It's Happening NOW
News from Radio Ecoshock.
Except for George Bush, most world leaders finally admit the climate is changing. But they say our problems are still off in the future. Take this statement by the Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell:
"I think it could be painted as alarming, but the reality is these changes will happen over time, they're e talking about a thirty to fifty year time span..."
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. Climate change is here now. Let's look at some recent news stories.
On November 8th, in Canada, the Vancouver Sun's headline blares "Pine Beetle Crosses Rockies." Just a local bug problem? Hardly. They say:
"The mountain pine beetle has crossed the Rocky Mountains and is poised to attack the jack pine in Canada's vast boreal forest..."
This beetle crawl below the bark of pine trees, causing damage that kills 80% of the pines. Whole vast valleys and ridges of lodge pole pine trees in British Columbia, the source of one third of wood to America, have turned red. Not just in the fall. These are evergreens, they are red, and they are dead. So far, there are 10 million hectares of infested pines in the Province. The damage is visible from space. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of timber is rotting on the stump. No one has the capacity to harvest that much wood. The pines are dying.
Now foresters and logging companies are trying to stop the beetle from heading south, into the United States, and East, into the almost endless pine forests across the whole north of Canada. Until a few years ago, the beetle was limited by nature. A few weeks of cold, around 40 degrees below zero, killed the beetles off. But now, as newspapers and government officials freely admit, global warming has ended the patterns of extreme cold in Canada's north. The beetle has free range, because climate change is here now, not thirty years in the future.
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Here is another casualty of climate shift. Believe it or not, parts of the Amazon rainforest are suffering from drought. Pictures show canoes grounded in dried out river beds. More than 100 towns that depend on river transport have been completely cut off. They are running out of drinking water, food, and medical supplies. Water levels in the Amazon River are at record lows, since records have been kept. One of its large tributaries, the Rio Negro, has dropped 12 meters since July.
Wildfires are breaking out in the dried out rainforest. Carlos Rittl, a Greenpeace forest campaigner in Brazil says:
"The Amazon is caught between these two destructive forces, and their combined effects threaten to flip its ecosystems from forest to savannah."
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And finally, Mr. Environment Minister, the United Nations warns that the world's fresh water lakes are evaporating. An October 31st article in the Financial Times, by Fiona Harvey, says that "lakes around the world are shrinking and becoming less productive because of climate change, pollution, poor irrigation practices and neglect."
The UN Environment Program report was released by executive director Klaus Topfer, who said:
"Economically, lakes are of huge importance. I hope that [the satellite images] will ring a warning around the world that, if we are to overcome poverty and meet internationally agreed development goals by 2015, the sustainable management of Africa's lakes must be part of the equation. Otherwise we face increasing tensions and instability as rising populations compete for life's most precious of resources."
We already know that tropical countries, where most of the poorest masses of human live, will be particularly hard hit by climate change. Satellite images show that African lakes and rivers have changed significantly, during the last two decades. For example, Lake Chad has shrunk by almost 90 percent. And the biggest fresh water lake on the continent, Lake Victoria, is now three feet, a meter, lower than it was in the 1990's. The country of Niger has lost at least 80 percent of its freshwater wetlands in just the last 20 years. Rainfall, and river flows, are drying out in central African countries like Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali, and Togo - just as population is booming. Expect suffering, international aid appeals, and localized water wars. And the scientists for the United Nations say that climate change is a driving factor in the growing fresh water crisis, across the globe.
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Where is the smoggiest city in the world, now that Mexico City air is improving? The results are in - the new title goes to China's capital, Beijing. According to the Guardian newspaper, October 31st, satellite data shows Beijing and its surroundings have the highest level of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant that causes fatal damage to human lungs. Dirty air is blamed for 400,000 premature deaths - every year!
That figure comes from a new study by the Chinese Academy on Environmental Planning.
While new industry in China's booming economy is a factor, not to mention the country's near total reliance on coal for both power and heavy manufacturing - the biggest contributor is the boom in car ownership. In just the last five years, Beijing's car population has doubled, to more than two and a half million.
The Guardian says: "China is the world's second-largest producer of greenhouse gases, and the World Bank has warned it is home to 16 of the planet's 20 most air-polluted cities."
European satellites show that air pollution in China has risen 50% over the last ten years. The deputy director of the country's environmental protection agency, Zhang Lijun, warns that air pollution could quadruple within the next 15 years, unless China can control energy use and stop an explosion of car ownership.
There are more than a billion people in China. A third of all city dwellers breath polluted air, and 100 million gasp in air that is rated as "very dangerous."
----------------------
The news from Mother Earth is so disheartening. At times I can hardly stand talking about it. There are so many dimensions we struggle to comprehend. When we cannot process the bad news, we go into Eco-shock.
