Obama and Climate Change -- What about Conservation?

Obama's Climate Speech (Reuters)

Yesterday, President Obama finally addressed the problem of climate change in a 45-minute speech at Georgetown University in Washington DC. He began with an impressive summary of the facts of climate change, calling carbon “pollution”, stating that twelve of the last fifteen years have been the warmest on record, that arctic ice has diminished to its smallest size on record and that the ocean temperatures have reached record highs. He also mentioned last week’s heat wave in Alaska and the drought and heavy rains of the Midwest.

            From there, he discussed how these effects have costs for all of us and said that, because the science was sound, we had to act. He wondered if we had the courage to act before it’s too late.

            To his credit, he proposed limits on pollution from power plants and mentioned ending fossil fuel subsidies. However, though he still did not come out against the Keystone Pipeline and instead left himself some wiggle room, saying that it would only be approved if it was in the nation’s best interests.

            It was a speech that was heavy on new technologies, as if renewable energies can solve our problems. Unfortunately, though he talked about using energy more efficiently and wasting less energy, he made no mention of actually using less energy, which also needs to be part of the solution. If we’re to transition off fossil fuels to 100% renewables, we simply can’t keep consuming energy the way we have been. Either that, or we’ll have to give up pristine wilderness and public lands for wind farms. I’m all for wind power, but not at any cost.

            Factoring consumption into the equation is also important to bring home the message that we are over-consuming the environment. One of the main causes of species loss is habitat destruction, usually from land converted to agriculture (typically cattle). In fact, if we developed a silver bullet and solved our energy problems tomorrow, we would still have the biodiversity crisis to solve.

            Obama said, “We all share a responsibility for keeping the planet habitable,” and this means we’re going to need to do more than transfer to renewable energies. We have to examine our entire environmental footprint and reduce it.

See the complete transcript of Obama's speech here, and a discussion of the impacts of climate change on biodiversity here. 

Living in an age of extinction II: Creating a Life Cairn

Why do no church bells ring when animals go extinct?

This was one of the questions that came up when Andreas Kornevall met with Reverend Peter Owen-Jones over a cup of tea and a plate of Indian curry. Kornevall had recently been to a workshop where a Guatemalan man related how he had lost his land and his culture and in relating his story the man became overcome with sorrow. Kornevall realized the men in the room were not accustomed to this public display of sorrow from another man and came to see how important it was, that grief was a way into thinking about the environment and change.

I caught up with Kornevall over Skype to ask him about the Life Cairn (previously mentioned here), which was begun over a year ago on Mount Caburn in East Sussex, England.

Daniel Hudon: Here in North America, we mostly see cairns as ways to guide hikers on mountain paths, but in England I understand they have an additional meaning.

Andreas Kornevall: That’s right, we also use them as markers, but for thousands of years, people here have been using them also as burial chambers. Around here (in East Sussex, England), there are many tumuli, which are mounds of graves, and they might have begun as cairns. Reverend Peter Owen-Jones has hosted a show in the BBC called 80 Faiths Around the World, and during our discussion we hit upon the idea of a cairn, a Life Cairn, as a way to mark the passings and address the passings of species that were going extinct. It began as a way to express our grief.

DH: How did you pitch the idea of the Life Cairn to the community?

AK: We held a meeting and about fifty people came – really a good amount of interest from a wide variety of people. People liked the idea. We’re just one stone; we hoped others would come and build on it.

DH: The Life Cairn was founded on May 22, 2011. What was the mood like that day?

AK: It’s hard to say what goes on in the minds of people. The first to lay stones were the youngest and the oldest who were present. According to tradition, water was put in the cairn. People came from all around to place their stones -- it’s on the eastern shoulder of Mt. Caburn, with a great view of the landscape and the sea. Though the whole project came from a place of grief and sorrow, there were songs and poems. It became festive. We were all wind-blown. Maybe it was something in our DNA, something from our burial customs – that go back thousands of years – when we were gathered around like that it felt like it needed to be done, this showing respect. It has been missing; at earlier times and in other cultures we showed more respect for animals – it’s been practiced before but it’s been forgotten now. Some say animal tracks are how we first learned to read – a debt we have forgotten. But yes, it became a happy event. People felt it was important to have paid tribute.

