A real green revolution is needed – Achim Steiner of UNEP

Starving poor led food riots in at least 33 countries in 2008; the under-funded FAO warns they are happening again this year.

The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) Nairobi meeting from 16-20 February aims at solving world environmental, financial, food and energy crises by creating a Green Economy.

“We need a Green Revolution in a Green Economy but one with a capital G”, says UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. “We need to deal with not only the way the world produces food but the way it is distributed, sold and consumed, and we need a revolution that can boost yields by working with rather than against nature. Over half of the food produced today is lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain. There is evidence within the report that the world could feed the entire projected population growth alone by becoming more efficient while also ensuring the survival of wild animals, birds and fish on this planet. Simply ratcheting up the fertilizer and pesticide-led production methods of the 20th Century is unlikely to address the challenge. It will increasingly undermine the critical natural inputs and nature-based services for agriculture such as healthy and productive soils, the water and nutrient recycling of forests, and pollinators such as bees and bats.”

UNEP's just-released report The Environmental Food Crisis: The environment’s role in averting future food crises states:

• food prices may increase by 30-50 per cent within the next few decades, due to drought, biofuels, high oil prices, low grain stocks and commodity speculation
• the food supply of the poor has already been hit by rich countries' overfishing and ethanol subsidies
• global warming threatens 25% of world food production
• meat consumption is rising rapidly, depleting grain stocks, deforesting the tropics, and chasing the poor off the land
• “green” biofuels should be produced from food wastes, switchgrass, straw and even nutshells
• 30 million tonnes of “trash fish” and “bycatch” are dumped annually. These could be used to increase fish farming and aquaculture production, without increasing pressure on wild fish stocks.

Climate change is a key threat to feeding earth's 9 billion people by 2050 -- yet another reason, says UNEP, that “Governments at the UNFCCC negotiation in Copenhagen in 300 days’ time must agree on a deep and decisive new global deal.” UNEP proposes mechanisms to

• control global food prices
• set up an international micro-finance fund for small-scale farmer productivity in developing countries.
• end rich counties' agricultural subsidies and dumping
• develop second generation biofuels based on wastes rather than on primary crops
• mitigation measures to adapt to extreme rainfall and drought on continents such as Africa
• aid to diversified and organic farming [see below - Ed.]
• enhance the “nature-based” inputs and “environmental services”: natural pollinators, water supplies, genetic diversity.

Organic farm in Africa: courtesy of Urban Sprout blog.

UNEP cites wasteful business-as-usual practices:

• US losses and food waste are estimated at 40-50%
• US markets are not working: while food banks go empty, ~25% of freshfruits and vegetables are lost between the field and the table
• food waste is half of Australia landfill
• 30% of food purchased in the UK is not eaten
• 30% of fish landed in Africa is lost, discarded, or spoiled
• similar losses elsewhere in developing countries
• 20-40% of the potential harvest in developing countries is lost to pests and pathogens
• this will increase with global warming
• also, rotting food gives off methane, one of the worst greenhouse gases
• land degradation will reduce African yields by another 1-8 per cent
• need for regional R&D in agriculture: only 13% of global investment is in Africa, versus 33%+ in Latin America and 40%+ in Asia. What should be done? for example, Nigeria is researching use of solar dryers to preserve the onion crop
• a threat to irrigation for 50% of Asia’s cereal production, Himalaya glaciers are receding
  
• water scarcity may reduce future world crop yields by ~12 %
  
• croplands are swallowed up by urban sprawl
• Sub-Saharan Africa population will grow from o.77 to over 1.7 billion by 2050
• the phony “Green Revolution”: artificial fertilizers, pesticides, increased water use and cutting down of forests, will result in massive decline in biodiversity.
• 80 per cent of all endangered species are threatened by agricultural expansion; Europe has lost over 50 per cent of its farmland birds; similar impacts are felt in N America

Organic farming in Africa

A UNEP / UNCTAD study of 114 small-scale farms in 24 African countries found:

• organic farming doubled yields, reaching more than 125% in east Africa
• this outperformed both traditional methods, and chemical-intensive conventional farming
• environmental benefits: improved soil fertility, water retention, drought resistance
• organic markets will continue to grow from $23 billion in 2002 to $70 billion in 2012
• improved local education and community cooperation.

