frog, the funniest film ever made about collapsing ecosystems, advises people who care: “Make friends, make fun, and make trouble.” Writer/actor Jon Cooksey plays half a dozen characters, including a lab scientist, who warns the audience, “This is the scary part. Are you ready? Global warming isn’t a problem. It’s a symptom of a much bigger problem.”&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>State-shift</p><p></p><p>Three years ago, Earth systems scientist Johan Rockström and colleagues published “Planetary Boundaries” in the journal Nature, showing that human activity has pushed seven critical systems – biodiversity, temperature, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, land use, fresh water, and ozone depletion – near or beyond critical tipping points. Furthermore, the report cautions, natural system feedbacks drive additional change and endanger other limits.</p><p></p><p>This year, Nature published “<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v486/n7401/full/nature11018.html" target="_blank">Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere</a>,” by 22 international scientists led by bio-paleoecologist Anthony Barnosky from the University of California. The team warned that human activity is likely forcing a planetary-scale transition, far beyond simple global heating, “with the potential to transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience.” Averting a planetary ecological crisis, they warn, now requires unprecedented human effort. “In a nutshell,” said Canadian co-author, biologist Arne Mooers, “humans havenot done anything really important to stave off the worst. My colleagues … are terrified.”</p><p></p><p>In “the Way Forward” in <a href="http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1113" target="_blank">Solutions Journal</a>, William Rees, creator of “ecological footprint” analysis at the University of British Columbia, reminds readers: “Climate change is just one symptom of generalized human ecological dysfunction. A virtual tsunami of evidence suggests that the global community is living beyond its ecological means.” Rees shows that the human ecological impact (utilizing the production from 2.7 global hectares per person) annually overshoots Earth’s productive capacity (1.8 global hectares) by 50 percent. “The human enterprise has already overshot global carrying capacity,” says Rees, “and is living, in part, by depleting natural capital and overfilling waste sinks,” including Earth’s atmosphere. “Solutions,” writes Rees, require that we “rewrite global society’s cultural narrative” to replace a “culturally constructed economic growth fetish.”</p><p></p><p>Double bind</p><p></p><p>Former World Bank Senior Economist Herman Daly proposed an ecological economics in the age of Rachel Carson, and published <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Steady-State-Economics-Second-New-Essays/dp/155963071X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1305664097&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank">Steady-State Economics</a> forty years ago. In a recent <a href="http://steadystate.org/canutist-state/" target="_blank">essay</a>,” Daly critiques the IBM notion to “build a ‘smarter planet’ – one that is ‘smart’ enough to obey our mindless command to keep growing.” Rather, Daly suggests, “Let’s make a smarter adaptation to the wonderful gift of the Earth, out of which we were created.”</p><p></p><p>A decade ago the Business Council for Sustainable Development in Antwerp, Belgium, calculated: “Industrialised world reductions – in material throughput, energy use, and environmental degradation – of over 90% will be required by 2040 to meet the needs of a growing world population fairly within the planet’s ecological means.”</p><p></p><p>Human enterprise finds itself in what ecologist and systems theory pioneer Gregory Bateson called a “double bind.” Our economic system demands growth, but Earth’s capacity requires restraint. If we shrink our economies, we face hardship, but if we keep growing, we face ecological collapse, a classic double bind. Bateson pointed out that when such an impasse occurs in nature, communities of organisms get creative, pulling options from the random, to evolve a radical new way of living. Those not up to the creative task, simply perish.</p><p></p><p>Whatever the environment community does at the next “summit,” it might as well be new and creative. Joining the charade won’t likely help. Perhaps it is time for a boycott or a counter-summit in a separate location, guided by indigenous leaders.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Moving beyond hope to action is a good sign for our social movements. Hope is a useful frame of mind, but not a strategy. Systems ecologist Pille Bunnell, a professor at Royal Roads University in Canada, says hope must be activated: “Hope is a manner of living and acting in the present that does not foreclose the future we desire.” &nbsp;Farmer-writer Wendell Berry takes up the question of appropriate hope in the poem “Sabbaths 2007”:</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp; hope must not depend on feeling good&nbsp; ...&nbsp; stop dithering.</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp; Tell them at least what you say to yourself.</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ===============&nbsp;</p>Tue, 07 Aug 2012 14:40:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/zeitgeist-shift/blog/41658/#comments-holderother issuesRex Weyler0000a0ae-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/ends-of-the-earth/blog/41134/Ends of the Earth<h3>Corporations look to plunder Earth’s polar resources</h3><p></p><p>The World’s multinational corporations face an unrelenting problem. Resource extraction has met Earth’s limits. The great fortunes of history were made by plundering resources, but we have taken the best of everything. With few virgin resources left, modern profit-making schemes turn to stock manipulations, debt swaps, and bets on derivative markets. Such manipulations, however, with no real wealth behind them, lead to inflation, collapse, and bailouts.</p><p></p><p>In the search for the remnants of nature’s real wealth, the captains of industry scramble for Earth’s remaining stores of minerals, forests, and biomass. This takes us to the ends of the Earth, to the poles, where receding ice opens land and seas for the final act of industrial pillage.</p><p></p><p>Limits</p><p></p><p>According to the <a href="http://www.wri.org/wri/">World Resource Institute</a>, some 6.2 billion hectares of forest once covered Earth’s landmass. Human expansion has reduced this by about half, to 3.2 billion hectares. Since we high-grade every resource, taking the biggest and best trees first, only about a quarter of the world’s frontier forests – measured in quality and quantity of standing timber – remains.