DH: What has happened since the Life Cairn was founded?

AK: People continue to come and lay stones. There are now about 3000 stones at the Life Cairn. There are no signs, no markings. It’s all word of mouth.

Since the opening, there have been spontaneous gatherings and poetry events, we’ve brought school groups up there for educational events about extinct species.

DH: Are you planning other Life Cairns?

AK: We just put one in the middle of Stockholm. We started one in Ecuador [which has more endangered species than any other country]. We have one planned with Catholic and Protestant priests in Northern Ireland. That’s on September 15. It’s like a water hole, a shared sense of responsibility. You’re there as a human being. It will be an open ceremony. Anyone can come.

Beyond that, I’d love to get one in every country. I’d love to set one up in front of the White House! (laughter)

DH: Setting one up in front of the White House would be something. How do you see the Life Cairn now? How are people treating it?

AK: Practically, as I said, as a place where we can gather to express our grief. It’s not an activist project. If it was an activist project, we would have put it in the center of  London. It’s a place for quiet reflection, for sanctuary. We lost two subspecies of rhino last year. When the Yangtze dolphin – the “Goddess of the River” – went extinct in 2006, there was no news. Same with the Pyrenean Ibex. We’re in the silent phase of the Sixth Extinction. But just as there’s an external climate change, we hope this will help create an inner climate change on how we relate to our environment, to overcome our feeling of being detached and blasé.

DH: An “inner climate change” is quite provocative.

AK: Well you know it’s true. The language of environmentalism is leaving us inert. Extinction is abstract. CO₂ is abstract. But biodiversity is not abstract. We grew up playing in trees, running around in the woods, chasing rabbits. This is not abstract. Look at things like “parts per million” and the statistics, these are facts that freeze us to death. Language is not communicating the depth of the problem. And certainly after Rio we see that language is not communicating enough – nations are not taking responsibility.

The vitality of the problem is missing and that’s how getting in touch with grief can help. There are no historical parallels here. As Aldo Leopold said, “For one species to mourn for another is a new thing under the sun.”

DH: Reverend Owen-Jones has a nice quote to summarize the project. Can you share that with us?

AK: It goes like this: “All life to carry one life, one life to carry all life.”

DH: Thanks for your Life Cairn. It’s a new way for us to consider the biodiversity crisis and to respond to it in a meaningful way.

AK: Thanks for giving me the chance to talk about it. 

Readers can visit the Life Cairn's Facebook page for more information, photos and videos. And if you're heading to East Sussex, bring a white stone for the Life Cairn. 

Find out about Andreas Kornevall's other projects, like the Earth Restoration Service, involved in proactive ecosystem restoration worldwide and Restore the Earth, which asks, "Will you leave a positive handprint on the Earth?"

Rio Plus 20

The United Nations Conferences on Sustainable Development begins this week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The conference is twenty years after the Earth Summit in Rio, which drew 178 nations and some 100 heads of state. Last week's issue of Nature (June 7) has a good summary of the three major international treaties that came about as a result of the Earth Summit.

Though these treaties were heralded at the time by Richard Benedick, who had negotiated the ozone accord for the US as landmarks: "the history books will refer to this day as a landmark in a process that will save the planet from deterioration", he and others cautioned that process would be slow.

Slow doesn't begin to describe it.

Look at the report card for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. For the main assignment of stabilizing greenhouse-gas emissions, a grade of F. Some good news in the subsidiary assignments of advancing climate research and policy analysis (A) and establishing a diplomatic process (A) -- hey, at least there are meetings -- but negligible progress on "promoting and dispersing climate-friendly technologies (D). 





















Next up is the report card for the Convention on Biological Diversity. 

