The Natural Patriot

I know I’ve already used that subtitle in a different context but I couldn’t resist.  Perhaps I’m getting into a rut . . . 

Anyway, the College Sustainability Report Card for 2008 has been released. This effort, led by the non-profit Sustainable Endowments Institute, ranks the 200 colleges and universities with the largest endowments.  The report shows that more than 2 in 3 schools have shown improved performance over the last year in implementing green practices and policies:

“High-performance green building standards guide construction at 59% of schools, while 42% are using hybrid or electric vehicles in transportation fleets. Notably, 37% of schools purchase renewable energy and 30 percent produce their onw wind or solar energy.  A substantial 70% buy food from local farms and 64% serve fair trade coffee.”

Alas, my own institution, the College of William and Mary, earns only a D-, I’m sorry to say.  This puts us in the bottom 27th percentile among the group scored.  On the bright side, as one colleague noted, this means we have (almost) nowhere to go but up.  Our low grade is not for lack of student interest.  William and Mary’s Student Environmental Action Coalition has been on a roll in recent years, eliminating styrofoam from student dining halls, initiating composting, increasing the use of locally grown foods, finding ways to save energy, and a host of other good work.  In the broader community the Williamsburg Climate Action Network has recently been formed.  Perhaps all this activity in the grass roots — and the example of A students like Harvard and The University of Virginia — will eventually tickle the toes of the College’s administration and generate some forward progress.  

[Photo shows solar thermal collectors on the roof of the Mechanical Engineering Building on the University of New Mexico campus]

Fascinating editorial in this week’s issue of Nature arguing that “Many ‘developing’ countries are much more developed than some people think. Their rapid progress should inspire scientists and their institutions to do more to confront global poverty.”

The immensity of the problem of continuing grinding poverty in the ”developing” world tends to make those of us lucky ones in the north feel a sense of impotence about what to do (rather like the response to global climate change).  But, in fact, many countries have made remarkable progress in life expectancy, per capita income, and other measures of well-being over recent decades. 

How do we know this?  There are mountains of dry demographic data out there but how to make sense of it all?  A picture is worth a thousand words, and a moving picture may be worth a million.  Enter Dr. Hans Rosling, a global-health researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who has developed an ingenious, intuitive, and compelling software for visualizing trends in world health and well-being.  Examples of what he’s done are posted at his website, Gapminder. There’s a lot of really cool stuff here but check out especially the animations in Gapminder World 2006, which show progress in alleviating poverty in any country in the world over the last half century.

Has the world become a better place in recent decades?  Watch this — it really blew me away.  And for a characteristically striking and intuitive animation showing how the proportion of people worldwide that live below the poverty line has decreased in recent decades — and is on track for meeting the millennium development goal by 2010 – see Human Development Trends 2005.

Poverty is obviously a critical international issue for basic humanitarian reasons.  But it is also important, perhaps less obviously, for nature conservation and the urgently needed transition to an environmentally sustainable world.  Many experts argue, cogently I think, that eradication of poverty through development of effective governments and functional market economies is the only way to reach sustainability in the long run (the picture shows people waiting in line to vote in Sierra Leone).  This would seem to be an issue that people from all parts of the ideological spectrum can get behind.  Strengthening democractic institutions and free markets has always been a core conservative value, for example. 

Why should we care about biodiversity?  

I frequently lecture on biodiversity science and trends, and some of the policy implications of declining biodiversity.  The main theme I develop comes from the major scientific effort in the last decade on identifying and quantifying the impacts of changing biological diversity on the functioning of ecosystems, and their consequent impacts on natural services that ecosystem provide to humanity — fishery production, waste decomposition, storm protection, and so on.  This is a distinctly utilitarian approach to valuing biodiversity. 

But there are of course a host of other reasons for valuing biodiversity, albeit often more difficult to quantify rigorously than the effects on ecosystem processes, and some of them are arguably more compelling than the utilitarian arguments.  The spiritual and cultural values of natural phenomena generally, and biodiversity specifically, are major ones (as recognized in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment). In addition to its importance in its own right, recognizing the spiritual and cultural value of nature can add some muscle to conservation efforts.