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, we have dammed some 30,000 rivers, drained aquifers, dried lakes, polluted our water tables, and heated our atmosphere. As a result, each year, deserts grow by 6-million hectares, as forests shrink by 16-million hectares. In agricultural regions, we’ve mined over half the carbon from our soils, and we wash 26-billion tons of top soil into the sea each year along with our toxins, creating ocean dead zones. We have reduced most large commercial fish species by 60-90% and we’ve reduced the marine mammals by 80-90%, and some to extinction.</p><p></p><p>To fuel this devastation, we’ve drained some 60 trillion gallons of oil from the Earth, the best half of the world’s hydrocarbon store, representing 500-million-years of captured solar energy. We dumped the carbon waste into our atmosphere, heating the planet and turning the oceans acidic. According to <a href="http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1113">Dr. William Rees’ global footprint analysis</a>, human enterprise annually overshoots Earth’s renewable productive capacity by half.</p><p></p><p>Nevertheless, a billion people remain undernourished, and 10 million starve each year. By depleting Earth’s natural wealth, we foreclose genuinely sustainable options for the world’s poorest people, forcing them into sweatshops and slums.</p><p></p><p>Any sane person would step back, take stock, and consider how to reduce wasteful consumption, share among the human family, and restore Nature’s bounty. Not the world’s corporate empires. Resource corporations view the receding ice caps as an opportunity for one last orgy of plunder.</p><p></p><p>Swarming the Arctic </p><p></p><p>The fundamental resource of industrialism is energy, and the fundamental industrial energy is oil. According to Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist at <a href="http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/icy-saga-emblematic-oil-prices-inevitable-climb">Casey Research</a>, “a century of oil production has depleted most of the world's easy oil deposits,” which has pushed those companies to seek ultradeep ocean wells, bitumen from Canadian tar sands, and the remnant oil reserves in the Arctic.</p><p></p><p>This summer, Shell Oil intends to drill <a href="http://greenpeace.org.nz/briefing/Shell_and_oil_exploration_off_Alaska.pdf">five exploratory wells</a> in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas on Alaska's continental shelf. Although the sea bottom in this region is relatively shallow – 50-meters, compared to a thousand meters or more for deepwater wells – drilling rigs in the Arctic must negotiate moving ice floes, Arctic storms, freezing weather, and 10 weeks of darkness.</p><p></p><p>Shell admits that they would likely abandon a well capping or spill cleanup during poor Arctic weather. Oil moving under ice floes is out of reach, and the US Geological Survey (USGS) warns that “there is no comprehensive method for cleanup of spilled oil in sea ice.” Furthermore, US Coast Guard Admiral Robert Papp admits that Alaska infrastructure to respond to an oil well blowout, does not exist. <a href="http://www.nathancullen.com/news/article_RE/3_years_to_cap_an_arctic_oil_spill_officials_say/">Canadian regulators</a> conclude that to drill a blowout relief well in the arctic would take three years.</p><p></p><p>According to the USGS, the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas contains 14-19 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The energy-intensive drilling would require an equivalent energy of 1-2 billion barrels of oil, so the net return might be about 15 billion barrels. At current consumption rates, that equals a 6-month world oil supply. The entire Arctic seabed, at best, may contain 3 years of world oil consumption. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>For this, the oil giants appear willing to risk the world’s last pristine marine ecosystems. Arctic waters provide vital habitat for krill, unique fish, commercial cod and pollock, the rare bowhead whale, dolphins, walruses, seals, penguins and other birds. An oil spill would ravage Arctic marine wildlife and devastate local fishing.</p><p></p><p>War profiteers jump in</p><p></p><p>Once the oil companies locate, drill, and start producing oil, the next phase requires an extensive network of pipelines. Spills have become routine in oil pipelines from Nigeria to Canada. Furthermore, like Iraq or Afghanistan, any region with oil and pipelines becomes a battleground for political control.</p><p></p><p>Russian oil company Gazprom has signed a deal with Exxon Mobil Corp to prospect for oil in Russia’s Arctic Kara Sea. The US, China, Russia, Canada, and other nations have already begun military posturing in the Arctic to protect their resource interests.</p><p></p><p>US cables released by <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/wikileaks-reveals-arctic-could-be-new-cold-war-20110512">Wikileaks</a> promote a “military presence” in Greenland to protect “American commercial investments” and justify a US military presence due to “the potential of increased military threats in the Arctic.” The alleged threats include Russian submarines planting flags under the North Pole, Russia’s foreign minister proposing a “redistribution of power” and “armed intervention” in the Arctic, and Norway justifying Fighter aircraft purchases to offset Russia’s Arctic intentions. Meanwhile, Chinese diplomat Cui Hongjian insists that the Arctic is a “public area,” and Canada has announced intentions to patrol the Arctic with drones.</p><p></p><p>Another US cable cited oil and ice-free shipping as “benefits accruing from global warming.” Since 1980, we’ve witnessed a <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/75-arctic-sea-ice-has-been-lost-and-why-important-20120614">75% reduction in Arctic sea ice</a>. The polar ice helps balance atmospheric temperature by reflecting solar energy. The dark water left by receding ice absorbs energy, causing Earth to heat faster. Meanwhile, ancient methane – 20-times more potent than CO<sup>2</sup> as a greenhouse gas – escapes from melting permafrost, a feedback that increases global warming.</p><p></p><p>Furthermore, the oil that doesn’t spill into the sea or land spills into the atmosphere. It makes no sense to risk Earth’s last pristine marine ecosystem, and runaway heating, to extend a decaying and destructive industry for a few years. But Shell Oil does not appear interested in preserving ecosystems or future generations. The oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi fields is worth $1-2 trillion dollars of revenue to the oil company. Their motivation is money, not a vision for sustainable human habitation on Earth.</p><p></p><p>Knowing that their actions will degrade Earth’s ecological stability, Shell has filed a pre-emptive lawsuit against environmental groups in an attempt to prejudice courts to favor Shell's plans before anyone can challenge them.</p><p></p><p>Resistance and vision</p><p></p><p>Indigenous nations, scientists, celebrities, Greenpeace, and other environmental groups have proposed a global sanctuary in the Arctic to protect species habitat and local, indigenous fishing, while banning unsustainable industrial fishing and oil drilling.