This time the main assignment was to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss. Result: Fail
There is progress in protecting ecosystems (C) but not much progress in sharing the wealth provided by gene diversity (E) or recognizing indigenous rights (D). I'm not sure why regulating genetically modified organisms gets an A, because we still don't have GMO labelling here in the US, so there's room for improvement here too. 


















The third report card was for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. Like the Convention on Biological Diversity, this Convention is little discussed in the Western media, probably because this is perceived as a third world problem though something like 40% of the US is vulnerable to desertification.

Now the main assignment was to "reverse desertification and land degradation" but again the result was the same: fail.  The most recent figures had 15% of land degrading in 1991 and that has jumped to 24% of land degrading in 2008.
There is little scientific investment for training on this issue (F) and little funding to help the poorer nations preserve their land and prevent degradation (E).






So much for the bad news. Is there any good news? Well, as another article points out in the same issue, Brazil has significantly slowed its deforestation... 

What can we expect at Rio+20? Let's see, there's a debt crisis in Europe and it's an election year in the US, which means few Western countries will be showing up with their checkbooks in hand. Expect finger pointing and footdragging.

The article doesn't mention that other report card issued that day: a stirring speech by 12-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki who chastises all the adults in the room for destroying her future. If you don't know how to fix it, she says, don't break it: It's amazing how little has changed. 
  

All figures from Tollefson, J. and Gilbert, N., 2012, Nature, volume 486, pp 20-23.

Stripping for the Planet

No, I don’t mean strip-mining the planet, or strip-malling the planet . Those have been done. And I don’t mean stripping the planet either, that’s been done too. I mean going out on a limb and doing something courageous: stripping for the planet.

Why? To get people to sign up for Earth Hour, which is this Saturday.

That’s what University of Illinois at Chicago student, Anna Swatson did and you can see the results here. A little inspiration – and a lot of courage – can go a long way. 

US Student Interrupts Climate Talks at Durban

Good for 21-year-old Middlebury student, Abigail Bora, for speaking out at the Durban climate talks:

I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot. The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty. We need leaders who will commit to real change, not empty rhetoric. Keep your promises. Keep our hope alive.

Get the full story here

Is your bank financing climate change?

We're all for shorter showers, eating less meat, bringing a re-usable bag or cup around and taking public transit, but as previous blog posts have indicated, eventually we're going to have to come together and create a movement that demands some changes from the powers that be.

One place to demand action from is our banks. According to Sourcewatch, Bank of America is one of the largest investors in the coal sector, and coal, of course, is a nasty pollutant and contributor to climate change.

You can find a nice summary about actions to get Bank of America and Wells Fargo to divest from coal here:


Using the banks' own policy statements, the Rainforest Action Network and the Sierra Club, have prepared the "2011 Report Card on Banks and Mountain Top Removal". See for yourself if anyone gets an A or a B, and who gets C's and F's.

I don't know about you, but last time I checked, mountains were not for blowing up. We, as bank customers, should be doing what we can to improve our banks grades. It's our money after all.

Is Environmentalism Failing?

Downunder Melbourne Australia’s recent two week long Sustainable Living Festival included this sold old Great Debate: Is Environmentalism Failing.

Five of Australia’s top environmentalists, plus Canadian eco-scientist, David Suzuki, spoke for about ten minutes each. I’m including the entire 85 minute clip below, courtesy of Australia’s ABC network. Further below, I also include some notes. Bear in mind that these are notes and it’s worth your while to watch the entire debate as they are better speakers than I am a summarizer.

First up was Ian Lowe (about 4.5 minutes into the clip), President of the Australian Conservation Foundation who began by reminding the audience that societies only survive if they live within their natural systems, and this is what environmentalism was all about. He argued that though there have been environmental achievements (for example, catalytic converters), the science is clear that we’ve been degrading the environment for the past thirty years and that we’re not living sustainably. He said the two main causes of this degradation are the appalling poverty in the developing world and unsustainable consumption in the richer part of the world. We in the rich parts have to ask ourselves what we’re prepared to give up – we have to live more simply so that others may live.

