This article by Homer-Dixon discusses the increasing anticipations of depleting energy sources. He draws on the possibility of mining in alternative areas like those in China that have no yet been explored for such purposes, and while this could be positive for our energy supply, it would be seriously detrimental to China's environment. There's also the issue of uneven energy inputs for the energy output that comes from drilling in different given areas. This problem threatens the economic growth that we have prided ourselves over for the past few decades. However, I think that maybe a short pause in industrialization and economic innovation wouldn't hurt.
The list of environmental harm that comes from coal, petroleum, and other mining is extensible. First of all, mining can have adverse effect on surrounded surface ground water, which can result in overly high concentrations of arsenic, sulfuric acid, or mercury. The runoff from these sinks contaminates surrounding vegetation and farm lands. One solution for this that should be more widely performed is the refillings of the mind aft it has been blasted through, in order to reduce water leakage and chemical contamination. Federal laws enforce this practice, but I think it must be better regulated and supervised to ensure the mining companies do it efficiently. Second, mountain-top removal, most commonly associated with coal mining in the Appalachians, has undoubtedly contributed to loss of biodiversity that mitigation practices cannot successfully address. Environmental scientists have proved that the action of blasting through the mountain tops expels large particles of dust and fly-rock into the air, which may contain sulfur compounds--a serious threat to human health.
These practices need to be better regulated, or perhaps slowed down.What Homer-Dixon fails to address in his article is the new technological advances for alternative energy sources. He only discusses the increasing deterioration of our current energy sources, but we all know those aren't renewable and are running out. What the world needs most now is a new beginning, a fresh start with sustainable innovations that we have the technology to produce.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Economic Growth: A Means to THE End?
Economic growth is a very dangerous idea in our current global society. The desire for greater economic growth is engrained in how countries and people operate today. Economic growth is seen as the cure for all of the world’s ills, such as poverty, debt and limited freedoms as mentioned by Homer-Dixon. Economic growth is argued as the solution to any of our planets environmental problems by market liberals. This idea, Homer-Dixon argues, is erroneous and dangerous to the future of our planet.
Market liberals’ reliance on economic growth as the means to repairing environmental damage is based in the assumptions of the environmental Kuznets curve and growth leading to innovation. Market liberals use the “greening” of Western economies as the proof of these assumptions. Homer-Dixon is arguing against the limited idea of economic growth leading to endless innovation and improvement. New technologies in natural resource extraction have not seen improved yields. Rather the decreasing yields per energy input, shown by Homer-Dixon, create a sense that the earth’s natural resources are diminishing.
The environmental Kuznet’s curve is a model that market liberals hold dear. The idea that continued economic growth will lead to decreases in emissions is something they strongly advocate. This model is severely faulted. For starters, it is based on an economic model that does not even hold true for inequality measures, its original intention. Secondly, it is the population of the richest, most developed countries that produce significantly more emissions per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Homer-Dixon is arguing against the market liberal approach. At the same time he is expressing the attachment that society has with this growth-focused approach.
Nick
Market liberals’ reliance on economic growth as the means to repairing environmental damage is based in the assumptions of the environmental Kuznets curve and growth leading to innovation. Market liberals use the “greening” of Western economies as the proof of these assumptions. Homer-Dixon is arguing against the limited idea of economic growth leading to endless innovation and improvement. New technologies in natural resource extraction have not seen improved yields. Rather the decreasing yields per energy input, shown by Homer-Dixon, create a sense that the earth’s natural resources are diminishing.
The environmental Kuznet’s curve is a model that market liberals hold dear. The idea that continued economic growth will lead to decreases in emissions is something they strongly advocate. This model is severely faulted. For starters, it is based on an economic model that does not even hold true for inequality measures, its original intention. Secondly, it is the population of the richest, most developed countries that produce significantly more emissions per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Homer-Dixon is arguing against the market liberal approach. At the same time he is expressing the attachment that society has with this growth-focused approach.
Nick
Social Greens vs. Market Liberals
Thomas Homer-Dixon appears to be torn between the views of market liberals and social greens. He very clearly acknowledges that economic growth is critical to improving the lives of people around the world, a very market liberal perspective. However, he also recognizes that our current methods of economic growth are not at all sustainable. We are running out of natural resources and our fossil fuel based global economy cannot survive in the future without grave consequences for humanity. While he explains the current rut that we are in, he offers no solutions, ending the article by saying “This contradiction is humankind's biggest challenge this century, but as long as conventional wisdom holds that growth can continue forever, it's a challenge we can't possibly address.”
Thursday, January 27, 2011
To Expand, Airports May Need Radical Alterations, Report Says
The projected increase of 50 million air travelers per year in the next two decades shocked me as troubling, as well as the ecological impact associated with the project.
