IPCC 4th Assessment Report doesn't agree with the Center for Biological Diversity

Apparently, the Center for Biological Diversity doesn’t agree with the Mitigation Working Group Report [PDF] in IPCC’s 4th Assessment as to the best strategy for mitigating CO2.


Photo from south island on New Zealand.

“Biomass clearing and site preparation prior to afforestation [i.e. planting] may lead to short-term carbon losses on that site… Accumulation of carbon in biomass after [planting ] varies greatly by tree species and site, and ranges globally between 1 and 35 t CO2/ha.yr (Richards and Stokes, 2004).” — Forestry. In Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (page 550)

Forests and Climate Change, Not Clearcut

“If you don’t have the law, you argue the facts; if you don’t have the facts, you argue the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, then you argue the Constitution” – John Adams

Poster from The Green Chain used by permission

It’s not clearcut

At Issue: Clearcutting and Climate Change

On January 27, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), a Tucson-based environmental advocacy group, filed suit against my former employer.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) regulates harvesting on California’s non-federal forests. Oddly, CBD isn’t claiming clearcutting 5,000 acres (none of harvest areas are greater than 40 acres[1]) disrupts habitat and thus endangers plants and animals. No, they’ve filed suit because clearcutting, ostensibly, increases global warming. “A clearcut is about as beneficial to the climate as a new coal-fired power plant,” says Brian Nowicki, CBD’s California climate policy director. At issue is whether Cal Fire “failed to carry out any project-specific analysis of the (greenhouse gas) emissions that would come from clearcutting projects it approved.”

“A clearcut is about as beneficial to the climate as a new coal-fired power plant “– Brian” Nowicki, CBD’s California climate policy director

Forests do a good job of soaking up carbon dioxide (CO2), a “greenhouse gas.” When harvesting removes the trees, some of the carbon in the soil, branches, litter, and leaves, escapes back into the atmosphere. It may be more than normal but it’s normal. Forests constantly exchange carbon, pulling CO2 from the air and putting it back through respiration. One textbook I consulted said of a normal forest, “Measurements have shown as much as 20 pounds [of CO2] per acre per hour being liberated from soil.”

The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) estimates 80% of the terrestrially exchanged carbon is done by forests. California’s forests pull more than 14 million metric tons (MMT) of CO2 annually from the atmosphere. “Most foresters I talk to feel the 14 million metric tons gross sequestration [the incorporation of carbon into the tree] rate is an underestimate,” said Gary Nakamura, Forestry Specialist for University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Forestry and a member of the California Board of Forestry.

Fires, harvesting, insect kill, disease, and the decomposition of forest products in landfills and composting facilities, return about 10 MMT back to the atmosphere. The numbers squish when squeezed. “The uncertainty in this estimate is roughly ± 38%,” Nakamura said in an email.

While the numbers aren’t certain, CBD is. They’ve defeated others before on this issue. They may win again, despite the science, the facts, or the law; never mind the constitution. “It’s part of an ongoing philosophical struggle between the forces of preservation and the forces of conservation,” Bill Keye, Government Affairs Specialist for the California Licensed Foresters Association (CLFA) told me. “They’ve shut down national forests, now they’ve branched out to private ownerships. They don’t like even-aged management [i.e. clearcutting] and they don’t like us [the forest industry].”

“It’s part of an ongoing philosophical struggle between the forces of preservation and the forces of conservation. They’ve shut down national forests, now they’ve branched out to private ownerships. They don’t like even-aged management and they don’t like us.” – Bill Keye, Government Affairs Specialist for the California Licensed Foresters Association

“Clear-cutting is an abysmal practice that should have been banned long ago due to its impacts on wildlife and water quality,” CBD’s Senior Counsel, Brendan Cummings said in a statement. “Now, in an era where all land-management decisions need to be fully carbon-conscious, there is simply no excuse to continue to allow clear-cutting in California.”