He acknowledged that the challenge to remove economic growth as a focus of our society was daunting but history tells us that other daunting challenges were overcome when enough people wanted the change badly enough, such as bringing down apartheid in South Africa, bringing down the Berlin Wall, and bringing down dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt. If our own politicians won’t listen then we have to replace them. He finished by saying that shaping a sustainable future is our duty and nothing less than our responsibility.

Next up was fiery Anna Rose (17:45 min into the clip), co-founder of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition who lamented that the environmental movement did not understand power and argued for ways to build power. Environmentalism was positioning itself as a charity that wanted your money not as a movement that needs your voice and power. She said that donations that began with us being harassed in the street are not empowering. Even online tools were being poorly used because the online organization was not translating into offline power. The notion of “click here” shows it’s simply a politics of gesture.

Climate change is not an environmental issue, she said, it’s about our health, survival and our future. Whether environmentalism fails is ultimately up to all of us.

Author Clive Hamilton (31:00) reminded the audience that Big Carbon is ruthless. He summarized some work done in Australia and noted that we urgently need a new environmental radicalism that understands the need to defeat Big Carbon and resists the pressure to conform to the prevailing political structure. This radicalism must be made up of people willing to put bodies on the line because, he concluded, no one ever achieved radical social change by being respectable.

Senator Christine Milne (43:00), Deputy Leader of the Australian Green Party, said that the concept of environmentalism has been spectacularly successful but the movement itself has failed to capitalize on the numbers of people who have a predisposition toward protecting the environment. She said many people support the idea but don’t have the courage to get involved.

But, she said, though we’ve had a revolution in communication, the democratic process hasn’t changed. Politicians are people who want to keep their seats and we need to make them believe they will lose their seat if they don’t act on our behalf. We need massive public campaigning and people have to say that they will change their vote. Thoreau said that most men lived lives of quiet desperation and go to their graves with the song still in them – now is the time for us to get out and get active again on the streets so that our song is heard.

Philip Sutton (56:00), author and co-founder of Safe Climate Australia summarized some of the political actions that led up to the Kyoto Protocal and beyond. He complained that glaciers were moving faster than our political systems but that the frequency of extreme weather events was causing people to sit up and take notice of the changing climate. He argued for 100 percent cuts in greenhouse gases, growing more plants and burying them to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (reverse mining) and deflecting some solar energy to cool the Earth while we create a safe climate.

He said that during World War II, countries rebuilt their economies at maximum speed and added that we’ll all feel invigorated when we can see that a safe, cooler planet is possible in the near term.

Finally, David Suzuki (1:09:00) spoke and he was clearly reeling from the information and impassioned speeches of the previous speakers. He argued that present environmental efforts were dealing with the symptoms of our destructiveness not the root causes. Our economic system, which disregards the services nature performs for our health and wellbeing and focuses only on financial gains is at the heart of the crisis. We have failed to address the fundamental truth that endless on a finite world is impossible.

He said we need to revise our human-centered position to a biocentric position in order to see how we are interconnected with all other species. He was aghast that we humans are one of 10-30 million species and think nothing about taking over 88% of the globe and leaving only 12% for all other species.

He also cautioned about the enormous power of corporations who we’ve allowed to infiltrate government processes yet who exist only to make money and threaten to remove jobs whenever they see fit. He applauded the book, Merchants of Doubt for exposing the hundreds of millions of dollars that has been spent claiming that climate science is junk science, something that he rightly called criminal activity.

Being green shouldn’t be a political football, he said, nor should environmentalism be a specialty: it’s a way of seeing ourselves in the world. He concluded that our task now is to motivate the motivators to motivate.

So there you have it. Again, the speakers themselves say it much better than my crude paraphrasings so do have a look at the video. Though many of the speakers addressed climate change specifically, many of their arguments also apply to the present crisis in species loss. Is the situation in North America any different from Australia? Is environmentalism failing? Your comments are welcome.