</p><p></p><p>A similar sanctuary was established in Antarctica 20 years ago, protecting the southern continent from mining and drilling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) now oversees scientists from 27 countries, performing valuable inter-disciplinary research in the Antarctic. The treaty prohibits military activity, and holds all Antarctic territorial claims in abeyance.</p><p></p><p>As giant corporations travel to the ends of the Earth for the final plunder of resources, the time has come for humanity to accept Earth’s biological and physical limits, preserve the vestiges of wild nature, arrest global warming, and prepare for a genuinely sustainable and equitable human society. That requires saving the Arctic from plunder.</p><p></p><p>==============&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Links in this essay:</p><p></p><p>World Resource Institute: <a href="http://www.wri.org/">http://www.wri.org/</a></p><p></p><p>Dr. William Rees, 50% Overshoot: <a href="http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1113">http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1113</a></p><p></p><p>Casey Research: Icy Saga, Oil’s Inevitable Climb: <a href="http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/icy-saga-emblematic-oil-prices-inevitable-climb">http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/icy-saga-emblematic-oil-prices-inevitable-climb</a></p><p></p><p>Shell’s Arctic oil exploration, exploratory wells, Greenpeace briefing: <a href="http://greenpeace.org.nz/briefing/Shell_and_oil_exploration_off_Alaska.pdf">http://greenpeace.org.nz/briefing/Shell_and_oil_exploration_off_Alaska.pdf</a></p><p></p><p>Canadian regulators, 3 years to drill Arctic relief well: <a href="http://www.nathancullen.com/news/article_RE/3_years_to_cap_an_arctic_oil_spill_officials_say/">http://www.nathancullen.com/news/article_RE/3_years_to_cap_an_arctic_oil_spill_officials_say/</a></p><p></p><p>Wikileaks reaveals Arctic war plans: <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/wikileaks-reveals-arctic-could-be-new-cold-war-20110512">http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/wikileaks-reveals-arctic-could-be-new-cold-war-20110512</a></p>Thu, 05 Jul 2012 17:37:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/ends-of-the-earth/blog/41134/#comments-holderabout usclimate changeoceansRex Weyler0000977a-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/historic-human-overshoot/blog/38778/Historic Human Overshoot<p><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/32396_63666.jpg" alt="" /></p><p></p><p>In nature, any successful species can overshoot a habitat, consuming resources faster than Earth’s ecosystems can replenish them. On Earth today, indicators such as species extinctions, soil loss, and global warming – tell us that humans have reached this state of overshoot on a global scale. In seeking solutions, we may benefit from some historical perspective.&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>University of British Columbia professor Dr. William Rees and his colleague Mathis Wackernagel originated the “ecological footprint” analysis, now universally used to measure personal, family, or regional ecological impact. Rees estimates that humans now use about fifty percent more resources in a year than Earth can replenish. In 2010, Rees wrote “The Human Nature of Unsustainability” for the <a href="http://www.postcarbon.org/reader"><em>Post Carbon Reader</em></a>, explaining some of the evolutionary reasons that our “reasonably intelligent species” appears unable to recognize its ecological crisis or respond accordingly.”</p><p></p><p>Rees explains that humans share with all species two behavioural traits critical to evolutionary survival:</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1. Expand to occupy all accessible habitats, and</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2. Use all available resources.</p><p></p><p>“These propensities toward overshoot,” says Rees, “are playing out on the global scale today.”</p><p></p><p>Humans are what biologists call “K-strategists.” The “K” stands for a habitat’s carrying capacity, which large mammals tend to fill with relatively-stable populations, restrained by predators and food supply. For such animals, habitat capacity limits may favour short-term, individual gratification (for food, sex, etc.). These traits have survival value, but only until the species overshoots its habitat capacity. Thereafter, as Rees explains, “behavioural adaptations that helped our distant ancestors survive... become maladaptive.”</p><p></p><p>Dr. Kathy McMahon, a clinical psychologist, who <a href="http://www.peakoilblues.com/">tracks stories of environmental trauma</a>, understands the ecological crisis, but believes we need to summon our “better angels” to help us survive and prosper. She agrees with Rees about destructive habits, but asks: “Do we not have within us, the very innate altruistic qualities needed to work our way back to that simpler, communally-focused way of life ... that will bring us back to our senses?” &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>McMahon asks: “ ... How do we find the sane space between Doom and Denial? Is blind optimism itself, a diagnosable mental disorder?” To build a sustainable future, it may help to understand something of our history.</p><p></p><p>The Dawn of Unsustainability </p><p></p><p>As long as humans relied on their own physical power to collect food, our ancient ancestors did not overshoot their habitats. Other predators and habitat capacity acted as restraints on growth, even after humans developed tools. Unsustainable human expansion appears in the historical record once humans gained access to “exosomatic energy” or “exoenergy” – energy from outside their own metabolism and nature’s growth cycles. The significant exoenergy sources in human history that led to habitat destruction include controlled fire, animal power, cultivated agriculture, slaves, and fossil fuels.</p><p></p><p>Comparing human population growth rates will help us understand the progress of human overshoot. Once <em>Homo erectus</em> communities began to control <a href="http://www.jstor.org/pss/2743299">fire in the mid-Pleistocene</a>, about 500,000 years ago, they gained the exoenergy that allowed them to expand beyond the capacity of their habitats. By 200,000 BC, only a few thousand humans lived on Earth (see population sources below), and their annual growth rate remained below one-thousandth of what it is today, around 0.001%, a 70,000-year doubling time, a very slow growth. By 40,000 BC, aided by controlled fire, modern <em>Homo sapiens</em> population had reached about 300,000, the growth rate had tripled to about 0.003%, and the doubling time fell to 20,000 years. Anthropologists find evidence, during this era, of large-scale human-induced animal and plant extinctions. Controlled human fire appears to be the primary cause.