Bursting Biofuels' Bubble

Interest is rising regarding climate change and energy security, but the true extent and nature of the Earth's environmental problems are not being recognized. Proposed solutions are often inadequate, such as the idea that hybrid cars can appreciably make the world's car culture sustainable. In the case of recently much hyped biofuels, the impacts upon the environment caused by further industrial resource intensive agriculture makes the solution equally bad if not worse than the problem.
A large scale embrace of industrial biofuel will further harm prospects for global ecological sustainability.

One Planet Many People

The dramatic and, in some cases, damaging environmental changes sweeping planet Earth are brought into sharp focus in a new atlas launched to mark World Environment Day (WED).

"One Planet Many People" Atlas was launched last year to mark World Environment Day 2005.

Produced by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), One Planet Many People: Atlas of our Changing Environment compares and contrasts spectacular satellite images of the past few decades with contemporary ones, some of which have never been seen before.

WARTIME MOBILIZATION TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT AND CIVILIZATION

Lester R. Brown

Since the first Earth Day 36 years ago, we have won many environmental battles but we are losing the war. Our early twenty-first century civilization is on an economic path that is destroying and disrupting the natural systems on which it depends. We are consuming renewable resources faster than they can regenerate. Forests are shrinking, grasslands are deteriorating, soils are eroding, water tables are falling, and fisheries are collapsing.

We are using up oil at a pace that leaves little time to plan beyond peak oil. And we are discharging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere faster than nature can absorb them. As a result, the earth’s temperature is rising, ice sheets are melting, and the sea is rising.

Our twenty-first century civilization is not the first to move onto an economic path that was environmentally unsustainable. Many earlier civilizations also found themselves in environmental trouble. As Jared Diamond notes in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, some were able to change course and avoid economic decline. Others were not. We study the archeological sites of the Sumerians, Mayans, Easter Islanders, and other early civilizations that were not able to make the needed adjustments in time.

Our future also depends on changing course, on shifting from Plan A, business as usual, to Plan B, restructuring the global economy. Sustaining progress depends on shifting from a fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy to a renewable-energy-based, diversified-transport, reuse/recycle economy.

The good news is that we have the technologies needed to build the new economy. We can see the Plan B economy emerging in the wind farms of western Europe, the solar rooftops of Japan, the growing fleet of gas-electric hybrid cars in the United States, the reforested mountains of South Korea, and the bicycle friendly streets of Amsterdam.

The bad news is that we do not have much time. As we contemplate the rapid restructuring needed, it is both instructive and encouraging to look at the U.S. restructuring for World War II. Initially, the United States resisted involvement in the war and responded only after it was directly attacked at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. But respond it did. After an all-out commitment, the U.S. engagement helped turn the tide, leading the Allied Forces to victory within three-and-a-half years.

In his State of the Union address on January 6, 1942, one month after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt announced the country’s arms production goals. The United States, he said, was planning to produce 45,000 tanks, 60,000 planes, 20,000 anti-aircraft guns, and 6 million tons of merchant shipping.

No one had ever seen such huge arms production numbers. But Roosevelt and his colleagues realized that the largest concentration of industrial power in the world at that time was in the U.S. automobile industry. Even during the Depression, the United States was producing 3 million cars a year.

After his State of the Union address, Roosevelt met with automobile industry leaders and told them that the country would rely heavily on them to reach these arms production goals. Initially they wanted to continue making cars and simply add on the production of armaments. What they did not yet know was that the sale of private automobiles would soon be banned. From the beginning of April 1942 through the end of 1944, nearly three years, there were essentially no cars produced in the United States.

In addition to a ban on the production and sale of cars for private use, residential and highway construction was halted, and driving for pleasure was banned. A rationing program was also introduced. Strategic goods—including tires, gasoline, fuel oil, and sugar—were rationed beginning in 1942. Cutting back on consumption of these goods freed up material resources to support the war effort.