An interesting new article in the Encyclopedia of Earth on “Sacred places and biodiversity conservation“, by Dr. Leslie Sponsel, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai`i, considers some of these issues.  Sponsel considers sacred places “new frontier for interdisciplinary research on their own merits and for their relevance for biodiversity conservation.” Some highlights:

“A particularly striking case is provided by a study from Bruce A. Byers and colleagues with the Shona people who live in the Zambezi Valley of northern Zimbabwe . . . A sacred place (nzvimbo inoera) is where spirits are present. Associated with it are certain rules of access as well as behaviors that are not allowed (taboos). Moreover, Byers and colleagues discovered that deforestation is at least 50% lower in sacred forests than in their secular counterparts. Some 133 species of native plants occur in these sacred forests, whereas they are variously threatened, endangered, or extirpated elsewhere in Zimbabwe. These researchers conclude that strategies for biodiversity conservation that link culture and nature are more likely to be effective than those imposed from the top down by government and/or international agencies and that ignore the traditional beliefs, values, institutions, and practices of local societies.”

Another specific example recently in the news involves  Canadian authorities’ recommendation against the use of Amazay Lake, British Columbia, as a mining waste dump. According to Earth News:

“The panel wrote that the conversion of Amazay lake into a tailings dump is ‘not in the public interest’ and that ‘both the Gitxsan and the Tse Keh Nay have stated that water is sacred to them, and that the destruction of a natural lake goes against their values as aboriginal people.’ The panel’s reasoning places sacred land issues on par with environmental concerns, which is indeed an important precedent in Canada. Politicians may still overrule the panel’s recommendation, but combined with the 2005 Supreme Court directive towards ‘meaningful consultation’ with Aboriginal people, the momentum appears to be heading in the right direction.”

One effort begun with the goal of aligning conservation goals with the spiritual beliefs of people tha use the areas is the Alliance for religions and conservation, which works with religious groups worldwide to develop homegrown environmental programs drawing on their own beliefs, values, and practices. ARC has implemented over a hundred projects that protect sacred sites.   Some of the more interesting (to me) examples include a recent statement of the “theology of the forest” from the Druze of Lebanon, and the Sacred Land project launched by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

[Photo of Buddha in a tree by Kenro Izu from Ayutthaya, Thailand]

Forbes magazine has just released its survey of the “greenest state in the land of the free” (to borrow from the old Davy Crockett TV show theme).  Forbes ranked each state in six equally weighted categories: carbon footprint, air quality, water quality, hazardous waste management, policy initiatives and energy consumption. 

They ranked the states on policy initiatives according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s energy efficiency scorecard. For energy consumption and lifestyle choice, they examined vehicle miles traveled, number of alternative fuel and hybrid-electric vehicles per capita, and number of LEED-certified buildings, among other metrics. Data from the Energy Information Administration, EPA, Department of Transportation, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club also went into the brew.

Here’s what they came up with (you can click on the states near the top and bottom of the list for more detail). 

“So who’s at the bottom? Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Indiana and, at No. 50, West Virginia. All suffer from a mix of toxic waste, lots of pollution and consumption and no clear plans to do anything about it. Expect them to remain that way.”

And where does all that trouble in West Virginia come from?  Mostly from the literal destruction of the landscape in pursuit of coal, and the nasty consequences for everybody that lives downstream.  Meanwhile, my home state of Virginia is flirting with lowering our ranking by emulating our neighbors across the border to the West  with a spanking new coal-fired power plant (complicated by the fact that Dominion Power is currently under investigation by the NY Attorney General).  Maybe some peer pressure from the northeast is in order . . .

That’s the name of a new documentary on the state of the Earth to air this coming Tuesday and Wednesday nights (23 and 24 October) on CNN. 

Normally, I shy away from anything that might be considered advertising.  But this looks like a good show.  And it got a little boost from the fact that NewsBusters (”Exposing liberal bias in the media”) is falling over themselves to dis it before it shows, with articles in the top slot just above their Ann Coulter banner ad, followed by the characteristic long string of thoughtfully considered, grammatically creative comments (sample: “And just how many scientists constitutes this majority? Save a SeAL, club a liberal!!”).  Although the show covers deforestation, species loss, and overpopulation, the bile from the right stems mainly from CNN’s pushing that tired old myth of global warming, dreamed up by Al Gore and the vast left-wing conspiracy of scientists (and somehow including such arch-liberals as Newt Gingrich, Rupert Murdoch, President Bush, and evangelist Pat Robertson, among others).  

CNN must be doing something right. 

