Budget Smog

A recent graph from the Congressional Budget Office (below) puts the US budget situation in an interesting light. Once you take the cost of running multiple wars off the books (the decade long decline in the green line) the spending side of the budget is pretty much in a steady state -- except for the cost of healthcare, which is rising dramatically.

So, you would think that environmental regulations that would limit air pollution and save billions in healthcare costs would be a good idea. Instead, as described in detail in Obama pulls back proposed smog standards in victory for business, the Obama administration has crumpled in the face of political pressure. Afraid of being labeled as responsible for "job killing regulation" during a period of high unemployment, the move effectively leaves in place 1997 era standards which even the Bush administration  admitted were lax and out of date. (The 1997 regulations were based on science showing that low-level ozone and other atmospheric pollutants contributed to various lung disease but not to death. Subsequent research has unequivocally tied such pollutants to both disease and death.)

Significantly, the regulations are, from a macro-economic perspective, effectively neutral. They would cost industry somewhere between $19 and 90 billion per year by 2020 (depending on the precise standard implemented) and would result in between $13 and 100 billion in healthcare savings. In other words, the total level of economic activity would remain the same, there would just be a shift from government expenditures on healthcare to private sector expenditures on pollution control.

Ominously,

The ozone standard is one of several air-quality rules the administration is in the process of adopting or has already finalized that are under attack. Others include new limits on mercury and air toxins, greenhouse gases from power plants, and a range of emissions from industrial boilers, oil refineries, cement plants and other sources.

This was the easy one. So the likelihood of action on the others is even less. Inaction on smog turns the big club of unilateral action on carbon emissions that the US courts gave the EPA when they ruled carbon was a pollutant into a plush toy. It is looking more and more like US environmental policy is another casualty of the divisive political culture. Return to slow and costly litigation in the courts may be the necessary path

The Quadruple Squeeze on Planetary Boundaries vs Homer-Dixon's Tectonic Stresses

Johan Rockström, Executive Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and lead author of Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity (which was extensively discussed in a special issue of Nature), recently gave a TED talk describing the project and its findings.



The project has two major components. The first looks at changes to the biosphere in an attempt to identify key planetary boundaries, that is "human-determined values (of key ecological variables) set at a “safe” distance from a dangerous level" such that major tipping points will be avoided and the biosphere will continue to function more or less as it currently does.

The image at the left summarizes the findings from this portion of the study: 1) the group identifies 10 key ecological variables (climate change, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, etc. represented by the slices of the pie), 2) defines a 'safe' level for each variable (represented by the green region) and 3) compares the current measures for each variable (red regions) to the save level. The study concludes that for three variables (climate change, biodiversity loss and nitrogen cycling) we have already crossed the planetary boundary.

Second, Rockstrom argues that humanity is putting the planet into a “quadruple squeeze” through pressures of human growth and inequality, climate change, ecosystem loss, and the problem of surprise – rapid tipping points.

It is interesting to compare this analysis with that provided by Tad Homer-Dixon in The Upside of Down. Homer-Dixon contends that five "tectonic stresses" are accumulating deep underneath the surface of today's global order:

• energy stress, especially from increasing scarcity of conventional oil;
• economic stress from greater global economic instability and widening income gaps between rich and poor;
• demographic stress from differentials in population growth rates between rich and poor societies and from expansion of megacities in poor societies;
• environmental stress from worsening damage to land, water forests, and fisheries; and,
• climate stress from changes in the composition of Earth's atmosphere.

Of the five, energy stress plays a particularly important role, because energy is humankind's master resource. When energy is scarce and costly, everything a society tries to do — including growing its food, obtaining enough fresh water, transmitting and processing information, and defending itself — becomes far harder.

The effect of the five stresses is multiplied by the rising connectivity and speed of our societies and by the escalating power of small groups to destroy things and people, including, potentially, whole cities. Interaction among the tectonic stresses and multipliers, according to Homer-Dixon, increases the possibility of unexpected and potentially catastrophic 'synchronous failure', a concept very similar to Perrow's characterization of a system accident.

