Author: Grist – the Latest from Grist

by Tom Philpott

News flash: high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a lousy product.

As Tom Laskawy reported here Tuesday, a recent study by Princeton researchers found that rats fed chow laced with HFCS gained more weight than rats fed equal calories of table sugar. All processed sweeteners add empty calories to food; but calorie for calorie, HFCS appears to be even worse than white sugar. Although the two sweeteners have roughly the same fructose/glucose ratio, we mammals seem to metabolize the HFCS differently than we do cane sugar.

That’s grim news. On average, Americans get 10 percent of their total calories from HFCS—and kids, who rank among its heaviest users, get an even higher percentage of calories from it.

And even if HFCS isn’t metabolized differently than table sugar—and some non-industry-related observers remain doubtful about the Princeton study—the ubiquitous sweetener would still be a lousy product. As I and others have argued before, rise of HFCS as a cheap sweetener (see chart, above) has helped push up overall sweetener consumption to unseen levels. In short, a gusher of sweetener from cornfields to food factories has resulted in billions of additional, and nutritionally void, calories in the American diet.

All of which got me thinking about the enormous U.S. corn crop. If HFCS is a product of dubious social utility, what about the other uses of corn? Are they any better? The question has serious public-interest implications, because the federal government is a major underwriter of corn production. Between 1995 and 2006, the government paid out $56 billion in corn subsidies, the Environmental Working Group reports. Corn is our most lavishly subsidized food crop, by a wide margin; it drew more in subsidies over that period than wheat ($22 billion), soybeans ($14 billion), and rice ($11 billion)—combined.

Now, whenever one discusses subsidies, it’s important to note that the real beneficiaries aren’t farmers, most of whom scrape by, but rather the companies they sell their corn to: from grain trader/sweetener makers like Archer Daniels Midland to meat producers like Tyson (or mega-firms that perform both roles, like Cargill). A recent study by Tufts researchers Tim Wise and Alicia Harvie reckons that by putting downward pressure on corn and soy prices, federal subsidies saved chicken producers $11.3 billion, pork processors $8.5 billion, and beef packers $4.5 billion in the 1997-2005 time frame. Producers of HFCS benefitted, too, to the tune of $2.2 billion, the researchers estimate.

The U.S. corn juggernaut.Source: National Corn Growers Association, World of Corn 2010OK, subsidy disclaimer to the side, let’s talk for a second about just how massive our corn crop is. According to this extraordinarily informative document from the National Corn Growers Association called the “2010 World of Corn,”  our corn crop is by far the world’s largest. We produce 42 percent of the globe’s corn—more than the next most prodigious corn-producing countries, China and Brazil, combined. (See chart, right.) We churn out six times as much corn as the entire European Union.

In acreage terms, fully a quarter of U.S. farmland is typically planted in corn (see chart, below left). Corn is typically grown in rotation with soybeans, which commands another quarter of our farmland. Thus together, these two industrial crops—neither of which can be consumed by people without heavy processing—occupy fully half of our farmland, a total area roughly equal in size to the state of Texas. And not just any farmland. The great bulk of corn and soy production takes place on what was once prime prairie terrain in the Midwest—one of the greatest stores of soil tilth and fertility on the globe.

As far as the eye can see: corn and its companion crop, soy, blanket half of U.S. farmland.Source: National Corn Growers Association, World of Corn 2010And to grow all that corn on that gorgeous land, farmers douse the soil annually with massive amounts of agrichemicals. In terms of synthetic and mined fertilizers, the corn crop sucks in nearly 40 percent of all nitrogen fertilizer applied in the United States, and upwards of 30 percent of phosphorous and potash. (Numbers crunched from USDA data, see table 2).  Such voracious use of fertilizers causes all manner of ecological trouble (see our recent series on nitrogen fertilizer, as well as this discussion of the ravages of phosphorous mining).

This annual cascade of industrial fertilizers, along with other agrichemical inputs, advances in diesel-guzzling farm machines, and new seed-breeding techniques, has given rise to an extraordinary surge in corn yields. At the end of the ‘60s, U.S. farmers were producing around 119 million metric tons of corn using 26 million hectares. Last year, they cranked out 334 million metric tons using 35 million hectares—a 180 percent increase, using only 34 percent more land. (Figures from above-linked World of Corn document.)

So where is all that corn going? Surely a crop that takes up a quarter of our land and burns through nearly 40 percent of our annual nitrogen use, and draws billions in annual subsidies, must deliver something amazing to make it worth all the trouble.

But the chart to the right offers other lessons. True, high-fructose corn syrup takes up just 3.5 percent of the corn crop. But what are the other uses?

We’re all ears: Where did all that corn go?Source: National Corn Growers Association, World of Corn 2010• Feed and residual, 42.5 percent. So, upwards of 40 percent of the corn crop goes into feedlots to fatten livestock for meat, milk, and eggs. The post-war explosion of cheap corn gave rise to an explosion of cheap meat. In 1950, Americans ate 144 pounds of meat per capita annually. In the 60 years since, corn prices fell steadily as output rose, and meat production shifted from diversified, pastured-based systems almost exclusively to corn-intensive, factory-style confinement systems. As a result, per-capita meat production has reached 222 pounds—a startling 54 percent increase since 1950.

The ill health effects of overconsumption of meat are well-established—they include “increased risk of heart disease and cancer, particularly colorectal cancer,” as well as a heightened risk of dying early, as the Washington Post reported last year.

Moreover, industrial livestock production is surely one of our filthiest industries—it tends to produce far more manure than can be absorbed into nearby fields as fertilizer, causing all manner of trouble downstream. And the confinement style of production given rise to by cheap corn has generated public-health threats ranging from MRSA to swine flu to antibiotic-resistant salmonella. Feedlot meat also has a tremendous greenhouse-gas footprint, despite industry tripe to the contrary.

In short, like HFCS, feedlot meat is a highly dubious product made possible by the explosion of cheap corn.

• Fuel ethanol, 32 percent. Groan. Do I really have to go through this argument again? To see why corn-based ethanol is a suspect product, please see here, here, here, and here.  Or read through Grist’s 2006 special series on biofuel, which remains largely relevant. Bonus: for an unholy intersection between ethanol and feedlot meat, go here.

• Exports, 15.7 percent. Ah, this is the bit that makes U.S. ag officials and agribiz chiefs crow about “feeding the world.” But dumping cheap, subsidized U.S. corn on foreign markets only leads to the global spread of questionable practices like turning corn into sweetener and meat. In the global south, the annual gusher of cheap U.S. corn undercuts domestic farms, eroding food security and prompting a flight from rural areas to cities. Mexico makes for an appalling case study. According to Tufts researcher Tim Wise: /AgNAFTA.html

Corn showed the highest losses [among subsidized U.S. crops entering the Mexican market]. Average dumping margins of 19% contributed to a 413% increase in U.S. exports and a 66% decline in real producer prices in Mexico from the early 1990s to 2005. The estimated cost to Mexican producers of dumping-level corn prices was $6.6 billion over the nine-year period, an average of $99 per hectare per year, or $38 per ton.

For a small-scale Mexican farmer, that’s enough to make the difference between earning a living off the land and having to go try to scratch out an existence in a Mexico City shantytown—or sneaking across the northern border for gainful employment.

So low-quality meat and sweetener, a shoddy alternative car fuel, an agrarian crisis visited upon our neighbor to the south … that’s more or less the corn crop. The 6 percent going to “other” use reflects mainly industrial-food ingredients: stuff like starches that end up in everything from ketchup to mac ‘n cheese. Another small fraction goes to extremely low-quality liquor.

This is what we’re getting out of 32 million hectares of mostly prime farmland and billions of dollars in annual subsidies? It’s time to start thinking about how to encourage more diversified, lower-input forms of agriculture. It’s not that we need to grow no corn; it’s just that we can’t afford to keep growing so damned much of it.

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by Tyler Falk

On Saturday at 8:30 p.m. local time (wherever you are) join 30 U.S. states, 3,100 U.S. cities, 121 countries, and celeb couple Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen (in both their homes), by turning off your lights for World Wildlife Fund’s 4th annual Earth Hour.

And what a more inspiring couple to promote the event than the two-time Super Bowl champion quarterback (who looks like he was trapped in the corner of his kitchen) and his supermodel wife? Watch the videos below (and check out Brady’s heavy-handed cover-up 17 seconds in):

 

OK, maybe not the most inspiring, but who really needs celebs to get inspired to play in the dark for an hour? If you’re running low on imagination here are 7 ideas. And watch this truly inspiring video of cities and landmarks across the globe dimming their lights for last year’s Earth Hour:

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Green celebs bring sexy back to Senate politics

by Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON—Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Thursday that he and Democrats working on climate-change legislation would unveil a new bill in mid-April, but warned that a cap-and-trade proposal was “dead.”

“I will continue to work on producing that new product, a new way to achieve energy independence, create jobs, clean up the air, and hopefully we’ll have something for you after the Easter break,” said Graham, referring to a two-week recess that ends the week of April 12.

Graham said he was working with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on the bill and that they hoped to rally “the right coalition of business and environmental groups” behind it.

“We’re looking at a sectoral approach to replace the cap-and-trade system, which is dead, by the way. There will never be a cap-and-trade bill passed by the United States Senate,” Graham told reporters.

Graham said the new climate-change legislation should set a price on carbon pollution blamed for global warming and promote offshore oil drilling, the construction of new nuclear plants, and development of renewable energy sources and other “clean” technologies, while weaning the United States off oil imports.

“I will continue to work with Sens. Kerry and Lieberman to produce a new bill that has a new focus that will lead to energy independence, create the jobs that we will need to become a vibrant, viable economy in the 21st century, and a green economy, and clean up the air,” he said.  “Where it goes from there, I do not know.”

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Kerry-vs.-Bingaman power struggle lurks beneath ‘what next?’ question in Senate

by Jonathan Hiskes

Today in conventional wisdom–busting news, we learn that grimy old cities are attracting more residential construction than the bright suburban frontier. Urban redevelopment is outpacing fringe sprawl by a solid margin, according to a new EPA study of the nation’s 50 largest metro areas. It’s a “fundamental shift in the real estate market,” says the report [PDF].

What’s more, the study finds, it’s not that regional policies are herding people back into urban neighborhoods. Personal preference seems to be driving much of the change. Turns out more people are deciding they want to live near walkable neighborhoods, transit lines, other urban stuff.

Overall construction has tanked in the last few years, of course. But the proportion of home building that happens in central cities has doubled since 2000 in 26 of those metro areas. Here we can see it:

Environmental Protection Agency

The Obama administration’s new Partnership for Sustainable Communities—a joint venture of the EPA, Transportation Department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development—should be glad to see the housing market’s already trending this direction.

More from Greenwire: ‘Smart Growth’ Taking Hold in U.S. Cities, Study Says

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From Pyramids to Paris, landmarks to go dark for Earth Hour

by Ashley Braun

This enlightened group of Spanish nightstalkers are fed up with shrinking urban green space. Worried that the most greenery people see nowadays comes in plastic containers with a sell-by date, they decided to prank up the limelight on an ugly corner of Madrid with their Packaged Vertical Garden. We think their style packs way more of a lunch punch than the way others just vine and moan about these sorts of problems.

Gustavo Sanabria, Luzinterruptus

Luzinterruptus via inhabitat

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by Grist

What are the best seeds to use for my container garden? What is the deal with organic pineapple? These are just a couple of the questions from March’s Live Chat with Tom Philpott. And if you’ve been dying to know Tom’s favorite food, the answer lies within.  Join us for next month’s Live Chat with Grist green advice maven, Umbra Fisk. Want in on the action? Become a Friend with Benefits by making a donation to Grist today.

 

<a href=“http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=978083d53e” mce_href=“http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=978083d53e” >Live Chat with Tom Philpott</a>

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HFCS study authors defend work against attacks

by Eric Roston

First Things First: President Barack Obama
signed health care reform into law this week, exposing a rarely
acknowledged political pre-existing condition among the pundit class: despite the conventional wisdom, no matter how many years experience a
given observer has had in Washington, whatever political party you
favor—nobody ever really has any idea what’s about to happen. As Sen.
Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said the other day about the current mood in Congress, “It was bad last
week. It’s going to be bad this week. Who knows what it’s going to be
like next week?”

Passage of a bill widely declared dead shores up the president’s and
his party’s political capital and has prompted an uptick in violent,
intimidating rhetoric among the Democrats’ political opponents in and out of the
blogosphere. Supporters of the various climate mitigation approaches may
feel emboldened,
  as if the conventional wisdom shouldn’t count them out either.

People at Work: Top White House advisers
met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Wednesday to chart
out a strategy to move climate legislation through the Senate. Sens. John Kerry
(D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are
expected to release a draft of their bill in April, after the two-week
spring recess that starts tomorrow. The troika has been shopping an eight-page proposal around influential lobbyists, such as the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, according to Politico.
The effort by Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman has been the most visible
effort by senators to address climate change, but other approaches will
not be discounted. More specifically, Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and
Susan Collins (R-Maine) will not be discounted. The pair has already
written a bill, introduced last November, that would compel heavy industry—predominantly sellers of fossil fuels—to buy carbon
emission permits, and trade them in a market. Auction receipts would be
mostly re-distributed back to consumers. [Click here to download the Nicholas Institute’s recent modeling study of Cantwell
and Collins’ CLEAR Act.]

All eyes turned to Graham after health care passed. Reports
circulated last week that he could walk out of climate-bill negotiations if Democrats passed healthcare reform
through a procedural sidestep called the “reconciliation” process, which
they did. With that bill now law, Graham vows to continue his work with
Kerry and Lieberman (I-Conn.). Passing another major bill right after
healthcare will take much more than Graham’s presence as a negotiator in
a political environment that—however it strains the imagination—keeps
finding ways to become more and more poisonous.

Many Democrats are eager to move on energy and climate legislation
despite the political obstacles. Twenty-two Democratic senators,
including Sens. Cantwell and Sherrod Brown of Ohio,
wrote a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid supportive of a jobs and energy security bill. Ten senators from coastal states
wrote a letter to Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman threatening to pull their
support for the as-yet-unseen bill if it contains provisions for
offshore oil drilling. NPR asks the question, whatever happened to
broader GOP support for climate policy?

Whatever Happened to…: For what it’s worth,
the president’s party continues to find encouragement for its climate
policy from abroad. The U.S. and international climate conversations
merged in Washington this week when Connie Hedegaard, the Danish
minister of climate and energy, visited, meeting
with U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern and chatting up the international
importance of U.S. legislation.

When two presidential candidates promised measures to address climate
change, in the summer of 2008, confidence in America’s first-ever
carbon market shot up to seven dollars a ton. But with international and
domestic negotiations uncertain, prices for a ton of carbon on the
Chicago Climate Exchange have dropped to ten cents. Among those hit hardest by the collapse in prices are
farmers who earned carbon credits through “no-till farming.” When
farmers deploy this practice, CO2 remains trapped underground if farmers
refrain from turning it over. Good practices—and what constitutes “good
practices” can be disputed—aren’t catching up with emissions trends. A
report in Nature this week documents a global rise in emissions from soil.

Civil (Legal) War?: Newsweek profiles EPA administrator Lisa Jackson as a way to narrate for its general
audience the inside-the-beltway machinations occurring in her agency and
on the Hill. Legislators prefer (perhaps by definition) that such major
changes in pollution laws go through Capitol Hill. “Jackson knew that
threatening to act by executive fiat wouldn’t be popular. But she also
knew it would get people’s attention, and maybe prod Congress to act,”
writes Daniel Stone. Murkowski has led opposition to the EPA’s move in
the Senate.

States too continue to hop on board the EPA litigation train. The
federal appeals court in Washington wrapped together the petitions
seeking to beat back the EPA’s endangerment finding. Sixteen states have
joined the battle.
Pennsylvania and Minnesota support the EPA’s finding, and 14 others
oppose it: Alaska, Michigan filed separately, while Nebraska, Florida,
Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota,
Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah acted together.