Remember when good Germans pretended they didn't know the murder of the Jewish people was in full swing. Many were happy just to get nice furniture from the apartments of the magically absent Jews. Others moved into their empty homes. That was the Holocaust.
Now, good people, we are captive agents in the Biocaust, the murder of vast species of other life forms.
This is one of those stories. The Inter Press Service for November 5th says new studies show the world's ocean life is facing unimaginable crisis. So many species are stressed, or extinct, that our ocean world may never recover its rich glory.
Poul Holm, a scientist from the Centre for Maritime and Regional Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, says:
"The oceans are dramatically different than they were 150 years ago," [Back then], "there were many more top predatory fish like tuna, and nearly all fish were much larger... and found over wider areas than today."
Reporting for Tierramerica, Stephen Leahy writes:
"Several hundred historians and marine scientists from around the world have been conducting research for more than five years into what the oceans were like 150, and even 300 years ago. They presented their findings last week at the History of Marine Animal Populations "Oceans
Past" Conference in Kolding, Norway.
Historical records revealed for example that the ling cod (Molva molva) of the North Sea had been fished out before 1920, when the decline was previously believed to have started in the 1970s."
Restaurant menus from the 1860's showed that lobsters were seldom offered, even though 20 pounders were common then. Now the average lobster harvested is just half a pound. Fishers are going further and further into the deep sea to find them. How long will they last? Like the abalone fish, they may be banned, and still disappear.
As older fisherfolk die off, along with their knowledge of the former rich fisheries, now wiped out, the younger sea harvesters have a completely different picture of what is natural. Humans cannot comprehend the environmental losses in their own lifetimes.
We continue to build ever-more fishing vessels, built on the myth of abundant oceans, while we wipe out more and more species to feed our images of wealth, and a growing human population. Because the environmental devastation happens far out in the ocean, where we cannot see, and because we have no measurements and history, serious and devastating losses continue in the world's seas. But they do not reach the media, the public consciousness, or the ballot box.
Despite electronic fishing techniques, from satellites to sonar, and despite building more and faster boats, the global sea food harvest is falling every year.
The scientist Poul Holm warns: "The demand for fish is well beyond what the oceans can now provide."
-----------
This has been news from Radio Ecoshock.
Tune in to commercial free all environment radio at www.ecoshock.org.
Except for George Bush, most world leaders finally admit the climate is changing. But they say our problems are still off in the future. Take this statement by the Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell:
"I think it could be painted as alarming, but the reality is these changes will happen over time, they're e talking about a thirty to fifty year time span..."
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. Climate change is here now. Let's look at some recent news stories.
On November 8th, in Canada, the Vancouver Sun's headline blares "Pine Beetle Crosses Rockies." Just a local bug problem? Hardly. They say:
"The mountain pine beetle has crossed the Rocky Mountains and is poised to attack the jack pine in Canada's vast boreal forest..."
This beetle crawl below the bark of pine trees, causing damage that kills 80% of the pines. Whole vast valleys and ridges of lodge pole pine trees in British Columbia, the source of one third of wood to America, have turned red. Not just in the fall. These are evergreens, they are red, and they are dead. So far, there are 10 million hectares of infested pines in the Province. The damage is visible from space. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of timber is rotting on the stump. No one has the capacity to harvest that much wood. The pines are dying.
Now foresters and logging companies are trying to stop the beetle from heading south, into the United States, and East, into the almost endless pine forests across the whole north of Canada. Until a few years ago, the beetle was limited by nature. A few weeks of cold, around 40 degrees below zero, killed the beetles off. But now, as newspapers and government officials freely admit, global warming has ended the patterns of extreme cold in Canada's north. The beetle has free range, because climate change is here now, not thirty years in the future.
-------
Here is another casualty of climate shift. Believe it or not, parts of the Amazon rainforest are suffering from drought. Pictures show canoes grounded in dried out river beds. More than 100 towns that depend on river transport have been completely cut off. They are running out of drinking water, food, and medical supplies. Water levels in the Amazon River are at record lows, since records have been kept. One of its large tributaries, the Rio Negro, has dropped 12 meters since July.
Wildfires are breaking out in the dried out rainforest. Carlos Rittl, a Greenpeace forest campaigner in Brazil says:
"The Amazon is caught between these two destructive forces, and their combined effects threaten to flip its ecosystems from forest to savannah."
-------------
And finally, Mr. Environment Minister, the United Nations warns that the world's fresh water lakes are evaporating. An October 31st article in the Financial Times, by Fiona Harvey, says that "lakes around the world are shrinking and becoming less productive because of climate change, pollution, poor irrigation practices and neglect."
