environment Politics: Barack Obama economics fallacies sustainability
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Year 4, Month 7, Day 17: The Rain Continued For An Hour
Krugthulu, in the Times:
It’s always important to remember that what ails the U.S. economy right now isn’t lack of productive capacity, but lack of demand. The housing bust, the overhang of household debt and ill-timed cuts in public spending have created a situation in which nobody wants to spend; and because your spending is my income and my spending is your income, this leads to a depressed economy over all.
How would forcing the power industry to clean up its act worsen this situation? It wouldn’t, because neither costs nor lack of capacity are constraining the economy right now.
And, as I’ve already suggested, environmental action could actually have a positive effect. Suppose that electric utilities, in order to meet the new rules, decide to close some existing power plants and invest in new, lower-emission capacity. Well, that’s an increase in spending, and more spending is exactly what our economy needs.
O.K., it’s still not clear whether any of this will happen. Some of the people I talk to are cynical about the new climate initiative, believing that the president won’t actually follow through. All I can say is, I hope they’re wrong.
Near the end of his speech, the president urged his audience to: “Invest. Divest. Remind folks there’s no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth.” Normally, one would be tempted to dismiss this as the sound of someone waving away the need for hard choices. But, in this case, it was simple good sense: We really can invest in new energy sources, divest from old sources, and actually make the economy stronger. So let’s do it.
“Stronger” should not mean “bigger.” June 29:
As accumulating atmospheric CO2 triggers extreme weather events everywhere on Earth, it underlines a simple, inescapable truth: we live on a finite planet with finite resources. Whether it’s food for the multiplying masses, energy for our industries, or just a safe place to put our waste, there is no dispute: we’re running out.
President Obama’s recent invocation of “economic growth” indicates how hard it is to abandon the delusion that our species can expand indefinitely without paying a terrible price. A healthy baby’s weight may double in a few months, but an adult doing likewise would be very sick indeed. Our species is no longer an evolutionary infant, and we can no longer base our lives on continuous expansion, for there is nowhere left to expand to.
We can have sustainability, or we can have growth, but trying to have both will inevitably lead to tragedy: having neither.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Barack Obama denialists idiots Republican obstructionism sustainability
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Year 4, Month 7, Day 15: Until The Crowd Got Wise
The Des Moines Register notices that AgSec Tom Vilsack supports President Obama’s climate initiatives:
WASHINGTON — The White House stepped up its campaign for a sweeping new climate change plan Wednesday as Obama administration officials highlighted the effects of recent extreme weather on Iowa and other states.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters the 2012 drought, the worst to hit the United States since the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, and the wet weather and flooding this year demonstrated the need to act. He also pointed to the recent uptick in forest fires, including one near Colorado Springs, Colo., that has burned hundreds of homes and forced residents to flee.
“This is a real issue and something that requires immediate attention,” Vilsack said. “It’s absolutely essential that we respond in a very aggressive way to the challenges of a changing climate.”
(snip)
Republican lawmakers and other critics criticized the president for unilaterally advancing a plan that they said would hurt the economy, cost jobs and hit consumers with higher energy costs.
They never change. June 28:
When Republicans criticize President Obama’s climate change initiatives, they tell us that plans to reduce CO2 emissions will “hurt the economy” and “raise energy costs” — utterly predictable tropes which collapse under the slightest scrutiny.
The notion that sane environmental policy is economically damaging ignores the fact that our prosperity ultimately hinges on environmental health; no amount of money will magically restore contaminated aquifers or repair a collapsed ecosystem. If our economy is “hurt” by reducing dangerous greenhouse emissions, the problem lies with how we define our economy, not with the notion that we — as individuals and as a nation — should be responsible for cleaning up the messes we’ve made.
And when it comes to increased energy costs, the facts are simple: our tax dollars have been subsidizing the fossil fuel industry for decades, enriching their corporate coffers while keeping prices at the pump artificially low. Furthermore our taxes pay to clean up oil spills, address the public health impacts of oil and coal, and fund the costly wars we wage to protect our sources.