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
The New York region’s two largest airports, already choked with crowds and delays, may need to be radically reconfigured so they can make way for vitally needed additional runways that would help accommodate a projected increase of almost 50 million air travelers per year within two or three decades, according to a new study.
The study, from the Regional Plan Association, calls for as much as $15 billion to be spent at Kennedy and Newark Liberty International Airports. At Newark, all three terminals would have to be at least partially razed, then rebuilt; at Kennedy, part of Jamaica Bay might have to be filled to create space for one or more new runways.
The proposed expansions would amount to the most ambitious reshaping of any of the region’s major airports in several decades. They would require significant changes in the region’s airspace, a modernization of the system for controlling air traffic and at least one act of Congress.
If the proposals are accepted by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates Kennedy, Newark and La Guardia Airports, they would surely encounter stiff resistance from local and national advocates for the environment, the report admits. They would also have to survive the political tug of war between the governors of New York and New Jersey, who jointly control the Port Authority.
The report, which was financed in part by the Port Authority, was scheduled to be presented at a daylong conference on the future of the airports in Manhattan on Thursday.
Christopher Ward, the executive director of the Port Authority, was scheduled to attend the conference and was expected to discuss the report as fodder for planning. Asked for comment, a spokesman for Mr. Ward said only that “we look forward to examining this study.”
The study considered a spectrum of options that stretched to the fantastic: a new airport on an island in New York Bay. But the cost was deemed to be “exorbitant.”
Elected officials and business leaders have discussed airport expansion for years, but have been reluctant to broach the idea publicly to avoid stirring up opposition too soon, said Kathryn S. Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City. But, Ms. Wylde added, “It’s become very clear that our economic future depends on investment both in the technology and facilities upgrades and runway expansion at the regional airports.”
For years, the local airspace has been too clogged to consider adding any more traffic. Indeed, federal regulators have placed limits on the number of flights each hour to and from the region’s airports. But the federal government is planning to upgrade the nation’s air traffic control system with a program known as NextGen that will allow more planes to squeeze into the region, said Jeffrey M. Zupan, a transportation analyst who is one of the report’s authors.
Once the first phase of NextGen is in operation, the Port Authority should seek to have the caps on flights lifted and begin making room for new runways and gates to accommodate the increasing traffic, the report says. It estimates that traffic at the three airports will increase steadily from about 104 million passengers annually last year to 150 million passengers within 20 to 30 years. Mr. Zupan said that the airports currently cannot handle more than about 110 million passengers a year.
The Port Authority has been grappling with how to alleviate congestion at its major airports; in 2007, it acquired a long-term lease on Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, N.Y., with the purpose of making it the region’s fourth major airport. That goal has yet to be realized, and the new plan suggests that the Port Authority’s money and efforts would be better spent at Kennedy and Newark.
The question of the Port Authority’s mission arose again this month when New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, asked for $1.8 billion to build and repair roads and bridges in North Jersey. New York’s senior senator, Charles E. Schumer, demanded that the Port Authority refuse that request, because, he said, the agency should devote its resources to grand plans that would benefit the economy of the entire region.
The cost estimates are preliminary and vary widely depending on which of several options for expanding Kennedy would be chosen, according to the report. The authors laid out seven proposals for adding runway space at Kennedy, some of which would require filling in more of the bay than others.
At Newark, they concluded, the only feasible way to expand would be to add a runway between the existing terminals and the two main runways in use there now. Doing that would require the demolition of all of Terminal B and parts of Terminals A and C, Mr. Zupan said.
Rebuilding the terminals in Newark could cost as much as $5 billion, which could raise the total cost of the expansion to $15 billion, the report says. But it estimates that not expanding the airports could cost the region $16 billion a year in lost airfare, as well as up to 125,000 jobs and $6 billion in annual wages.
At Kennedy, expansion could cost anywhere from $1 billion to $3.5 billion, depending on whether one or two runways are added and how they are configured, the report says. It lays out seven possible configurations at Kennedy, some of which involve reorienting the flight path into and out of the airport. Doing so would bring those flights into closer conflict with planes going to and from La Guardia, which the Federal Aviation Administration might find unacceptable, Mr. Zupan said.
Among the alternatives, he said, would be to fill in part of Jamaica Bay and construct a new runway parallel to the existing runway used by the giant trans-Atlantic passenger jets. Getting approval for that option would entail not only overcoming opposition from environmental groups but also changing the federal law that created the Gateway National Recreation Area, which explicitly prohibits expanding the airport into the bay.
A section of the bay known as Grassy Bay contains a deep trench that was dug during construction at the airport in the 1950s, the report says. That trench has some negative effects on the surrounding bay, which might be ameliorated if it were filled in during the construction of a runway, Mr. Zupan said.
But John Waldman, a professor of biology at Queens College, said he was skeptical about that trade-off and imagined it would not occur without a “fierce battle.” While he said that filling the trench to level the bottom of the bay probably would be beneficial, he said he could not see the benefits outweighing the cost of encroaching on one of the “ecological jewels” of the region.
“I don’t see that as a clear trade of equal value,” Professor Waldman said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/nyregion/27airports.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
The New York region’s two largest airports, already choked with crowds and delays, may need to be radically reconfigured so they can make way for vitally needed additional runways that would help accommodate a projected increase of almost 50 million air travelers per year within two or three decades, according to a new study.
The study, from the Regional Plan Association, calls for as much as $15 billion to be spent at Kennedy and Newark Liberty International Airports. At Newark, all three terminals would have to be at least partially razed, then rebuilt; at Kennedy, part of Jamaica Bay might have to be filled to create space for one or more new runways.
The proposed expansions would amount to the most ambitious reshaping of any of the region’s major airports in several decades. They would require significant changes in the region’s airspace, a modernization of the system for controlling air traffic and at least one act of Congress.
If the proposals are accepted by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates Kennedy, Newark and La Guardia Airports, they would surely encounter stiff resistance from local and national advocates for the environment, the report admits. They would also have to survive the political tug of war between the governors of New York and New Jersey, who jointly control the Port Authority.
The report, which was financed in part by the Port Authority, was scheduled to be presented at a daylong conference on the future of the airports in Manhattan on Thursday.
Christopher Ward, the executive director of the Port Authority, was scheduled to attend the conference and was expected to discuss the report as fodder for planning. Asked for comment, a spokesman for Mr. Ward said only that “we look forward to examining this study.”
The study considered a spectrum of options that stretched to the fantastic: a new airport on an island in New York Bay. But the cost was deemed to be “exorbitant.”
Elected officials and business leaders have discussed airport expansion for years, but have been reluctant to broach the idea publicly to avoid stirring up opposition too soon, said Kathryn S. Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City. But, Ms. Wylde added, “It’s become very clear that our economic future depends on investment both in the technology and facilities upgrades and runway expansion at the regional airports.”
For years, the local airspace has been too clogged to consider adding any more traffic. Indeed, federal regulators have placed limits on the number of flights each hour to and from the region’s airports. But the federal government is planning to upgrade the nation’s air traffic control system with a program known as NextGen that will allow more planes to squeeze into the region, said Jeffrey M. Zupan, a transportation analyst who is one of the report’s authors.
Once the first phase of NextGen is in operation, the Port Authority should seek to have the caps on flights lifted and begin making room for new runways and gates to accommodate the increasing traffic, the report says. It estimates that traffic at the three airports will increase steadily from about 104 million passengers annually last year to 150 million passengers within 20 to 30 years. Mr. Zupan said that the airports currently cannot handle more than about 110 million passengers a year.
The Port Authority has been grappling with how to alleviate congestion at its major airports; in 2007, it acquired a long-term lease on Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, N.Y., with the purpose of making it the region’s fourth major airport. That goal has yet to be realized, and the new plan suggests that the Port Authority’s money and efforts would be better spent at Kennedy and Newark.
The question of the Port Authority’s mission arose again this month when New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, asked for $1.8 billion to build and repair roads and bridges in North Jersey. New York’s senior senator, Charles E. Schumer, demanded that the Port Authority refuse that request, because, he said, the agency should devote its resources to grand plans that would benefit the economy of the entire region.
The cost estimates are preliminary and vary widely depending on which of several options for expanding Kennedy would be chosen, according to the report. The authors laid out seven proposals for adding runway space at Kennedy, some of which would require filling in more of the bay than others.
At Newark, they concluded, the only feasible way to expand would be to add a runway between the existing terminals and the two main runways in use there now. Doing that would require the demolition of all of Terminal B and parts of Terminals A and C, Mr. Zupan said.
Rebuilding the terminals in Newark could cost as much as $5 billion, which could raise the total cost of the expansion to $15 billion, the report says. But it estimates that not expanding the airports could cost the region $16 billion a year in lost airfare, as well as up to 125,000 jobs and $6 billion in annual wages.
At Kennedy, expansion could cost anywhere from $1 billion to $3.5 billion, depending on whether one or two runways are added and how they are configured, the report says. It lays out seven possible configurations at Kennedy, some of which involve reorienting the flight path into and out of the airport. Doing so would bring those flights into closer conflict with planes going to and from La Guardia, which the Federal Aviation Administration might find unacceptable, Mr. Zupan said.