The UN Environment Program report was released by executive director Klaus Topfer, who said:
"Economically, lakes are of huge importance. I hope that [the satellite images] will ring a warning around the world that, if we are to overcome poverty and meet internationally agreed development goals by 2015, the sustainable management of Africa's lakes must be part of the equation. Otherwise we face increasing tensions and instability as rising populations compete for life's most precious of resources."
We already know that tropical countries, where most of the poorest masses of human live, will be particularly hard hit by climate change. Satellite images show that African lakes and rivers have changed significantly, during the last two decades. For example, Lake Chad has shrunk by almost 90 percent. And the biggest fresh water lake on the continent, Lake Victoria, is now three feet, a meter, lower than it was in the 1990's. The country of Niger has lost at least 80 percent of its freshwater wetlands in just the last 20 years. Rainfall, and river flows, are drying out in central African countries like Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali, and Togo - just as population is booming. Expect suffering, international aid appeals, and localized water wars. And the scientists for the United Nations say that climate change is a driving factor in the growing fresh water crisis, across the globe.
-----------
Where is the smoggiest city in the world, now that Mexico City air is improving? The results are in - the new title goes to China's capital, Beijing. According to the Guardian newspaper, October 31st, satellite data shows Beijing and its surroundings have the highest level of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant that causes fatal damage to human lungs. Dirty air is blamed for 400,000 premature deaths - every year!
That figure comes from a new study by the Chinese Academy on Environmental Planning.
While new industry in China's booming economy is a factor, not to mention the country's near total reliance on coal for both power and heavy manufacturing - the biggest contributor is the boom in car ownership. In just the last five years, Beijing's car population has doubled, to more than two and a half million.
The Guardian says: "China is the world's second-largest producer of greenhouse gases, and the World Bank has warned it is home to 16 of the planet's 20 most air-polluted cities."
European satellites show that air pollution in China has risen 50% over the last ten years. The deputy director of the country's environmental protection agency, Zhang Lijun, warns that air pollution could quadruple within the next 15 years, unless China can control energy use and stop an explosion of car ownership.
There are more than a billion people in China. A third of all city dwellers breath polluted air, and 100 million gasp in air that is rated as "very dangerous."
----------------------
The news from Mother Earth is so disheartening. At times I can hardly stand talking about it. There are so many dimensions we struggle to comprehend. When we cannot process the bad news, we go into Eco-shock.
Remember when good Germans pretended they didn't know the murder of the Jewish people was in full swing. Many were happy just to get nice furniture from the apartments of the magically absent Jews. Others moved into their empty homes. That was the Holocaust.
Now, good people, we are captive agents in the Biocaust, the murder of vast species of other life forms.
This is one of those stories. The Inter Press Service for November 5th says new studies show the world's ocean life is facing unimaginable crisis. So many species are stressed, or extinct, that our ocean world may never recover its rich glory.
Poul Holm, a scientist from the Centre for Maritime and Regional Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, says:
"The oceans are dramatically different than they were 150 years ago," [Back then], "there were many more top predatory fish like tuna, and nearly all fish were much larger... and found over wider areas than today."
Reporting for Tierramerica, Stephen Leahy writes:
"Several hundred historians and marine scientists from around the world have been conducting research for more than five years into what the oceans were like 150, and even 300 years ago. They presented their findings last week at the History of Marine Animal Populations "Oceans
Past" Conference in Kolding, Norway.
Historical records revealed for example that the ling cod (Molva molva) of the North Sea had been fished out before 1920, when the decline was previously believed to have started in the 1970s."
Restaurant menus from the 1860's showed that lobsters were seldom offered, even though 20 pounders were common then. Now the average lobster harvested is just half a pound. Fishers are going further and further into the deep sea to find them. How long will they last? Like the abalone fish, they may be banned, and still disappear.
As older fisherfolk die off, along with their knowledge of the former rich fisheries, now wiped out, the younger sea harvesters have a completely different picture of what is natural. Humans cannot comprehend the environmental losses in their own lifetimes.
We continue to build ever-more fishing vessels, built on the myth of abundant oceans, while we wipe out more and more species to feed our images of wealth, and a growing human population. Because the environmental devastation happens far out in the ocean, where we cannot see, and because we have no measurements and history, serious and devastating losses continue in the world's seas. But they do not reach the media, the public consciousness, or the ballot box.
Despite electronic fishing techniques, from satellites to sonar, and despite building more and faster boats, the global sea food harvest is falling every year.
The scientist Poul Holm warns: "The demand for fish is well beyond what the oceans can now provide."
-----------
This has been news from Radio Ecoshock.
Tune in to commercial free all environment radio at www.ecoshock.org.