“Now, in an era where all land-management decisions need to be fully carbon-conscious, there is simply no excuse to continue to allow clear-cutting in California.” – CBD Senior Counsel, Brendan Cummings

Different Trees, Different Needs

Yet if we want to keep a healthy mix of trees, there’s not only an excuse to allow clearcutting, there’s a place for clearcutting. Every gardener knows some plants work best in shade and some thrive in full sunlight. The same holds for trees. Some trees, such as ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir, do best in full sunlight. Other trees grow in shaded conditions.

Foresters prescribe clearcutting in order to be able to plant trees that are intolerant to shade. Selection cutting shifts the species mix toward shade-tolerant trees because the ones needing full sunlight won’t be able to compete and will get crowded out. Without major stand disturbance such as fire, logging, or extensive windthrow to create those openings, trees such as ponderosa and Douglas-fir won’t have the conditions they need to survive and will be shaded out.

So, if the desired future is to have ponderosa pines or Douglas-firs in our forests, clearcuts beat selection harvests. The only argument should be over the size of the openings allowed, and after the biological needs of a species are met, it’s a matter of policy. California’s regulations restrict clearcut size to 20-40 acres, the smallest openings allowed in the western United States.

A CBD Win Won’t Help the Environment

However well-intentioned lawsuits such as CBD’s latest against Cal Fire are, they have the power to cause unintended consequences. If Bill Keye is right and CBD’s goal is to end all harvesting, the result is far more pollution, not simply more CO2; results CBD contends they are trying to prevent.

““When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.”“- Alston Chase, author of “Playing God in Yellowstone.”

Such lawsuits hold the power to shift people away from California’s renewable second-growth forests, and the wood they provide, to non-renewable resources and their more energy-intensive requirements; or perhaps worse, shifting to sources where environmental policies carry little regard. “When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy,” said Alston Chase, author and former philosophy professor, “the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.”

Never mind the metaphorical coal-fired power plant, real coal-fired power plants will be running harder to create products from substitutes, such as concrete, steel and aluminum. These substitutes require more energy to explore, excavate, smelt, and manufacture.

Our California forests have the capacity to produce all the wood we need and export some as well, yet we import 75% of our wood. And, when we do buy wood, it may not be from places that carefully scrutinize harvests. It’s Kabuki environmentalism and the “zero-cut,” illusion of preservation, getting wood from countries with lax environmental enforcement.

The lawsuit seems to be classic NIMBYism: “think locally, pollute globally.”

—————————————————

[1] 40 acres is the maximum clearcut size allowed by the Forest Practice Rules

If it’s not grown, it has to be mined

Recently, Barnes and Noble launched its own e-book reader, the “Nook,” to compete with the Amazon Kindle.[i] E-readers are handy electronic devices, they can hold hundreds of books, and use an ‘electronic paper.’ They have been heralded as alternatives to ‘dead-tree publishing.’

Without doubt, digital technology improves lives. Consider mobile phones: once isolated African fishermen now connect and locate the best markets for their catch. As a result, spoilage has decreased, fishermen make more money, and consumers pay less.[ii] “Mobile phones have been described as ‘the single most effective tool to promote development,’” says Tom Standage of The Economist magazine.[iii] In the same way, e-readers might save America’s forests to absorb CO2.[iv] [v]

Substituting plastic for paper reminds me of a movie where a character complains of a headache. His friend, a tough-as-nails soldier, smiles. “Let me show you a trick,” he says. The soldier breaks his friend’s finger. The pain of a broken finger trumps a headache. Problem solved.

Nothing comes without cost. Manufacturing and disposing of electronics can harm the environment more than the harvest of a thousand trees. There’s another carbon footprint to consider besides CO2: CN—cyanide.

