I'm off to Argentina for the next few weeks, so there won't be much action here.
Individuals wanting substance, can head on over to Collide-a-scape where there is an interesting discussion going on About the New Energy Revolution.
Individuals interested in visuals should check out Palíndromo Mészáros photos documenting the effects of a massive toxic aluminum spill in Hungary. The photo below isn't photoshopped or a before/after photo. The red line represents the height of the toxic sludge. The photographer cleverly selected the camera height in order to create the effect. Details and other amazing images at American Photo.
The past few days has seen the release of a couple of interesting World Bank reports. Yes, they have been associated with some rather misplaced policy initiatives (I'm looking at you, shock therapy!), but they do a good job of bringing together global information and, arguably, have been tarred for the sins of their twin sibling, the IMF.
The first report, Toward a Green, Clean, and Resilient World for All: A World Bank Group Environment Strategy 2012-2022, lays out the Bank's vision of global environmental policy for the next decade. The general point of the report is to underscore the connection between environmental concerns -- particularly at the global scale -- and the Bank's main mission of poverty alleviation, particularly in the developing world. To this end, they articulate the need for a 'green, clean, and resilient world' defined as follows:
"What do we mean by “green”? Green refers to a world in which natural resources are conserved and sustainably managed to improve livelihoods over time. It is a world in which ecosystems (both green and blue) are healthy and increase the economic returns from the activities they support—such as the fish-breeding and coastal protection services of coral reefs and the water filtering and soil protection services of forests. Other vital ecosystem services such as erosion regulation, carbon sequestration, and pest control are supported and protected. Subsoil assets are also leveraged to build other forms of wealth, such as productive and human capital. In all of this, the private sector uses natural resources sustainably as part of good business, creating jobs and contributing to long-term growth.
"What do we mean by “clean”? Clean refers to a low-pollution, low-carbon world. This is a world in which cleaner air, land, water, and oceans enable people to lead healthy, productive lives. It is also a world in which cleaner production standards spur innovation—whether through reducing air pollution, addressing legacy pollution, or encouraging recycling. It is a world in which industries are built around clean technologies— either for energy, water, transportation, or housing—providing jobs, offering the potential of export-led growth, and contributing to sustainable economic development. It is a world in which the clean technologies and production methods used by the private sector meet or even exceed international standards—partly because of management choices, but also because regulation rewards clean technologies and because clients and investors seek it. It is a world in which governments and companies are held to account by people on their clean performance.
“Resilient” means being prepared for shocks and adapting effectively to climate change. In a resilient world, countries are better prepared for more-frequent natural disasters, more-volatile weather patterns, and the long-term consequences of climate change. Healthy and well-managed ecosystems are more resilient and so play a key role in reducing vulnerability to climate change impacts. Climate resilience is integrated into urban planning and infrastructure development. Through effective social inclusion policies, countries and communities are better prepared to protect vulnerable groups and fully involve women in decision making.
The second report, What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management, focuses on municipal waste. The world's cities currently generate around 1.3 billion tonnes of MSW a
year, or 1.2kg per city-dweller per day, nearly half of which comes
from OECD countries. That is predicted to rise to 2.2 billion tonnes by
2025, or 1.4kg per person. The Bank estimates China's urbanites will
throw away 1.4 billion tonnes in 2025, up from 520m tonnes today. By
contrast, America's urban rubbish pile will increase from 620m tonnes to
700m tonnes.
Building of Fruedenberg's concept of disproportionality -- unequal access to environmental rights and resources observable in the privileges accrued by relatively few actors to create highly uneven levels of polluting emissions per job created -- Matthews develops the concept of a Local Pollution Haven. These are counties that combine three characteristics: 1) high levels of pollution per amount of economic reward, 2) high levels of toxicity per amount of economic reward and 3) low levels of regulatory control. Here's a map showing the distribution of such counties. Not surprisingly, the havens are heavily concentrated in the South (specifically, the states of Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi). When compared to non-pollution haven counties, the havens are typically metropolitan or adjacent to metropolitan counties with higher levels of economic inequality, more than twice the proportion of blacks, and little in-migration. Notably missing is the state of Louisiana, often targeted in the environmental justice literature for its predilection to locate refineries and other aspects of the petrochemical industry in poor counties populated by people of color.
Additional details are in the abstract:
The ‘‘jobs versus the environment’’ dichotomy has been a recurring theme in the United States for decades. It is typically taken to refer to a choice or trade-off between economic growth and development and environmental quality or the lack of environmental degradation. Little resolution has occurred after decades of research because of inconsistent or problematic conceptualization and the use of inappropriate spatial units of analysis. Research on international and domestic pollution havens is reviewed in an effort to introduce the Local Pollution Havens concept. Local pollution havens are conceptualized as counties with high levels of pollution per unit of economic reward, high toxicity per unit of economic reward, and low regulation or other social controls. Traditional and spatial statistical techniques are utilized to construct this measure and determine which counties fit the conceptualization. Descriptive statistics and the results of t-tests and logistic regression analyses are presented to demonstrate how these areas differ from other counties. Implications for the remediation of these areas and also avenues of future research are offered.
That levels of mercury are high and pervasive in New Brunswick and the northeastern US has long been known. A new report Mercury in Terrestrial Ecosystems of the Northeast from The Biodiversity Research Institute in Gorham Maine underscores the issue. The report provides a good overview of the impact of mercury and related policy issues. The key finding is that mercury accumulation, previously considered a risk for aquatic
ecosystems, is also found in many wildlife species living on the land. Unfortunately, the study is limited to 11 northeastern states, so there is little direct information about New Brunswick.
Their website, however, does have links referring back to the results of an earlier 2001-05 project focusing on mercury disposition in the aquatic systems of Northeastern North America. This project, which involved Environment Canada as a partner, provides information about NB.
One of the more interesting aspects of the new report is the information comparing the US sources of the emissions in 1990 with those in 2005. Emissions from medical and municipal waste incinerators have been reduced by over 95%, while emissions from coal fired electrical generating plants remain essentially unchanged.
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
A video tribute site, with lots of interesting material related to Bill's work, is now available.
Specifically, there are the following items: 1) Bill in His Own Words (interview of Bill done in November 2010) 2) The Legacy of Bill (tributes from colleagues who attended Freudenfest) 3) Bill's Blowout in the Gulf Lecture (lecture on his latest book, November 2010) 4) 12 class lectures by Bill, part of his "ENVS 1 Intro to Environmental Studies" course
While the class lectures are nominally 'introductory' material they are informed by Bill's own research and full of unique and unusual insights. Some of his last work placed a special emphasis on “disproportionality,” or the tendency for a major fraction of all environmental impacts to be associated with a surprisingly small fraction of the overall economy as covered in Structural Factors and the Double Diversion: I=PAT and beyond embedded below. (Note: the recording quality on some of the class lectures isn't great and you have to turn the volume all the way up.)
Interesting article in the NYTimes on the global trade in coal. The basic point: while developed countries move to limit the use of coal as a fuel for electrical generation in order to reduce emissions, that very same coal is being sold to China. Moreover, where the coal was traditionally burned close to where it was mined, now it is shipped thousands of miles -- with the additional cost in emissions. And, to make it even more problematic, as demand has grown so has the price and, hence, more production and new mines. In short, local action to reduce emissions is going for nothing at the global level as those emissions are merely being relocated.
The graph above shows that the vast majority of countries are either importing less coal or exporting more of it. The one major exception, China, which has gone from a net exporter to a net importer in the two years between 2007 and 2009.
As the above map shows, there are a large number of countries involved in the trading of coal. The bulk of the shipments to China, however, come from Australia and Indonesia.
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.
In 1997 UC Berkley endocrinologist Tyrone Hayes was contracted by a subsidiary of Syngenta corporation to do research on the widely used agricultural chemical atrazine. Not surprisingly, the company wasn't pleased when Hayes concluded that the chemical might affect male reproductive development in frogs. Prevented by the terms of the contract from publishing the results, Hayes waited for the contract to expire, repeated an expanded version of the research he had done under contract and published the results. Thus began what has become a decade long battle between Hayes and Syngenta.
Hayes, who has always admitted to wearing two hats -- that of objective scientist and that of impassioned activist -- has long been recognized as a character. As in the clip below, he frequently peppers his academic talks with a rap delivery.
It turns out, however, that his hip-hop style has a bit of a gangsta flavor. For years Hayes has been sending rap emails with what is being described as lewd and inappropriate comments to various Syngenta employees. Now, in an attempt to discredit Hayes and his research, Syngenta has released the documents and actively worked to construct an ethical controversy.
Atrazine has been banned in the EU and, with the EPA re-re-restudying its allow-ability in the US, Syngenta seems to have shot off both barrels; attacking both Hayes and his research. It seems that the blood sport of American politics is beginning to affect its science as well.
For those interested in more, a brief clip of an academic talk by Hayes is below and here are links to the legal complaint against Hayes, the emails he sent, articles questioning the ethics of his actions in Nature and Science, and an article outlining the early history of the relationship between Hayes and Syngenta (which dates back to 1997) can be found here.
Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, who took the photo of the LA freeway system at the top of the right hand column and several others on the blog, has a new series of photos of the Gulf oil spill. The series, executed in large-scale digital c-prints, was captured this May and June when Burtynsky boarded a helicopter and took aerial shots of the burning Deepwater Horizon rig where the crisis — the worst marine oil spill in history — originated. An artist whose work has long been driven by deep-seated environmental concerns, Burtynsky's photos can be seen on the website of Toronto’s Nicholas Metivier Gallery (a preview of the exhibition opening on September 16).
Burtynsky has explored the theme of oil for more than a decade, from the Alberta oil sands to Baku, Azerbaijan, one of the earliest sites of oil discovery. These images are gathered in the book Burtynsky: Oil, and a previous blog about the Oil series, with links, is here. The show’s curator, Paul Roth writes in the accompanying book: “The subject is not oil. In these pictures, Edward Burtynsky shows the man-made world—the human ecosystem—that has risen up around the production, use, and dwindling availability of our paramount energy source.”
Global plastic production has risen nearly 6-fold since 1980.
There has been a lot of focus on both the length of time it takes plastics to break down and their tendency to accumulate in the ocean (particularly the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch'). Brought together by ocean currents known as gyres, the plastics have dramatically detrimental consequences for ocean birds.
Recently, there have been a couple of studies shedding new (and, perhaps, hopeful) news about plastics. First, there is evidence that plastic breaks down in the ocean much faster than previously believed. On the down side, the breakdown tends to release potentially toxic chemicals like Bisphenol_A which Health Canada has declared as hazardous to human health.
Second, the current issue of Science reports the result of a 22 year study of the accumulation of plastic in the less publicized 'Atlantic gyre' (see illustration).
One surprising finding is that the concentration of floating plastic debris has not increased during the 22-year period of the study, despite the fact that the plastic disposal has increased substantially. The whereabouts of the "missing plastic" is unknown. ..... A companion study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin details the characteristics of the plastic debris collected in these tows. Most of the plastic is millimeters in size and consists of polyethylene or polypropylene, materials that float in seawater. There is evidence that biological growth may alter the physical characteristics of the plastic over time, perhaps causing it to sink.
The full report is available here: Kara Lavender Law, Skye Moret-Ferguson, Nikolai A. Maximenko, Giora Proskurowski, Emily E. Peacock, Jan Hafner, and Christopher M. Reddy. Plastic Accumulation in the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. Science, 2010; DOI: 10.1126/science.1192321
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.
Red circles on this map show the location and size of many of our planet’s dead zones. Black dots show where dead zones have been observed, but their size is unknown.
It’s no coincidence that dead zones occur downriver of places where human population density is high (darkest brown). Some of the fertilizer we apply to crops is washed into streams and rivers. Fertilizer-laden runoff triggers explosive planktonic algae growth in coastal areas. The algae die and rain down into deep waters, where their remains are like fertilizer for microbes. The microbes decompose the organic matter, using up the oxygen. Mass killing of fish and other sea life often results.
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?
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.
In this TED talk, Jeremy Jackson, a coral reef ecologist, explains how three factors--overfishing, pollution and climate change, each destroyed the coral, fish stocks and ocean life, and how those three factors continue to interact in a positive feedback system to destroy ocean life.