The year 1942 witnessed the greatest expansion of industrial output in the nation’s history—all for military use. Wartime aircraft needs were enormous. They included not only fighters, bombers, and reconnaissance planes, but also the troop and cargo transports needed to fight a war on two distant fronts. From the beginning of 1942 through 1944, the United States far exceeded the initial goal of 60,000 planes, turning out 229,600 aircraft, a fleet so vast it is hard even today to visualize it. Equally impressive, by the end of the war more than 5,000 ships were added to the 1,000 or so that made up the American Merchant Fleet in 1939.

In her book No Ordinary Time, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes how various firms converted to wartime production. A sparkplug factory was among the first to switch to the production of machine guns. Soon a manufacturer of stoves was producing lifeboats. A merry-go-round factory was making gun mounts; a toy company was turning out compasses; a corset manufacturer was producing grenade belts; and a pinball machine plant began to make armor-piercing shells.

In retrospect, the speed of this conversion from a peacetime to a wartime economy is stunning. The harnessing of U.S. industrial power tipped the scales decisively toward the Allied Forces, reversing the tide of war.
Germany and Japan, already fully extended, could not counter this effort.
Winston Churchill often quoted his foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey:
"The United States is like a giant boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate."

This mobilization of resources within a matter of months demonstrates that a country and, indeed, the world can restructure the economy quickly if it is convinced of the need to do so. In this mobilization, the scarcest resource of all is time. With climate change, for example, we are fast approaching the point of no return. The temptation is to reset the clock, but we cannot. Nature is the timekeeper.

The question facing governments is whether they can respond quickly enough to prevent threats from becoming catastrophes. The world has precious little experience in responding to aquifer depletion, rising temperatures, expanding deserts, melting polar ice caps, and a shrinking oil supply.

These trends are fully challenging the capacity of our political institutions and leaders. In times of crisis, societies sometimes have a Nero as a leader and sometimes a Churchill.
Leadership, like time, is a scarce resource. History judges political leaders by whether or not they respond to the great issues of their time.

For today’s leaders, that issue is how to move the global economy onto an environmentally sound path. We need a national political leader to step forward, an environmental Churchill, to rally the world around this effort.

World on Fire

Sarah McLachlan’s poignant song and powerful video for ‘World on Fire’ made an artistic statement and benefited the less-fortunate.

Sarah took the production costs for her video and donated them to worthy causes all around the world, choosing to simply play her guitar and utilize her time on air to showcase how the production money could be spent on charity instead of on a music video.
In all, the video donated $148,270, that would have otherwise been spent on the video’s production, to causes like Comic Relief, CARE USA, Film Aid, and Heifer International.

No matter what you think of her music, the message is still very sobering stuff.
"The more we take, the less we become."

Planet under Stress

We are a successful breed. Our advance from our hominid origins has brought us near-dominance of the world, and a rapidly accelerating understanding of it.

Scientists now say we are in a new stage of the Earth's history, the Anthropocene Epoch, when we ourselves have become the globe's principal force.

But several eminent scientists are concerned that we have become too successful - that the unprecedented human pressure on the Earth's ecosystems threatens our future as a species.
We confront problems more intractable than any previous generation, some of them at the moment apparently insoluble.

There are six areas where most experts agree that a crisis is brewing:

Food: An estimated 1 in 6 people suffer from hunger and malnutrition while attempts to grow food are damaging swathes of productive land.

Water: By 2025, two-thirds of the world's people are likely to be living in areas of acute water stress.

Energy: Oil production could peak and supplies start to decline by 2010.

Climate change: The world's greatest environmental challenge, according to the UK prime minister Tony Blair, with increased storms, floods, drought and species losses predicted.

Biodiversity: Many scientists think the Earth is now entering its sixth great extinction phase.

Pollution: Hazardous chemicals are now found in the bodies of all new-born babies, and an estimated one in four people worldwide are exposed to unhealthy concentrations of air pollutants.

All six problems are linked and urgent, so a list of priorities is little help.
It is pointless to preserve species and habitats, for example, if climate change will destroy them anyway, or to develop novel crops if the water they need is not there.

And underlying all these pressures is a seventh - human population.
There are already more than six billion of us, and on present trends the UN says we shall probably number about 8.9 billion by 2050.

Living within the planet's means need not condemn us to giving up what we now assume we need for a full life, just to sharing it.

The challenge we face is not about feeling guilty for our consumption or virtuous for being "green" - it is about the growing recognition that, as the human race, we stand or fall together.

The meaningless ritual of recycling

Is recycling an essential tool in the armoury of a responsible citizen to reduce the pressure on our ailing planet? Or, as Timothy Cooper argues in this week's Green Room, is it a meaningless ritual that fails to get to grips with the real problems of copious consumption?

"What the revival of recycling has really done, like the myth of "ethical consumerism", is to give the impression that the environmental crisis presented by global capitalism can be indefinitely delayed if only we all do our bit."

"It places the blame for environmental problems not on those who make the profits, but on a faceless mass of "consumers". "

"It prevents us asking the important question of capitalism: how much longer can this go on, and if it is to end then how?"

In Greed we Trust

John F Schumaker takes on the philosophers of greed

CHINESE philosopher Lao Tzu wrote 2,500 years ago: ‘There is no calamity greater than lavish desires, no greater guilt than discontentment and no greater disaster than greed.’ If he’s right, we’ve concocted a mighty sick world for ourselves. The infamous ‘greedy Eighties’ turned out to be a mere dress rehearsal for one of the most spectacular greed surges in history, with jaw-dropping degrees of stockmarket folly, corporate skulduggery, decadence, excess and high-octane narcissism. But, just as with the ‘lessons of the Eighties’, the ‘lessons of the late Nineties’ fall on deaf ears. The overriding lesson seems to be that greed is sweet for the economy.

As human beings continue to be reshaped by consumer culture into restless, dissatisfied, and all-desiring economic pawns, greed is being redefined as a virtue and a legitimate guiding principle for economic prosperity and general happiness. In the process, it is steadily eating away at the cornerstones of civilized society and undermining the visions, values and collective aspirations that made us strong.

However in his essay ‘The Virtue of Greed’, Walter Williams, an economics professor at George Mason University, maintains that without greed, our current economic and social structures would implode. He echoes the view of many economists in saying ‘greed produces preferable economic outcomes most times and under most conditions’. Many economic rationalists agree that greed’s proven superiority as the psychological launchpad for economic activity is due to its being the only consistent human motivation. Most alternatives have revolved around altruism, and failed. Even the respected economist Lester Thurlow, in an essay entitled ‘Market Crash Born of Greed’, holds that ‘altruism does not seem to be congruent with the way human beings are constructed. No one has been able to construct a society where communal altruism dominates individual greed.’

When we salute all-consuming America as the standout ‘growth engine’ of the world, we are in many ways paying tribute to the economic wonders of greed. William Dodson’s essay ‘A Culture of Greed’ chronicles America’s pre-eminence as a greed economy. He writes that the US enjoys a relative absence of constraints, including tax and labour constraints that would otherwise burden corporations with a sense of social responsibility, plus various system advantages and historical traditions, that together allow greed to flourish and be milked for purposes of profit and growth.

Jay Phelan, an economist, biologist, and co-author of Mean Genes, feels that greed could be our ultimate undoing as a species. Yet he theorizes that evolution programmed us to be greedy since greed locks us into discontent, which in turn keeps us motivated and itchy for change. In the past at least, this favoured survival. Conversely, he believes, it would be disastrous if humans lacked greed to the extent that they could achieve a genuine state of happiness or contentment. In Phelan’s view, this is because happy people tend not to do much, or crave much – poison for a modern consumer economy.

Recent years have seen the publication of a wide range of studies casting doubt on whether economic models aimed at increasing personal wealth and consumption are actually conducive to human happiness. In fact, the large-scale General Survey of the United States found that, from the early 1970s to the late 1990s, the percentage of people who are ‘very happy’ actually dropped from 34 per cent to 30 per cent, despite higher incomes, more possessions and improved living standards.