Raw materials for electronics don’t spring from the ground in the same way trees do for books. “If it’s not grown, it has to be mined,” says resource geologist Sarah Andrews and author of the “Em Hansen” mysteries.[vi]

“These are not your grandfather’s mines,” says Robert Moran, PhD., an expert in geochemistry.[vii] Moran’s company, Michael-Moran Associates, has commented extensively on the environmental impacts of mining projects around the world for both the mining industry and for environmental activists. Mines are “constructed on a huge scale unheard of less than thirty years ago.”[viii]

And the reason there are open-pit mines, “2,000 feet deep, and one to two miles across,” is our appetite for stuff. Each year, the average American consumes 23 tons of mineral products.[ix] By supplanting paper with technology, we stop growing, harvesting, and planting trees and start digging and drilling for metals, toxic chemicals, and petroleum products. “Welcome to my world,” Andrews said.

It’s a dangerous world filled with explosives, Bunyanesque machines, and hazrdous materials. Industrial extraction uses cyanide compounds to separate metals from the ore.[x] And, though U.S. mines pollute less than others around the world, hard-rock mining produces more toxic waste than any other industry in the country.[xi] For example, one ounce of refined gold generates nearly 80 tons of toxic waste. The leftovers are akin to nuclear waste for the mining industry: around for a long time, hazardous, and no one really knows what to do with it. The waste contains “every element in the periodic table,” said Dr. Moran.

Printed texts from the eighth century still exist[xii] while electronics break, wear out, or, more often, become obsolete. When reusing isn’t possible, the choice becomes disposing or recycling.

Discarded electronics account for 70% of the overall toxic waste currently found in landfills, by some accounts. Americans pitch a computer and three mobile phones every second.[xiii] California’s waste stream sees 480-thousand tons of junked electronic goods each year.[xiv]

Electronics recycling is not wholly benign. American recyclers continue to dump our unwanted electronics on developing countries. Often, the metal recovery poses health and safety risks for workers and pollutes our environment:[xv] burning plastics and using toxic chemicals—sodium cyanide; nitric, hydrochloric, and sulfuric acids—to extract the metals.

Obviously, technology is not going away. Nor should it. But changes need to happen. Perhaps there should be a haz-mat disposal charge assessment for all products. Europe and Japan have passed laws that require electronic manufacturers to take back their products for recycling. [xvi] The law has caused manufacturers to rethink design with an eye toward ease of disassembly and reuse.

Bottom line: Forests return [xvii] . Plastics and cyanide dumps don’t go away. Instead of saving trees for our descendants, we’re leaving tons of toxic wastes and despoiled landscapes where trees may not grow for millennia.

If you still think sustainable forestry is a bad idea, give me your finger; let me show you a trick.

[i] Kellogg, Carolyn. “The Nook: Barnes & Noble announces its own e-reader,” Los Angeles Times Website, October 20, 2009, http://bit.ly/4vGWYT (accessed December 4, 2009)

[ii] Standage, Tom. “Telecoms in emerging markets,” The Economist website, September, 2009, http://bit.ly/8NCAYd (accessed December 4, 2009)

[iii] Standage, Tom. “Telecoms in emerging markets,” The Economist website, September, 2009, http://bit.ly/8NCAYd (accessed December 4, 2009)

[iv] Yardley, William. “Protecting the Forests, and Hoping for Payback,” New York Times Website, November 28, 2009, http://bit.ly/6N5t46 (accessed December 4, 2009)

[v] Sibley, Lisa. August 19, 2009. “Cleantech Group report: E-readers a win for carbon emissions.” http://cleantech.com/news/4867/cleantech-group-finds-positive-envi

[vi] Personal conversation

[vii] Moran, Robert E. 2007. “Pebble Mine: Hydrogeology and Geochemistry Issues.”

[viii] Personal conversation

[ix] Mostly as rock used for roads and other construction according to the Mineral Information Institute.

[x] Moran, Robert E. “Cyanide In Mining: Some Observations On The Chemistry, Toxicity And Analysis Of Mining-Related Waters.” http://earthworksaction.org/pubs/Cyanide_Leach_Packet.pdf

[xi] According to the Environmental Protection Agency

[xii] Rocca, Mo. “The Future of Paper.” The Tomorrow Show, CBS (http://bit.ly/4xxzIZ) accessed December 5, 2009

[xiii] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/06/60minutes/main4579229.shtml “”Well, we throw out about 130,000 computers every day in the United States.” And he said over 100 million cell phones are thrown out annually.

[xiv] Cascadia Consulting Group, Inc. 2004“Executive Summary [to CIWMB] – Statewide Waste Characterization Study (http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/Publications/default.asp?pubid=1097)

[xv] The Economist Jun 7th 2007, “The truth about recycling”

[xvi] The Economist Jun 7th 2007, “The truth about recycling”

[xvii]The functional forest, especially a quick-growing, well-managed one compensates for the pollution through sequestering carbon and protecting watersheds. And all along, gainful employment is made available in forests for people making tough decisions; it’s not easy to be green.

If it's not grown, it has to be mined

Recently, Barnes and Noble launched its own e-book reader, the “Nook,” to compete with the Amazon Kindle.[i] E-readers are handy electronic devices, they can hold hundreds of books, and use an ‘electronic paper.’ They have been heralded as alternatives to ‘dead-tree publishing.’

Without doubt, digital technology improves lives. Consider mobile phones: once isolated African fishermen now connect and locate the best markets for their catch. As a result, spoilage has decreased, fishermen make more money, and consumers pay less.[ii] “Mobile phones have been described as ‘the single most effective tool to promote development,’” says Tom Standage of The Economist magazine.[iii] In the same way, e-readers might save America’s forests to absorb CO2.[iv] [v]

Substituting plastic for paper reminds me of a movie where a character complains of a headache. His friend, a tough-as-nails soldier, smiles. “Let me show you a trick,” he says. The soldier breaks his friend’s finger. The pain of a broken finger trumps a headache. Problem solved.

Nothing comes without cost. Manufacturing and disposing of electronics can harm the environment more than the harvest of a thousand trees. There’s another carbon footprint to consider besides CO2: CN—cyanide.

Raw materials for electronics don’t spring from the ground in the same way trees do for books. “If it’s not grown, it has to be mined,” says resource geologist Sarah Andrews and author of the “Em Hansen” mysteries.[vi]

“These are not your grandfather’s mines,” says Robert Moran, PhD., an expert in geochemistry.[vii] Moran’s company, Michael-Moran Associates, has commented extensively on the environmental impacts of mining projects around the world for both the mining industry and for environmental activists. Mines are “constructed on a huge scale unheard of less than thirty years ago.”[viii]

And the reason there are open-pit mines, “2,000 feet deep, and one to two miles across,” is our appetite for stuff. Each year, the average American consumes 23 tons of mineral products.[ix] By supplanting paper with technology, we stop growing, harvesting, and planting trees and start digging and drilling for metals, toxic chemicals, and petroleum products. “Welcome to my world,” Andrews said.

It’s a dangerous world filled with explosives, Bunyanesque machines, and hazrdous materials. Industrial extraction uses cyanide compounds to separate metals from the ore.[x] And, though U.S. mines pollute less than others around the world, hard-rock mining produces more toxic waste than any other industry in the country.[xi] For example, one ounce of refined gold generates nearly 80 tons of toxic waste. The leftovers are akin to nuclear waste for the mining industry: around for a long time, hazardous, and no one really knows what to do with it. The waste contains “every element in the periodic table,” said Dr. Moran.

Printed texts from the eighth century still exist[xii] while electronics break, wear out, or, more often, become obsolete. When reusing isn’t possible, the choice becomes disposing or recycling.