Global climate change is the costliest threat our species has ever faced. Addressing it proactively is both environmentally and economically responsible.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture denialists farming sustainability
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Year 4, Month 7, Day 11: Roya Garden Blues
More on coffee, from the Burlington Free Press:
The president of Apecafe in El Salvador, a cooperative formed in 1997 to represent more than 400 coffee farmers, Puente has had a front-row seat to “la roya,” the fungus that is devastating coffee plantations across Central America.
“We think outbreaks of violence and famine can occur in some cooperatives as a result of this situation,” Puente said in a recent interview from San Salvador, where Apecafe is headquartered. “The other issue is migration. People are going to want to move to the United States and other countries where they can find food. We place a great deal of importance on treating roya to end all the negative effects of the disease. They are catastrophic. People suffer a great deal.”
Puente says la roya, also known as coffee rust, has affected more than 74 percent of the coffee plantations in El Salvador. He says the country will lose 1 million of the 1.7 million quintals of coffee beans it normally produces. One quintal is equal to about 100 pounds.
“The reality is we have been hit by something very powerful,” Puente said.
The price of coffee has yet to go up in the United States, but Lindsey Bolger, senior director of coffee for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in Waterbury, said that could change next year.
This is just the beginning. June 24:
Like a lot of Americans, I’ve always thought of coffee as a staple food. And like a lot of Americans, I’m dreading a future where it’s turned into a costly luxury. Coffee rust is just one of a host of complex consequences of the intensifying greenhouse effect that are going to make all our mornings that much harder.
In coming years, we won’t be drinking the best-tasting coffee, but that which is most resistant to extreme weather, unpredictable rains, droughts, devastated biodiversity, and fungal pests like La Roya. And it won’t just be coffee, but virtually everything else we put on the table.
How much more news of this sort can we absorb before our politicians stop being terrified of offending their corporate paymasters and start taking immediate steps to protect the world’s agriculture from the consequences of climate change? Each passing day makes action less effective and more expensive.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility kindness refugees rising seas sustainability
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Year 4, Month 7, Day 9: Homeward Bound
Brian Schatz is a good guy. US News & World Report:
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, introduced an amendment Wednesday to the pending immigration bill that aims to allow Pacific islanders and others affected by climate change to reside legally in the United States.
“It simply recognizes that climate change, like war, is one of the most significant contributors to homelessness in the world,” Schatz said, according to Think Progress.
If enacted as law, the amendment would allow non-U.S. citizens to seek recognition as “stateless persons,” allowing them possible legal residency in the U.S.
“This amendment to the immigration bill gives the Secretary of Homeland Security the discretion, but not an obligation, to take into account situations in which a person cannot return to their country because it’s uninhabitable due to climate change,” a Schatz spokesperson told U.S. News in an email.
“This is not an abstract issue. Hawai’i has had a long, close and enduring relationship with its island neighbors in the Pacific for which climate change is an imminent threat. For Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, the Cook Islands and others, rising seas threaten the very existence of these countries,” said the spokesperson. The amendment’s language does not specify these nationalities.
I ain’t got no home in this world anymore. June 22:
It’s universally human to think of our closest associations before those more distant in time or space. First ourselves, then our families, then our neighbors, then our countrypeople. And for the entire span of human history this has been a sane and logical response to disasters, regardless of their causes.
But we have to to re-imagine these ancient instincts. This makes for heightened understanding between peoples and nations, and widens our network of obligation and reciprocity. The millions of stateless people created by the burgeoning catastrophe of planetary climate change cannot be excluded from our communities; it is the CO2 emissions of the industrialized nations that has triggered their plight in the first place. In these first years of the twenty-first century, we are coming face to face with an irreducible truth: on an Earth made smaller by efficient transportation and instant communication, we are all neighbors; we’re all family.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture sustainability timescale
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Year 4, Month 7, Day 6: Well, You Needn’t
The Times-Colonist (B.C., Canada) talks about “adaptation”:
Lemons are growing in North Saanich, and they are just a taste of some of the new crops that are popping up in B.C. as the temperature gets warmer. As average temperatures go up, farmers and gardeners are trying species that are usually found in subtropical or Mediterranean countries.
At Fruit Trees and More Nursery in North Saanich, Bob Duncan gets hundreds of lemons from his tree. Over on the Lower Mainland, Art Knapp nurseries have seen a 20 per cent increase in sales of species like olives and figs.
Global warming is often debated in the big picture, but the details of gradual changes around us bring the debate down to earth. The devastating march of the pine beetle is one effect of warmer temperatures that is clearly visible across vast areas of B.C.’s forests. New crops close to home are another sign of the change.
The Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium expects that by the 2020s, the mean temperature in the capital region will rise by .9 degrees Celsius. That will increase the median number of frost-free days by eight. More than a week of extra frost-free days is a big difference.
Across the province, the mean temperature is predicted to rise by a full degree and frost-free days to rise by 10.
Over the longer term, by the 2080s, temperatures in the capital region are predicted to rise by 2.5 degrees and frost-free days by 20.
A climate like that opens new possibilities for crops that were once inconceivable here.
Pollyannas. June 20:
“Adaptation” to climate change sounds pretty inviting. After all, who wouldn’t like a longer gardening season? But from a larger perspective, the consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect are hardly benign. Countless species are finding their habitats changing far faster than evolutionary processes — which almost invariably means extinction. And when one life-form vanishes, the others which depend on it will find their survival compromised as well.
Our current economic system is predicated on the commodification of every available resource: fuel, food, water, and even air (the wealthy breathe freely, while the poor live downwind of coal plants, refineries, and factories). While this allows us to enjoy strawberries in midwinter, it hides the crucial fact that any tear in the intricately woven fabric of earthly life ultimately affects the fate of us all. “Adaptation” all too often is a euphemism for something far simpler, quicker, and more final: dying.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility facing the apocalypse media irresponsibility sustainability
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Year 4, Month 7, Day 4: Find The Cost Of Freedom…
The Washington Post channels its inner tree-hugger:
THE INTERNATIONAL Energy Agency (IEA) last week warned that global carbon dioxide emissions in 2012 were the highest ever. Yet international climate negotiations have floundered. Many Americans and their representatives in Congress still doubt climate change is a problem worth addressing. And as the developing world advances, its peoples are polluting more to obtain higher standards of living.
Forget for a moment the ideal or rational response; what’s the bare minimum global leaders could do? The IEA had some useful, if modest, suggestions.
An energy-gobbling world emitted 31.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide in 2012, the result of extracting and burning vast amounts of coal, oil and natural gas. Last month, the world reached another milestone that scientists and policymakers said they wanted to avoid — CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere that exceeded 400 parts per million. Scientists reckon that the last time concentrations were that high, the Earth was far warmer. Though the planet’s sensitivity to carbon emissions is still a matter of intense study, the IEA figures that, under policies in place now, the planet could warm between 3.6 and 5.3 degrees Celsius, mostly over the next hundred years. By contrast, world leaders have committed to limiting warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, the point past which the consequences could be very negative.
Very negative. Indeed. June 18:
Any appropriately robust response to global warming must take place on multiple levels of scale. Regional projects like infrastructural reinforcement need to be supported by local-level changes in roadway use, power consumption, and waste processing, such as New York City’s plans for comprehensive composting. Ultimately, however, all strategies will succeed or fail based on two factors.