Comparison shows a substantial amount of similarity in the two. With the exception of Homer-Dixon's emphasis on energy, they focus on the same factors: demographic, economic, environmental/ecological and climatic stresses and the importance of thresholds and surprise. Each, however, extends the analysis of the other in new and important directions. Thus, the Planetary Boundaries provides details on the entire range of key ecological operations necessary for viable operation of the biosphere; a topic not covered in as much detail by Homer-Dixon. Similarly, Homer-Dixon provides substantial additional insight on trends within human social systems that will affect our ability to implement the changes necessary to live within the planetary boundaries. Specifically, he adds the multipliers of globalized transportation and communication networks and the redistribution of power resulting from the proliferation of cheap weapons to the shared concern for economic inequality.

In short, the two present complementary rather than competing accounts.

Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone 2010

The previous post showed a map of dead zones around the world. Nancy Rabalais, Executive Director of Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Chief Scientist aboard the research vessel Pelican, has released an update on the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone -- noting that it is one of the largest ever. Some pertinent quotes follow:

The area of hypoxia, or low oxygen, in the northern Gulf of Mexico west of the Mississippi River delta covered 20,000 square kilometers (7,722 square miles) of the bottom and extended far into Texas waters. The relative size is almost that of Massachusetts. The critical value that defines hypoxia is 2 mg/L, or ppm, because trawlers cannot catch fish or shrimp on the bottom when oxygen falls lower.

This summer’s hypoxic zone (“dead zone”) is one of the largest measured since the team of researchers from Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University began routine mapping in 1985. Dr. Nancy Rabalais, executive director of LUMCON and chief scientist aboard the research vessel Pelican, was unsure what would be found because of recent weather, but an earlier cruise by a NOAA fisheries team found hypoxia off the Galveston, Texas area. She commented “This is the largest such area off the upper Texas coast that we have found since we began this work in 1985.” She commented that “The total area probably would have been the largest if we had had enough time to completely map the western part.”

LSU’s Dr. R. Eugene Turner had predicted that this year’s zone would be 19,141 to 21,941 square kilometers, (average 20,140 square kilometers or 7,776 square miles), based on the amount of nitrate-nitrogen loaded into the Gulf in May. “The size of the hypoxic zone and nitrogen loading from the river is an unambiguous relationship,” said Turner. “We need to act on that information.”

The size of the summer’s hypoxic zone is important as a benchmark against which progress in nutrient reductions in the Mississippi River system can be measured. The Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Nutrient Management Task Force supports the goal of reducing the size of the hypoxic zone to less than 5,000 square kilometers, or 1,900 square miles, which will require substantial reductions in nitrogen and phosphorus reaching the Gulf. Including this summer’s area estimate, the 5-year average of 19,668 square kilometers (7,594 square miles) is far short of where water quality managers want to be by 2015.

For more information: http://www.gulfhypoxia.net

David Maisel meets NASA

The past few decades have seen an increase in 'art photographers' interested in environmental subjects. A number of them, such as David Maisel (responsible for the image Inspiration AZ, 4 from the series The Mining Project shown here) document large scale degradation of the landscape by taking photos from the air. It is interesting to compare this work with photos taken by NASA from space as part of the Earth Observatory project. Both share a similar documentary and consciousness raising orientation. Which do you find most moving? The Maisel image made explicitly and intentionally for this purpose or the NASA image which was taken automatically and selected after the fact for this purpose?

Escondida Copper Mine, Atacama Desert, Chile as rendered by the NASA Earth Observatory.

The Escondida copper-gold-silver mine produces more copper than any other mine in the world (1.483 million tons in 2007), amounting to 9.5% of world output and making it a major part of the Chilean economy. The mine is located 170 kilometers (110 miles) southeast of Chile’s port city of Antofagasta, in the hyper-arid northern Atacama Desert at an elevation of 3,050 meter (10,010 feet) above sea level.

This astronaut photograph features a large impoundment area (image center) containing light tan and gray waste materials (“spoil”) from of the Escondida mine complex. The copper-bearing waste, which is a large proportion of the material excavated from open pit excavations to the north (not shown), is poured into the impoundment area as a liquid (green region at image center), and dries to the lighter-toned spoil seen in the image. The spoil is held behind a retaining dam, just more than 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) long, visible as a straight line at image lower left.

Escondida means “hidden” in Spanish, and it refers to the fact that the copper ore body was buried beneath hundreds of meters of barren rock, and the surface geology gave no signs of its presence. Instead it had to be located by a laborious drilling program following a geologic trend—an imaginary line hundreds of kilometers long established by other known copper finds—with which Escondida lined up.

Escondida produces mainly copper concentrates. Assisted by gravity, the concentrates are piped as slurry down to the smaller port of Coloso just south of Antofagasta, where they are dewatered for shipping. The mine began operating in 1990.

The Journey of a Plastic Bag

Futurestates is an interesting website. Aimed at provoking thought about the mid-term future (e.g., the next 50 years), the site has 11 fictional mini-feature films exploring potential futures through the lens of contemporary global issues. My favorite -- with the voice of noted film director Werner Herzog -- is the story of a plastic bag (available by link if the player below doesn't work).

Agent Orange, the Military and the Environment

When people look for culprits to blame for environmental degradation, they typically pick on industry or the general public. There is, however, a strong case to be made that the military is responsible for much of the worst degradation -- one need only think of Hiroshima, the oil field fires in Kuwait or look at the list of Superfund sites in the US (which is topped by Hanford and other military related sites). People tend to give the military a pass because the actions are seen as necessary or in the public good (e.g., bringing WWII to an end) and because their operations are often shielded in secrecy and, hence, not widely known.

Photojournalist Philip Jones Griffiths covered the Vietnam war and his book Vietnam, Inc. is widely recognized the the best treatment of that war -- a war that saw more journalist access than any other in history. Griffiths' remains haunted by his Vietnam experience and in 2003 published Agent Orange: "Collateral Damage" in Viet Nam a book that stunningly documents the human and ecological tragedy.



Closer to home, a previous student of mine Chris Arsenault, recently published Blowback: A Canadian History of Agent Orange and the War at Home focusing particularly on the testing of Agent Orange and Agent Purple at Base Gagetown outside Fredericton. Significantly, exposed Canadian vets have gotten significantly less compensation from the government than have Americans. CBC's coverage of the controversy is available here.

In the US, a new report The Agent Orange Boomerang: A dark legacy of the Vietnam War is creating a whole new set of problems has just been released. The report covers four main topics: 1) A Legacy Revisited describes how Agent Orange is still damaging lives in Vietnam, 2) Agent of Influence makes the case for US compensation for victims in Vietnam, 3) Environmental Consequences of War takes a general look at the problem and, in specific, explores why the military rarely cleans up the messes they leave behind, and 4) A Hard Way to Die explores why hundreds of thousands of American Vietnam vets with Agent Orange–related
diseases have been made to suffer without VA health care.

A video from the press conference at the release of the report is also available.

Plastic, Plastic, Everywhere .....

Chris Jordan recently returned from a photographic trip to the Midway Atoll, located near the Pacific Trash Vortex (an area of the Pacific Ocean twice the size of Texas where the ocean currents accumulate garbage). While there he photographed the decaying body’s of dead albatross chicks full of plastic they had consumed.



While Jordan's photography has always focused on environmental matters, the current work packs much more emotional punch. His earlier work, like the image shown below, tended to be cool, rational reflections on the scale of human impact. Packing Peanuts (2009) is a 60x80" depiction of 166,000 packing peanuts, equal to the number of overnight packages shipped by air in the U.S. every hour.



Here is a closer view. Other images can be viewed on his website.