Discarded electronics account for 70% of the overall toxic waste currently found in landfills, by some accounts. Americans pitch a computer and three mobile phones every second.[xiii] California’s waste stream sees 480-thousand tons of junked electronic goods each year.[xiv]

Electronics recycling is not wholly benign. American recyclers continue to dump our unwanted electronics on developing countries. Often, the metal recovery poses health and safety risks for workers and pollutes our environment:[xv] burning plastics and using toxic chemicals—sodium cyanide; nitric, hydrochloric, and sulfuric acids—to extract the metals.

Obviously, technology is not going away. Nor should it. But changes need to happen. Perhaps there should be a haz-mat disposal charge assessment for all products. Europe and Japan have passed laws that require electronic manufacturers to take back their products for recycling. [xvi] The law has caused manufacturers to rethink design with an eye toward ease of disassembly and reuse.

Bottom line: Forests return [xvii] . Plastics and cyanide dumps don’t go away. Instead of saving trees for our descendants, we’re leaving tons of toxic wastes and despoiled landscapes where trees may not grow for millennia.

If you still think sustainable forestry is a bad idea, give me your finger; let me show you a trick.

[i] Kellogg, Carolyn. “The Nook: Barnes & Noble announces its own e-reader,” Los Angeles Times Website, October 20, 2009, http://bit.ly/4vGWYT (accessed December 4, 2009)

[ii] Standage, Tom. “Telecoms in emerging markets,” The Economist website, September, 2009, http://bit.ly/8NCAYd (accessed December 4, 2009)

[iii] Standage, Tom. “Telecoms in emerging markets,” The Economist website, September, 2009, http://bit.ly/8NCAYd (accessed December 4, 2009)

[iv] Yardley, William. “Protecting the Forests, and Hoping for Payback,” New York Times Website, November 28, 2009, http://bit.ly/6N5t46 (accessed December 4, 2009)

[v] Sibley, Lisa. August 19, 2009. “Cleantech Group report: E-readers a win for carbon emissions.” http://cleantech.com/news/4867/cleantech-group-finds-positive-envi

[vi] Personal conversation

[vii] Moran, Robert E. 2007. “Pebble Mine: Hydrogeology and Geochemistry Issues.”

[viii] Personal conversation

[ix] Mostly as rock used for roads and other construction according to the Mineral Information Institute.

[x] Moran, Robert E. “Cyanide In Mining: Some Observations On The Chemistry, Toxicity And Analysis Of Mining-Related Waters.” http://earthworksaction.org/pubs/Cyanide_Leach_Packet.pdf

[xi] According to the Environmental Protection Agency

[xii] Rocca, Mo. “The Future of Paper.” The Tomorrow Show, CBS (http://bit.ly/4xxzIZ) accessed December 5, 2009

[xiii] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/06/60minutes/main4579229.shtml “”Well, we throw out about 130,000 computers every day in the United States.” And he said over 100 million cell phones are thrown out annually.

[xiv] Cascadia Consulting Group, Inc. 2004“Executive Summary [to CIWMB] – Statewide Waste Characterization Study (http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/Publications/default.asp?pubid=1097)

[xv] The Economist Jun 7th 2007, “The truth about recycling”

[xvi] The Economist Jun 7th 2007, “The truth about recycling”

[xvii]The functional forest, especially a quick-growing, well-managed one compensates for the pollution through sequestering carbon and protecting watersheds. And all along, gainful employment is made available in forests for people making tough decisions; it’s not easy to be green.

The Optimistic Environmentalist

As a child of the 1960’s On April 22, 1970, I, along with 20 million others that day, attended one of the first Earth Day celebrations. We had heard the predictions and we were duly frightened. In those days, most of us in the environmental movement worried about air pollution causing another ice age through global cooling. Many doomsayers proclaimed Malthus—an eighteenth century economist who argued that human population which grew exponentially would quickly outstrip crop yields which grew arithmetically—was a Pollyanna. We stood on the brink of drought and mass starvation; no oil, forests reduced to stumps, foul air, frozen and polluted water. None of that has happened in the past 40 years, perhaps because we made the necessary changes.