Among the alternatives, he said, would be to fill in part of Jamaica Bay and construct a new runway parallel to the existing runway used by the giant trans-Atlantic passenger jets. Getting approval for that option would entail not only overcoming opposition from environmental groups but also changing the federal law that created the Gateway National Recreation Area, which explicitly prohibits expanding the airport into the bay.
A section of the bay known as Grassy Bay contains a deep trench that was dug during construction at the airport in the 1950s, the report says. That trench has some negative effects on the surrounding bay, which might be ameliorated if it were filled in during the construction of a runway, Mr. Zupan said.
But John Waldman, a professor of biology at Queens College, said he was skeptical about that trade-off and imagined it would not occur without a “fierce battle.” While he said that filling the trench to level the bottom of the bay probably would be beneficial, he said he could not see the benefits outweighing the cost of encroaching on one of the “ecological jewels” of the region.
“I don’t see that as a clear trade of equal value,” Professor Waldman said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/nyregion/27airports.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
Monday, January 24, 2011
Wrong, but Right
The problems presented by Maniates should be of serious concern for any environment-conscious, informed American. The environmental situation is dire, and the proposed solutions from the government and leading environmentalists are well short of necessary, even without anticipating future growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Maniates is right in arguing that there must be a dramatic change in the environmental movement and in discussing the consequences of continuing to do the bare minimum.
However, the author is not considering the reality of environmental discourse in the United States when he is demanding the real deal from politicians and environmentalists. To begin with, there is a huge amount of disagreement in the United States about the very existence of climate change. This argument even extends to the country’s political elite, such as Senator Inhofe, minority leader of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who uses the committee’s webpage to denounce what he calls Climategate.
Taking a firm stance on climate change, and treating Americans like adults by revealing the true dangers of continued environmental neglect will not result in the automatic shift that Maniates says is necessary. Politicians like Inhofe are waiting to attack these environmental concerns as conspiracy, and he has plenty of support among Americans. Any approach that is looking to fundamentally change our American systems will have to deal with these non-believers
- Nick Dreher
However, the author is not considering the reality of environmental discourse in the United States when he is demanding the real deal from politicians and environmentalists. To begin with, there is a huge amount of disagreement in the United States about the very existence of climate change. This argument even extends to the country’s political elite, such as Senator Inhofe, minority leader of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who uses the committee’s webpage to denounce what he calls Climategate.
Taking a firm stance on climate change, and treating Americans like adults by revealing the true dangers of continued environmental neglect will not result in the automatic shift that Maniates says is necessary. Politicians like Inhofe are waiting to attack these environmental concerns as conspiracy, and he has plenty of support among Americans. Any approach that is looking to fundamentally change our American systems will have to deal with these non-believers
- Nick Dreher
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Small is Nothing
In Summer 2009, President Obama spearheaded a promise made by the G8 to cut 80% of their carbon emissions by 2050. The pact is broad in its scope, ambitious in its promises, but most of all, it is attainable given the right course of action. Cutting carbon emissions by 80% while still running vital industries such as mining and high-tech production requires that the two largest sources of carbon emissions in our country - electricity and automobile - are not halved or quartered. They must be eliminated.
A proper long-term plan to cut emissions will sacrifice short-term solutions with glaring holes, including focuses on raising fuel economy and developing (relatively) low-scale power solutions (I'm looking at you, wind/hydro/solar/geotherm). These steps will be akin to continually halving the distance between your current point and your destination - you will never reach your goal. Instead, development must be focused on implementing long-term, near-zero carbon sources. In the case of automobiles, we have real technology that is not yet ready for a massive scale. In the case of energy, we have a readily available zero carbon solution that has been in use for over 40 years in America, is abundant, safe and reliable, and has already been incorporated into other major nations' energy budgets. We must go nuclear.
Maniates presents the problem but does little to offer a solution of how to solve it. To see a well thought out analysis of how to attack the problem by an engineer (as well as a strangely similar analysis of the fatal flaw in our current energy analysis), look to the July-August edition of Scientific American.
A proper long-term plan to cut emissions will sacrifice short-term solutions with glaring holes, including focuses on raising fuel economy and developing (relatively) low-scale power solutions (I'm looking at you, wind/hydro/solar/geotherm). These steps will be akin to continually halving the distance between your current point and your destination - you will never reach your goal. Instead, development must be focused on implementing long-term, near-zero carbon sources. In the case of automobiles, we have real technology that is not yet ready for a massive scale. In the case of energy, we have a readily available zero carbon solution that has been in use for over 40 years in America, is abundant, safe and reliable, and has already been incorporated into other major nations' energy budgets. We must go nuclear.
Maniates presents the problem but does little to offer a solution of how to solve it. To see a well thought out analysis of how to attack the problem by an engineer (as well as a strangely similar analysis of the fatal flaw in our current energy analysis), look to the July-August edition of Scientific American.
The Answer: Policy Change
In Maniates' article entitled "Going Green? Easy Doesn't Do It," he discusses the issues with new popular thought that making small changes in our daily lives can benefit the environment. While this mindset can certainly help, the answer, I believe, lies in policy change. The reason why all these "small easy things" don't actually have a grand impact is because they're as easy to not do as they are to do.
Everyone knows about recycling. Everyone knows that it's better to take a 10 minute shower than a 20 minute one. You don't need to read a book to understand the importance of shutting the lights off when you leave a room. So if we all know these things, why doesn't everyone do them? Because, sadly, not everyone cares. If you don't have to worry about suddenly getting your electricity or water shut off, there's little incentive to conserve them. People who don't care about the environment won't go out of their way to bring their recyclables down to the basement of their apartment building when it's 10x more convenient to just throw them down the trash chute. That's why the only thing that will make a serious impact is through policy change. If I knew what policies specifically would make a change, I'd be working on the Hill right now. But it's undoubtable that more people bring their recyclables to supermarkets to stick in those machines in order to get 5 cents back for each can. What if we had more monetary incentives like that? At this college campus, we could give some sort of reward to students who lived sustainably in the dorms, or recycled everything instead of trashing it.
Look at the One Child Policy in China. I'm not saying we should go communist and pass some incredible law like that, but it just goes to show that policy it the only way to really make a large-scale, lasting impact.
Everyone knows about recycling. Everyone knows that it's better to take a 10 minute shower than a 20 minute one. You don't need to read a book to understand the importance of shutting the lights off when you leave a room. So if we all know these things, why doesn't everyone do them? Because, sadly, not everyone cares. If you don't have to worry about suddenly getting your electricity or water shut off, there's little incentive to conserve them. People who don't care about the environment won't go out of their way to bring their recyclables down to the basement of their apartment building when it's 10x more convenient to just throw them down the trash chute. That's why the only thing that will make a serious impact is through policy change. If I knew what policies specifically would make a change, I'd be working on the Hill right now. But it's undoubtable that more people bring their recyclables to supermarkets to stick in those machines in order to get 5 cents back for each can. What if we had more monetary incentives like that? At this college campus, we could give some sort of reward to students who lived sustainably in the dorms, or recycled everything instead of trashing it.
Look at the One Child Policy in China. I'm not saying we should go communist and pass some incredible law like that, but it just goes to show that policy it the only way to really make a large-scale, lasting impact.
Easy solutions can be start for change
In the face of such a monumental environmental challenge, it is hard to believe that taking small steps is the only or best way to effect change. By reducing the current environmental problem to “lazy” solutions, our leaders are doing much more than just treating Americans like children. Essentially they are diminishing the severity of the problem to something that can be remedied by quick fixes. As Maniates says, these “economic, simple, even stylish” solutions are not enough to halt the environmental damage. They would, at best, slow the current rate of environmental harm. By downgrading the challenge that we face in tackling the environmental issue, Americans are given an excuse to be unrealistic about what they need to do to help solve it.
Question 1 Response
It should not come as a surprise to Mr. Maniates that Americans today are lazy and that their consumption habits closely mirror the lifestyles they choose. American citizens are complacent with their effect on the environment in large part because of the minimal perceived consequences. The roads are clean, lawns are tidy (thanks in large part to migrant labor) and the air seems clean. Pollution occupies a place in short memory to be a thing of the 1960s and 1970s when Lady Bird Johnson and others enacted policies to clean up America. For whatever reason, Americans seem to be conscious of that era and do not want to return to it, while at the same time oblivious of the very real consequences in the near future.
Mr. Maniates is right when he states that American ingenuity is best matched when struggling. He is also correct when he asserts that a fundamental shift in our system needs to occur in order to make real change. But does he seem to suggest that a fundamental shift that makes Americans struggle is necessary to achieve progress? No doubt that would get Americans to rethink the way they view environmentalism. As Jared Diamond asserts in “The Last Americans” policies that are right, are not always popular and Bill McKibben also outlines this in his book “Maybe One”. Change is not easy in the face of societal norms but it does not help to be critical of baby steps towards changing the way Americans consume.
Mr. Maniates is right when he states that American ingenuity is best matched when struggling. He is also correct when he asserts that a fundamental shift in our system needs to occur in order to make real change. But does he seem to suggest that a fundamental shift that makes Americans struggle is necessary to achieve progress? No doubt that would get Americans to rethink the way they view environmentalism. As Jared Diamond asserts in “The Last Americans” policies that are right, are not always popular and Bill McKibben also outlines this in his book “Maybe One”. Change is not easy in the face of societal norms but it does not help to be critical of baby steps towards changing the way Americans consume.