Carbon–It’s What’s for Dinner: Monday was World Water Day. National
Geographic marks the event with a comprehensive cover package about this most
personal of all environmental issues (You are mostly water). In the
magazine’s leader, writer Barbara Kingsolver offers a lyrical perspective on our many worlds of water. Water is the ultimate commons.
Earth has a finite amount of it, but an expanding global civilization.
The essay glides toward mention of that seminal work, Garret Hardin’s
“The Tragedy of the Commons.” Kingsolver writes: “Agreeing to
self-imposed limits instead, unthinkable at first, will become the right
thing to do. While our laws imply that morality is fixed, Hardin made
the point that ‘the morality of an act is a function of the state of the
system at the time it is performed.’ Surely it was no sin, once upon a
time, to shoot and make pies of passenger pigeons.” Other articles—and
photos, natch—look at desalination,
California’s water, and the U.K. group WaterAid’s work in southwestern Ethiopia.

About 1,800 gallons of water go into the production of one pound of
beef. The magazine has a nice online interactive graphic showing the “embedded water” in various products. Likewise, how much
CO2 meat production represents came under scrutiny this week. A
University of California, Davis, professor challenged a four-year-old
report that found emissions from meat production represents 18 percent of the global emissions of heat-trapping gases. Frank
Mitloehner told an academic conference that the report, called Livestock’s
Long Shadow, included more variables in its calculation of meat’s
carbon emissions than in the transportation sector emissions calculated
by the IPCC. The apples-to-oranges comparison skews the result, making
it look like meat production pollutes more. In the U.S., transportation
contributes about a quarter of emissions, but pork and beef production
add just three percent of the national total. An author of the report
says of Mitloehner’s study, “I must say honestly that he has a point.”

Sea Is for Climate: Widescale production of
batteries would focus attention on parts of the world not considered
major players in the global energy economy. But a proliferation of
batteries for transportation and stationary use might make Bolivia or
neighboring Chile into the Saudia Arabia of lithium,
a key ingredient batteries. The nearly 4,000-square mile salt flats,
remains of an ancient sea, contain the world’s largest lithium deposits,
waiting to power your electric car.

India and Bangladesh settled a longstanding dispute over a tiny
island with two names by letting the rising Bay of Bengal swallow it
whole. New Moore island (India) or South Talpatti (Bangladesh) stood
just six feet above sea level. The waters have risen in temperature and
height in recent years. The island, which was uninhabited, will continue
to be uninhabited.

Eric Roston is Senior Associate at the Nicholas Institute and author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s Core
Element Has Become Civilization’s Greatest Threat. Prologue
available at Grist.
  Chapter about Ginkgo biloba and climate change available at Conservation.

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by Ashley Braun

Weather you’re a conservative, an American, or everyone else, we fear you may feel like just another statistic in this wryly scientific graph.

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by Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON – China has surpassed the United States as the top investor in clean energy, with the rising Asian power becoming a “powerhouse” in the emerging field, according to a new study led by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The report said that China has shown determination to be on the front line of green technology, while U.S. investors have been put off by uncertainties amid the legislative battle on climate change.

Chinese investment in clean energy soared by more than 50 percent in 2009 to reach $34.6 billion, far more than any other country in the Group of 20 major economies, the study said.

Total U.S. investment was about half that at $18.6 billion, the first time in five years that the world’s largest economy lost the top spot in clean energy, the study said.

“China is emerging as the world’s clean energy powerhouse,” Phyllis Cuttino, global warming campaign director of the Pew Environment Group, told reporters on a conference call. “This represents a dramatic growth when you consider that just five years ago their investment totaled $2.5 billion.”

China has also overtaken the United States as the top emitter of carbon blamed for global warming and came under fire for its role in December’s much-criticized U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen.

But the study found that China had made a strategic decision to invest in wind and solar technologies as it copes with sharply rising demand for energy—and has set some of the world’s most ambitious targets on renewable energy.

The study also found strong investment by Britain, which ranked third with $11.2 billion for clean energy; Spain, which came in first in green investment when taken as percentage of gross domestic product; and Germany.

Nations seen as struggling in the clean energy competition include the United States, Australia, and Japan, the study said. Cuttino said the three nations have “less consistent, clear, and long-term policies in place.”

U.S. President Barack Obama, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama have all championed climate action, but none of the countries have set in motion nationwide plans to curb emissions.

But the study noted that Australia had potential in wind energy and said Japan was “one of the G-20’s most promising growth markets” if the resource-poor nation carries out plans to ramp up solar and wind power.

The study found that even though the United States dominates technological innovation, its investment in clean energy tumbled 42 percent last year from 2008 levels.

The researchers partly blamed the global economic slowdown but also said there was a lack of direction. Climate legislation has been stalled in the Senate, although Obama allies have vowed to push it ahead now that Congress has completed the top priority of expanding health care.

John Woolard, CEO of California-based solar plant builder BrightSource Energy Inc., said that the government needed to take action to create markets. “We have never had certainty or predictability in the United States,” he said. “We have not had a thoughtful and coherent energy policy in this country for decades.”

Obama and his congressional allies argue that curbing emissions will open up a new green economy, helping fuel the economic recovery.

Many Republican leaders are skeptical, saying that restrictions on carbon would only worsen a fragile economy.

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From Pyramids to Paris, landmarks to go dark for Earth Hour

by David Roberts

Van JonesBy now the Strange Episode of Van Jones is well known in and outside of politics. Jones became White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs in March of 2009. Shortly thereafter began a summer of crazy, as Tea Party activists stormed congressional offices and the air waves, shouting warnings of incipient tyranny.

In July, Glenn Beck became fixated on the “czars” in the Obama administration, who, he alleged, formed a secret, unelected shadow government devoted to instituting socialism. Among his first targets was Jones, dubbed the “green jobs czar.” Initially, it was about his connections to the Apollo Alliance, but as the teabaggers got to digging they uncovered youthful radicalism, some intemperate humor, and the coup de grace, Jones’ name listed on a 9/11 conspiracy site. There was a spectacular feeding frenzy, and in early September, Jones resigned from the White House.

He has moved on now, working at the Center for American Progress, getting ready to teach a class at Princeton, and speaking at conferences and other events. “This is probably my last interview about the past,” Jones says. “I really do want to remind people that I’m not Paris Hilton.” It’s the path forward, the solutions, that interest him, now as ever. But in the name of helping his supporters and others digest what happened, he spoke to me about his return to his father’s values, the lessons he’s learned from the last year, and why he views the whole incident as “friendly fire.”

(In part two of our interview, Jones speaks about the policies and projects he’s working on and his hopes for the future.)

———

Q. Are you a 9/11 “truther”?

A. No, I’m not. What I believe about 9/11, what I think pretty much everyone believes about 9/11, is that it was a conspiracy by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and nobody else, to hurt America.

I learned a tough lesson. Back in 2004, people came up to me at a conference, saying they represented 9/11 families and wanted my help and support. I said, “Sure, I’m happy to help any way I can.” I didn’t know their agenda or anything about what they were doing. They just, based on that verbal assurance, went and put my name on a website. They did the same thing to Paul Hawken and Jodie Evans. None of us ever saw the website or their atrocious, abhorrent language. They didn’t have a signature from me. But by [the time all this came out], we were in something of a media firestorm. Even progressives who had stood with me were whipsawed by all that.

Q. Are you a communist?

A. No, I’m not. That’s the plain reading of the article everybody points to, where I talked about how those ideas were part of my past. I gave a speech at the Network of Spiritual Progressives in 2005 where I talked about the fact that I literally, physically burned out on the politics of outrage and confrontation. For the better part of a decade, I’ve been the No. 1 champion of free-market solutions for poor people and the environment. I have a best-selling book and hundreds of speeches and interviews that attest to that.

That said, I’m never going to apologize for my passion for the underdog, in this economy and the next one. The government has a role to play. It’s got to get on the side of the problem-solvers. The big polluters still get all the breaks; that’s got to stop.

Q. Are you angry about what happened?

A. What I try to remember is that the whole country’s going through a process. We’re going to be a very different country in 20 years. That brings up a lot of fear and a lot of anger. People on both sides of the political spectrum are going to make mistakes. In my heart, I see these noisy attacks on me as friendly fire. These are my fellow countrymen and women, who don’t want to see this country continue to suffer. I feel exactly the same way.