It’s because of this looking back that I’m an optimistic environmentalist. The lake is half-full. Though problems do exist, we have hope. We mustn’t squander resources. Yet, I side with Julian Simon. “First, humanity’s condition will improve in just about every material way,” the late economist said. “Second, humans will continue to sit around complaining about everything getting worse.” Such thinking that everything is worsening elicits a siege mentality where we either shut down because we want no more bad news or we feel imperiled.

Those who feel imperiled bang pans, beseeching us to repent and turn away from our profligate ways; Lester Brown—the rightly-renown environmentalist and founder of Worldwatch Institute and Earth Policy Institute—is one. He writes of climate change, “Researchers…believe that global warming is accelerating and may be approaching a tipping point…” Brothers and sisters the end is near and we stand upon banana peels between vipers and the abyss. We stand on the brink of droughts and mass starvation; forests reduced to stumps, no oil, foul air, frozen and polluted water.

Let’s recap for those keeping score at home, it’s “The Pollyannas”-7, “Malthus and the Prophets of Doom”-0.

Well Malthus and the prophets of doom will continue to say as Bullwinkle J. Moose used to say, “This time for sure.”

The Top 13 Environmental Stories of the Aughts

Here is my olio list of profound and profane environmental news of the past decade–the aughts.

  1. Hurricane Katrina From the toxic sludge left behind on the land to removal of the vegetative buffers by encroaching civilization, hurricane Katrina exposed so many of our environmental shortcomings, all in one storm.

  2. Al Gore’s Inconvenient Nobel Peace PrizeI voted for Gore in 2000 and thought he was a reasonable man. His Saturday Night Live sketch indicated he had some sense of humor. Yet, his dourness shines through in both his book “Earth in the Balance” and his PowerPoint cum film “An Inconvenient Truth,” a film filled with numerous inconvenient falsehoods. What was the Nobel Committee smoking?

  3. Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen ConsensusThe Copenhagen Consensus commissions “research that analyzes the optimal ways to combat the biggest problems facing the world. “In doing so, it gores a number of Sacred Calves. Like a buyer for WalMart, the Copenhagen Consensus looks for where we humans can get the most bang for our buck. It turns out anthropogenic (a fancy way to say something caused by people) global warming wound up at #30, a fact that fries most greens and climatologists.  I think the failure of Kyoto and Copenhagen (and sites in between) underscore this fact that investing $1 and getting a 1cent return is not what we should do. You would think more politicians would get behind the Consensus’s recommendation to go after the low hanging fruit first. I guess they figure the low hanging fruit is sour grapes.By the way, if you have not yet read Lomborg’s “Skeptical Environmentalist,” published in 2001, you need to–now. Lomborg started out by trying to debunk the late Julian Simon who said, “First, humanity’s condition will improve in just about every material way. Second, humans will continue to sit around complaining about everything getting worse.” Professor Lomborg, one of the top 100 public intellectuals, according to Foreign Policy & Prospect Magazine, took a statistician’s view of the arguments used by the Environmental Lobby (and Al Gore) and found hyperbole that focused on the minuses and never the pluses. Lomborg’s book contains thousands of footnoted sources, something that’s missing from many others.

  4. TVA coal ash dam break/spillOne year after the coal ash spill near Knoxville, the Tennessee Valley Authority still has no plan of what to do with a billion gallons toxic goo from their Kingston Fossil Plant. Dredgers have been running 24 hours a day, 6 days a week (on the day 7 the oil is changed), since the spill to clean out the Emory river. The dam break indicates the extent of our life-style’s “externalities“–those obligations and costs we all bear–from abandoned cyanide pits from mining to air pollution from power plants and automobiles.

  5. Climategate–Scientists Behaving BadlyThe leaking of emails and files from East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit shined the light of public scrutiny into the marble towers of academia and provides a glimpse of how science gets done. Turns out that scientists are just as tribal and not above pettiness any more than the rest of us, reminding me of the squabbling politics of a homeowners’ association. Climategate defines schadenfreude.