Discussion Question 1
For your initial posts I'd like you to read and comment on this piece, which appeared in the Washington Post on Thanksgiving Day a couple of years back. What do you make of the article's argument?
The article was written by Michael Maniates of Allegheny College, one of the authors of the "Confronting Consumption" chapter we are reading this week. Professor Maniates may, if he has time, drop in on your blogs and follow your discussions, so aim to give him something to think about.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/21/AR2007112101856_pf.html
Going Green? Easy Doesn't Do It
By Michael Maniates
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Thanksgiving nicely focuses our attention on things of lasting importance: family, friends, community, a rich harvest. None of these blessings come without cost or sacrifice. Today, then, we might consider what we must give of ourselves to preserve such abundance in the face of increasing climatic instability.
One needn't ponder this question in a vacuum. Several best-sellers offer advice about what we must ask of ourselves and one another. Their titles suggest that we needn't break much of a sweat: "It's Easy Being Green," "The Lazy Environmentalist," or even "The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time."
Although each offers familiar advice ("reuse scrap paper before recycling" or "take shorter showers"), it's what's left unsaid by these books that's intriguing. Three assertions permeate the pages: (1) We should look for easy, cost-effective things to do in our private lives as consumers, since that's where we have the most power and control; these are the best things to do because (2) if we all do them the cumulative effect of these individual choices will be a safe planet; which is fortunate indeed because (3) we, by nature, aren't terribly interested in doing anything that isn't private, individualistic, cost-effective and, above all, easy.
This glorification of easy isn't limited to the newest environmental self-help books. The Web sites of the big U.S. environmental groups, the Environmental Protection Agency and even the American Association for the Advancement of Science offer markedly similar lists of actions that tell us we can change the world through our consumer choices, choices that are economic, simple, even stylish. Al Gore himself isn't immune. His recent Live Earth concert featured a who's-who lineup of celebrities who said that if we all do our little bit to recycle and conserve -- the simple things, mind you, because that's all we'll need (translation: that's all they think we'll go for) -- we can together rescue the world for our children and grandchildren.
Never has so little been asked of so many at such a critical moment.
The hard facts are these: If we sum up the easy, cost-effective, eco-efficiency measures we should all embrace, the best we get is a slowing of the growth of environmental damage. That's hardly enough: Avoiding the worst risks of climate change, for instance, may require reducing U.S. carbon emissions by 80 percent in the next 30 years while invoking the moral authority such reductions would confer to persuade China, India and other booming nations to embrace similar restraint. Obsessing over recycling and installing a few special light bulbs won't cut it. We need to be looking at fundamental change in our energy, transportation and agricultural systems rather than technological tweaking on the margins, and this means changes and costs that our current and would-be leaders seem afraid to discuss. Which is a pity, since Americans are at their best when they're struggling together, and sometimes with one another, toward difficult goals.
Throughout our history it has been the knotty, vexing challenges, and leaders who speak frankly about them, that have fired our individual and communal imagination, creativity and commitment. Paul Revere didn't race through the streets of Middlesex County hawking a book on "The Lazy Revolutionary." Franklin Roosevelt didn't mobilize the country's energies by listing 10 easy ways to oppose fascism. And it's unlikely that Martin Luther King Jr.'s drafts of his "I Have a Dream" speech or his "Letter From Birmingham Jail" imagined a practical politics of change rooted in individualistic, consumer-centered actions.
This Thanksgiving, the greatest environmental problem confronting us isn't melting ice, faltering rain, or flattening oil supplies and rising gasoline prices. Rather, it's that when Americans ask, "What can I do to make a difference?" we're treated like children by environmental elites and political leaders too timid to call forth the best in us or too blind to that which has made us a great nation.
Surely we must do the easy things: They slow the damage and themselves become enabling symbols of empathy for future generations. But we cannot permit our leaders to sell us short. To stop at "easy" is to say that the best we can do is accept an uninspired politics of guilt around a parade of uncoordinated individual action. What of the power and exhilaration that comes from working with others toward bold possibilities for the future? What of present sacrifice for future gain?
The time for easy is over. We're grown-ups who understand the necessity of hard work and difficult choices. We're ready for frank talk about how we best confront -- in ways rewarding, confusing, creative and hard -- the planetary emergency before us.
The writer is a professor of political science and environmental science atAllegheny Collegein Meadville, Pa.
The article was written by Michael Maniates of Allegheny College, one of the authors of the "Confronting Consumption" chapter we are reading this week. Professor Maniates may, if he has time, drop in on your blogs and follow your discussions, so aim to give him something to think about.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/21/AR2007112101856_pf.html
Going Green? Easy Doesn't Do It
By Michael Maniates
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Thanksgiving nicely focuses our attention on things of lasting importance: family, friends, community, a rich harvest. None of these blessings come without cost or sacrifice. Today, then, we might consider what we must give of ourselves to preserve such abundance in the face of increasing climatic instability.