I have some patience with all the yelling. I already went through the politics of outrage and confrontation, and for me, I know it doesn’t work. I’ve found a different place to stand. There’s a meeting point for good people in this country, whatever political party they are in. It has to do with making America stronger for the long term, making sure we’ve got our fair share of the next century’s good jobs, making sure we’ve got clean air, clean water, a safe planet for our kids, and we’re respecting creation.

Q. When it all kicked up, did you consider getting out and trying to defend yourself more publicly?

A. I thought it was important, at that moment in the president’s journey, for him to be able to have the conversation he needed to have with the American people without me trying to jump into the frame. You have to remember, we were at a very delicate moment in August and September. The president of the United States was trying to make sure that people who don’t have enough money for doctors get the help they need. Suddenly he runs into this buzz saw of wild accusations of socialism, he’s creating death panels, all kinds of stuff. I felt like he needed to be able to speak as clearly as he could about America’s future and not about my past.

Q. I’ve heard from lots of your supporters who were disappointed by the way it went down. What do you tell them?

A. I had six months in the White House to work on almost everything I’d ever dreamed of working on. Nobody, not even my fiercest critics, criticized the job I was doing, or anything I said, while working for the president. They had to dig up and distort stuff from before I even went to D.C. So I did a good job and had a good experience. Beyond that, we’re all learning: the president’s learning, the administration’s learning, I’m learning, the movement for hope and change itself is going through a big learning process. How I felt about it was, if I’m going to make a mistake, I’d rather err on the side of giving the administration a clean shot at trying to have the conversation they wanted to have. People have a difference of opinion about that, and I understand them.

But I also have to say, having spent six months in the White House, your mindset is very different. It’s like being in an airplane with turbulence: if you’re a passenger on the plane, you have a very different experience; I was in the cockpit for six months. My love of country, which was already tremendous, was just a thousand times deeper every week. It’s very easy for activists to say, hey, just get out there, put your fingers in people’s faces and set everything right. The question is, how does that actually work? There were bigger goals at stake.

Q. You were obviously made into something of a caricature for a while there, as though you hadn’t changed since your angry youth. How have your values evolved over the years?

A. As a kid, I hated seeing bullies in the neighborhood hurting people, or animals being mistreated, that kind of stuff. My whole life I’ve been asking, what are we going to do about the underdog, the people who are being mistreated and left out? My questions have not changed since I was a small child. But as you get older, your answers change. When I was in my 20s, I had the typical answers of most activists in their 20s living in the Bay Area. And now I’m in my 40s and I have a different set of answers.

I worked through different sets of solutions, trying to make a difference for people who are poor and disadvantaged in this country. Police departments in the Bay Area in the mid-90s were having trouble with some officers repeatedly violating the law; I saw that as a problem, went to the state bar association, got licensed, and designed a relational computer database to try to better track problem officers and precincts. Then, at the Ella Baker Center, I created something called the Books Not Bars campaign to reduce the number of kids who were going to prison.

Working on the ground in tough neighborhoods, I found that, from an intellectual and ideological point of view, just giving people stuff doesn’t solve the problem. People want and deserve the dignity of working and earning their way to a better life; it’s not just about redistributing stuff at them.

My father’s life kind of bore that out. My dad grew up in abject poverty and he worked his way out of it. He was a police officer in the military, then he came home and became an educator. I grew up in a super-patriotic household. Like a lot of kids who grow up that way, when I got out in the world and saw homelessness and discrimination, a lot of the things that didn’t look like “liberty and justice for all,” I was heartbroken. I went in a very angry direction, rebelled against my dad and everything he taught me for a while.

I couldn’t hear it when he was alive, but what my dad always used to say to me was people have to climb their own ladder out of poverty. What society has to do is make sure there’s a ladder for them to climb. Doing the work that I did, I saw that was true. The youth programs that were the most generous were producing the worst results. The youth programs that were the most demanding were producing the best results.

There’s also a spiritual dimension to my evolution, which is hard to talk about in mainstream politics. I burned out, not just from a political point of view, but from a spiritual point of view, on a lot of my earlier positions. You go around and try to get people worked up about how oppressed they are, and how terrible the system is, and if you’re successful, you just manage to make people more angry, depressed, and frustrated. I could talk with you for hours about everything I was against, but I couldn’t say anything I was for. At a certain point, if you’re going to do this kind of work, 12- and 18-hour days with some of the poorest people in the country, who have the toughest problems, you have to know what you’re working for, not just what you’re working against.

I felt unable to sustain the level of anger that some of those positions required. I felt, in my own life, the need for hope and inspiration and solutions. So I kind of switched from diesel to solar. It was in that journey that I discovered practical, green business solutions. I discovered that I could do a better job describing what I was for. I reconnected with my own faith, I started a family, I did a number of things that brought me back to my dad’s values. I think it’s a typical American story in a lot of ways, a prodigal son story, coming back home to the values I was raised with, but trying to apply them in a different context. My commitment to solutions for poor and disadvantaged people has not changed, but I’ve moved from righteous indignation to a healthier place.

I think I have the right to be evaluated based on who I am and who I am becoming. I would say that for anybody in American politics. If anybody in American politics, after all we’ve been through as a country over this past 10 to 15 years, has exactly the same view about everything they had in the mid-90s, I question their fitness to lead.

Q. The people who were criticizing you loudest are the ones who do have exactly the same ideas they had 15 years ago.

A. It’s interesting that some of my critics are fellow Christians and people who are not always, by their own admission, living lives that reflect their deepest values. I would hope they could “forgive me my trespasses.” But I won’t take second place to anybody in terms of my love for this country. I work to try to get the American dream realized for people whom a lot of my critics will never meet, never even drive through their neighborhoods. I didn’t do it for a weekend; I’ve been doing it for almost 20 years.

At the end of the day, a certain set of people will be critical of anybody with progressive ideas. They’ll take the first opportunity to walk away from the conversation. But I don’t think that’s most Americans. I do think other folks who are committed to market solutions at some point should take yes for an answer from me.

Q. What has the episode taught you?

A. If you want to play a leading role on challenging issues, you have to take responsibility for how you are going to be heard. To the extent that I sometimes use humor or colorful language to make a point to an audience … you’ve got to be aware that there’s always a bigger audience.

It used to be, as you went through these stages in your life, you could go to the next town and start over. The only person you were accountable to besides yourself was, if you were a person of faith, God. The line of grace was vertical, between you and your creator. Now, in this age of YouTube and Google, all of us are leaving digital bread crumbs behind of the person we used to be. Anything you do or say, some silly thing you did at a college party if somebody had a cell-phone camera, can be seen by everybody, forever. You can know more than you ever wanted to know about pretty much anybody.

It requires more wisdom of society. The line of grace now has to be horizontal. We have to learn how to forgive each other and extend a certain amount of empathy as we all grow up in front of each other. At some point, there’ll be enough people who have had these “gotcha” experiences, and we’ll hit a tipping point. We’ll have a different level of tolerance. But it’s too early. We’re still too new to this, we don’t have the language, customs, and rituals to be able to handle all this stupid stuff we can learn about each other.

My commitment to the country and to a solution-based, love-fueled politics is pretty sturdy. At no point did I let go of any of that. I had thousands of defeats and only one victory. The victory was this: I’m not mad at anybody, I don’t hate anybody. I’m still committed to solving these problems from a good place in my own heart.

I’m still learning how to make the kind of differences I want. I’m not a politician, I’m not running for office, so I have more freedom to take on tougher causes and make more challenging connections. But I don’t have total freedom. At the end of the day, I want to help build bridges. The communities I’m concerned about need more friends and fewer enemies, and I’ve got to be aware of that. If I’m not effective, the people who suffer are not primarily me, it’s the people who need green jobs but won’t get them.

I had a year where all my dreams and all my nightmares came true. That’s a lot of living in a short period of time. Where it left me is much, much more compassionate and with a deeper patriotism. My faith is deeper. My compassion for the pain in this country, whether it expresses itself as the Tea Party movement or as the Coffee Party movement, is much deeper. I don’t see things as simply as I used to. I’m looking forward to spending a year teaching, reflecting, and speaking out where it’s appropriate. But in terms of my hopes for the country, and my contributions, I feel like I’m just getting started.

This is probably my last interview about the past. I really do want to remind people that I’m not Paris Hilton. The only reason people cared about me in the first place, before some people made an issue of every dumb thing I ever said or supposedly said, was that I’m a guy with some solutions and some passion for them. That hasn’t changed.