  6. Failure of the Doha talksDoha in Qatar is the place where members of the WTO (World Trade Organization) discuss treaties for freer trade. Globalization is often a bugbear for people wanting to keep the status quo. The United States has its farm and biofuel subsidies that prove to be sticking points. But history shows when standards of living increase, birth rates decline and the quality of life increases. Economists agree that unencumbered trade raises the standard of living for for countries with the most open markets. (for more see “If words were food, nobody would go hungry” in the Economist). The Copenhagen Consensus puts implementation of the “Doha development agenda” at #2 behind combating malnutrition with Micronutrient supplements for children (vitamin A and zinc).

  7. Willie Smits and Samboja LestariIf you have never heard of Willie Smits or Samboja Lestari, you are not alone, but you should have. Smits has literally changed the climate in the district of East Kalimantan, Indonesia where he and his group have renewed the rainforest that had been cut down to make palm-oil biodiesel, all the while providing food and 3000 jobs for the locals and returning the land to them in the bargain. He gets my nomination for the Nobel Prize.

  8. 2008 Global Economic Meltdown“Prosperity,” the American philosopher Mark Twain said, “ is the best protector of principle.” And the opposite is true. Alligators look like the makings of a hearty meal and not an endangered species when you need to put food on the table or starve. (For more see Gallup’s “Americans: Economy Takes Precedence Over Environment”.

  9. Cell phonesCell phones have been around for more than a couple decades but texting and GPS (Global Positioning System) has catapulted them above mere phones. Cell sourcing–using cell phone to gather and disseminate information rapidly–will change everything. Farmers will get information on crop diseases and other concerns with the result being greater yields on less land and freeing up land for other (one hopes environmentally friendly) uses. People will be able to provide information to aggregators on environmental concerns and pinpoint their locations instantly.

  10. The United Nations’ Millennium Ecosystem Assessment“When we try to pick out anything by itself,” John Muir said, “we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” The MEA was the attempt by the United Nations to quantify how much of the ecosystem was hitched to us. It turns out everything is.

  11. 2004 TsunamiThe tsunami of December 26, 2004 was especially memorable to me because my firstborn (who was living in Japan at the time) had decided NOT to go to Phuket, Thailand that Christmas. He opted instead to have the North Koreans point their weapons across Korea’s DMZ at him and his friends. Had he not, he might have ended up as a statistic with the other 230,000 who died under a 100 foot wave.

  12. Anthropogenic Global Warming

    I predict AGW will be the “coming ice age” of predictions.

    In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During [this past year] record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries.” — Time Magazine, 1972, Science: Another Ice Age?

    Conserve energy for conservation’s sake.

  13. Credit Card Reform Act of 2009 How does credit card reform qualify as an environmental story? File this one under “only in America.” It was in the CCRA of 2008, that Republicans, tacked on a rider allowing people to take concealed weapons into our nation’s parks and wildlife refuges. Where else but in America can we get squeezed at a 30% annual interest rate AND carry a concealed loaded firearm the wilderness? Look out Smoky Bear, I’m packing heat.

Happy New Year everyone.

Major Cuts in Carbon Emissions Are Not Worth The Cost

That’s the motion debated (Oxford-style) January 2009 on National Public Radio’s Intelligence Squared. The program runs about 45 minutes and was well worth my time.

FOR THE MOTION:

Peter Huber, co-author of The Bottomless Well and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Bjorn Lomborg, creator of the Copenhagen Consensus

Philip Stott, biogeographer and the editor of the Journal of Biogeography for 18 years.

AGAINST THE MOTION

L. Hunter Lovins, president of Natural Capitalism Solutions

Oliver Tickell, author of Kyoto2

Adam Werbach, global chief executive officer at Saatchi & Saatchi. He is the youngest president ever elected for the Sierra Club.

You can hear the debate on this media player: