environment: biodiversity cultural diversity economic inequities
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 15: Who Killed Cock Robin?
The Winnipeg Free Press reports on a study which makes explicit something we all knew was the case:
MONTREAL – A new study suggests climate change will have the greatest impact on the populations least responsible for causing the problem.
Researchers at McGill University found what many have long-suspected — countries that produce the least carbon dioxide emissions per-capita also tend to be more vulnerable to climate change.
“Based on our ecological models, we see that the potential impact of climate change will be the greatest in countries that have contributed very little,” lead researcher and PhD candidate Jason Samson said in an interview.
Sent March 6:
The ongoing tragedy of global climate change is exacerbated by the sad ironies of geography, as it becomes ever clearer that those who will pay for the greenhouse emissions of the developed world are those who have benefited least from industrialization and large-scale agriculture. The McGill study makes these gross inequities evident, clarifying the nature of the grotesque injustice that is being perpetrated on thousands of societies everywhere around the world. Countless local, small-scale cultures with rich lodes of traditional knowledge will be extinguished as climate change destroys the ecologies within which they have flourished for thousands of years. Just as biodiversity is essential for the survival of an ecosystem, cultural diversity is key to the survival of our species. Humanity’s ability to adapt to a radically transformed post-climate-change planet will be severely compromised by the loss of these indigenous cultures, obliterated through no fault of their own.
Warren Senders
Uncategorized: Arctic ice melt biodiversity tundra
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 13: Could Robert Service Have Written Tales Of The Temperate North?
The Montreal Gazette reports on yet another detailed, comprehensive scientific study showing dramatic, terrifying stuff going on that our policy-makers will resolutely ignore because their paymasters want them to. To wit:
Forecasting profound changes to all Arctic ecosystems “fuelled by human- induced global warming,” the U.S.-led team of scientists has mapped the expected vanishing of moss- and lichen-covered land across much of the Canadian North, where up to 44 per cent of the terrain now classified as tundra could be replaced by invading boreal forest or shrub environments by 2099.
Sent on March 5:
There is plenty to be worried about in the “Climate Dynamics” study, but perhaps the most ominous thing of all isn’t mentioned in the article. Climate change’s devastating impact on the tundra is an ecological disaster-in-the-making, but the real import of this study lies in the fact that here it is not just an individual species that faces extinction, but an entire complex ecosystem extinguished all at once, in the blink of a geological eye. How many slow millennia of life’s adaptation and evolution are to be found in a few square meters of tundra? And how quickly, by contrast, is it to be destroyed? And yet the real tragedy is not restricted to the world’s Northern latitudes; the tundra is only one among many unique and irreplaceable ecologies everywhere around the world that will soon pass into history, as global warming transforms the planet in unexpected ways.
Warren Senders
environment: biodiversity lodgepole pine predictions scientific method
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 9: Maybe They Can Import Kudzu. Yeah. That’ll Work.
More on the soon-to-vanish Lodgepole Pine, this time from Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard. As opposed to a generic AP story, this one appears to be the work of a staff writer, and it’s pretty good.
Citizens of the Pacific Northwest can no longer say they weren’t warned. With the recent release of a study predicting that global warming will bring about a catastrophic decline in the lodgepole pine population over the next five or six decades, residents of the area can begin to imagine a very different-looking future. While the work of Richard Waring and his colleagues is region-specific, there can be no doubt that similar processes are underway around the world; hundreds of regional ecosystems will experience massive disruption, losing thousands of key plant and animal species. We must all work together to change our patterns of energy consumption; as Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland once said, “What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?” We’ve all been warned. What will we do now?
Warren Senders
environment: biodiversity endangered species
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 26: Bellwethers
The Taipei Times runs a piece from the NYT’s Elizabeth Rosenthal, discussing the fate of endangered species in a climate-changed future. I have a cold and I’m sniffling constantly, which doesn’t help my mood.
The next few decades will see increasing loss of animal and plant species due to climate change. These localized tragedies, unintended consequences of humanity’s ongoing environmental transformation, are harbingers of our own future. Biodiversity is a planetary survival strategy; the greater variety of life exists, the more likely it is that something will always survive. Similarly, cultural diversity is under threat from the same forces that are wreaking havoc on our climate. Pervasive industrialization and consumerism are homogenizing our humanity, making it ever harder for indigenous cultures to sustain themselves, and making our own lives ever less integrated with the global ecosystems of which they are a part. We human beings are doing to ourselves what we are doing to animals like the Hartlaub’s turaco and Aberdare cisticola; their endangerment is saddening for its own sake, and for what it foretells about our own future.
Warren Senders
environment: biodiversity Department of the Interior Ken Salazar
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Month 3, Day 29: Who Cares About Some Hapless Toad?
I read an article at the GOS which noted a new piece in Scientific American outlining a whole mess of different problems we’ll be facing in years to come if we want to keep the planet habitable for humans and other life. The whole list is pretty depressing (what a surprise!). I selected one area on which to base a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
Dear Secretary Salazar,
In a newly published article in Scientific American, environmental scientist Jonathan Foley describes nine separate thresholds below which different environmental systems must remain if we are to maintain the health of our planet. Among these is the crucial area of biodiversity loss.
The scientific community notes that the current rate at which we are depleting the diversity of the Earth’s flora and fauna is at least 100 times the historic average, and easily ten times what could be considered a safe measure.
Biodiversity is critical for the planet’s long-term survivability, because it is through a wide spectrum of life-forms that ecological resilience is maintained. Monocultures are more prone to disease, predation and the devastating effects of ecological shifts. If a population depends primarily on a single food source, a crop failure can devastate an entire population inside a season — the lesson of the Irish potato famine.
It is crucial that the Department of the Interior make efforts to educate Americans about the importance of biodiversity in maintaining our country’s natural resources for future generations. It is increasingly apparent that the rich web of life upon which we all depend is far more fragile than has been assumed. Our collective behavior needs to change if we are to survive as a culture and as a species.
It’s equally important that the DOI be more proactive with regulatory initiatives to protect threatened species and habitats. There is no room left for giveaways to corporate special interest groups. While so-called “charismatic megafauna” may have their own constituencies, many of the life-forms facing extinction are obscure and seemingly insignificant. But ecological science has demonstrated time and time again how even the smallest creatures have crucial roles in the functioning of our environment.
Humanity’s rapid expansion and exploitation of the Earth’s resources has turned out to be a mixed blessing, providing luxurious lifestyles for some while triggering potentially catastrophic effects on our climate and biosphere. I urge the Department of the Interior to be even more proactive in educating Americans about the dangers we face — and to act vigorously to protect “the least among us.”
Thank you,
Warren Senders