On the other hand, what marketing guru decided to schedule the show’s 2nd installment on the opening night of the World Series?!  Might have to record it, if I can figure out how to do that . . .

The series also includes a set of Resources for Educators.

Yes, that Newt Gingrich. I admit this is hard for me, as a lifelong Democrat. But bear with me.  

In our better moments, we all like to talk about finding common ground and fostering bipartisanship and all that stuff.  So I am trying to walk the walk here.  If we can put aside his social agenda for a moment, one has to recognize that Newt Gingrich has been one of the more compelling voices on the right in terms of the role of science in American policy, consistently arguing that generous investment in science and education is among the key factors in making this country strong, economically robust, and flexible in the tumultuous new millennium.

Probably many of us who remember him from his Speaker-of-the-House days have forgotten, or were never aware, that Gingrich is a bona fide environmentalist.  So much so that conservative think tanks have found it necessary to keep an eye on him – fearing that his support for the Endangered Species Act and  National Instutute of the Environment have brought us dangerously close to the end of western civilization as we know it.  All the code words are there: “junk science”, “property rights”, “unreasonable regulation”.  As one conservative think-tanker commented, disapprovingly, on Newt’s establishment of a House task force on the environment:

“Then Gingrich gave Republicans with views similar to those of liberal environmental organizations equal representation on the task force with Republicans holding conservative/limited-government views”

Horrors — equal representation! What is America coming to?

According to Wikipedia, Gingrich started his career as a Professor of History at the University of West Georgia (where he was denied tenure, which may have something to do with his lifelong antipathy toward the “intellectual elite“). Interestingly, the book jacket lists him as having been an “environmental studies professor.” At any rate, it is clear that the environment has been a key, substantive issue for Gingrich over the long haul.

So I have now finished reading his book, A Contract with the Earth, co-authored with Terry Maple, Professor of Pyschology, Behavior, and Conservation at Georgia Tech and former Director of Zoo Atlanta.  The book is pretty easy going, really an extended essay.  And it is excellent. Much of this stuff has been said before, but rarely from a voice that carries (or carried at one time) so much weight with the large conservative American constituency that “environmentalism” or “creation care” or whatever you want to call it so desperately needs. The proposed Contract with the Earth consists (presumably not coincidentally) of Ten Commandments Commitments:

1. Take the Lead (message to the “sole superpower” remaining on earth, whose leadership has, to put it politely, dropped the ball on environmental issues)

2. Reward a new generation of environmental entrepeneurs (employing the core conservative approach of market-based approaches to innovation)

3. Retire or rejuvenate old technologies (Coal comes to mind)

4. Transform the role of government (Again, near and dear to conservatives, and a long-term Newt issue.  But these guys also recognize that some problems cannot be solved by the market alone and that some government regulation is necessary, hence Newt’s long-time support for te Endangered Species Act)

5. Become an aspirational and inspirational Nation (here’s where the Patriotism comes in)

6. Position America to meet the challenge (”We must be prepared to anticipate and quickly respond to present and future threats.  The high priority of the environment must be affirmed.”)

7. Encourage scientific and technical literacy (I’ll drink to that, as I have said before)

8. Invoke the spirit of collaboration and cooperation (Who can argue with that?  I only wish Newt had discovered this lofty goal before leading his scorched-earth attack on the Clinton White House back in his glory days.  But let’s not go there . . .)

9. Support the environment through philanthropy and investment (”A coordinated, strategic philanthropy will support the increasing priority of environmental events and issues.”)

10. Enlist the Nation (”executives in government, business, science and the arts must rally to mobilize all citizens to pursue proactive, environmental policies and practices at home and in the workplace . . . Every one of us, meek and mighty, is needed to reach our goal of a cleaner, healthier Earth”)

There is a lot of good stuff here, along with, inevitably, some fluffy rhetoric and some substantive issues I would question.  The wonkish details of how such a revolution might transpire have been expressed better elsewhere (e.g., here and here), but of course, that is not the goal of this book.  What is important is its compelling case that working toward a harmonious and sustainable symbiosis with the rest of life is not only the central and most important practical challenge of this century, but that it is a moral and patriotic imperative.  The message is expressed with the concise, emotionally stirring, and intellectually compelling prose we’ve come to expect from this master political operator, and each chapter ends with the “talking points” one expects in a political manifesto.  It is incredibly refreshing to hear these obviously heartfelt and well-reasoned arguments from a hard-core conservative.  Like author Tom Friedman, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, and Republican Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, Gingrich and Maple are showing that natural security must be a fundamental part of patriotism. And it must unite people from across the political and ideological spectra.