Related Links:

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Glenn Beck’s survival guide: Food and energy independence

by Umbra Fisk

Water, water everywhere, but is
it on the brink? Not if oceanographer Sylvia Earle has anything to do with it.
Dearests, meet Ms. Earle, an aquanaut, author, and one of today’s greatest
advocates of the ocean—also, I suspect, a direct descendant of
Poseidon. (I’ve asked for funding from Grist for a DNA test to be sure. Stay
tuned.)

As the head of the National
Oceanic Atmospheric Administration in the early ‘90s, her fierce protection of
the blue part of the planet landed her the title Sturgeon General. She’s also a
female Buzz Aldrin of sorts (minus the Dancing with the Stars appearance), having gone deeper in the ocean than any woman in history;
she walked untethered on the ocean floor. One giant, wet leap for womankind and
the reason The New Yorker deemed Earle Her Deepness.  

At 75, as the Explorer in
Residence for National Geographic (Coolest. Title. Ever.), she is tirelessly
speaking up for the seas.

Earle came up for air to chat
with me at the Environmental Film Festival in Washington, D.C. Her Deepness was
there to help promote a film made by the Natural Resources Defense Council
about the problems of ocean acidification from carbon dioxide called Acid
Test. 

Q. If you had an elevator ride to tell
someone about the state of the oceans, what would your pitch be?

A. Everybody
should care about the ocean. Just imagine Earth without one. We’d have a
planet a lot like Mars. No ocean; no life. No blue; no green. A lot
of people are really concerned about what’s happening to the green—to
terrestrial life. But everybody needs to understand that all life depends on
the existence of the ocean. The ocean shapes climate; 97 percent of the water
on earth is in the ocean. It’s where the greatest diversity and abundance of life
is. That’s no surprise, given that all life requires water. And where is the
water? It’s in the ocean. That’s where the action is.

There was a
feeling going back up until about half a century ago when people still thought
that the ocean was so vast, so resilient, that it didn’t matter what we put
into it or what we took out of it—that the ocean could somehow recover.
Somehow the belief was that our job was to extract from the ocean wildlife with
no limits. Now we know that there are limits to what we can take from the ocean and get away with.

Q. What do you
see as the greatest human threats to the ocean currently?

A. All things considered, I think that the biggest problem comes down to complacency born of ignorance, of people simply not knowing, of still believing
somehow that the ocean is big enough, vast enough, to be able to recover no
matter what we put in and take out. Everything that we care about is connected
to the ocean. It doesn’t matter where on the planet you live; your life depends
on the existence of the ocean—and not just rocks and water but a living
ocean, a healthy ocean, an intact ocean where the integrity of systems is
stable. We have destabilized the ocean systems. Our complacency is the worst
problem because if you don’t know, you can’t care. Ignorance is the basis of
being complacent. Once you know, once you understand, you’re burdened with that
knowledge. I can’t eat fish anymore, or any sea food, because I know too much. I
know the consequences not only to the ocean and the health of the ocean, but
also how that comes back to affect me personally.

Q. I saw an ad
today for Burger King. They have a fish sandwich for, like, $2.99. What’s the
real cost of that fish sandwich? How does that relate to sustainable seafood,
and is there even such a thing? 

A. Well think
about a fish sandwich. Do you go to a burger place and get a mammal
burger? Do you get Kentucky Fried Bird? People will take and accept a
“fish sandwich,” not having a clue about what kind of fish it is. Now
I could go along with it being farmed responsibly—farmed catfish or tilapia—creatures that are as low on the food chain as chickens. It takes about two
pounds of plants to make a pound of 1-year-old or less catfish or tilapia. It’s
about the same as it is for chickens. For cows, it’s about 20 pounds of plants
to make a pound of cow. To make a pound of tuna, think thousands of pounds of
plants, or tens of thousands of pounds of plants, or even a hundred thousand
pounds of plants going through this long and twisted food chain. An orange
roughy takes 30 years, and yet they sell on the market for $8.99 a pound in my
local supermarket in Oakland, Calif. That doesn’t begin to pay the real cost.

And actually
these creatures are priceless. We don’t know how to make them. We don’t farm
them. We’re taking wildlife out of the sea. And even those creatures that now
are being “farmed” such as salmon and a few other species, mostly we take
wildlife out of the sea in large quantities to get small quantities of farmed
fish or other creatures that we’re growing. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. It
certainly doesn’t make dollars and cents if we put a value on wildlife in the
sea.

Q. I have read
that if we don’t do anything we may have very few fish left by 2043. Can you
talk a bit about that?

A. A few years
ago, I was visiting in Australia. It was just after a report came out that 90
percent of many of the commercially extracted species from the sea were gone—gone in a few decades, since the 1950s. Taken. Extracted. What did we do with
them? We ate them. We caught them, and we killed them; and we disrupted the ecosystems
from which they were extracted, using trawls that take not just the fish but the whole system. They take the equivalent of bulldozing the forest
to get a handful of songbirds. That’s the way we have fished—destructively.

Q. Can you tell us about The Great Garbage Patch and what
people can do to help?

A. I’m asked
sometimes, “How bad is the problem of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch?”
And I have to say, it’s not just the great Pacific that’s in trouble; it’s the
ocean, all of it, that is in trouble—from the debris, the plastics, and the
other stuff that we’re putting into the ocean. A lot of it we can’t see because
it’s chemical waste or carbon dioxide that’s causing pollution. It’s hard to
escape plastics in our lives these days. But one thing every person should try
to avoid is the one-time-use plastic. There was an illusion that you could have
biodegradable plastics, but plastics generally don’t just disappear. They get
into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces—so small that they’re now being
consumed by planktonic creatures.

Q. What’s one thing you can recommend that people do to help the oceans? 

A. I appeared on The Colbert Report, and we began a
little conversation about this. Colbert being Colbert said, “Well if I
can’t eat fish anymore, how am I going to get my mercury?” Another good
issue to question whether you should continue to eat ocean wildlife. If you
do, know what you’re eating, know where it came from, know what it’s name is—not a mindless chunk of fish in a fish sandwich or “catch o’ the day.” It could
be any of 20,000 different kinds of vertebrate creatures. We don’t do that with
birds or mammals. You kind of know when you’re eating lamb or chicken or beef—mostly. There may be some mystery meat circulating out there, but, with fish,
it’s all mystery meat

And then the
so-called vegetarians that say, “Oh, I don’t eat meat; I just eat
fish.” If I were a fish, I would be outraged at that comment. I mean, “I’m
meat too,” I would say.

Watch the full interview with Sylvia Earle:

Related Links:

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The changing threat to water: Global warming & World Water Day

‘The Story of Bottled Water’ and big fun learning about water

by treehugger.com

The New York Times Magazine did a photo spread of some rather extreme conversions of churches, shipping containers, water towers, and even caves. We do our own roundup of TreeHugger favorites:

A chapel converted to residence by ZECC Architects.

Churches

ZECC Architects, beloved of their conversion of a water tower into a residence, are at it again with this conversion of a Dutch
chapel into a single family residence. In some ways it is a bit sad,
when formerly public spaces get converted to private residences, but
not every church can be converted into a bookstore or other public use, and this chapel is a bit less dramatic than the church that became the bookshop.

See more photos of the chapel here.

For the full set of wacky water tower apartments, cave condos, holy hole-in-the-walls, and shipping container cribs, join our friends at Treehugger. 

Water tower apartment in Essen, Germany.Photo: Lars Tunbjork for The New York Times

Water towers

The NY Times describes this picaresque water tower home:

A decade ago, the architects Arnim Koch and Michael Dahms were working on a project for the municipal utility of Essen, Germany, when they became enamored with an obsolete 1905 water tower. The pair designed eight floors into the tower’s base, which are now home to two rental apartments, a real estate agency and a communications business.

See more photos of the water tower apartment here.

For the full set of wacky water tower apartments, cave condos, holy hole-in-the-walls, and shipping container cribs, join our friends at Treehugger. 

Underground house by SeArch and Christian Müller Architects.