</p><p></p><p>For example, around 47,000 BC, humans arrived in Australia and large animals (mammals, 19 marsupials, 3 large reptiles, and most flightless birds) all vanish. Research conducted by <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/309/5732/287.short">Dr John Magee, Dr Michael Gagana</a> and others shows that emu diets suddenly changed from vast plant varieties to a few shrubs. The explanation: Humans regularly set fire to the landscape to flush out prey. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>The burning destroyed species directly and caused climate change by reducing water vapour flow between biosphere and atmosphere. Cloud cover declined, the monsoon cycle was broken, the Nullarbor grassland and forest (with tree-dwelling Kangaroos) became desert scrub, and once abundant Lake Eyre became a salt flat. Similar extinctions occurred almost everywhere humans migrated.</p><p></p><p>About 75% of North America’s megafauna (mastodons, mammoths, giant beavers, bears, sabre-toothed tigers) perished as humans advanced into their habitats. Some 30 species of megafauna disappeared in South America. When humans arrived in Madagascar, only 2,000 years ago, every mammal over 20-pounds disappeared (pygmy hippos, lemurs, and others.). Human communities in Hawaii quickly eradicated 90% of all bird species, and in New Zealand exterminated 11 Moa species in 100 years.</p><p></p><p>We learn evolutionary “success” has costs, and without restraints, those costs can be fatal to even the “successful” species.</p><p></p><p>Mining the soils</p><p></p><p>By 10,000 BC, <em>Homo sapien</em> population had grown to about 4.5 million, the growth rate increased 7-times in 30 millennia to 0.02% and the doubling rate fell to 3-thousand years. It helps us understand our modern predicament to realize that with this growth rate, humans were already unsustainable. At a 3-thousand-year doubling time, human population would have reached our modern 7-billion in a little over 30,000 years – instead of 12,000 – but still would have reached it. This tells us something about what the right solutions will look like. The answer to overshoot is not a particular level or style of technology, but rather achieving a stable growth pattern, which in nature means a cyclical growth pattern, a dynamic stability within an environment, which in ecology we call “homeostasis.” &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>After 10,000 BC, animal husbandry and crop cultivation provided humanity with two new sources of exoenergy, animal power and soil mining. Some indigenous cultures in the western hemisphere learned to replenish soils, utilizing legumes to fix nitrogen and applying seaweed and fish to replace nutrients. It is possible to create a permanent agriculture, but these systems imply limits to community growth. Those societies that simply mined their soils suffered devastating results.</p><p></p><p>Soil microbiologist <a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4628">Peter Salonius</a> traces “irreversible degradation of arable soil productivity… to the advent&nbsp;of cultivation agriculture.” Productive soils, as modern permaculture research shows, need interdependent ecosystems to recycle nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, and other compounds. Early slash and burn agriculture disrupted these natural systems. Intense cultivation and irrigation in Mesopotamia, for example, left depleted, salted soils. Entire civilizations collapsed.</p><p></p><p>One of human society’s earliest extant stories – the Sumerian <em>Gilgamesh</em> from 2500 BC – chronicles forest depletion and ponders the ethics of deforestation. Humans with goat herds and hand axes converted the Syrian/Lebanon cedar forests to desert.</p><p></p><p>During this stage of human history, social elitism in human communities appears to have overwhelmed our “better angels,” our cooperative, egalitarian, respectful, and modest lifestyles. Hierarchies developed that controlled land, conquered neighbours, and took slaves (another form of exoenergy that allowed rulers to dominate more people and more land).</p><p></p><p>By 400 BC, human population had reached 160 million, the growth rate reached 0.13%, and the doubling time fell to only 525 years. Forest and soil destruction soared, proved unsustainable, and led to a massive collapse.</p><p></p><p>Growth stops and restarts</p><p></p><p>In 430 BC a plague swept Athens, marking a profound shift in human growth patterns. By 100 AD, for the first time in human history, the human growth rate turned negative. Humans were dying off, due to overcrowding, disease, crop failure, warfare, and genocide. It took almost 2,000 years for humanity to recover and sustain its 400AD growth rate. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>During this period, the Chinese began burning coal, the dawn of the hydrocarbon era. In both Asia and Europe, coal powered new migrations, colonization, and more plunder. Once again, increased exoenergy fuelled massive growth, and in this case, industrial growth. Around 1810, the human population reached a billion people, and then added another billion in a century. The annual human population growth rate peaked in 1963, at 2.2%. The fastest billion people were added between 1985 and 1997 (12 years and 2 months!) The most humans ever added to Earth in one year, 1989, is 87 million! The growth rate is now half its peak, 1.1%, but we still add some 77 million humans each year, equivalent to ten cities the size of London.</p><p></p><p>Today, most humans eat negative-net-energy food provided not from soil, but mostly from oil. Most world agriculture now runs on hydrocarbons for land clearing, tilling, harvest, fertilizer, transport, and packaging. To achieve this, we have burned the best half of recoverable hydrocarbons in one century, launching a new climactic era of rapid heating. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>We need to shift quickly from hydrocarbons to low-carbon energy sources to avoid drastic global warming, but history also shows that unless we slow our consumption and growth trends, more energy cannot really save us. &nbsp;</p><p></p><p>In the essay “Future Scenarios” in <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&amp;tid=11105"><em>Sustainability or Collapse?</em></a><em> An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth</em> (R. Costanza, et. al., 2007), the authors warn: “Even when a collapse is known to be imminent, it often cannot be controlled, and recovery cannot occur until considerable reconfiguration and downsizing has taken place.”</p><p></p><p>Here is where we must summon our “better angels” in the search for an appropriate scale of human activity “It is now time,” Kathy McMahon says, “for careful thinkers to propose an alternative view of what it means to be fully human. We may need to look outside The First World for new insights and broader understandings.”</p><p></p><p>- Rex Weyler, December 2011</p><p></p><p><em>Deep Green is Rex Weyler's monthly column, reflecting on the roots of activism, environmentalism, and Greenpeace's past, present, and future. The opinions here are his own.