Such findings are being hailed by social critics as proof that the greed economy is toxic to well-being, and that it is hastening our slide into a collective state of ‘unhappy consciousness’, as sociologists call it. But they may be missing the main point if, indeed, greed and unhappiness are the fire in the belly of a consumer economy. There is little doubt that the cultural sanctification of greed is creating a deep existential void that cannot be filled – whatever the degree of material indulgence, personal achievement or private gratification. Despite that, this ‘Empty Self’ of modern life, with its insatiability and alienation, may actually be what is necessary to power greed economics.

The eminent sociologist Zygmunt Bauman writes in an insightful essay, ‘The Self in a Consumer Society’, that greed itself is changing in order to better serve consumer capitalism. In the past, says Bauman, greed was not constant because people’s desires were still attached to needs and objects, as well as a credible social world, which meant they tended to pause from time to time in satisfaction or reflection. Over time, however, consumer culture has upped ‘consumptive capacity’ by honing its members to be immune to satisfaction, and thus immediately ready to desire the next thing that comes along. Of this, Bauman says that desire no longer desires satisfaction. In the modern age, ‘desire desires desire’, which is the basis for our new ‘constant greed’.

Research is starting to show that we have come to see ourselves as incorrigibly greedy by nature. According to one survey, nearly 90 per cent of people agree with the statement ‘Humans always want more, it is part of human nature’. But in truth, a society’s culture determines the extent to which our propensity for greed is activated or suppressed.

Judith Ann Johnson’s groundbreaking 1999 doctoral dissertation drew the connections between maximal greed and the cultural combination of capitalism, materialism, hyper-competition and discrimination. It is the presence of all these factors that makes greed what she calls an overarching ‘map of Western consciousness’.

Another of Johnson’s key findings is that greed operates best at very low levels of wisdom, awareness and understanding. It may be that the relentless dumbing down of consumer society is a valuable cultural strategy that paves the way to ever more efficient greed economics.

One specific way that greed sparks the modern economy is by suppressing savings rates via unending craving for all things consumable, which translates into frivolous spending and a hearty appetite for credit. There is an economic formula, made famous by financial legend and greed guru Leon Levy, that states: ‘For every 1 per cent rise in savings, corporate profits fall by 11 per cent.’ This means, for example, if greed-inspired overspending in the US would ease to the extent that savings rose to a modest 5 per cent from the current subzero mark, corporate profits would fall by 50 per cent or more.

Greed is the backbone of the prevailing ‘philosophy of more’ that supports the profitable ‘big is beautiful’ trend (as with ‘mini-mansions’, four-wheel drive SUVs, and so on) as well as the worldwide ‘investment-driven’ property boom/ bubble. The gluttonous aspect of greed-mindedness carries further short-term advantages by way of increased tendencies toward overconsumption, waste, premature disposal and replacement, needless upgrading and general disregard for conservation.

Greed drives entrepreneurial investment. It also facilitates the manufacture and commercial exploitation of false needs. It is no wonder that greed enthusiasts insist that nothing can beat greed when it comes to the economy, and that we should not give up on it as the epicentre of economic and social life, or fixate on burst stock-market bubbles, or sticky- fingered Enrons and Worldcoms.

Peter Catsimpiris, co-founder of the pro-capitalist Laissez Faire League, even scolds us in his essay ‘In Defense of Greed’ for stunting our children’s greed potential with commands such as ‘Give some to the other children’. To unleash the power of greed, he says, we should teach them that greed is the great hope of humanity from which can spring boundless prosperity, progress and innovation.

But others point out how greed, and its ‘dying with the most toys’ cultural hero system, is infusing children around the globe with selfdestructive degrees of materialism, avarice and self-preoccupation. The commercialization of childhood is being led by greedy corporations that put profits before social responsibility and children’s health. Over the past two decades, for example, aggressive advertising by the soft-drink industry has seen high-sugar soft-drink consumption double in children aged 6 to 11, a major contributor to the worsening epidemic of childhood obesity and diabetes. Today, with greed still their main moral compass, these companies market an ever-expanding array of caffeinated drinks to children that have health experts worrying about a new wave of youth addiction.

The globalization of greed is being facilitated by agencies such as the World Trade Organization, whose mission it is to eliminate obstacles to the proliferation of transnational corporate activity, but which in effect merely pumps up corporate profit sheets at the expense of workers’ rights, local environments and communities.

The notion that individual greed can serve the common good has wormed its way into political philosophies, even some with long-standing socialistic leanings. The ultimate expression of this illogic can be seen in the current US administration of George W Bush, which pins most of its hopes on a government-by-greed strategy. But, as antigreed psychologist Julian Edney argues, there is a fundamental flaw in this method as evidenced most conspicuously in the ever-widening gap between rich and poor: ‘Greed demolishes equity. Simply, you cannot have both unrestrained greed and equality.’

According to Edney, the celebration of greed has spawned a ‘schizophrenic haze’ that numbs society to the tragic and dangerous consequences of the present ‘apartheid economy’. In the end, unchecked greed erodes freedom, undermines the social fabric and is an undemocratic force.

More and more mental-health professionals are saying that greed is not nearly as good for people as it is for economies, with some warning that greed is beginning to overwhelm conscience, reason, compassion, love, family bonds and community. Moreover, existing levels of constant greed are causing clinical depression and despair in many people.

The term ‘pleonexia’ is being used to diagnose pathological greed that can contribute to a host of ills, including stress, burnout, gambling addictions, compulsive shopping, ‘affluenza’ and loss of moral grounding.

American psychologist and greed treatment specialist David Farrugia, sees greed as a mistaken, empty and shortsighted goal that contains many seeds of destruction, in particular those that destroy families and marriages. Beyond that, in his article ‘Selfishness, Greed, and Counseling’, a chronic orientation toward greed has been shown to result in inflexibility, anxiety and diminished reality testing, all of which tarnish a person’s overall experience of life.

Extremes of greed may even make a greed economy sick. For instance, Leon Levy feels that the greed factor in the US has actually gone too far in subduing savings and raising debt, and that consumption and the economy generally will be seriously hampered for some time to come.

Unchecked greed can also be so harmful to the environment that it comes back to haunt the economy. In fact, the single largest hitch with greed culture and greed economics is the long-term crushing effects these have on the planet. That is a monumental problem that none of today’s greed enthusiasts have been able to solve.

John F Schumaker is an American-born clinical psychologist now living in Christchurch, New Zealand. His latest book is The Age of Insanity.

Published in New Internationalist - Issue 369 - July 2004

Climate Crisis Coalition

The Climate Crisis Coalition seeks to broaden the circle of individuals, organizations and constituencies engaged in the global warming issue, to link it with other issues and to provide a structure to forge a common agenda and advance action plans with a united front.

Spinning Global Warming

We are Earth scientists. We are not part of a vast conspiracy to perpetrate a hoax, nor are we crowd-following herd animals. We are concerned about the world we are leaving to our children. We have not asked James Hansen, but we would venture a guess that his motives are similar. As scientists we have a duty to speak out when our findings strongly suggest that a dangerous and harmful development is underway - just like someone who sees smoke billowing out of a house has a duty to call the fire brigade.

As scientists we are of course not above criticism. The public, or the fire brigade, is very welcome to ask critical questions. What exactly do you see - is it just smoke, or do you see flames? How much smoke? Are you sure you're not exaggerating this? Could there be some other explanation? Readers of this site know that we are very happy to discuss every piece of evidence publically, critically and in great detail - that's what this site is for.

World's forests continue to shrink

Eco-Economy Indicators are the twelve trends the Earth Policy Institute tracks to measure progress in building an eco-economy. Forest cover is one of the best single indicators of changing land use.