Without comprehensive reform of our energy economy and a global move away from the destructive fossil fuels that caused the problem in the first place, all other initiatives are doomed to failure. And without a reformed and responsible news media that recognizes the severity of the situation and the crucial importance of accurate reporting on climate change, there will be no widespread societal support for any actions could possibly impact the problem. When it comes to the civilizational threat posed by the climate crisis, ignorance has profound moral implications — and delay is suicidal.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: cities community media irresponsibility rising sea levels sustainability urban development
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Year 4, Month 7, Day 3: My City By The Bay
The Arizona Daily Star continues on the what-cities-are-doing-to-prepare-for-when-the-shit-hits-the-fan angle:
BONN, Germany – From Bangkok to Miami, cities and coastal areas across the globe are already building or planning defenses to protect millions of people and key infrastructure from more powerful storm surges and other effects of global warming.
Some are planning cities that will simply adapt to more water.
But climate-proofing a city or coastline is expensive, as shown by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s $20 billion plan to build flood walls, levees and other defenses against rising seas.
People think we’re going to technologize our way out of this. Nope. June 17:
When it comes to planning ahead for a climate-changed future, the world’s cities are definitely ahead of the curve. Reinforced infrastructure is critical for a world in which extreme weather events are routine occurrences, and coastal areas which fail to anticipate rising sea levels may well face guaranteed submersion— which means millions, perhaps billions, of disrupted lives.
But physical infrastructure can only be part of a comprehensive strategy for coping with the consequences of an accelerating greenhouse effect. Two other elements must be integrated into the equation. Without a resilient social network — a culture which fosters cooperation, sharing, and mutual assistance in times of stress — all the physical and technical infrastructure in the world won’t make a difference. And without mass media that is morally and ethically committed to telling the truth about the climate crisis, societal support for these measures will always be hamstrung by ignorance and denial.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture cities denialists infrastructure sustainability
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Year 4, Month 7, Day 2: Just Enough For The City
The Paramus Post (Paramus, NJ) discusses Michael Bloomberg’s plan for climate adaptation:
In the devastating aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn charged the task force with giving recommendations to improve the resiliency of city buildings and maximize preparedness for extreme weather conditions like high winds, high temperatures and flooding. Urban Green Council led the 200+ member task force.
Highlights of specific suggestions:
• Create stronger buildings—require new and replacement doors and windows to be wind resistant; anchor homes to their foundations; design sidewalks to capture storm water.
• Ensure reliable backup power—make it easier for buildings to use backup generators and solar energy; require buildings to keep stairwells and hallways lit during blackouts; add hookups for roll-up generators and boilers.
• Provide essential safety—install a community water faucet for entire buildings during power outages; maintain habitable temperatures during blackouts by improving insulation; ensure windows open enough to both reduce overheating and guarantee child safety.
• Implement better planning—create emergency plans; adopt a new city code for existing buildings; support “Good Samaritan” legislation that protects architects and engineers from liability for emergency volunteer work.
The report makes recommendations for four specific types of buildings: commercial, multifamily residential, homes and hospitals. Recommendations require a combination of upgrading existing codes, implementing new codes, employing retrofits, removing barriers and adopting voluntary practices at the building ownership level. The suggestions strike a balance between resiliency and cost.
All good stuff, but just a drop in the bucket. June 16:
Preparing for extreme weather is a crucial part of any plan for adapting to a climatically-transformed world. As the greenhouse effect continues to elevate atmospheric temperatures, increased moisture in the air will bring more precipitation — and failing to plan ahead will inevitably mean more lives disrupted, more property destroyed, more money wasted. Mr. Bloomberg’s plans for buildings and infrastructure in New York City are an excellent start.
But there is more to do in planning for the impacts of climate change than strengthening foundations, improving drainage, and reinforcing utility connections. Delivery systems for food and water need to be developed, tested, and practiced; community groups must be integrated into disaster response, increasing the resilience and flexibility of individual neighborhoods in coping with disasters.