Similar studies have been made by FAO and IAASTD. Here is an example from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia -- TenaKebena video of a small-scale community agriculture and reclamation project.

See also 8 other UNEP videos and graphics on climate change impacts; Sustainable Land Use Forum Jan 2009 in Ethiopia; IDRC study Cities Feeding People (1994) on urban agriculture; City Farmer links; Sidewalk Sprouts blog; FAO – GIEWS Global Information and Early Warning System; Miguel Altieri, Small farms as a planetary ecological asset: five reasons...; corporate funding of African organic farms; previous posts tagged food.
Photo by John Morgan: urban agriculture project in Havana.

World fisheries threatened

map: Worldfish Center
33 of the poorest countries of the world, where fish is a key source of protein, are threatened by climate change, says a study just released by the Worldfish Center. The world’s least developed countries are twice as dependent on fish: they get 27% of protein from lakes, coasts and reefs compared to 13% elsewhere.

Photo: women are half of Africa's fishers: UN Africa Renewal program

Climate change is drying lakes, killing ocean reefs, pushing salt water into freshwater habitats and producing more coastal storms. Over a billion of the hungry poor in Africa, Asia and South America will be affected. The survey of 132 countries says Malawi, Guinea, Senegal, Uganda, Peru, Colombia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan, and Yemen are most at risk. Climate change will be devastating, but without international aid (which has been stingy or nonexistent for decades) they will be unable to cope.

Somalia is an example of the conflict that can result. With government unable to control its waters, unscrupulous international fleets cleaned out its coastal fisheries. Desperate fishermen turned to piracy, attacking and seizing ships, whose ransoms cost millions of dollars. Now piracy has become big business, and will be difficult to eradicate. What will happen when 33 countries start fighting over scarce resources, and their climate refugees search desperately to survive?

Red indicates overfished, yellow fully exploited: FAO graph.

Note: Somalia was overfished by rogue commercial fleets, bankrupting their domestic fishers and encouraging piracy. Similar problems are reported in Senegal and other West African coasts, where half of the EU's fish supply is taken. Tanzania, Somalia, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu are also targeted. The rich are eating up the food of the poor. International regulation of rogue fleets is still being "negotiated" 27 years after the Law of the Sea was agreed. See the FAO list of endangered fish stocks, Wikipedia on IUU (illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing) and Greenpeace IUU Blacklist which states: "International enforcement could shut down this trade. The owners and operators are not impossible to track down. 80 different countries play host to them – including the European Union and Taiwan, Japan, EU member states, Korea, the US, and increasingly China and the Philippines." Panama, Belize and Honduras offer flags of convenience. International financiers of the rogue fleets have yet to be named or held responsible.

See also: Andrew Purvis updates in UK Observer 26 Apr 09 and 27 Apr 09; the World Wildlife Fund, The Coral Triangle and Climate Change: Ecosystems, People and Societies at Risk (May 2009) warns that Asia's coral reefs from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia down to Australia are dying, threatening the food supply of 100 million.

Extreme weather events

The scientific data are clear: the exponential increase of extreme weather events, compared to earthquakes, is due to human-caused climate change -- even after making allowances for improved natural disaster reporting.

graphs courtesy of UNEP / GRID-Arendal

A 2004 study by SwissRE forecast yearly losses due to climate change will soon reach $150 billion. With costs skyrocketing, it should be no surprise that multinational insurance companies are leading the movement to climate change awareness and green capitalism -- or that homeowners at risk of coastal flooding are discovering no company will insure them.