One needn't ponder this question in a vacuum. Several best-sellers offer advice about what we must ask of ourselves and one another. Their titles suggest that we needn't break much of a sweat: "It's Easy Being Green," "The Lazy Environmentalist," or even "The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time."
Although each offers familiar advice ("reuse scrap paper before recycling" or "take shorter showers"), it's what's left unsaid by these books that's intriguing. Three assertions permeate the pages: (1) We should look for easy, cost-effective things to do in our private lives as consumers, since that's where we have the most power and control; these are the best things to do because (2) if we all do them the cumulative effect of these individual choices will be a safe planet; which is fortunate indeed because (3) we, by nature, aren't terribly interested in doing anything that isn't private, individualistic, cost-effective and, above all, easy.
This glorification of easy isn't limited to the newest environmental self-help books. The Web sites of the big U.S. environmental groups, the Environmental Protection Agency and even the American Association for the Advancement of Science offer markedly similar lists of actions that tell us we can change the world through our consumer choices, choices that are economic, simple, even stylish. Al Gore himself isn't immune. His recent Live Earth concert featured a who's-who lineup of celebrities who said that if we all do our little bit to recycle and conserve -- the simple things, mind you, because that's all we'll need (translation: that's all they think we'll go for) -- we can together rescue the world for our children and grandchildren.
Never has so little been asked of so many at such a critical moment.
The hard facts are these: If we sum up the easy, cost-effective, eco-efficiency measures we should all embrace, the best we get is a slowing of the growth of environmental damage. That's hardly enough: Avoiding the worst risks of climate change, for instance, may require reducing U.S. carbon emissions by 80 percent in the next 30 years while invoking the moral authority such reductions would confer to persuade China, India and other booming nations to embrace similar restraint. Obsessing over recycling and installing a few special light bulbs won't cut it. We need to be looking at fundamental change in our energy, transportation and agricultural systems rather than technological tweaking on the margins, and this means changes and costs that our current and would-be leaders seem afraid to discuss. Which is a pity, since Americans are at their best when they're struggling together, and sometimes with one another, toward difficult goals.
Throughout our history it has been the knotty, vexing challenges, and leaders who speak frankly about them, that have fired our individual and communal imagination, creativity and commitment. Paul Revere didn't race through the streets of Middlesex County hawking a book on "The Lazy Revolutionary." Franklin Roosevelt didn't mobilize the country's energies by listing 10 easy ways to oppose fascism. And it's unlikely that Martin Luther King Jr.'s drafts of his "I Have a Dream" speech or his "Letter From Birmingham Jail" imagined a practical politics of change rooted in individualistic, consumer-centered actions.
This Thanksgiving, the greatest environmental problem confronting us isn't melting ice, faltering rain, or flattening oil supplies and rising gasoline prices. Rather, it's that when Americans ask, "What can I do to make a difference?" we're treated like children by environmental elites and political leaders too timid to call forth the best in us or too blind to that which has made us a great nation.
Surely we must do the easy things: They slow the damage and themselves become enabling symbols of empathy for future generations. But we cannot permit our leaders to sell us short. To stop at "easy" is to say that the best we can do is accept an uninspired politics of guilt around a parade of uncoordinated individual action. What of the power and exhilaration that comes from working with others toward bold possibilities for the future? What of present sacrifice for future gain?
The time for easy is over. We're grown-ups who understand the necessity of hard work and difficult choices. We're ready for frank talk about how we best confront -- in ways rewarding, confusing, creative and hard -- the planetary emergency before us.
The writer is a professor of political science and environmental science atAllegheny Collegein Meadville, Pa.
Friday, January 21, 2011
For Many Species, No Escape as Temperature Rises
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
KINANGOP, Kenya — Simon Joakim Kiiru remembers a time not long ago when familiar birdsongs filled the air here and life was correlated with bird sightings. His lush, well-tended homestead is in the highlands next to the Aberdare National Park, one of the premier birding destinations in the world.
When the hornbill arrived, Mr. Kiiru recalled, the rains were near, meaning that it was time to plant. When a buzzard showed a man his chest, it meant a visitor was imminent. When an owl called at night, it foretold a death.
“There used to be myths because these are our giants,” said Mr. Kiiru, 58. “But so many today are gone.”
Over the past two decades, an increasing number of settlers who have moved here to farm have impinged on bird habitats and reduced bird populations by cutting down forests and turning grasslands into fields. Now the early effects of global warming and other climate changes have helped send the populations of many local mountain species into a steep downward spiral, from which many experts say they will never recover.