Elizabeth Mygatt

A healthy planet needs healthy forests. Thriving forests regulate the water cycle and stabilize soils. Forests also help moderate climate by soaking up and storing carbon dioxide. In addition to these ecosystem services, forests provide habitat for diverse flora and fauna, offer cultural, spiritual, and recreational opportunities, and provide a variety of food, medicines, and wood.

Nearly 4 billion hectares of forest cover the earth’s surface, roughly 30 percent of its total land area. Though extensive, the world’s forests have shrunk by some 40 percent since agriculture began 11,000 years ago. Three quarters of this loss occurred in the last two centuries as land was cleared to make way for farms and to meet demand for wood.

Over the last five years, the world suffered a net loss of some 37 million hectares (91 million acres) of forest, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization…

Earth Policy Institute Resources on FORESTS

60 seconds...

"Planet Earth is 4.6 billion years old. If we scale this inconceivably vast time span down to a more manageable 46 years, then modern man has been around for four hours, and the Industrial Revolution began a minute ago. During those 60 seconds of biological time, man has multiplied his numbers to plague proportions, ransacked the planet for fuels and raw materials, and caused the extinction of countless species of animals and plants".
Jonathon Porritt

Nuclear Japan

JAPAN relies on nuclear power for nearly a third of its electricity, and a lack of local sources of energy, coupled with a national commitment to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, imply that this figure will have to rise to 40% over the next few years. But deep suspicion of nuclear energy and its regulation is not helping. Local opposition has, since 2003, forced three utilities to shelve plans for new nuclear plants. Now, on March 24th, a court ordered the newest and biggest of the country's 55 reactors, at the Shika plant in western Japan, to stop operations, barely a week after it had come onstream. The court upheld a case brought by residents who argued that the reactor's design took too little account of the risk of big earthquakes. The power utility plans to appeal.

About a fifth of the world's nuclear reactors sit in what are reckoned areas of “significant” seismic activity; in Japan, make that 100%. To date, the performance of Japan's nuclear plants has been exemplary during earthquakes; they have either sailed through unruffled, or reactors have shut down automatically. Nonetheless, human errors and cover-ups have generated unease. An accident in 1995 has kept one reactor closed to this day. In 1999, at a facility outside Tokyo, workers mixed enriched uranium by hand to save time, and caused a runaway chain reaction, killing two workers and irradiating hundreds of villagers. In 2002, details of falsified inspection and repair reports forced the temporary closure of 17 plants. And in 2004, steam from a broken pipe that had not been inspected for two decades killed five workers in western Japan.

Still, Japan's nuclear programme is not completely off the rails. This week the governor of Aomori prefecture gave his blessing to Japan's first commercial nuclear-fuel reprocessing plant. Given its distance from the country's industrial areas, northern Japan does not lightly turn away business—even of the nuclear sort.

Nuclear Power

Greenpeace calls the Summit for Life on Earth a failure

WTO trade liberalization and lack of funding hijacked biodiversity.

As the two-week long world summit on biodiversity drew to a close, Greenpeace described the outcome as major failure - a missed opportunity to stop the global loss of life in the world's forests and oceans.

"The Convention on Biological Diversity is like a ship drifting without a captain to steer it," said Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace Political Advisor on Forests. "The negotiations have failed to chart a course to stop biopiracy, provide additional financing for protected areas, establish marine reserves on the high seas and to ban illegal logging and trade."

Human Development Trends 2005 - UNDP

Gapminder produce an interactive presentation for the "Human Development Report 2005" by UNDP.

Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development. This is done in collaboration with universities, UN organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations. Gapminder is a Foundation registered at Stockholm county administration board (Länstyrelsen) (reg. nr. 802424-7721). It was founded by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on 25 February 2005, in Stockholm.

Gapminder Foundation will advance software development that have been done earlier by the non-profit company Gapminder Ltd. Funding has been and is mainly by grants from Sida for the Trendalyzer project. Being a producer of global public goods Gapminder benefit from free and creative inputs from pilot-testers and other end-users in many institutions and organisations.