Some examples:

2003 - heatwave in Europe leaves 10,000 dead; record heat in Southern USA

2004 - freak snowstorm in Southern USA

2005 - hurricane Katrina, W. India floods, hottest northern summer ever

2006 - deadly cold across Europe and Russia, killer typhoons and floods in Ethiopia, Pakistan, India, Thailand, N. Korea; heatwave deaths in USA

2007 - killer heatwave in Japan

2008 - California & Australia wildfires, increase in Atlantic hurricanes, Southeast USA drought

2009 - Australia wildfires, N. China drought, floods and snow in southern France, cold wave in Europe

See Wikipedia on extreme weather, UNEP / GRID-Arendal discussion of its costs.

CO2 emissions by country, and per person

The Guardian now has an interactive map (click here) showing CO2 emissions by countries and regions of the world for 2001-2006. Per capita emissions tell a different story:
Source: UNEP-GRID (click graph to enlarge). If the rich countries had the same level as China, greenhouse gases could be cut 30%. Our high-energy lifestyle is driving us to disaster, as Indian and Chinese delegates tried vainly to point out at Poznan. Public opinion is far in advance of governments on this issue, an HSBC survey shows.

See also Carbon Footprint of Nations: Norwegian University of Science and Technology data for emissions by nation and industrial sector.

New Energy Economy Emerging in the United States - Lester Brown

Learning to think about the future poster by Trinifar

Excerpts from Lester Brown's full text at Earth Policy Institute:

"A new US energy economy based on wind, solar, and geothermal energy is emerging at a pace and scale that could not have been imagined a year ago.

"Wind appears destined to become the centerpiece of the new U.S. energy economy, eventually supplying several hundred thousand megawatts of electricity. Texas has overtaken California... [with] nearly 6,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity online and a staggering 39,000 megawatts in the construction and planning stages... (think 45 coal-fired power plants). Other leaders among the 30 states with commercial-scale wind farms are Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, and Colorado. In South Dakota, Clipper Windpower and BP are teaming up to build the 5,050-megawatt Titan wind farm, the world’s largest. Already under development, Titan will generate five times as much electricity as the state’s 780,000 residents currently use [and feed Illinois]. In Wyoming... Philip Anschutz is developing a 2,000-megawatt wind farm, a 900-mile high-voltage transmission line to California [ and another line to] Colorado cities of Fort Collins, Denver, and Colorado Springs. Wind-rich Kansas and Oklahoma are looking to build a transmission line to the U.S. Southeast to export their wealth of cheap wind energy. California is developing a 4,500-megawatt wind farm complex in the Tehachapi Mountains northwest of Los Angeles.... Maine—a wind energy newcomer—is planning to develop 3,000 megawatts of wind-generating capacity, far more than the state’s 1.3 million residents need. Delaware is planning an offshore wind farm of up to 600 megawatts, which could satisfy half of the state’s residential electricity needs. New York State, which has 700 megawatts of wind-generating capacity, plans to add another 8,000 megawatts, with most of the power being generated by winds coming off Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. And soon Oregon will nearly double its wind generating capacity with a 900-megawatt wind farm in the wind-rich Columbia River Gorge.

"Solar power is also expanding at a breakneck pace.... California, with its Million Solar Roofs plan, is far and away the leader. New Jersey is also moving fast, followed by Nevada. The largest U.S. solar cell installation today is a 14-megawatt array at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, but photovoltaic electricity at the commercial level is about to go big time. PG&E has entered into two solar cell power contracts with a combined capacity of 800 megawatts. Together, these plants will cover 12 square miles of desert with solar cells [with] peak output comparable to that of a large coal-fired power plant. Solar power plants are appealing in hot climates because their highest output coincides with the peak demand for air conditioning. The United States has the world’s only large solar thermal complex, a 350-megawatt project completed in 1991, [but] 10 large solar thermal power plants are under construction or in development... Eight of the plants will be built in California, one in Arizona, and one in Florida. Within the next three years, the United States will likely go from 420 megawatts of solar thermal generating capacity to close to 3,500 megawatts—an eightfold jump.