Over the next 100 years, many scientists predict, 20 percent to 30 percent of species could be lost if the temperature rises 3.6 degrees to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. If the most extreme warming predictions are realized, the loss could be over 50 percent, according to the United Nations climate change panel.
Polar bears have become the icons of this climate threat. But scientists say that tens of thousands of smaller species that live in the tropics or on or near mountaintops are equally, if not more, vulnerable. These species, in habitats from the high plateaus of Africa to the jungles of Australia to the Sierra Nevada in the United States, are already experiencing climate pressures, and will be the bulk of the animals that disappear.
In response to warming, animals classically move to cooler ground, relocating either higher up in altitude or farther toward the poles. But in the tropics, animals have to move hundreds of miles north or south to find a different niche. Mountain species face even starker limitations: As they climb upward they find themselves competing for less and less space on the conical peaks, where they run into uninhabitable rocks or a lack of their usual foods — or have nowhere farther to go.
“It’s a really simple story that at some point you can’t go further north or higher up, so there’s no doubt that species will go extinct,” said Walter Jetz, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale, whose research last year predicted that a third of the 1,000 mountain birds he studied, or 300 species, would be threatened because warming temperatures would decimate their habitats.
Birds are good barometers of biodiversity because amateur birdwatchers keep such extensive records of their sightings. But other animals are similarly affected.
Two years ago, scientists blamed a warming climate for the disappearance of the white lemuroid possum, a niche mountain dweller in Australia that prefers cool weather, and that was cute enough to be the object of nature tours. Many scientists, suspecting that the furry animal had died off during a period of unusually extreme heat, labeled the disappearance the first climate-related animal extinction.
Since then, biologists have found a few surviving animals, but the species remains “intensely vulnerable,” said William F. Laurance, distinguished research professor at James Cook University in Australia, who said that in the future heat waves would probably be the “death knell” for a number of cold-adapted species.
For countries and communities, the issue means more than just the loss of pleasing variety. Mr. Kiiru regrets the vastly diminished populations of the mythic birds of Kikuyu tribal culture, like buzzards, owls and hawks. But also, the loss of bird species means that some plants have no way to pollinate and die off, too. And that means it is hard for Mr. Kiiru to tend bees, his major source of income.
Current methods for identifying and protecting threatened species — like the so-called red list criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a conservation gold standard — do not yet adequately factor in the impact of probable climate shifts, and the science is still evolving, many scientists say.
Some species that scientists say are at most risk in a warming climate are already considered threatened or endangered, like the Sharpe’s longclaw and the Aberdare cisticolain Kenya. The cisticola, which lives only at altitudes above 7,500 feet, is considered endangered by the international union, and research predicts that climate change will reduce its already depleted habitat by a further 80 percent by 2100.
Other Kenyan birds that are at risk from climate warming, like the tufted, brightly colored Hartlaub’s turaco, are not yet on watch lists, even though their numbers are severely reduced here. A rapid change of climate can quickly eliminate species that inhabit a narrow niche.
On a recent afternoon, Dominic Kimani, a research ornithologist at the National Museums of Kenya, combed a pasture on the Kinangop Plateau for 20 minutes before finding a single longclaw. “These used to be everywhere when I was growing up,” he said.
He added: “But it’s hard to get anyone to pay attention; they are just little brown birds. I know they’re important for grazing animals because they keep the grasses short. But it’s not dramatic, like you’re losing an elephant.”
As the climate shifts, mountain animals on all continents will face similar problems. Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley recently documented that in Yosemite National Park, where there is a century-old animal survey for comparison, half the mountain species had moved their habitats up by an average of 550 yards to find cooler ground.
Elsewhere in the United States, the pika, the alpine chipmunk and the San Bernardino flying squirrel have all been moving upslope in a pattern tightly linked to rising temperatures. They are now considered at serious risk of disappearing, said Shaye Wolf, climate science director of the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco, which in 2010 applied to protect a number of American mountain species under the United States’ Endangered Species Act.
Last year, new research in the journal Ecological Applications and elsewhere showed that the pika, a thick-furred, rabbitlike animal that takes refuge from the sun in piles of stones, was moving upslope at about 160 yards a decade and that in the past decade it had experienced a fivefold rise in local extinctions, the term used when a local population forever disappears.
On the Kinangop Plateau in Kenya, Mr. Kimani exults when he finds a Hartlaub’s turaco, once a common sight, near Njabini town, in a stand of remaining of old growth forest, after engaging local teenagers to help locate the bird. The turaco could lose more than 60 percent of its already limited habitat if current predictions about global warming are accurate, according to Dr. Jetz.
“Even substantial movement wouldn’t help them out,” he said. “They would have to move to the Alps or Asian mountains to find their mountain climate niche in the future.”
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