Underground houses

There are a lot of benefits to building houses underground; they are cheap, almost free, to heat and cool. In Vals, Switzerland there are famous thermal baths with amazing views, so in order to build close to the baths, the architects buried this house into the hill.

See more photos of underground homes here.

For the full set of wacky water tower apartments, cave condos, holy hole-in-the-walls, and shipping container cribs, join our friends at Treehugger.

Related Links:

McMansion modular

Modern modular done right

Oh, those sexy building codes: More powerful than 100 nuclear plants

by Tom Philpott

 

From Marion Nestle:

The impossibly impenetrable health care bill that just passed the House has one little piece of good news buried in it: national calorie labeling.

The provision covers chains with 20 outlets throughout the country and is supposed to go into effect in a year or so.  It also covers vending machines!  These are great steps.  Calorie labeling has two effects.  It educates anyone who is interested to look and think about it.  And it encourages chain restaurants to offer lower calorie options.

Eat a Big Mac (540), large fries (500), and large Coke (310),  and you’ve ingested 1350 calories (source)—or more than half of what a moderately active adult male needs to maintain body weight. And you’ve taken in virtually no fruits and vegetables in the process.

Putting calorie info on menus is no doubt a solid idea—but let’s not oversell it as a panacea for stemming the rising tide of diet-realted maladies (not that anyone is). As Tom Laskawy and others have reported, research on the efficacy of calorie labels has shown modest at best results—and nor can the labels be relied on to be accurate.

Related Links:

Have Jesus’ disciples been overeating?

Watching the green screens at the Environmental Film Festival in D.C.

HFCS study authors defend work against attacks

by Jake Schmidt

Click to enlarge. “Want to Protect Farms and Ranches Here? Protect them there. Ending deforestation in the tropics isn’t just some tree-hugger’s cause.” Those are the opening lines of a new advertisement campaign run by the Ohio Corn Growers Association and Avoided Deforestation Partners which stresses the need to protect tropical forests in order to protect the competitiveness of U.S. agriculture (see ad to right and click to make it bigger). 

You may be asking, why is an American farm group supporting efforts to stop tropical deforestation—  many, many miles from their home base? The simple answer is (as the ad states):

Illegal overseas agriculture and timber operations are tearing down and burning the world’s forests to make room for massive logging, cattle, palm oil and soybean operations. This deforestation is a leading cause of climate pollution, but it also hurts U.S. agriculture. Crops grown on this slash-and-burn land undercut American farmers and ranchers producing corn, soy, canola, meat and leather. And paper and wood products from illegal tropical logging undercut responsibly managed U.S. forests. This deforestation reduces commodity prices and hurts competitiveness, putting additional strains on American families trying to hold onto their farms, ranches and timberlands [emphasis added].

Tropical deforestation and agriculture.  Agricultural expansion is a major driver of deforestation in many developing countries.  For example, it is estimated that agricultural expansion—from soy and cattle—accounts for 80 percent of Brazil’s deforestation (and a recent study suggested that 80 percent of the world’s deforestation since 1980 was the result of agricultural expansion). Illegal and unsustainable logging often work in tandem with agriculture to cause deforestation—logging clears the rainforest, selling the wood provides cash for investments in agricultural operations, and then agricultural crops and cattle are introduced into recently cleared land a couple of years after clear cutting. A few years later, more land is cleared as the former rainforest soil is quickly depleted. 

How does agricultural expansion in rainforests impact U.S. farmers and ranchers?  First, agriculture and forestry products from countries with large deforestation such as Brazil and Indonesia are sold directly into the U.S. These products can compete with goods produced in the U.S. Second, agricultural and forestry products like timber, beef, and soy are globally traded commodities. When these products are sourced from deforested land and sold in the global market, they compete directly with more sustainably produced U.S. exports and impact the market price of those products throughout the world. For example, in 2007 Brazil accounted for 32 percent of the global exports of soybeans*—soybean are one of the major agriculture drivers of deforestation in Brazil. In a sense some agriculture expansion in tropical forests is “subsidized” by lax enforcement of illegal logging and unfettered expansion of agriculture into the rainforests.

This video from Avoided Deforestation Partners shows the dynamics in very helpful way (if you are more of a visual person).

Luckily the House-passed energy and climate bill contains key provisions that aid in slowing and stopping deforestation (as I’ve discussed here)—and Senator Kerry has supported these provisions in bills that he co-authored (as you can see here and here). The bill sets aside 5 percent of the value of allowances from the cap and trade program for deforestation reduction activities in tropical countries and contains provisions for high-quality forest carbon offsets in countries that have developed robust systems to ensure that the reductions are real, additional, verifiable, and permanent. Without the investment in the deforestation set aside, tropical forest countries won’t have near-term resources to build their capacity and develop the robust systems to generate credible offsets (they will never move from a theoretical supplier of offsets to a real supplier). And it will be hard to define a system that doesn’t lead to agriculture and forestry activities simply shifting to non-participant countries—so called “leakage”—which is why the set aside is also designed to support efforts in countries that are susceptible to “leakage” but aren’t eligible for offsets. We need both the set aside and strong rules governing offsets to ensure that offsets based on reducing deforestation are actually reducing global warming pollution across the world and therefore have real value. In other words, this set aside investment is critical to the development of deforestation offsets which aren’t “subprime.”  

Slowing the loss of tropical forests, which contributes up to 17 percent of the world’s global warming pollution, is not only good global warming policy, but is also in the interest of U.S. farmers, ranchers, and foresters, as recently recognized by the Ohio Corn Growers, American Forest and Paper Association, National Farmers Union, National Alliance of Forest Owners, American Forest Foundation, Conservation Forestry, Green Diamond, and Hardwood Federation (see letter here).

Hopefully the Senate will take up these provisions and listen to the growing chorus of America’s farmers, ranchers, and foresters that see the connection between reducing tropical deforestation and keeping American agricultural and timber exports strong.

———————

Sasha Lyutse greatly assisted in this post.

* Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAOStat, FAO Statistics Division (2009), November 10, 2009

Related Links:

No rest for the warriors.

Passage of healthcare security bill gives momentum to bipartisan climate and energy security bill

The changing threat to water: Global warming & World Water Day

by Ashley Braun

UPDATE: Discovery’s TLC has officially signed Alaska’s most famous former official. However, Discovery would really like everyone to stop calling it a reality show, and acknowledge it for what it really will be: a “documentary series about the remarkable Governor Palin and her home
state of Alaska.” Will the network’s aspirations to keep it from becoming a “political program” be successful? Perhaps only with an airhead filter.

Sarah Palin attracts more drama than Jersey Shore, so it’s only natural for her to guide us to the natural reality-TV shores of Alaska. Rumors say Palin’s asking Discovery Communications to coffer up a glacially cool $1.2 million per episode, making it even pricier than her campaign wardrobe.

“Sarah Palin’s Alaska” is to be shot (perhaps from a helicoptor?) in the high-def style of the wildly successfully “Planet Earth” series, the previous global leader of spendy nature shows. Will “Alaska” be Discovery’s next Pebble Gold Mine?

The internet can only imagine how Palin’s wildlife narration will pan out:

Look! It’s a polar bear. I sued the federal government to keep that guy and his ilk from getting an endangered species listing. …

Oh! I see a wolf! Let’s get a nice aerial shot of this little guy. BANG.

Check it out! This is the village of Shishmaref. Let’s set up a time lapse sequence and watch it fall off into the sea because of global warming snake oil science.

However, her show will more likely end up like this earnest videographer’s imaginings, complete with “year-round frozen permafrost, frozen tundra” and lofty inspirational music:

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Like what you see? Sign up to receive The Grist List, our email roundup of pun-usual green news just like this, sent out every Friday.

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From Pyramids to Paris, landmarks to go dark for Earth Hour

by Agence France-Presse

Jane Goodall.Photo: United NationsLONDON—Humans should have fewer babies to help the global battle against climate change, according to the renowned British primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall.

Goodall, whose 1960s research on chimpanzees changed perceptions of relations between humans and animals, fears the controversial issue has slipped down the agenda in the debate about humanity’s impact on the environment.

“It’s very frustrating as people don’t want to address this topic,” said the 75-year-old English scientist. “It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it—but there are so many of us,” she told AFP in an interview.

The answer, she says, is that “we should be talking about somehow curtailing human population growth.”