"96 geothermal power plants now under development in twelve western states are expected to double U.S. geothermal generating capacity....

"It is historically rare for so many interests to converge at one time and in one place...

• No one can cut off the supply of wind, solar, or geothermal energy.
  
• It also avoids the price volatility that has plagued oil and natural gas in recent decades... the price is stable since there is no fuel cost.
  
• [It will] dramatically cut carbon emissions, moving us toward climate stability and thus avoiding the most dangerous effects of climate change.
  
• It will staunch the outflow of dollars for oil, keeping that capital at home to invest in the new energy economy, developing national renewable energy resources and creating jobs here.
  

"At a time of economic turmoil and rising joblessness, these new industries can generate thousands of new jobs each week. Not only are the wind, solar, and geothermal industries hiring new workers, they are also generating jobs in construction and in basic supply industries such as steel, aluminum, and silicon manufacturing. To build and operate the new energy economy will require huge numbers of electricians, plumbers, and roofers. It will also employ countless numbers of high-tech professionals such as wind meteorologists, geothermal geologists, and solar engineers.

"To ensure that this shift to renewables continues at a rapid rate, national leadership is needed in one key area—building a strong national grid....

"[We are] now tapping energy sources that can last as long as the earth itself. Oil wells go dry and coal seams run out, but for the first time since the industrial revolution we are investing in energy sources that can last forever. This new energy economy can be our legacy to the next generation."

*****

For more information on Earth Policy Institute’s plan to cut carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020, see Chapters 11-13 in Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (PDF)

The effects of climate change / A son is torn

from The Ecologist (click on image to enlarge)

Recent scientific news: tipping points in CO2-caused ocean acidity in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and South Pacific, impacts on coral reefs and seafood species. UK studies show continuing zooplanckton dieoff. See Wake up, Freak out animation and National Geographic's videos of impacts of 1 to 6 degrees global warming. A major cause: the world will soon have a billion motor vehicles, according to the Wall Street Journal.

A son is torn as GM launches its "grassroots" campaign
Phony grassroots movements created by lobbyists are called astroturf, a form of greenwashing. This open letter to his father, Tom Brewer of GM, by Josh Brewer, first appeared in Huffington Post.

On November 12, Tom Brewer received an "URGENT call to action..." along with all other General Motors employees in the United States from GM North American President Troy Clarke. The return email address was "grassroots@gm.com." The urgent task at hand: Call your members of Congress to request that the American auto industry receive a government "loan" of at least $25 billion.

Employees were then directed to a website through which to take action: http://www.gmfactsandfiction.com/

As a grassroots clean energy advocate and strategic communications professional, it's a type of request I know intimately. I've written and received countless emails just like it. Two this week. Tom, however, has not.

Tom has been an employee of General Motors since he graduated from Evansville University in 1974. At the time, for a Midwestern kid from "stonecutter" Bedford, Indiana, it was kind of like going to work for Google today.

As you can imagine, Tom's seen a lot happen in the energy and auto industries in the last 34 years, but before this year he never considered that his retirement, his health care, and indeed his professional future would be in such dramatic jeopardy. In fact, without ever changing careers, he once worked for the largest and arguably the most influential corporation in the world; now he's getting these emails. He never dreamed that he'd need to be calling his congressmen to save the company to which he's always been loyal, and upon which he and his family's livelihood has depended. I can speak with such certainty about Tom's past because I've known him for 27 of the 34 years he's been with General Motors, and we're very close.

Tom is my dad.

And, Dad, I can't begin to describe how torn I am this week... My friends always called you "Big Tom" because of your powerful build, and if you were "big" to them, you were superhuman to me. Just so you know, no matter what happens in the next few days, you still are...

Today, though, I'm the Internet Director (a brand new type of occupation) for the Energy Action Coalition (a brand new type of organization) and today you're the Planning Administrator of GM Manufacturing Spring Hill in Spring Hill, TN.

