Yet again we are warned that climate change and increasing population will cause massive starvation [more | search]. It is appalling how few people are aware that soil, land and even the atmosphere's waste absorption potential are finite resources. The root cause of climate change and virtually all aspects of the global ecological crisis is too many people consuming beyond the carrying capacity of ecosystems to absorb and regenerate from their impact. The population bomb has exploded and some 6.5 billion people now live on a planet that can probably only support well one billion or less (the population about 125 years ago). How this grotesque overshooting of the biosphere's ecological systems is unwound will have profound impacts upon the quality, and even possibility, of continued human existence. Will just and equitable measures be taken to reduce human numbers through population controls, as China has done somewhat successfully, or will ecological collapse do it much less mercifully? Humanity has reached the limits of technology and the biosphere's ability to put off over-population's impact being fully felt. Now may be a good time to buy a small piece of land and take up gardening.
August 2007 Archives
China and the U.S. continue to compete for the dubious honor of being the world's worst climate and environmental national villain [search]. As humanity careens towards self-immolation, both the Chinese totalitarian and American imperialist regimes use the international climate change and environmental negotiations to jockey for national advantage rather than uniting with the international community in common cause against the greatest planetary threat to humanity ever. Both fail to show international visionary leadership, continuing to obstruct and send conflicting signals regarding joining an international program of mandatory emission reductions -- making the critical process of developing a post-Kyoto policy more difficult than necessary. This week China felt it necessary to state it is not ready to join a post-Kyoto pact, as the United States floated that it is ready to contribute to world carbon emission cuts. Check back next week. A climate deal is beginning to look more likely post-Kyoto, the question is whether it will be adequate and equitable, or parochial and half-measured. Certainly there is much at stake and no one expects either country to haphazardly damage their economies or development prospects, yet both are guilty of refusing to participate in good faith in solving a planetary ecological climate emergency for which they are most responsible.
An epic environmental disaster of unprecedented proportions is playing itself out in China. Yes, Europe and the United States are historically culpable for introducing and establishing capitalism without reference to sustaining natural capital as the foundation of economic life. Yet China has embraced resource intensive, ecosystem devastating capitalism [search] with a particular fervor. What is happening in terms of resource use, climate impact and junk consumer product production in China (and the world's role in consuming) simply cannot be sustained.
All right thinking free peoples have a choice to be made. Either learn to live ethically and environmentally responsibly as one of over 6 billion human inhabitants of the Earth, embracing personal virtue and sacrifice; or be part of the ecological devastation of everyday consumer living that is dismantling the Earth biosphere, and thus suffer with your children the horrific consequences of eating the Earth to death. This environmental leader is telling you the full truth: personal sacrifice is required for the Earth, climate and humanity to survive.
TAKE ACTION: Dramatic efforts required to stop the expansion of Tasmanian old-growth forest logging by construction of a massive new pulp mill by Gunns Ltd
Tasmania, Australia's woodchipping giant Gunns Ltd. is poised to be granted fast track approval by the Tasmanian government to build a massive chemical pulp mill in northern Tasmania. This forest-hungry pulp mill will be a disaster for Australia's ancient forests, climate, wildlife and future. If built, the US$1.4 billion project would need four million tonnes of logs a year. It would double Gunns' current rate of clearcutting in Tasmania's native forests. It will also dump thousands of tonnes of poisonous waste into Bass Strait every day, threatening marine life, tourism and the fishing industry. For way too long Tasmania's ancient forests - some containing massive eucalyptus trees - have been clearcut to produce paper pulp, mostly for the Japanese market... Continued markets for paper pulp from ancient forest liquidation depend upon this disastrous pulp mill being forced through the Australian legal system... the impact of this massive pulp mill on Tasmania's ancient native forests, much less regional and global climate, have not been considered. Additionally Minister Turnbull has acknowledged there is insufficient data available to assess the impacts of 64,000 tonnes a day of poisonous waste being released into Bass Strait... (the) Gunns had already signed a contract with construction firm John Holland to start building the pulp mill "in the first week of September"... At a time when Australia's federal government is proposing funding ancient forest protection and conservation internationally as a measure to a combat climate change, it is hypocritical and repulsive that Australia continues industrially clearing its own native forests. Australia's ancient forests will still be logged, even clearcut, for throw away consumer products; even as the Australian government calls upon less developed and poor nations to protect their forests for the climate. TAKE ACTION.
Nonprofits’ Conservation Websites Inform More than 35,000 Visitors a Day
CLEVELAND,OH – August 24, 2007 – Thunderstone Software LLC announced today that Denmark, Wisconsin-based Ecological Internet, Inc. has renewed its license of Thunderstone's Webinator Web Index & Retrieval System to continue offering industry-leading search capabilities on all its environment conservation websites, including the highly popular http://www.ecoearth.info and http://www.climateark.org/.
Ecological Internet, Inc. (http://www.ecologicalinternet.org) is a non-profit organization specializing in the use of the Internet to achieve conservation outcomes. As part of its mission it seeks:
* to empower the global movement for environmental sustainability by working to conserve climate, forest, ocean and water ecosystems
* to commence the age of ecological sustainability and restoration
* to provide forest/rainforest, climate, water, ocean and environment conservation websites--presented as a free service to the environmental community.
Ecological Internet maintains up-to-date climate, forests and environmentportals that serve more than 35,000 visitors a day. It enables its website users to quickly search the indexed content of five million URLs and retrieve the desired information.
TAKE ACTION! The rise in demand for air travel is one of the most serious environmental threats facing the Earth. Global aviation's negative impact upon global climate and ecology [search] is becoming more evident and known. Aviation accounts for about 2% of world emissions of carbon dioxide, over 6% in the U.K. and other over-developed countries, and projected passenger growth of five percent a year means airplane emissions are growing more rapidly than any other source. Air transport contributes disproportionately heavily to global warming, as carbon dioxide and water vapor emitted at high altitude are four times more potent than at sea level... The "Camp for Climate Action" outside London's Heathrow airport is this week highlighting aviation's centrality to fighting global warming. Heathrow is the world's busiest airport and a bigger source of CO2 emissions than most countries, yet the airport's capacity is to be doubled by building a third runway... The danger of "celebrity environmentalism" is clear as the launch of Leonardo DiCaprio’s eco-documentary entitled "The 11th Hour" coincides with the Heathrow aviation protests. Mr. DiCaprio glibly defends his and other celebrity's use of private jets, and despite a solar powered house and hybrid car, all his personal efforts to reduce his carbon footprint are shattered by a jet-setting lifestyle. Clearly addressing climate change and other global ecological crises will require shared sacrifice and a reduction in consumption by many... Let Leo know that the battle to stop the growth in aviation's greenhouse gas emission is one the most important environmental battles ever that require his personal example... Let him know you will see his movie if he swears off private jets. TAKE ACTION!
PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release – 13th August 2007
Joint Press Release by Biofuelwatch, Ecological Internet and Rainforest Rescue
Millions of farm birds could be left without enough food and breeding sites next spring if plans to scrap Europe’s agricultural land set-aside targets for next year go ahead, warn environmental groups. Plans to set a zero set-aside targets from October this year have been announced by the EU Commissioner for Agriculture, Mariann Fischer-Boel, as a response to rising food prices. Those plans are to be ratified by ministers this autumn. Several studies confirm that set-asides have become a vital habitat for many of Europe’s endangered birds and insects, and that farm birds have declined by nearly 50% on average since 1980. Over 5300 people have written to European politicians this month, asking for the plans to be dropped and supporting a moratorium on biofuel targets.
Glen Barry, Director of Ecological Internet explains: “Dramatic declines in insect, bird and wild flower populations show that many of Europe’s ecosystems are under extreme stress from intensive agriculture and climate change. Our future depends on protecting healthy ecosystems. We need real cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, with massive cuts in energy use as well as truly sustainable renewable energy, such as wind and solar power. More intensively farmed monocultures cannot be part of the solution.”
A climate change protest camp [more] has been set up outside Heathrow airport in the UK, and thousands of protesters are expected at the "Camp for Climate Action" which will highlight the link between aviation and global warming [search]. Current and projected growth in air travel is clearly not environmentally sustainable. Aviation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. This sort of civil disobedience is precisely what is needed now at an immense scale against airports, SUVs, coal power, the oil industry, flacid governments and numerous other Earth destroyers if climate disaster is to be averted. Maybe the private jet carrying Leonardo DiCaprio will be blocked as he swoops in to lecture others at this 11th hour on global ecology. The sacrifice is you.
Arctic ice cover has shrunk faster this summer than in any year since reliable satellite imagery of the polar cap became available in 1979. A record has been set for the lowest recorded northern hemisphere sea ice area, and we still have five or six weeks of ice melt before the usual minima.
A user pointed out this graph and map showing clearly the magnitude of ice melt. Replacement of ice with open waters leads to further warming, making it very unlikely that previous ice levels will be achieved any time soon. Artic sea ice loss is a major indicator of abrupt, runaway climate change [search]. As a trained ecologist it hurts so much to see these dispassionate presentations that clearly indicate global ecological collapse.
I am saddened, shocked and dismayed at humanity's continued climate change denial [search]. How sure of cataclysmic climate change impacts must we be before we fundamentally change our way of being individually and socially? The UN reports that the world suffered an unprecedented string of extreme weather events in early 2007, the Goracle falsely suggests carbon emissions in China can be cut without economic sacrifice, and the poor are to bear even more hunger due to climate change. This is just today's news! How will ecological and social collapse be averted? What sort of actions are necessary and warranted? Who will lead? Who should we follow?
TAKE ACTION! Europe's bird and insect populations, as well as heavily stressed terrestrial ecosystems, face decimation as the European Commissioner for Agriculture plans to scrap land set-asides for the 2008 season. This unexpected move is a response to rising grain prices – caused by the growing biofuel sector and worsening climate change impacts. Europe’s common farmland birds have declined by nearly 50% since 1980... 45% of Europe’s butterflies are at risk of extinction and a recent study found 80% declines in bee diversity and 70% declines in the diversity of wild flowers dependent on pollination on hundreds of sites in the UK and Netherlands... the future Europe's ecosystem functionality such as pollination and provisions of food supplies may be at risk as pollinators are driven into extinction. Biofuel expansion for the European market is already causing massive deforestation, biodiversity losses, displacements of local communities and loss of food sovereignty in the global South – now Europe’s wildlife and remaining terrestrial ecosystems are likely to become another victim. Please send the letter below to ask Europe’s politicians not to scrap land set-asides until they are substituted for a more sustainable EU agricultural policy based on organic agriculture and biodiverse mixed farming system. Biofuel targets and incentives must be abolished now, to protect biodiversity and food supplies worldwide.
President Bush has announced he will some three days after the United Nations holds crucial climate talks in September. Leading economic powers and carbon emitters from the industrialized and developing world [more | more2] have been invited from September 27-28 to discuss reducing carbon emissions. Golly. If the Bush administration really has had a change of heart on the need for mandatory carbon and other greenhouse gas emission reductions, it would be fantastic. I would not hold my breathe however. This administration has been criminally negligent in not only pulling the United States out of productively participating in international climate talks and agreements; but has sought to obstruct progress by the rest of the world as well. Reneging on pledge to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, withdrawing from Kyoto, censoring U.S. government climate scientists, gutting air pollution and other environmental laws -- this President will go down in history as being horrendously criminally negligent on environmental issues. His only hope to prove he is genuine is to move past voluntary approaches and commit to moving the world towards equitable mandatory emissions cuts. Anything else is continued criminally negligent climate obstruction.
It is very encouraging to see a high-profile U.S. politician -- former US Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry -- proposing serious legislation to address illegal logging [search] in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Destruction and diminishment of primary and old-growth natural forest habitats [search] is responsible for about one quarter of human caused greenhouse gas emissions [search]. There is a booming and out of control illegal logging industry preying upon these life-giving ecosystems and they must be stopped if humanity and the Earth are to have a chance. The proposed "Combat Illegal Logging Act" is a much needed first step to stop this ecological evil.
However it is disappointing that "legal" clearing and selective first time logging of primary ancient forests is given a pass. There is little or no difference in ecological impact between first time legal and illegal ancient forest logging. An evolutionarily distinct, millions of year old ancient forest does not differentiate much between being industrially dismantled legally or illegally, or for that matter between being totally deforested or heavily commercially selectively logged. In either case what was once an ancient forest is no longer, and in both cases massive carbon release happens immediately, while future ability to function as a carbon sink is diminished if not destroyed.
To certify that "legal" ancient forest dismemberment is somehow OK while illegal is not disingenuously and falsely suggests there is a sizeable difference in impacts upon climate, biodiversity and other ecosystem services. There is not. This is why Ecological Internet campaigns tirelessly to End Ancient Forest Logging -- even targeting for protest prime ancient forest logging apologists Greenpeace and WWF [alert]. It is abundantly clear that even FSC certification is no guarantee of ecological sustainability or legality of ancient forest logging.
Global ecological sustainability depends critically upon maintaining large, intact, contiguous, natural, non-industrially managed ecological reserves to power the biosphere. This is of course very politically problematic, but to survive as a species and a biologically complex Earth; finding the right policy combination of local, community based small-scale eco-forestry management [search] and strict protection with payments for avoided deforestation [search] and industrial diminishment must be actively sought. This is not an opinion. It is ecological fact based upon findings of ecological, global change and conservation biology sciences.