</em></p><p></p><p><em>Population estimate sources: Hyde (2006), Maddison (2003) Biraben (1980), Durand (1974), McEvedy &amp; Jones (1978), Thomlinson (1975), Livi-Bacci (2001), Carl Haub (2005), K. W. Harl, Kremer (1993), Tanton (1994), US Census Bureau (2008), Population Reference Bureau (2005); UN: 1973, 1999, 2006. All figures are approximate.</em></p><p></p><p><em>Image: Artist John Quigley: "</em><span class="Value"><em>"We came here and created ‘The Melting Vitruvian Man’, recreating da Vinci's famous sketch of the human body, because literally climate change is eating into the body of our civilisation. When he did this sketch it was the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, the dawn of this innovative age that continues to this day, but our use of fossil fuels is threatening that." Image: Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace</em><br /></span></p>Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:49:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/historic-human-overshoot/blog/38778/#comments-holderclimate changeRex Weyler000096a7-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/canada-climate-criminal/blog/38567/Canada: Climate Criminal<p><img src="http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/community_images/84/2284/31622_62112.jpg" alt="" /></p><p></p><p>At the dawn of the 21st century a new political regime has transformed Canada from global hero – once standing up for peace, people, and nature – to global criminal, plunging into war, eroding civil rights, and destroying environments.</p><p></p><p>What happened to Canada? Oil. And not just any oil, but the world’s dirtiest, most destructive oil. Canada’s betrayal at the Durban climate talks – abandoning its Kyoto Accord commitments – is the direct effect of becoming a petro-state.</p><p></p><p>By the late 20th century, oil companies knew that the world’s conventional oil fields were in decline and oil production would soon peak, which it did in 2005. These companies, including sovereign oil powers such as PetroChina, turned their attention to low-grade hydrocarbon deposits in shale gas, deep offshore fields, and Canada’s Alberta tar sands. Simultaneously, inside Canada, oil companies began promoting the political career of the son of an Alberta oil executive, the conservative ideologue Stephen Harper.</p><p></p><p>Shell Oil opened operations in the tar sands in 2003. In 2004, the same year Canada signed the Kyoto Accord, committing to reduce carbon emissions, oil companies began to form “think tanks” and astroturf groups in Canada to establish the oil agenda and promote Harper as Conservative Party leader. Two years later, in 2006, Harper’s Conservatives formed a minority government with 36% of the popular vote and launched Canada’s petro-state era, slashing environmental regulations, joining US Middle East wars, and launching a tar sands campaign, one of the most ecologically destructive industrial projects in human history.</p><p></p><p>In Durban, in December 2011, after mocking climate science and common decency, Canada’s Environment Minister, Peter Kent announced that Canada would abandon the Kyoto deal, abrogating a legally binding international agreement, which Canada had signed seven years earlier.</p><p></p><p>The Canadian government has become the policy arm and public relations voice of the international oil industry, discarding its reputation as an ethical country. Millions of Canadians have expressed outrage at the government that abandoned them and shamed Canada on the world stage. These voices are rarely heard in Canada’s corporate media. Meanwhile, Canadians witness an erosion of free press and civil rights within their own nation. They should not be surprised.</p><p></p><p>Life as an oil resource colony</p><p></p><p>“Oil and democracy do not generally mix,” explains Terry Karl in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Plenty-Petro-States-International-Political/dp/0520207726"><em>The</em> <em>Paradox of Plenty</em></a>: <em>Oil Booms and Petro-States</em>. Oil is a “resource <br /> curse” for local populations, as experienced by Nigeria, Indonesia, Venezuela, Iran, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and other nations. Oil rich nations attract oil industry patrons, who tend to support dictators. Petro-states often lose local economic sovereignty, suffer human rights atrocities, and see their environments devastated.</p><p></p><p>In the 1970s, the UK and Dutch economies experienced the oil curse as the North Sea oil and gas boom gave the illusion of prosperity while eroding sovereign economic capacity. Britain’s petro-state leader Margaret Thatcher used oil revenues to wage war, create banking empires, and subsidize elite society, while plundering the environment and leaving common citizens dispossessed of their own national heritage.</p><p></p><p>In 1977 <em>The Economist</em> magazine coined the term “Dutch disease” to describe the social and manufacturing decline caused by extreme resource exploitation. Oil revenues make a nation's currency appear stronger for a while, but this makes their exports more expensive and undermines manufacturing and local economy.</p><p></p><p>In 2011, the Montreal Macro Research Board warned that the “petrolization” of Canada had created “A severe case of Dutch Disease,” weakening Canadian business sovereignty, “hollowing out manufactured goods exporters” and making Canada “increasingly reliant” on oil and coal exports.</p><p></p><p>Like Thatcher's England Canada launched a scheme to privatise profits and socialize the costs of oil development. In the last decade, Canada has handed out over $14 billion in tax subsidies to oil, coal, and gas companies, while losing over 340,000 industrial jobs. A University of Ottawa study shows that oil colony economics is the largest factor in these job losses.</p><p></p><p>“Petro-states,” writes Terry Karl, become “unaccountable to the general population.” To impose the oil company agenda on their citizens, petro-regimes tend to centralize power, avoid transparency, and create a politics of lies and deceit.</p><p></p><p>Politics as war</p><p></p><p>Twice, in 2008 and 2009, Harper shut down the Canadian Parliament to avoid inquiries into his international deals, finances, and scandals including abusive treatment of Afghanistan detainees. Canada now ranks last among industrial nations in honouring freedom of information requests.</p><p></p><p>Harper’s perverse secrecy is typical of oil politics. “This is how petro states are made,” writes Andrew Nikiforuk in one of Canada’s best news sources, <a href="http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/04/21/SilentElectionIssue/">The Tyee</a>; “with a quiet infection that eats away a nation's entire soul.”</p><p></p><p>In March 2011, as Harper ran Canada from secret cabinet meetings, 156 members of the government found Harper and his minority regime in contempt of Parliament for its refusal to share legislative information with other elected members.</p><p></p><p>In April 2011, Canadians learned that Harper’s liaison to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers had previously been convicted of defrauding two Canadian banks, a car dealer, and his own law clients, and had lobbied the Canadian government on behalf of his ex-hooker girlfriend.</p><p></p><p>The convicted felon, Bruce Carson, served as chief tar sands promoter, claiming “The economic and security value of oil sands expansion will likely outweigh the climate damage that oil sands create.” Carson also opposed “clean energy efforts in the U.S.” Canadian lobbyists undermined US low-carbon fuel standards by <a href="http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/03/16/Canada_Teams_With_Oil_Lobby/">lobbying</a> the US government.</p><p></p><p>In June 2011, on national television, another Harper henchman, Tom Flanagan, advocated assassinating WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: “I think Assange should be assassinated,” he told Canada’s CBC. Flanagan has been one of the lead architects of Harper’s war on his own people. Before the 2011 election, in Canada’s <em>Globe and Mail</em>, Flanagan wrote, “An election is war by other means.” He compared an election campaign to Rome’s destruction of Carthage, whereby they “razed the city to the ground and sowed salt in the fields so nothing would grow there again.”</p><p></p><p>Alan Whitehorn of the Royal Military College of Canada wrote, “This suggests a paradigm not of civil rivalry between fellow citizens, but all-out extended war to destroy and obliterate the opponent. This kind of malevolent vision and hostile tone seems antithetical to the democratic spirit.” Harper’s government is now constructing barricades around the Parliament buildings, erecting more jails, and passing tougher criminal codes. The Canadian people, who once felt proud of their democratic institutions, now feel like the “enemy” of their own government.</p><p></p><p>Canada against the world</p><p></p><p>Outside Canada, the Harper regime has dismissed the United Nations and international opinion. Canadian government officials called the UN a “corrupt organization.” Former Canadian senior UN official Carolyn McAskie wrote in <a href="http://www.caidc-rccdi.ca/fr/node/2078">Canada and Multilateralism: Missing In Action</a> that Canada, once respected as a UN leader, is now “spurning a whole system of organizations critical to world peace, security and development.”</p><p></p><p>Economic analyst <a href="http://news.goldseek.com/GoldenJackass/1323982800.php">Jim Willie</a> wrote that Canada has “followed the Goldman Sachs path to the fields of corruption and fealty… Canada followed the Bush Doctrine of fascism, embracing the war footing … and tightening the security vice. Next they will become a Chinese commercial colony.”</p><p></p><p>When citizens around the world objected to the climate impact of the tar sands, Harper’s government attempted to rebrand the notorious carbon bomb as “ethical oil,” shamelessly ignoring the facts. The tar sands crimes against humanity and nature begin with obliterating boreal forests and soils, creating massive open-pit mines, and removing two tons of sand and soil for every barrel of oil. The thick bitumen is melted with natural gas, which requires one-third of the energy in tar sands oil to remove it. The project uses about 150-million gallons of water each day from the Athabasca river and aquifers, and the black waste turns boreal lakes into sludge pits, kills birds and other wild life, and contaminates the local ground water. Pollutants from tar sands smoke stacks have caused lung disease throughout the region and a 30% increase in cancers over the last decade. Mike Mercredi from the indigenous Fort Chipewyan Cree Nation calls the impact “slow industrial genocide.”</p><p></p><p>The crime continues with pipeline oil spills and oil tankers that threaten the entire coast of North America. Meanwhile, the tar sands project emits more that 45-million tons of greenhouse gases each year. NASA climatologist James Hansen has warned that if the tar sands are fully exploited, “it is game over for the climate.”</p><p></p><p>The French Foreign Ministry called Canada’s decision to renege on its Kyoto climate commitments, “bad news for the fight against climate change.”</p><p></p><p>Representative Ian Fry from the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu called Canada’s reversal “an act of sabotage ... a reckless and totally irresponsible act.”</p><p></p><p>The China news agency, Xinhua, called Canada’s decision “preposterous,” and China's Foreign Ministry urged Canada to “face up to its due responsibilities and duties... and take a positive, constructive attitude towards participating in international cooperation to respond to climate change.”</p><p></p><p>UN climate chief Christiana Figueres warned that Canada “has a legal obligation under the convention to reduce its emissions, and a moral obligation to itself and future generations to lead in the global effort.” UN Advisor on Water, Maude Barlow, called the tar sands “Canada’s Mordor.”</p><p></p><p>After Canada’s shameful showing in Durban, a Canadian businessman wrote to national newspaper, <em>The Globe &amp; Mail</em>: “The pride of wearing the maple leaf on the lapel or backpack is gone. It's best hidden now. .. not one person in any country I have visited has been complimentary. Harper and his sheep will deny or ignore such facts while people like me lose business.”</p><p></p><p>Inside Canada, people are rising up, lead by <a href="http://wildernesscommittee.org/what_we_do/supporting_healthy_communities/canadas_tar_sands">The Wilderness Committee</a>, <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/tarsands/">Greenpeace</a>, <a href="http://www.canadians.org/energy/issues/tarsands/">Council of Canadians</a>, the <a href="http://www.ienearth.org/">Indigenous Environmental Network</a>, the <a href="http://yinkadene.ca/">Yinka-Dene Alliance</a>, and others. These groups need international support to halt the tar sands crime and help Canada recover its lost reputation.</p><p></p><p>-Rex Weyler, November 2011</p><p></p><p><em>Deep Green is Rex Weyler's monthly column, reflecting on the roots of activism, environmentalism, and Greenpeace's past, present, and future. The opinions here are his own.</em></p><p></p><p><em>Image: <span class="Value">At dawn on the opening day of the UN climate summit in Durban, South Africa, Greenpeace take to Parliament Hill to brand the Harper government 'CLIMATE FAIL' of epic proportions. Credit: Eye in the sky/Greenpeace</span></em></p>Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:09:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/canada-climate-criminal/blog/38567/#comments-holderclimate changeRex Weyler00009526-0000-0000-0000-000000000000http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/real-wealth/blog/38182/Real Wealth<p style="text-align: center;">"Money and market values cannot be used to <br />evaluate real wealth from the environment."<br />— Howard T. Odum</p><p></p><p>Howard T. Odum's Energy Economics</p><p></p><p>In the 1970s, Howard T. Odum explained human economics using ecology and energy fundamentals. His work remains essential for ecologists, who imagine achieving "sustainability." His 1973 "Energy, Ecology, &amp; Economics" provides a good summary of his concerns for our future, and helps explain why consumption and expanding technologies have limits. A Prosperous Way Down, (2001, with his wife Elisabeth), provides realistic solutions.</p><p></p><p>Odum consulted on the Limits to Growth project and respected Herman Daly (Steady State Economics, 1977) as a rare economist, who saw reality in its complex whole. The closing pages of Odum's 1971 Environment Power and Society, warned of coming peak energy and rising debt: "There may be a long period of leveling energy budgets," he wrote; "the expanding economy may be gone. The citizen will sense this process as inflation." As Odum predicted, humanity hit that "level energy budget" in 2005 and now faces the end of an expanding global economy.</p><p></p><p>Odum's daughter – Mary Odum Logan, Ph.D., adjunct professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage – recalls, "In the 1960s, I heard dinner table lectures regarding the energy and ecology problems we witness today. My Father would be shocked that governments today trot out tar sands and shale gas as rescue strategies, a delusion he dismissed in the 1970s. Exploiting profit-positive but negative net-energy deposits, burns energy, destroys the boreal ecosystems, drains aquifers, and increases global heating. My father never believed that we would be so stupid."</p><p></p><p>Energy quality and economics</p><p></p><p>Odum's energy economics begins with an understanding that energy provides the foundation for all life processes, but that all energy is not equal. As energy is transformed through an ecosystem, quantity decreases as concentration increases. Odum coined "Emergy" to account for the variations of energy quality. In Environmental Accounting: Emergy and Environmental Decision Making (1996), he explains how energy provides for "real work" and "real wealth" in any biophysical system including a human economy:</p><p></p><blockquote>"Understanding the economy requires that both money circulation and the pathways of real wealth be represented together but separately. Money is only paid to people and never to the environment for its work... Therefore, money and market values cannot be used to evaluate the real wealth from the environment. When the resources from the environment are abundant, little work is required from the economy." (1996, p. 55)</blockquote><p></p><p>Real wealth has no money flow until humans impose one. All non-human societies and human societies for most of human history consumed Nature's real wealth without money. Modern human societies, for example, pay loggers and fishermen to harvest Nature's embodied energy. Inside the human system, money can expand exponentially, but "real wealth" remains limited by energy, materials, and biophysical processes.</p><p></p><p>Free services from the environment – trees, fish, fresh water, nutrient recycling, and so forth – require a higher energy-cost once we commercialize them, such as bottled water and processed food. Most North American and European food is "negative net energy." We invest more calories (hydrocarbons, fertilizers, labour, transport) than the calories in the food we consume. In a natural system, this is not remotely sustainable. Odum explains:</p><p></p><blockquote><p></p><p>"The great conceit of Industrial man imagined that his progress in agricultural yields was due to new know-how... A whole generation ... thought that the carrying capacity of the earth was proportional to the amount of land under cultivation and that higher efficiencies in using the energy of the sun had arrived. This is a sad hoax, for industrial man no longer eats potatoes made from solar energy; now he eats potatoes partly made of oil (1971, p. 115)"</p><p></p><p>"When the resources are scarce, obtaining costs are higher... and the market puts a high value on the product. ... Market values are inverse to real wealth ... and cannot be used to evaluate environmental contributions or environmental impact (1996, p. 60)."</p><p></p></blockquote><p></p><p>Fossil fuel represents stored solar energy, concentrated over a billion years, which is why we can eat negative-net-energy food, for a while. Any plan to replace that hydrocarbon flow with, say, solar panels and windmills, should examine Odum's "emergy" analysis.</p><p></p><blockquote>"Energy is measured by calories, BTUs, kilowatt-hours ... but energy has a scale of quality which is not indicated by these measures. The ability to do work ... depends on the energy quality ... measurable by the amount of energy of a lower quality grade required to develop the higher grade. [Odum, 1973, Energy, ecology and economics].</blockquote><p></p><p>Leaves transform disperse (low grade) sunlight into high grade wood; time and pressure transform that into coal or oil. Energy is lost at every stage. We use hydrocarbon subsidies – mining, manufacture, transport – for solar panels or nuclear plants. Solar cells and windmills require iron and copper, but try mining copper with solar power and you'd soon get the idea.</p><p></p><p>Odum redefined certain economic concepts based on these energy fundamentals:</p><p></p><p>Energy economics: "The science of economics may profit by restating more of its theorems to include power principles. Studies of money alone are just as incomplete as studies of mineral cycles alone. (1971, p. 182)."</p><p></p><p>Recycling: "Any compatible combinations of plants and animals are self-rewarding... [If] there is no loopback of minerals from wastes to the plants, a necessary function for both animals and plants is interrupted and these species drop out (1971, p. 175)."</p><p></p><p>Odum is being diplomatic here, but issuing a grave warning to humans. His energy economics principles are not just metaphors. Society itself represents embodied energy.</p><p></p><p>Energy and social justice: "As fossil fuels are injected, the role of machines increases, outcompeting man in simple, mechanical work. The increased total work done increases the standard of living but only to those who can plug into the economy with a service that has an amplification value greater than the machines. (1971, p. 185)."</p><p></p><p>Only a privileged few have access to the education, capital, and plundered resources that "amplify" their value enough to accrue monetary wealth in a world of limited energy and resources. Everyone else, most of humanity – and all of nature – is degraded in this energy hierarchy that lacks the necessary feedback loops.</p><p></p><p>Unemployment: "Circuits of a system that have to be maintained but are not being used for system work can be described as unemployment. A certain part of any population needs to ... provide reserve capacity to perform full-time maintenance functions and information-increasing actions such as sleep, education, and relaxation. However, too much unemployment means a system with too much maintenance cost. (1971, p. 188)."</p><p></p><p>Unemployment is a system dysfunction, not just a personal failure of the unemployed. This principle is the inverse of the previous one regarding individual social value. The fossil energy subsidy in human society becomes concentrated among the wealthy as billions of people starve or remain under employed. Social injustice is directly linked to ecologically unsustainable consumption among the wealthy.</p><p></p><p>Debt: "Credit is the flow of work for which the money loopback is delayed... ecological systems operate mainly on credit... plants in spring produce for the animals from their reserves of mineral currency, whereas the payment by animals and microbes of minerals loops back to the plants... long after the harvest but in time to start a new cycle (1971, p. 188)."</p><p></p><p>In human economics, rising debt is fake energy. In Nature, all debts are paid and no one is "too big to fail."</p><p></p><p>Inflation: "Inflation is an acceleration of the rate of money circulated in relation to the energy flow." (1971, p. 195).</p><p></p><p>"In the 1930s, a badly functioning economic system and a transition from a rural solar economy to an urban fossil-fuel economy created lower productivity... Adding money will stimulate the flow of energy only when supplies of energy are large. Adding money when sources of energy are limited merely creates inflation." (Odum &amp; Odum, 1976, p. 55, 58).</p><p></p><p>Real wealth – fresh water, arable soil, wildlife – is not created by money, nor destroyed when money is gone. If money is produced faster than real wealth, the system collapses. Witness the economic crash of 2008: World energy flow peaked in 2005 and remained flat, but the economy (money) continued to grow. With flat energy and growing economy, oil prices soared from $30 to $147. The world's annual energy bill quintupled, and the economy collapsed, exposing the toxic bank assets (fake energy).</p><p></p><p>Limits: Odum's "Maximum Power Principle" helps explain why consumption has limits and why complex societies hit the wall even as technologies and efficiencies improve. Self-organizing systems and the species within them maximize energy harvesting and use it to create feedback loops to bring in more energy. However, there is a tradeoff between efficiency and power. A more efficient system may go slower, delivering less productivity. A system arranged to go faster may waste energy.</p><p></p><p>Enduring natural systems typically alternate energy storage with consumption. This pulsation uses more energy, but produces stability by allowing flexibility and creativity within the system. Resilient systems allow change. Thus, system control itself is limited. Witness the social cost of political systems that seek to control change and punish the very self-organization principles that furnish resiliency.</p><p></p><p>Odum describes how Energy flows anywhere in the universe are organized in an "energy transformation hierarchy." Many joules of sunlight, for example, are required to make one joule of organic matter. Energy is lost at each transition, but the embodied energy is more concentrated.</p><p></p><p>A tree provides an example of energy hierarchy. The leaves and tiny roots collect and concentrate dilute sunlight and disperse resources. Larger branches and roots chemically transform the energy in higher concentrations – spending energy to do so. Finally, the tree trunk represents high quality energy, useful as fuel, building, and so forth. A human society – even at the level of burning wood – represents extremely concentrated energy, at considerable cost to the organic system.</p><p></p><p>However – and here is the catch that humanity needs to understand – each hierarchical level of concentrated energy has to lend support to the energy collection structure as a whole, or it cannot endure!</p><p></p><p>The tree trunk cannot just be an energy and material consumer; it has to help leaves (from which it grew) do a better job of collecting energy. This is a living system. The tree cannot "waste" its photosynthesis on wood investment that does not serve the system to maximize system energy processing.</p><p></p><p>Ecological food webs are complex examples of energy hierarchies. Predators "pay" for the energy captured from prey by providing services to the ecosystem – concentrating nutrients back to soil and limiting prey – otherwise, as Odum explains, predators would be a net energy drain and would perish. These energy accounts remain perfect in Nature, debts are paid, imbalance is resolved, and wastes are recycled.</p><p></p><p>Real Sustainability</p><p></p><p>Thus, we glimpse humanity's challenge. We are an energy drain on the ecosystem and we have compounded that problem by becoming a material drain (depleted forests, collapsed fisheries, eroded soils) and an unprocessed waste producer (garbage, toxins, CO2, etc.). Natural systems will support a complex level of energy concentration (such as human society) if that complexity returns to the system a net energy gain. Humanity is not doing that.</p><p></p><p>Fossil fuel consumption has funded our complex civilization that has overshot its habitat's capacity. Fossil fuel agriculture feels like increased productivity, but really represents system degradation. Computers appear "efficient" because we do not account for their hydrocarbon subsidy. We haven't yet figured out how to pay the larger system back. Earth doesn't take dollars, bank drafts, or collateralized debt obligations.</p><p></p><p>"Neo-classical economic theory only worked on the way up," Mary Odum Logan warns, "and won't work on the way down. The self-amplifying growth agenda falls apart the minute you reduce the energy inputs. Those autocatalytic feedback loops cause a Wile E. Coyote, beep-beep moment as our economy finds itself suspended in thin air over the chasm.</p><p></p><p>"Add money, and it's like pushing on a string if there is no real wealth to move the economy. The money piles up in the hands of the wealthy, creates haves and have-nots, and skews incentives towards wasteful growth, luxury, mansions, and mega yachts rather than real economic work. Borrow to buy stuff, especially when the stuff is geared towards the old paradigm, and you just end up with piles of houses and SUVs, stacked up in a concrete cul-de-sac with nowhere to go."</p><p></p><p>Howard Odum's insights reveal that advocating more modest lifestyles is not pessimism, but realism.</p><p></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p></p><p>Links:</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Prosperous-Way-Down-Principles-Policies/dp/0870816101">A Prosperous Way Down</a></p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Environment-Power-Society-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0231128878/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1322627534&amp;sr=1-2">Environment, Power, and Society</a></p><p></p><p><em>Deep Green is Rex Weyler's monthly column, reflecting on the roots of activism, environmentalism, and Greenpeace's past, present, and future. The opinions here are his own.</em></p>Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:09:00 Zhttp://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/real-wealth/blog/38182/#comments-holderclimate changeother issuesRex Weyler