Today my organization is calling on me to mobilize hundreds of thousands of young people to fight in Congress and the halls of politics nationwide for the clean energy future that we MUST achieve for the future of our economy and our climate. This week your organization is calling on you to get on the phones with your congressmen to save the 100 year old auto company to whom you've devoted your entire professional life.

In the 27 years we've been a family, our story has never been more important to the country. On the one hand, if we don't bailout your company and the backbone of our economy, it seems we're doomed. On the other, if we don't work now for our future and a transition to a clean energy economy, we're doomed. It's heart wrenching, Dad. I'll go ahead and tell you now that I will help you, but I need you to be willing to help me too. Please hear me out.

My entire conscious life has been directly connected to you, General Motors and the Saturn plant in Spring Hill. The "Saturn" part of our story is especially important because it was a car and an entire company designed in the 1980's in response to Japanese vehicles that were kicking American ass during an energy crisis.

It hits so close to home right now, it hurts.

You took us from Freeland, Michigan to Middle Tennessee in 1988 when "Saturn" was nothing but 3,000 acres of corn field, some office trailers, and a rock quarry. We watched as the grassroots company grew from a trailer park in Spring Hill to an innovative, case-studied, globally known and tremendously respected brand that was actually different.

And it really really was different. Those weren't just commercials. I was there with you. Remember showing me around the facility for the first time? Remember the first Saturn Homecoming? Remember when they installed the pollution scrubbers and I was extra interested?

When the first Saturns rolled off the line in 1991, I don't know of another community of employees and local families in the United States that has ever been so proud. I remember you and mom popping in the video tape - the one of all of the Spring Hill employees and Skip LeFauve - and us watching together on the old brown couch.

It was a different kind of company. It was a different kind of car. It was innovative. And remember a few years later when Saturn became the brand through which the EV1 electric car was leased? The EV1 program put GM far ahead of the curve in the electric car field and promised to usher in a new era of American ingenuity. And remember, Dad, when you brought home an EV1 pre-launch model just as I was learning to drive?

I knew I was experiencing the future. For a teen with car and baseball magazines strewn across his bedroom floor, I beamed and bragged about you and about GM to everyone in town (and in that town it really was everyone) - though I would never admit it to you at the time. But of course as this story goes, the promise of that future ended with lobbyists in California and executives in Houston and Detroit. "Different" died. Those grassroots died.

And, as you and I both know, GM didn't stay ahead of anything - in Spring Hill or anywhere. The last of the GM EV1's were rolled to their "death" in 2005, and last month, you and the former-Saturn Spring Hill plant recently had the best product launch in GM history, which would be amazing ...except that it came with the unveiling of a brand new SUV, the Chevy Traverse.

Similar to when the first Saturns rolled off the assembly line, it's difficult to describe my feelings on this except to say that I'm so proud of you, Dad. Absolutely, yes. But I am furious with General Motors. I "support the troops, not the war."

In manufacturing terms, you and the thousands of GM employees in Spring Hill, TN and around the United States are deserving of heroic praise for your work and performance, doing more with less. In executive terms, Rick Wagoner, Bob Lutz and all the rest in Detroit should be flat out ashamed.

The Traverse is a beautiful car by traditional American auto standards, and GM has certainly spared little of its mind-numbingly waning cash promoting that traditional beauty. This "crossover" (read: glossy covered SUV), however, was born into two abysmal climates - economic and environmental - and even starting to think about any new automotive product in traditional American auto schemes represents gut-level, irresponsible, Bush-ian failure. That any car company in 2008 actually promotes something like 25 mpg (with a tailwind, going downhill) for 100 year old suck-bang-blow technology is an absolute travesty.

That it's coming from General Motors whose very survival depended on game changers and innovation for much longer than the last 24 months, is practically a crime. I know you can't innovate on a dime, Dad, but GM has had decades. The Traverse is like a hipster Tahoe. An oxymoron. Whatever they call it; however they promote it; as pretty as it may be, doing the same-old-thing-but-a-little-better is not innovation. And again, for a company with three million dependents, not innovating is not just wrong for business, it borders on moral corruption.