And, finally, people everywhere need to accept that the climate crisis is a dangerous and undeniable reality. We can no longer afford the luxury of denial.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture denialists idiots sustainability
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 23: Full Of That Yankee-Doodly-Dum
The Des Moines Register reports on Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s words:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. farmers and ranchers must adapt or risk getting left behind as climate change becomes an increasingly influential part of the agricultural landscape, the head of the U.S. Agriculture Department said Wednesday.
During a speech in Washington, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said better technological advancements through products such as seed so far have been enough to maintain production levels despite more intense storms, forest fires and an increase in invasive species.
But Vilsack, who served two terms as Iowa’s governor, called the threat of a changing climate “much different than anything we’ve ever tackled” and warned that without more drastic changes the accelerating pace and intensity of global warming during the next few decades may soon begin to significantly affect agriculture.
“If we do not adapt and mitigate climate impacts, it could have an impact on yields, it could have an impact on where we grow, what we grow in the future,” Vilsack told reporters after a speech on the effects of climate change on agriculture. “This is not something that is a next week issue or a next year issue, but this is something that over the next several decades we’re going to continue to confront.”
Second letter today. June 7:
Climate-change deniers don’t have many options left. As the consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect become ever more evident, the old cliches are sounding increasingly tired. The science “isn’t settled”? Actually, the science of climate change is about as conclusive as it gets.
It’s a “liberal hoax”? Tell that to the millions of people whose lives have been disrupted by droughts, extreme weather, invasive species, and rising sea levels.
It’s “too expensive” to deal with it? Of all the absurd responses, this one surely takes the cake. Preparing our infrastructure now so that we’ll be able to cope with the ongoing climate crisis in coming decades is obviously more cost-effective than waiting for catastrophic events and then mounting a response.
Agricultural productivity is going to take a huge hit in the next few years, as our carbon dioxide chickens come home to roost. Our survival as a nation hinges on our ability to take this clear and present danger with the seriousness it demands.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture diplomacy economics peace sustainability
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 22: I Was The Kid With The Drum
More on Pakistan, this time from the Tribune (PK):
FAISALABAD: Climate change has raised serious concerns for the developing world posing severe social, environmental and economic challenges. Pakistan’s status as an agro-based economy made it extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, said speakers at the concluding session of the three-day Agricultural Model Inter-comparison and Improvement Project-Pakistan (AgMIP-Pakistan).
The AgMIP-Pakistan kickoff workshop and international seminar on climate change was jointly organised by the University of Faisalabad’s Department of Agronomy at the New Senate Hall on Thursday.
Speaking at the occasion, UAF Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan said that the impact of climate change had received high contemplations in Pakistan as it was closely linked to food security policy and poverty for the vast majority of Pakistan’s population.
In the 1960s, the green revolution changed the face of the global agri-sector due to research in new varieties and fertilisation. In the 1970s, cotton heat stress varieties brought new heights in productivity, whereas 1980s was remembered as poultry revolution and the 1990s, subsequently, for hybrid varieties of corn. The global agricultural landscape had witnessed revolutions when faced with tough challenges in every decade.
Khan hoped that climate change in the 21st century will ultimately pave way to explore highest productivity potential for feeding the rapidly growing population.
I’ve never been published in Pakistan. That’d be interesting. June 7:
By an ironic confluence of economics and geography, many of the countries most responsible for accelerating climate change will be among the last to feel the full destructive power of a runaway greenhouse effect — while nations like Pakistan even now find themselves on the front lines.
Severe droughts, unpredictable monsoons, and unseasonal weather phenomena combine to endanger agricultural productivity, which in turn is almost inevitably a trigger for humanitarian and political crises. If humanity is to survive and prosper in the coming centuries, the world’s major polluters must rein in their profligate carbon emissions and begin addressing the problems of global heating by taking responsibility for their role in the crisis — and the states currently bearing the brunt must prepare for the disasters looming in the not-so-distant future. Planetary climate change is bad enough by itself without adding devastating resource wars to the picture.
Warren Senders