Goodall is a patron of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), a nonprofit organization that campaigns for population stabilization and a gradual decrease both globally and in Britain. It argues for improved provision of family planning and sex education, calls for better education and rights for women, and advocates that couples voluntarily “stop at two.”

The OPT’s stated mission is to reduce projected population growth of 2.3 billion by 2050 by at least 1.3 billion—to reach no more than 8 billion by 2050 instead of the 9.1 billion figure predicted in 2004 by the United Nations Population Division.

Goodall believes a cornerstone in any drive to stabilize population growth, particularly in less developed countries where populations are expanding, must be the improvement in the quality of life of the poorest.

‘They are struggling to survive’

Since 2002, Goodall has been a U.N. Messenger of Peace, one of a handful of distinguished figures who agree to focus the world’s attention on the work of the U.N. She also heads a project in the forests of East Africa that aims to combat deforestation by allowing rural dwellers to profit directly from the conservation of their natural environment.

The U.N.-backed program known as REDD (or Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) is being implemented in regions of western Tanzania and Uganda by the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), a global nonprofit organisation she founded. JGI-Tanzania was awarded a grant of $2.7 million from the Norwegian Embassy in Tanzania in January to help implement the project, which aims to conserve natural habitat while also raising the quality of life among local communities.

“If you don’t improve the lives of the people—helping the women so that their babies don’t die, providing information about family planning—then it’s very irresponsible,” she told AFP. “We provide information about family planning and in most cases people are very grateful, including the men, interestingly.”

Reforesting large areas of degraded landscape is central to the project’s goal of promoting sustainable use of tropical forests, whose conservation Goodall believes is vital in the fight against climate change because of their ability to remove or “sequester” CO2 from the atmosphere.

“They [the local population] have denuded their hillsides and are struggling to survive—we’re working on the ground in Tanzania and Uganda teaching people new technology to tackle this problem,” explained Goodall.

“Google Earth has a new kind of cell phone which the local people can use with GPS but also video,” she said. “It allows them to map deforested areas by filling in data points—here the forests are being cut down, here there are new trees. If communities can demonstrate that they are having an impact in terms of restoring their forests, then they get this money from the carbon polluters.”

Goodall’s belief in the potential benefits of conservation for both humans and animals comes through in her recently published book, Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued From The Brink.

In it she relates a number of conservation success stories from different corners of the globe, from the Black Robin of the Chatham Islands near New Zealand to the short-nosed sturgeon of New York’s Hudson River.

A firm believer in the reality of climate change, Goodall hopes the positive tone of her book will translate into practical action to help conserve the environment in the long term, whether this is through reforestation projects or sensible family planning.

“Warming is a cycle, but we’ve certainly made it worse—it’s the speed with which it’s happening that’s so terrifying. We know the CO2 out there is causing this, so shouldn’t we be using our brains, our technology, and our skill to do something about it, whether we did it or whether some other force did it?”

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China overtakes U.S. in green investment, study finds

by Tom Laskawy

BPA leached from plastic: not just a problem for landlubbers.It’s looking more and more like the chemical industry’s idea to make the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A ubiquitous in the environment was a terrible, and terribly dangerous, idea. Having successfully tainted the food supply with its presence, BPA has now has put the world’s oceans at risk (via Science Daily):

Scientists have reported widespread global contamination of sea sand and sea water with the endocrine disruptor bisphenol A (BPA) and said that the BPA probably originated from a surprising source: Hard plastic trash discarded in the oceans and the epoxy plastic paint used to seal the hulls of ships.

The team analyzed sand and seawater from more than 200 sites in 20 countries, mainly in Southeast Asia and North America. All contained what Saido described as a “significant” amount of BPA, ranging from 0.01 parts per million (ppm) to 50 ppm. They concluded that polycarbonates and epoxy resin coatings and paints were the main source.

One of the notable findings in this study is that in the ocean environment, “unbreakable” polycarbonate plastic… breaks down. And when the stuff breaks down, it releases a nasty set of toxins, including BPA. Meanwhile, every ship in the world contributes to the process simply by the act of steaming about the ocean while the BPA in its exterior paints and epoxy resins leach into the water. Even worse, the scientists measured BPA concentrations at levels known to affect mollusks, crustaceans and other sea life.

It sorta makes the FDA’s refusal to ban the chemical irrelevant, at least for the oceans’ sake. But for the sake of people ingesting the stuff through can linings, etc, the agency needs to act. Now. Thanks to the potent combination of a gung-ho chemical industry and lax government oversight, we are now well into a massive experiment with the endocrine systems of pretty much every form of life on earth. As if we don’t have enough to worry about with climate change and antibiotic resistant bacteria, now we’re just going to have to cross our collective fingers and hope some kind of BPA-related nightmare scenario doesn’t occur.

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by Tom Laskawy

The pink bollworm: the bug that ate Monsanto’s Bt franchise?Photo: North Carolina State UniversityThe current crop of superweeds plaguing farmers who rely on Monsanto’s RoundUp pesticide represents by now a well documented crisis. But watch out, world! Here come the superbugs.

That’s right, Monsanto’s other flagship product, its “Bt” line of genetically modified seeds which emit their own pesticide in the form of a naturally occurring toxin, is now under threat from resistant insects. Science Magazine ($ub req’d) has the details:

Monsanto has revealed that a common insect pest has developed resistance to its flagship genetically modified (GM) product in India. The agricultural biotechnology leader says it “detected unusual survival” of pink bollworms that fed on cotton containing the Cry1Ac gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which codes for a protein that’s toxic to many insect pests. In a statement to Science, Monsanto claims that the finding from western India “is the first case of field-relevant resistance to Cry1Ac products, anywhere in the world.”

This development comes despite Monsanto’s long history of downplaying the probability of the evolution of Bt resistant insects. In some ways, this is a worst case scenario for the biotech giant with both its main genertically engineered seed traits now under attack by Mother Nature. As a result, some analysts marveled at Monsanto’s casual announcement of a development that could lead to a collapse of one of its main money-makers:

One prominent researcher questions whether the Gujarat bollworms truly are resistant. Monsanto’s conclusions and methodology are “flawed,” charges CICR Director Keshav Raj Kranthi, an entomologist. In 8 years of monitoring Bt cotton, he says, CICR has “not found any resistance.” Kranthi argues that Monsanto “should have analyzed tens of thousands of specimens before making this claim. … It’s a mystery why Monsanto is trying to kill its own technology.” Monsanto disputes that charge; it says its resistance tests were “standard practice” but declined to elaborate on its methodology.

Perhaps it’s worth keeping in mind that Monsanto is in the midst of trying to move farmers from its first-generation Bt seed, to its newer [more expensive] second generation Bt seed which expresses multiple versions of the Bt toxin. In theory, this new seed would kill pests that the first gen version might not. Do I smell an ulterior motive?

It’s also true that scientists who don’t get their paychecks via Monsanto have been warning of Bt resistant insects for quite some time—and the Science article mentions the fact that, despite Monsanto’s claim, resistance to Bt has been seen in North America already. These risks are one of the reasons why the EPA requires farmers to plant “buffer zones” of non-GMO crops around any GMO field which theoretically minimizes the resistance risk. However, as the NYT reported last fall, a surprising number of US farmers ignore those guidelines and increasing the probability of resistant insects.

But it’s not just Monsanto we should be worried about—the NYT observed that widespread Bt resistance would be a huge problem for large organic growers because Bt toxin insecticides are one of the few organic options available. India, which is in the midst of an agricultural crisis and is attempting a significant increase in organic agriculture, is the last place you’d want to see something like this happen.

As one expert summed up the significance of this latest news on GMOs:

I hope that this episode will cut down on the belief … that Bt has some magical immunity to resistance.

Huh. And I thought it was GMO opponents who were the ones accused of indulging in magical thinking. Well, Monsanto, how’s that shoe feel now?

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by Jonathan Hiskes

A leading thinker on the left recently wrote that elite authorities have failed us and require grassroots input to become accountable.

A leading thinker on the right recently wrote that centralized authorities have failed us and should be balanced by stronger local economic, political, and social networks.

Now Woody Tasch of the Slow Money Alliance wants to get people with these sentiments working together. He’s calling for a green version of the Tea Party:

We all share an abiding frustration at the dysfunctions of Wall Street and Washington. We are deeply frustrated at the damage caused by money that is too fast, investment banks that are too big and government programs that are too complex. But the mark we are trying to hit isn’t in Washington or on Wall Street. It’s much closer to home. It’s right here, in our own backyards, in our communities. That’s why David Brooks wrote last week that both the welfare state and the market state are models that have failed …

The new direction in which we must head can be called many things: relocalization, rebalancing, rebuilding, revitalizing, restoration and preservation, redevelopment, job creation, retooling, decentralization. This will take many shapes. I would suggest as one of the cornerstones of this rebuilding process the following goal: a million investors investing 1% of their assets in local food systems …

We need balance—and the balance we need must be achieved in both our food system and our financial markets. We don’t want to be dependent on crazy financial schemes or far-flung food supply chains, the security of which is impossible to guarantee. We don’t want our investments or our food filled with ingredients that we do not understand. We want new, simpler recipes for economic, social and personal health.

So, let’s start fixing America—restoring our shared sense of purpose and our common dreams—from the ground up, starting with food. [Emphasis mine.]

Even Glenn Beck seems to have a soft spot distributed energy and local food.

Libertarian righties and locavores working for shared goals? Crazy. So how do we make this partnership happen?

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The ‘femivore’: New breed of feminist, or frontier throwback?

by Sean Casten

From 1980 to 2007, total U.S. electricity consumption increased by a factor of 1.8, but total generation capacity increased by only 1.7 times. In other words, demand out-grew supply. For a while, that was fine—we had more toys than we needed, and real power prices declined for two decades as we made better use of the toys we had.

By the year 2000, though, that gig was up, and we suddenly found ourselves having to run our most expensive plants harder, having fully tapped-out our low-cost supply. Electricity prices, not surprisingly, rose—and continue to do so, 10 years later. Grid managers refer to this trend as an “eroding reserve margin,” and its impacts were foreseen and avoidable.

Yet we did nothing. Worse, we still don’t seem to have any fundamental understanding of the cause. To the extent we are even aware that electricity prices are increasing, it’s because we’ve heard politicians and media pundits assign blame—blame that usually has absolutely nothing to do with the underlying cause. Saudi Arabian oil, California deregulation, and Wall St. fat cats get a lot more attention than infrastructure underinvestment.

This problem goes well beyond the power sector. Throughout the economy, our wants are growing faster than our capacity to meet them. From global warming to national security to Medicare cost inflation we face predictable, avoidable crises that require only that we make near-term, large-scale investments. We’ve blamed the oil companies, climate scientists, botched intelligence, and greedy insurance/pharmaceutical executives for those problems, but who is stepping up to take responsibility for getting them solved?

This is not a new idea; at least since the Japanese boom in the 1980s we’ve heard the steady drumbeat that the U.S. “doesn’t take a long view.” Given the choice, we’ll give $1,000 to the TV salesman before we give it to the rainy day fund. The counter-argument has been that consumer spending drives our economy in ways that are under-appreciated: it’s not that we save too little, but that the Asians save too much. Take U.S. consumerism away and a whole lot of recently-emerged economies don’t.

Up to a point, that’s true—but beyond that point, its nonsense. We just witnessed the collapse of a massive, debt-fueled spending bubble that our depleted savings accounts were not prepared to handle. Meanwhile, we are hurtling towards a fossil-fueled temperature bubble that our depleted atmosphere is not prepared to handle. There are those who say that human innovation will protect us from environmental disaster, because it always has before. And there were those who said that widespread, global housing price collapses were impossible. Is there any sign we’re learning from past hubris?

American blessings

I recently found myself in Mexico City, having dinner with a Welsh banker who had spent much of his career privatizing businesses in eastern Europe and Latin America. It was as good a place as any to think about America’s role in the world, so I asked whether he thought U.S. policies and lenders had generally helped or hindered the countries in which he worked. He observed that “America is an amazing, unique place. That means that what worked in America probably doesn’t work anywhere else, and that always surprises you.” That led to a discussion of the various happy accidents that have made us so unique. What’s striking is the degree to which they also explain our current dilemma.

Domestic resources. From rich topsoil to massive freshwater reserves, from herds of wild game to fossil fuel reserves, we had resources that—through our formative years—vastly exceeded our needs. The simultaneous development and preservation of the frontier. John Muir and John D. Rockefeller are two sides of the same American coin. We take for granted both the great solitude of the frontier and the great riches available to those who exploit it. The optimism innate to American Dream is sustained by that contradiction. A well-timed depression. The generation that led us through World War II and into the boom years of the 1950s never outgrew the frugality of their youth. A well-timed war. World War II and the subsequent demographic bubble established our economic pre-eminence and gave us the fiscal ability to pay for New Deal entitlement programs.
  The Marshall Plan. America’s ability to grow without war (at least of the hot variety), the emergence of the dollar as the global currency, and the moral dimension to our global leadership all derive in part from the foundations laid by George Marshall.

In each instance, the engine for future growth was created by the existence or creation of capital well in excess of present needs—a reserve margin. Like any capital investment, it required short-term sacrifice for long-term gain. Throughout the first two-thirds of the 20th century, we made big, long-time-horizon investments every decade or so: the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, the numerous advances of the civil rights era and the Clean Air Act. But since the 1970s, what have we done?

American curses

My generation (I was born in 1971) has taken those blessings for granted, and has no direct experience with the sacrifice required at the time of their creation. Like a kid on a trust fund, we’ve got access to an amazing stream of dividends, but don’t know how to invest.

More problematically, to even suggest that we ought to make short-term sacrifices (AKA, “investments”) triggers what Senator Byrd has aptly characterized as “barkings from the nether regions of GlennBeckistan.” If the private sector isn’t willing to invest, the public sector shouldn’t either, and if you believe otherwise you must be a big government liberal pinko.

Poppycock. Teddy Roosevelt was a populist and a conservationist, but I’m willing to bet he didn’t think very highly of Leon Trotsky, no matter how “socialist” his policies may sound to a modern ear.

The obvious consequence is a decline in the public discourse. The less obvious and ultimately much more troubling   consequence is the steady erosion of the reserve margin we’re leaving for our kids. We need to make massive investments in capital to secure our future. We need new power plants, but need clean ones that replenish the capital of our atmosphere. We need to stabilize the Afghanistan/Pakistan region if we are not to spend the next 50 years in fear of Arab friends. We need to figure out how to build a social safety net that works for a very different demographic base and growth trajectory than the one we had in 1930.

In short, we need to act as if the next generation had a vote. When discount rates suggest otherwise, it proves only that ethics cannot—and should not—be algebraically eliminated from a larger moral calculus.

This is not a call to abandon those unique American advantages that made us great, but rather to return to them. We need the benefits that accrue uniquely from competitive markets, but cannot afford to lose sight of the occasional need for near-term financial sacrifice out of moral obligation.

Churchill—as good a scholar of the American character as anyone this side of de Tocqueville—understood this better than most. Without question, he understood and was able to communicate the need for self-sacrifice in times of crisis. But at the same time, he never lost sight of the power—and consequences—of competitive markets. Recall his observation that “the inherent vice of capitalism is its unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is its equal sharing of miseries.” Truly competitive markets remain the greatest engine we have for growth in human welfare, and they are fueled by their ability to provide unequal blessings. But not all markets are competitive, and not all moral obligations have dollar-denominated surrogates. Capitalism is necessary, but not sufficient.

The paradigm we need is something a bit more. We need to preserve, protect, and advance a political and business climate that provides all of us—including those not yet born—with equal opportunities to participate in a system that unequally allocates its blessings. That requires a change in the way we think about politics, business, and even morals. When the left argues for equal distribution and the right argues for unequal access, our reserve margin erodes. When business leaders absolve themselves of moral responsibility, it erodes further. When the moral stature of civic leaders is compromised if they are “tainted” by any past evidence of profit-seeking behavior, it erodes further still. All of these actions—ubiquitous as they are—focus attention on a false conflict and detract our attention from the critical issues at hand.

Today, we remember the “greatest generation” not for the returns they earned on their investments, but for the dividends they left behind. We need to hold ourselves to the same standard.

 

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