That's who you and I are supposed to call our Congresspersons for? That's what my grassroots support is supposed to promote? Any new vehicle launch begins years before it hits a dealer lot. I know that as well as anyone. New vehicle launch is the exact job I've watched you do for decades. Unfortunately you don't get to choose what product you produce. Rick and Bob choose that. They chose the Traverse and 100 other products and initiatives this decade, and it's precisely that lack of foresight that is unforgivable. It's precisely for these reasons that I'm inexpressibly torn this week as Congress moves to vote on an auto industry bail out.

And I'm sorry, Dad, I know we talked about this - but a "bail out" is exactly what it is. It's not a loan. "Loans" are something you do in good faith. Like when you bought our home. Remember when you walked into the First Farmers & Merchants Bank in Columbia, TN, looked Jim Cook in the eye, told him what you needed, shook his hand, and he gave it to you because with a look and a handshake he knew you were a man of integrity and character?

If you can honestly tell me that Rick, Bill, and Bob are as deserving as you were - that you would give them a loan on a look and a handshake - I'll call it a loan too.

I can only imagine that a soldier's family feels 100x worse: "Please fund the equipment my father/mom/husband/wife/son/daughter needs to survive... and dear god, please GET US OUT OF THIS MESS!" I know we have to do something, Dad. I do. The last thing I'd ever want is for you and and three million others across this country to lose their jobs. To lose their pride. But I don't just want you to have A job, dad. I want you to have a good job. A job that's part of the leading edge of what this country can do. What it can BE. Like you used to have.

I want my entire generation - bigger than any generation in US history - and those that follow us to have the best jobs in the world too. I don't want 1 in 10 jobs in the US to take a hit next week, but I also don't want hundreds of millions of already-struggling Americans to blow their tax dollars on failure. I don't want to pull out the last straw on you and your friends and colleagues, and I don't want to build scaffolding for something that's so badly broken. The truth is that I am only where I am because of the man you are and your providing for me. And you did that as a loyal employee of General Motors. I get that.

I'm just having a near-impossible time trusting your bosses with what they're asking for. I want you to have your paycheck and your health care and your pension, and shares of stock that are worth more than my morning Dupont Circle coffee, and I also want the electric and high efficiency cars I've dreamed of for over a decade.

My grassroots demands the clean energy future that I HAVE to have for your grand children.

I am a clean energy professional fighting for our collective next decades, and I am a General Motors son worried about our collective next week. So here's where I'm at, Dad...

As I said, I'm going to help you. But I need you to help me too. To some, it would appear that our jobs and our perspectives are diametrically opposed. But as you know, I see us as inextricably linked - whether we were linked by blood or not. It's crucial that someone like you and someone like me work together to move our country forward. And the grassroots is the place to do it. But it has to stay there. It can't be Rick and Bob.

Troy Clarke wrote you, and you've passed it along to me, to ask that we use the force of active citizenship to save a company and an industry. It's unprecedented in GM history, and if GM is actively and truly engaging in the democratic process from the bottom up because it cares about the future of this country, I will support it. I'm going to call my Congresswoman this week, as you and Troy asked, and I'm also going to call the Congresspersons of every state I've lived in for the past 10 years and I'm going to ask them to provide a loan for your company, Dad.

But here's what you and Troy Clarke should do for me.

Next week, and the week after, and every week until every dime of that loan is re-payed, you and Troy and all your colleagues and bosses will call your congresspersons and give them updates on how quickly you are retooling your facilities to build the next generation of clean cars and how many people you have put back to work with Green Jobs.

And before you hang up you're either going to ask for (or thank them for, if me and MY colleagues have anything to say about it) the investment in a new clean energy infrastructure that will not just save a company and an industry, but create an entirely new one.

...you know, it's funny. As I was writing this, the song "409" by the Beach Boys came on my iPod. (Yes, I still listen to the Beach Boys.) My eyes started tearing up, and if I hadn't been in public, I would have all out cried. It is one of the first songs I remember singing along with you in our car, Dad. "She's real fine, my 409..."

The thing is, a 409 cubic inch, 6.7 liter Big-Block Chevy engine isn't fine. It's not even ok. It never really was. That thinking... that tune... is what got us in this mess. I hope beyond hope that one of these years when I come home for Christmas to introduce your grand kids to Big Tom, we'll be singing a new tune together in a whole new kind of car built by the grassroots of your company.

Peak everything, or “après moi, le déluge“

Click on graphs for fullsize view in their original context.
Peak oil: 1. fossil fuels in the history of human energy use
2. a conventional graph by Van Deas for ASPO: Association for the Study of Peak Oil. See also Wikipedia Peak_oil , theoildrum.com/, and ODAC.

Humans have been exceeding the biosphere’s capacity to renew itself. This is a recipe for species extinction and human decimation. We are eating the world alive, stealing from our children. As we violate the principle of sustainable development, each succeeding generation will have less than the preceding one.

“Peak grain” seems to have been reached – grain stocks are at their lowest level in decades. While oil soared 80% in the last year, food prices rose over 40%. Fertilizers, produced from or with fossil fuels, doubled in price last year.

source: Chicago Board of Trade

For many, the result is starvation. Excerpt from an Associated Press report 29 Jan 08:

Let them eat mud

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well. The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean… About 80 percent of people in Haiti live on less than $2 a day and a tiny elite controls the economy… two cups of rice now sell for 60 cents, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago. Beans, condensed milk and fruit have gone up at a similar rate…Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $5, the cookie makers say... at about 5 cents apiece, the mud cookies are a bargain compared to food staples.

-- See full text and UN reports from Kenya.

Arable land is declining relative to population. Much is lost to erosion and desertification. For the results, see Wikipedia on food security and world hunger. Stanford scientists predict mass starvation: global warming will reduce Asian grains by 10%, Southern African corn crops by 30%.

Sources: WRI: World Resources Institute (above) and USDA (below) tons per acre

Peak water: shortages already threaten China, India and their neighbours, Australia, mid-Africa, the entire Middle East – exacerbating existing conflicts. Andrew Liveris, chairman of Dow Chemical, announced at Davos meeting that “Water is ... the oil of the 21st century.”
map source: WRI, UNDP-GEF

Fish, the traditional protein of the poor, have been depleted by commercial trawling.

Forests have been pillaged and burned. Below are their original extent, and what is left today.

As climate warms, disease vectors spread. Two examples: malaria, and Lyme disease.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Minerals too are reaching their peak, increasing the dangers of environmentally disastrous mining practices, and of great-power battles over scarce supplies.

graph: Armin Reller, U of Augsburg & Tom Gruedel, Yale U.

Finally, the world’s political culture seems stuck in the past, or returning to the worst of the past: beggar my neighbor – let the poor “eat cake” as Marie Antoinette foolishly said; my nation right or wrong, tribalism, religious fundamentalism. According to former UK ambassador Craig Murray, we underestimate how dangerous and widespread such ideas can be, even among supposedly educated people:

Last year I delivered a talk on Central Asia at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. As I sat preparing my lecture, I had the television on low in my hotel room because I don't like complete silence. Gradually I found myself listening intently to an evangelical preacher, telling his TV congregation that they should not worry about casualties in Iraq because the Bible showed us that there had to be a great and bloody conflict in the Middle East before the Second Coming of Christ. So the more people who died in these wars, the closer we are to Jesus. -- Murray's blog 24 Jan 08

See also the blinkered views of the North American super-rich reported by Johann Hari, “Reshuffling the deck chairs on the National Review cruise” / “En croisière sur le ‘Titanic’ de la droite américaine”, Le Monde Diplomatique février 2008

Further reading:
Richard Heinberg, Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Heinberg
James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century (2006) and his blog Clusterfuck Nation, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Howard_Kunstler
Thomas Homer-Dixon , The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization (2007)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millenium_Development_Goals
IISD (International Institute for Sustainable Development) 2008 study Boom or Bust: How commodity price volatility impedes poverty reduction, and what to do about it, for the Dec 2008 IGF in New Delhi
Suzuki Foundation studies and recommendations

The Ecological Economics of Robert Costanza

The 1992 edition is now being revised. Contents include renewable resource eco-accounting / management / conservation, sustainable agriculture, green technology, eco-economic modelling (local, regional and global), implications of thermodynamics, critiques of the basic assumptions of traditional economics and GNP, dangers of GMOs and gene pool privatization, alternative principles for valuing natural wealth, methods of governance, case studies of environmental conflict and resolution.

Costanza is a key mover in a number of other research projects:

IHOPE Integrated History of People on Earth. The final IHOPE research plan will be published in early 2008. Many details are explained in Costanza et al. Sustainability or Collapse: What Can We Learn from Integrating the History of Humans and the Rest of Nature? Ambio (2007) 36:522-527

PAGES (Past Global Changes) f. 1991 supports research aimed at understanding the Earth’s past environment in order to make predictions for the future. We encourage international and interdisciplinary collaborations and seek to involve scientists from developing countries in the worldwide paleo-community. PAGES' scope of interest includes the physical climate system, biogeochemical cycles, ecosystem processes, biodiversity, and human dimensions, on different time scales—Pleistocene, Holocene, last millennium and the recent past. PAGES is a core project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and is funded by the U.S. and Swiss National Science Foundations, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

IGBP The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme is partially explained in Costanza et al, Biodiversity and ecosystem services: A multi-scale empirical study of the relationship between species richness and net primary production. Ecological Economics (2007) 61:478-491

IHDP International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. See the explanation in Costanza, Farley et al. An integrative approach to quality of life measurement, research, and policy. Surveys and Perspectives Integrating Environment and Society. (2007) 1:1-5.

ESSP Earth System Science Partnership

AIMES Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System: is the synthesis and integration project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme: http://www.aimes.ucar.edu/
It includes Global Emissions Inventory Activity
Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (passworded, but the IHOPE site above is not)
Coupled Carbon Cycle Climate Model Intercomparison Project

Earth Inc. A Shareholder's Report from Costanza's Gund Institute (to be published soon) and some sample pages

ESDA: Envisioning a Sustainable and Desirable America, a citizen participation process for an eco-America in the year 2100. Its online forum has been superseded by Costanza's Earth Forum blog/wiki.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change

Click on graphics to see them fullsize.
source: WRI (World Resources Institute) 2007 source: WRI: GHG per capita 2007


Climate change source: UNEP/GRID-Arendal: increases in temperature 2001-2005See also CBC's Google map with photos of global warming

US activists
http://focusthenation.org/ plan for 30 Jan 2008
http://powershift07.org/
http://stepitup2007.org/ and allies http://stepitup2007.org/links.php
http://www.1sky.org/
http://avaaz.org/
http://www.climateprotect.org/

IPCC Fourth Report

NASA map of ocean warming.
(IPCC-27) Government officials and scientists of the UNEP Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are meeting in Valencia, Spain, to combine their earlier reports of this year into an action plan on climate change. The Fourth Assessment Report will be released on Saturday (November 17) in time for the December 2007 summit in Bali, Indonesia, where our political leaders will be fighting over a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol (due to expire in 2012). The 4th report will be the "final" word on "climate change and its likely impacts – many of which will happen in the time-frame of people alive today, not in some far distant future,” said Achim Steiner, head of UNEP, at Valencia. Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary-General, said after his official visit to Antarctica last weekend, "I come to you humbled after seeing some of the most precious treasures of our planet threatened by humanity's own hand."
-- full story in UN News. See also UN webcasts and BBC.