So I say: Kudos to Newt Ginrich and Terry Maple, two premier Natural Patriots.  And Let’s hope their ideas take root and grow.

Significant news on the US legislative front (from the Ecological Society of America’s press release):

“The House cleared a bill on October 10 that would let foreign nations pay off some of their debt by protecting coral reefs and tropical forests.  The bill, H.R. 2185, passed without objection, putting it in a good position to make it to the President’s desk this year. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved a similar bill, S. 2020, last month. A Senate floor vote has not yet been scheduled.  The bill would reauthorize and expand an existing “debt for nature” program that helps countries conserve tropical forests to include coral reefs and marine habitats. The original statute, which expires at the end of this year, has helped conserve 50 million acres of forest in Asia, the Caribbean, Central and South America.  The new legislation credits qualified developing countries for each dollar they spend on tropical forest, coral reef or coastal habitat conservation.  Eleven countries currently have “debt for nature” forest conservation agreements: Bangladesh, Belize, Botswana, Jamaica, El Salvador, Panama, Peru, Guatemala, Colombia, Paraguay and the Philippines.  Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, the Wildlife Conservation Society and Conservation International match funds to contribute to the program. The groups have invested more than $9.6 million to debt-for-nature swaps and have endorsed the new bill.”

A related news story illustrates how this works in practice: the US has just agreed to forgive $26 million of Costa Rica’s debt in exhange for protecting some of the country’s most threatened tropical forests.  Costa Rica’s end of the bargain involves a committment to invest a similar sum in conservation of the forests and their diverse, endangered wildilfe.  The US government is contributing ~$12.6 million, while Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy will contribute $1.26 million each. Those funds and the interest they generate will eliminate $26 million in Costa Rica’s debt over the next 16 years, the largest such “debt for nature” swap in the history of the Tropical Forest Conservation Act, passed in 1998 to facilitate such agreements. The deal also requires Costa Rica to cooperate with the USA on drug enforcement and counterterrorism.  According to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.:

“Debt-for-nature agreements are a successful model for government and citizen cooperation and should encourage more public-private partnerships to further the cause of global conservation and environmental protection.”

In addition to being major reservoirs of biodiversity, the trees and soils of tropical forests contain gigantic quantities of carbon.  Cutting and burning of those forests contributes 20 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the world’s cars, trucks, trains and planes combined.  Because of this dual significance of tropical forests for biodiversity and the carbon cycle (and by extension, global warming), some have argued that preventing tropical deforestation is the single biggest environmental priority on a global scale. After Costa Rica lost nearly 80% of its forest cover over the last few decades, concerted reclamation of degraded land and planting of trees have reversed that trend, bringing current forest cover to over 50% and making Costa Rica one of the success stories and role models in tropical conservation.

A significant development in this proposed reauthorization of the debt-for-nature legislation is its extension into the oceans, in the interest of conserving coral reefs critically endangered by a variety of threats, not least of them warming temperatures and ocean acidification resulting from greenhouse gas emissions. 

There is hope!

With the constant tide of depressing, alarming, and just plain bizarre news always lapping at our shoes, it’s a comfort to know that there is indeed still some justice and sanity remaining in the world. 

Al Gore, dogged and indefatigable warrior for climate righteousness, Former-Next-President-of-the-United-States, and Natural Patriot extraordinaire, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

As most readers will know by now, the FNPUS shared this honor with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the unprecedented global coalition of scientists that devoted years of their lives to collecting, analyzing, and exhaustively vetting the complex and obscure scientific data on climate change necessary to hammer out a series of scientific consensus statements on the state of what we do and don’t know about global climate and how it’s changing.

Dave Roberts at Grist has captured, with characteristic wit and dead-on accuracy, the depressing inability of the mainstream American media to grasp the real significance of this historic event, which has to do not with the obsessive issue of whether he cares to run for President or not, and what the Prize might mean for his chances or not.  No, the significance of Gore’s receipt of the Nobel is the recognition of something utterly unique in the recent history of American politics — one man’s long-term, single-minded, crusade (if I may use that charged word) to bring a huge, complex, profound, long-term (and hence politically suicidal) problem to the front burner of an American public drugged into indulgent complacency by years of politicians who get elected by promising that all problems can be solved with bigger guns and lower taxes. 

In the rest of the world, the award was cause for celebration (from the Washington Post):

“John Ashton, Britain’s special representative for climate change, said the award signals that the international community has ‘crossed a threshold’ when it comes to global warming. ‘The international community now understands this is not only an environmental challenge like other environmental challenges, it is a fundamental challenge to international peace and security,’ he said in an interview. Reaction in Europe, where the Bush administration has been seen as resistant to addressing the warming issue, was strongly positive among politicians across the ideological spectrum. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called Gore “inspirational.” [Conservative] French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was happy that “a great American used his position to set an example.” European Commission President Jos¿ Manuel Barroso said he hoped Gore’s honor would encourage world leaders to ‘approach this challenge even more swiftly and decisively.’”

Meanwhile, back home in the US of A, our current president’s staff could manage only this: “Obviously it’s an important recognition, and we’re sure the vice president is thrilled.” Presumably he meant Gore, rather than Dick Cheney, who it is impossible to imagine being thrilled at this news.  Conservatives are predictably fuming.  What does this have to do with peace? Well, here is what the Nobel committee said:

“By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC and Al Gore, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is seeking to contribute to a sharper focus on the processes and decisions that appear to be necessary to protect the world’s future climate, and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind. Action is necessary now, before climate change moves beyond man’s control.”

Evidently, American military brass has similar fears about implications of climate change for national security.  Given how close Al came to being the leader of the Free World (and let’s not rehash that now . . .), one might be forgiven for speculating wistfully at how different the landscape of environmental politics and policy might look today had the American people’s undisputed choice for President been allowed to assume that office in 2000.

But perhaps it’s all for the better.  As Roberts emphasizes and Gore himself has alluded in previous speeches, he can probably accomplish more in his present role as self-appointed world ambassador for sane environmental policy than he could within the confines of the American Presidency, with its perverse habit of forcing the best and brightest statesmen we can produce to fritter away their precious energy arguing about whether this or that brain-dead person should have her feeding tube pulled after a video diagnosis on the Senate floor, whether he believes in fairy tales, whether consenting adults should be prevented from living together in peace because of someone else’s fairy tales, etc.  Who needs that?  Not Al Gore, evidently. He has more important fish to fry.

So I say: “Hail to the Chief!”

Climate change denialists — what are these guys thinking?  I mean, what do they really think, in their heart of hearts (or whatever organ it is they use to make arguments such as this) when noone else is listening?

I have often daydreamed of responding to the more hard-core denialists by suggesting that they write letters to their great-grandchildren and explain to them why they are doing what they are doing (or, more importantly, not doing) and what they hope for their future world.  What would you tell your descendents if you could talk to them 100 years from now, in their world inherited from us, about what you were thinking and doing to ensure that their inheritance included at least some shadow of the miraculous world we take for granted?  I would be very intrigued, for example, to see such a letter from Oklahoma Senator and infamous former Environment and Public Works Committee Chair James Inhofe (see, for example, here and here).

Evidently, great minds think alike.  My colleagues at DeSmog Blog have beat me to the punch (way to go guys!) with a very similar idea, albeit not explicitly directed at denialists, in their “100 Year Letter” project.  A few letters have come in so far.  I would love to see more of them, because I think this personal, emotional approach is just the sort of thing that might work in breaking through the thick, desiccated crust of apathy and cynicism and (deliberately fabricated) confusion and fear that keeps people from getting it, from understanding that climate change is a real problem that will have real and serious consequences for the people that we love most in this world — our children and their children.

I think it would be a useful exercise for each one of us to sit down and think hard about what we want for our great-grandchildren and what we are willing to do to provide it for them.  Then write it down and send it to DeSmog Blog.  Or send it to your local newspaper, or both.  I’m thinking about mine now.  Stay tuned . . .

. . . the USA opens a sleepy eye and rolls over.

France recently engaged an unlikely coalition of farmers, fishermen, trade unionists, captains of industry, environmentalists, scientists, and politicians to develop a blueprint for a new “green revolution” in sustainability. Against all odds, it appears to have worked — so far.  As reported in Nature (and also here), The group came to consensus on the following key points: