The Natural Patriot

Ok, now that I’ve got your attention . . .

It’s often struck me that, just as I am about to wander off and let the blog wither away to die a natural and dignified death, fading into obscurity like the motley materials in the compost I’ve periodically discussed here, something perverse happens to prevent me from doing so. Someone I admire mentions that they read the Natural Patriot and did not fall asleep, for example. Well, it will be clear to the alert reader that I’ve been something of a slacker in this medium for an alarmingly long time now. It was starting to look grim. But I am here to tell you that reports of the Natural Patriot’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Which brings me, at last, to what you’ve been waiting for in amused incredulity: the explanation for the title of my post today.

Why, you would be entirely justified in asking, would I say something so transparently absurd about myself?

The answer will be found in an email that I received out of the blue yesterday from none other than Jeremy Rifkin, (well, OK, technically, it was from a secretary at his institution . . .), economist, bestselling author, architect of a “Third Industrial Revolution”, advisor to various heads of state, and (according to his website) “the most widely read columnist in the world today”. Naturally I was skeptical of the invitation at first, but it appeared to be from a legitimate return address, did not have the pathetic spelling and grammatical faux pas characteristic of internet hoaxes, etc. etc. The name was familiar so I googled him and discovered, among other things, that he was called by Time magazine in 1989 “the most hated man in science“, mainly for his aggressive — and, some would say, unscrupulous — tactics in opposing genetically engineered organisms in the environment (See, for example this essay about anti-science activism). Ah yes, that Jeremy Rifkin. This obviously gave me some pause. I reproduce the message below in its entirety:

-Jeremy Rifkin

Well, yes, since you ask, this does interest me. Let me start by reassuring faithful readers that I’m not so narcissistic as to believe that I’m one of the world’s 30 leading intellectuals, scholars, and/or scientists. But neither am I immune to flattery. And the Huffington Post is the real deal. Plus, my first thought was “what a great title for a blog post this will be!” So I said, “OK, I’ll bite.” I may very well be stepping into a snake pit. But you can’t make a mark if you don’t engage. It will at least provide an opportunity to dig out the old manifestos about the need for a new concept of patriotism from my files of various rejected newspaper op-ed pieces and post them where someone might actually see them.

Anyway, just a shot across the bow for now. Stay tuned for the essay — and the zombie-like resurrection of the Natural Patriot . . .

Alan Weisman recently published a book that got a lot of press attention for its novelty idea of considering The World Without Us — that is, what earth would look like if some unlikely event wiped out humans and left everything else more or less intact.

An interesting topic for cocktail party chat. But let’s consider the much more germane and pressing question: what will a world with us look like , meaning a world filled with the additional four or five or six billion descendants we as a global society are likely to produce in the coming decades before we bump up against the limits to global human population growth and the numbers stabilize?

As the old warning goes: this is not a test. This is not a parlor game question or an academic question. This is arguably the fundamental question at the root of all others. Consider the words of the father of capitalism himself, Adam Smith, from The Wealth of Nations in the fateful year 1776:

“The desire for food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire for the conveniences and ornaments of building, dress, equipage and household furniture, seem to have no limit or certain boundary.”

The implications of those desires, and what might be done about them, are well laid out in a recent special theme issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London dedicated to “The impact of population growth on tomorrow’s world“. It is sobering and thought-provoking reading (and, importantly, for my readers who don’t happen to have access to a full-service university library, the issue is open access). The issue has everything from fossil fuel limits to the demographic transition, to refutations of revisionist claims that population growth is unimportant, to accounts of how policy has reduced population growth humanely in a variety of countries, to what we should be thinking about to fix the problem, on a global scale. The table of contents is shown below, with links to the articles, but here is the bottom line, and I quote:

“This statement, prepared by the organizers, summarizes some conclusions of the meeting without committing every participant to support of every detail.

Rapid population growth in some regions, combined with increasing affluence and explosive growth in fossil fuel and natural resources consumption throughout the world, is seriously endangering a broad range of natural systems that support life. For the first time in history, much of the natural world is adversely affected by human activity. Global warming is just one among many threats to sustaining human life, wildlife and the natural environment.

The United Nations projects that the human population will increase from the current 6.8 billion to between 8 billion and 10.5 billion in 2050. Although more than half the world’s women now have an average of two children or fewer, the global population is still growing rapidly and this year there will be 78 million more births than deaths (a number slightly less than the population of Germany). Over 95 per cent of this growth is in low-income countries least able to provide for these numbers. Despite deaths from AIDS, much of the fastest population growth is in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2007, Western donor contributions to family planning were less than a quarter of the inflation-adjusted target set at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. Shrinking family planning budgets have been associated with stalled fertility decline in a number of countries, leading to serious adverse effects on the health of women and their families and the stability and progress of civil society. In Kenya, as a result of diminished focus on family planning, the projected population in 2050 has been increased from 54 million to 83 million. Some observers predict that an increase of this magnitude may lead to food scarcity and crumbling infrastructure and, potentially, to violent conflicts over scarce resources.

With over 80 million unintended pregnancies each year, there is already a large unmet need for family planning. Surveys show that 200 million women wish to delay or stop the next pregnancy and over 100 million are not using any contraception because they lack access to it or face other barriers to its use. Even in the USA, one of the most affluent nations in the world, half of all pregnancies are unintended.

Meeting the unmet need for family planning has been highly successful in slowing rapid population growth. Ready access to contraception and safe abortion has decreased family size, even in illiterate communities living on less than a dollar a day. Increased access to family planning will make it easier for countries with rapidly growing populations to expand education. Education, in turn, particularly of women, makes an important contribution to fertility decline and a crucial contribution to development. However, rapidly growing countries cannot always expand education fast enough to keep pace with the growing number of children each year.

The coming decade should be dedicated to the needs of the one billion young people aged 15–24 in the world, the majority living in low-income settings with limited educational and employment opportunities. Every young person should have full access to contraception and the knowledge of how to use it. The burden of ill health associated with unsafe abortion must be confronted, especially among young people who are often most vulnerable to unintended pregnancy.

The unmet need for contraception in low-income countries is calculated to increase from 525 million couples in 2000 to 742 million by 2015. It is essential that national leaders and international donors, especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, understand the imperative to invest in education and improved access to family planning.

All women should be protected from unintended childbirth. Making every birth a wanted birth is a goal that can be approached through improved access to family planning.

Reaching this goal is vital to creating a healthier and more equitable world.

Theme Issue: ‘The impact of population growth on tomorrow’s world’
Roger V. Short: Population growth in retrospect and prospect.

Malcolm Potts, Anne M. Pebley, and J. Joseph Speidel. Editorial.

Adair Turner. Population priorities: the challenge of continued rapid population growth.

John Bongaarts. Human population growth and the demographic transition.

Alex C. Ezeh, Blessing U. Mberu, and Jacques O. Emina. Stall in fertility decline in Eastern African countries: regional analysis of patterns, determinants and implications.

Adair Turner. Population ageing: what should we worry about?

Steven W. Sinding. Population, poverty and economic development.

Wolfgang Lutz. Sola schola et sanitate: human capital as the root cause and priority for international development?

J. Joseph Speidel, Deborah C. Weiss, Sally A. Ethelston, and Sarah M. Gilbert. Population policies, programmes and the environment.

Richard Nehring. Traversing the mountaintop: world fossil fuel production to 2050.

Bradley A. Thayer. Considering population and war: a critical and neglected aspect of conflict studies.

Ndola Prata. Making family planning accessible in resource-poor settings.

Martha Campbell and Kathleen Bedford. The theoretical and political framing of the population factor in development.

Malcolm Potts. Where next?

OK, fame would be overstating it, even on a local level. But we did get air. At any rate, Check out last night’s green energy link on WVEC-TV 13. Now it’s looking forward to actually doing the work . . .

[Over the last year, through a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs, euphoria and despair, exciting breaks, wild goose chases, dead ends, dark nights of the soul, and so on, we have been working to develop a project to employ wild algae to simultaneously help clean up pollution on the one hand and provide a feedstock for environmentally sustainable biofuels on the other. It has been a long road. But we have cleared the first hurdle. 

As the authoritative news anchors used to say back in the day, with a sense of controlled urgency, “This just in“:]

Algae initiative aims to produce fuel while helping the environment

By Joe McClain, The College of William and Mary
30 September 2009

The College of William and Mary and its Virginia Institute of Marine Science have formed a collaborative research initiative to investigate a promising new technology to produce biofuel from the algae growing naturally in rivers and the Chesapeake Bay.

The enterprise, called ChAP—the Chesapeake Algae Project—is an integrated research approach to algae-based energy production and environmental remediation. It includes a number of corporate partners, notably StatoilHydro, a Norwegian energy company. StatoilHydro has seeded the enterprise with an initial $3 million investment. Other key partners are the Williamsburg energy advisory firm Blackrock Energy, the University of Maryland, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Arkansas and HydroMentia, a Florida company that works with water-treatment technologies.

“This is the kind of collaboration at which William & Mary excels,” William & Mary President Taylor Reveley said. “It is a powerful extension of our own drive toward a more sustainable campus community.”

StatoilHydro representatives met with William & Mary officials and other partners in Williamsburg recently to sign a formal agreement to proceed. Other partners, private and public, are expected to join the initiative as work progresses.

“By taking the first step in close cooperation with some of the most skilled researchers the U.S. has to offer in this field, we feel confident that we have the best starting point possible for reaching a successful result and a good basis for attracting new private and public partners in the future,” says Lars Nordli, head of StatoilHydro’s biofuel division.

The William & Mary/VIMS group is investigating a process that not only is environmentally sustainable, but if used on a large scale, can help to reverse a number of environmental problems such as excess nutrient enrichment that produces “dead zones” in the Chesapeake Bay and other waters.

However, Dennis Manos, William & Mary’s vice provost for research and graduate and professional studies, said the main environmental benefits of ChAP will derive from the central goal of the project: to find a way to produce algal biofuel on an industrial scale.

“We would like to help companies put a significant dent in the world’s thousand-barrel-per-second appetite for oil,” Manos said.

Lead researchers at VIMS involved in ChAP include J. Emmett Duffy, the Loretta and Lewis Glucksman Professor of Marine Science, and Professor of Marine Science Elizabeth Canuel. At the Williamsburg campus of William & Mary, Gene Tracy, Chancellor Professor of Physics and Applied Science; Bill Cooke, professor of physics; and Robert Hinkle, professor of chemistry, are lead members of the team, which includes other faculty members.

Manos explained that the project involves the entire process of producing biofuels, from algal growth to harvesting, extracting the oil and other projects from the algae, processing the oil and producing the final biofuel product.

The project was initiated by exploring, among others, technology originally developed by Walter Adey of the Smithsonian Institution as an efficient, large-scale aquarium filter.  Adey has been meeting with a group of researchers at William & Mary and VIMS for the past year, working out details of how to adapt the concept to industrial-scale algae cultivation. A test site has been operating at VIMS, using brackish York River water, and a second test station is planned for Lake Matoaka on the William & Mary campus.

Algae are good candidates for use as biofuel because of their rapid growth rates, ability to take-up nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, and some of these aquatic plants have as much as 50 percent oil content, depending on environmental factors. ChAP differs from other algal biofuel initiatives in two ways.

“In the first place, we’re going to work with many species of algae, as opposed to concentrating on farming a monoculture, or attempting to contain genetically modified algae in open-water environments,” Manos said. Most current algae studies focus on one high-yield species or strain of algae, but Manos explained that using a polyculture approach makes the algae less susceptible to disease and generally more robust. One of the goals of ChAP will be to develop processes to maximize the effective energy yield from a harvest that varies in oil content.

The other difference is that the process is designed to work without competing with either fresh-water supplies or agricultural resources. “The process will work in brackish water, salt water, even waste water,” Manos said. “That’s one of the best parts of the whole idea, and ultimately, while producing affordable transportation fuel, using wild algae can even help to remediate conditions that otherwise would lead to harmful algal blooms.”

[Stand by for details . . .]

As an academic ecologist researching or teaching about ecosystems, a common dilemma is the issue of how to define the boundaries of a system. Where, for example, does the Chesapeake Bay end and the Atlantic begin? What is the edge of the Hubbard Brook ecosystem? Et cetera. But there is one major exception to this rule: planet earth. We can define the edges of that superecosystem reasonably well. For all practical purposes we are limited, as a global society, to the resources we have here, with the single major exception of incoming solar radiation.

Humans have now grown in abundance and influence to the point where we are the force of nature. Which begs the ultimate practical question about ecosystems: How is humanity interacting with the planetary ecosystem, and is this suite of interactions sustainable?

Obviously, this generation is not the first to ask these questions. In 1972, a team lead by Donella Meadows from MIT published a book called “The Limits to Growth” (LTG), which presented results of a computer modeling study commissioned by a think-tank, The Club of Rome, concerned about the mounting impacts of unsustainable human activities on the earth system. They examined the interactions of five subsystems of the global economic system: population, food production, industrial production, pollution, and consumption of non-renewable natural resources. The model began in 1900 and continued to 2100. The model was able to reproduce broadly the historical data to the year 1970.

The central message from the LTG model  was that growth of the global economy would lead to exceeding planetary limits sometime in the 21st century, likely resulting in collapse of the human population and economic system.

BUT, the model also suggested, collapse could by an aggressive program of changes in behavior, progressive policy, and strategic application of technology.

LtG modeled three scenarios:

1) The “standard run” represents a business-as-usual situation where physical, economic, and social relationships were maintained more or les as they were during 1900–1970. This run (see the figure above) shows continuing economic growth into the early decades of the 21st century but signs of increasing environmental pressure at the start of the 21st century (e.g., resources diminishing, pollution increasing exponentially, growth slowing in food, services, and material wealth per capita). Sounds uncomfortably familiar? Finally, this scenario resulted in “overshoot and collapse” of the global system in mid-21st century due to diminishing resources and increasing pollution.

2) The “comprehensive technology” approach—approximating suggestions of “optimists” like Julian Simon or Bjorn Lomborg—attempts to solve sustainability issues with purely technological solutions. This scenario assumes (as do some economists, astonishingly enough) that levels of resources are effectively unlimited, as well as efficient recycling of materials, big reductions in pollution, doubling of agricultural land yields, and availability of birth control world-wide. Hmm. This scenario delayed the collapse of the global system to the latter part of the 21st century, after which economic growth outstripped the gains in efficiency and pollution control.

3) The “stabilized world” scenario assumed implementation of both technological solutions and deliberate social policies to reach equilibrium in population, material wealth, food, and services per capita. Policies implemented include perfect birth control for a family size of two kids per couple; preference for consumption of services over material goods; effective control of pollution; maintenance of agricultural land; and increased lifetime of industrial capital, among others.

The publication of the Limits to Growth study (LtG) in 1972 had immediate and ongoing impacts. Millions of copies were sold, and it was translated into 30 languages. It linked the world economy with the environment in the first integrated global model.

Needless to say, the book was also highly controversial. There was and remains a sustained campaign to discredit the LtG, including repeated misrepresentations that the LtG predicted resources would be depleted and the world system would collapse by the end of the 20th century. So people have been arguing about this for more than 30 years.

Surprisingly, no one thought to test whether the predictions were true until very recently, when Graham Turner published a paper comparing historical data for 1970–2000 with the LtG scenarios. Here’s what he found (see the other figures here):

Generally, the “stabilized world” and “comprehensive technology” scenarios overestimated food, services, and material goods for the population. And population was under-estimated by the “stabilized world” scenario. All scenarios matched the remaining non-renewable resources to varying extents. Global persistent pollution was underestimated by both the “stabilized world” and “comprehensive technology” scenarios.

Overall, Turner’s analysis shows that — can you guess it yet? — 30 years of historical data match pretty closely the key features of the business-as-usual “standard run” scenario, which predicted collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century. Conversely, the data did not compare well with other scenarios involving salvation through technology (perhaps too much of it is being diverted to twitter) or stabilizing behavior and policies.

Yikes.

Turner’s analyses also provide some indication of the change in consumption patterns that would likely be required to achieve a sustainable global system. The “stabilized world” scenario assumed a sustainable global average per capita level of material wealth approximately equal to contemporary levels. Currently, of course, the great majority of that wealth is being enjoyed by us in the developed world, which makes up one-quarter or less of the world’s population. If, for the sake of argument, this wealth were distributed evenly across the future global population (assume ~9 billion people), average per capita material wealth would fall to about 1/6th of current levels in developed countries.

Yikes again. Let’s get that cap-and-trade bill passed . . .

[original source:  Turner GM (2008). A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality. Global Environmental Change-Human and Policy Dimensions, 18, 397-411.]

It’s a tough job these days being an environmentalist proponent of sustainability. Bad news and warnings of impending doom at every turn. One might be forgiven for craving a bit of sunshine every once in a while.

One of the especially troubling themes that has risen to dominance in recent years as a result of reports from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the IPCC on climate change, and so on, is the idea that the world’s ecosystems are undergoing a fundamental and potentially irreversible shift into alternate states from which we may not be able to return. There is a good deal of evidence in support of this idea. And the question of how and whether ecosystems can recover form the wounds we inflict on them is a critical one because humanity is rapidly running out of wild nature to exploit. Thus, fixing degraded systems is now central to a sustainable future. Can we pull it off? Conventional wisdom’s answer is rather pessimistic.

So I was quite intrigued, and heartened, to read a new paper in the open-access journal PLoS ONE by by Holly Jones and Oswald Schmitz that set out to test this idea with quantitative data. They scoured the scientific literature for studies that had examined how fast ecosystems recover from disturbances. They found 240 studies — spanning land, sea, and freshwater and including a wide range of habitats –  that met their criteria.

The results were surprising: across a broad range of ecosystem and perturbation types, they found that most ecosystems appear capable of rebounding surprisingly quickly—within a few decades—if treated properly (see the figure). The last point being the trick, of course. Forests rebounded most slowly, and agriculture and multiple stressors had the longest lasting effects. But, overall, most ecosystems were able to recover to something like their pre-disturbance state within a decade or two.

The analysis offers an unexpected ray of hope that damaged ecosystems may be much more resilient on average than previously expected.

Now, the glass might alternatively be seen as half-empty given that roughly half the systems and variables examined had not recovered by the end of their respective studies. In many cases this is probably because they had not been monitored long enough. Intriguingly, only 5% of the ecosystems showed evidence of shifting into an alternate stable state, suggesting that this phenomenon may rarely explain non-recovery despite the high-profile attention such regime shifts (as they are called in the technical literature) have received in recent years.

There are, of course, the usual questions about how representative are the published data found through an electronic literature search, and also the more specific spectre of “shifting baselines” affecting the results, that is, in trying to determine what the actual “natural” or equilibrium state of an ecosystem is in the absence of disturbances.

To me, perhaps the most sobering issue, which was not considered by this study, is that ability to measure recovery is only possible once the perturbation has been relaxed. Yet many of the pressures humans are now imposing, such as climate heating and agriculture, are long-term, sustained perturbations that are unlikely to be relaxed in the foreseeable future. The analysis also found that recovery is slower from multiple stressors, which is increasingly the situation facing most ecosystems.

Despit these caveats, this new analysis provides a first quantitative benchmark against which future refinements can be evaluated. Equally importantly, in my view, these data provide a valuable psychological jolt to an increasingly entrenched sense of resignation and hopelessness about the state of wild nature. While there is no arguing with the magnitude of impacts humans have had on ecosystems, this paper offers at least a hint that nature is more forgiving and resourceful than many have assumed.

[Original source (open access): Jones,H.P. and O. J. Schmitz. 2009. Rapid Recovery of Damaged Ecosystems. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5653. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005653]

[Editor’s note: Following is Paul Hawken’s recent commencement speech to the graduating class of the University of Portland. It is so inspiring, so filled with poetry and wisdom, and so dead on the mark that I feel compelled to reproduce the whole thing verbatim. I have admired Paul Hawken since I read the equally inspiring book he co-authored with Amory and Hunter Lovins, “Natural Capitalism” (which I still have not added to the NP Essential Reading list where it belongs). Talk about thinking outside the box. He is a true Natural Patriot. Read this essay, ponder it, print it out to read again every couple of months, and follow his advice.]

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there. Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food — but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refugee camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown — Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television. This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

I was kindly invited by Ava at the Reef Tank blog to contribute a post to a series they are featuring on climate change and its particular connections to marine ecosystems.

I took the opportunity to organize some of my thoughts from various presentations I’d done recently on climate change in the mid-Atlantic coastal zone of North America.  The result has now been posted: “Bracing for a Sea Change“.

The Reef Tank blog also features lots of other interesting material, including several posts from my colleague and friend John Bruno on coral reefs (see one example here).

Check it out!

Now that it is becoming increasingly clear that we are already on board for a substantial increase in global temperature in the coming century, the discussion has broadened from efforts to cut the greenhouse gases that drive the process, which are obviously more critical than ever, to include also efforts to mitigate the expected impacts.

In addition to efforts at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and overhauling energy industries, there have been many suggestions for geo-engineering on a global scale to reduce atmospheric heating. The latter range from the sublime to (often) the ridiculous — huge parasols in space to shade the earth, dumping freight cars of iron filings into the tropical ocean to stimulate blooms of plankton that suck down the CO2, etc. Many such suggestions would be astronomically expensive and some are truly over the top.

Is there really no better way? Why not look to Nature for an answer?  This approach has worked countless times before. Natural ecosystems have had 3-some-odd-billion years to experiment in the face of constant pressure and have discovered a plethora of ingenious ways to solve problems.

Consider the new paper in Current Biology by Ridgwell and colleagues. These authors suggest the ingenious hypothesis that regional warming might be mitigated not by costly futuristic infrastructure but by relatively simple changes in crop varieties that change leaf albedo over large areas.

Ridgwell et al. proceed from the observation that historical conversion of native vegetation to crops with higher albedo (i.e., ability to reflect incoming solar radiation) has reduced warming, and they suggest a low-tech, relatively inexpensive approach that would exploit the existing infrastructure of agriculture.  The idea is to switch crops to known varieties that have leaf glossiness and/or canopy architecture that reflect more solar radiation. By making these changes in the Hadley Centre coupled atmosphere-ocean model, they estimate that summer temperatures could be reduced by a substantial 1 degree C throughout much of the mid-latitude northern hemisphere. These changes could potentially be done cheaply and quickly and might even be improved by selective breeding for higher-albedo foliage.

The figure at left shows the global distribution of croplands. The model of Ridgwell et al. allowed C₃ grasses (crops such as rice, wheat, and soybeans) and C₄ grasses (e.g., maize, sorghum, sugarcane, and millet) to grow within these areas designated as cropland.

The figure below shows the results in terms of  climatic impacts of bio-geoengineering.  The colors show the global anomalies of summer (JJA) and winter (DJF) surface air temperature resulting from a +0.04 increase in maximum crop canopy albedo and an elevated atmospheric CO₂ concentration of 700 ppm, relative to “control” conditions with no change in crop albedo. The small “hotspots” of cooling or warming visible on the map are mostly associated with localized changes in seasonal sea-ice extent or snow cover relative to the control, induced by the cropland albedo changes elsewhere.

To me this is a classic potential application of reconciliation ecology, and also biomimicry, that is creative use of nature’s methods to achieve goals that are important to humanity but minimize impacts on the rest of the ecosystem (in the sense that we already have huge areas under agricultural cultivation and this is unlikely to change).   Plus it’s surely a whole lot cheaper than putting a bunch of colossal umbrellas in space, even if that was likely to work.

[Original source: Ridgwell A, Singarayer JS, Hetherington AM, and Valdes PJ. 2009. Tackling Regional Climate Change By Leaf Albedo Bio-geoengineering. Current Biology 19(2):146-150.]

[Note: I normally don’t clog the blog with big swaths of text lifted verbatim from other sources, but in this case I couldn’t resist.  This is a copy of one of the Policy News issues I get periodically from the Ecological Society of America’s Washington office.  I include it here both because of the high density of important information about accelerating progress in environmental policy, but even more because the tone and content of this news of federal government activities related to the environment has shifted so profoundly in just the last month that it’s truly hard to believe.]

TRANSITION: EARLY ACTION BY OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, CONGRESS REFLECTS ENVIRONMENTAL FOCUS

CLIMATE CHANGE

In a January 26th announcement on climate change, President Obama outlined several priorities, which included addressing corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards, California’s request to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “endangerment finding” linking climate change to increased public health risks.

Many opponents of the climate policies have responded with their concerns, warning of government infringement on private property and what they expect to be disastrous impacts on industry. William Kovacs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s vice president of environment, technology, and regulatory affairs, suggested that granting California’s waiver would lead to the regulation of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, something industry also opposes. “This would almost certainly extend well beyond cars and trucks and would have the unintended consequence of creating costly and burdensome permitting requirements on millions of construction projects including hospitals, schools, and office buildings,” he said shortly after Obama’s announcement.

In Congress, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has set a December deadline for moving climate legislation through her Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, where Democrats have an 11-8 edge. She is confident that this margin will allow her to pass the legislation easily but acknowledges that far greater challenges will arise when it hits the Senate floor.

A successful climate change bill, one that will win over a sufficient number of Republicans and conservative Democrats, will likely require input from a variety of sources. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NM) has indicated that several panels may engage in the process-both Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) have expressed interest in participating. Boxer has stated in the past that she would welcome work on climate policy from other committees, and recently indicated that she’ll look to Baucus for guidance in developing legislation capable of standing up to possible challenges before the World Trade Organization. She also said she would be receptive to Banking Committee suggestions on establishing an oversight board with which to regulate a new emissions trading market.

Republicans may also play a role in shaping the bill. In Boxer’s committee, Arlen Specter (R-PA), who cosponsored cap-and-trade legislation with Bingaman in 2007, said that he joined the Committee this year to push for a more moderate climate bill. “I want to have a stronger voice on global warming,” he said. “I want to be sure that what we propose is something which is attainable.” Also likely to figure prominently in the climate debate is John McCain (R-AZ), who joined the Energy and Natural Resources Committee this year. Although Specter and McCain are proponents of climate change legislation, few other Republicans share their views, and EPW Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-OK) [Editor’s note: the closest thing the US Senate has to the anti-Christ] has predicted that Boxer will not be able to defeat a filibuster.

Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has also vowed to hold a climate change vote-the first ever for the House-this year.

CAFE STANDARDS AND CALIFORNIA WAIVER

The auto industry has long opposed the increased regulation of emissions, arguing that it would do irreparable damage to the already suffering industry in the midst of the economic crisis. These arguments resulted in Former President George W. Bush’s decision not to finalize his interim CAFE rulemaking, which would have applied to model years 2011 to 2015. Last month, however, President Obama indicated that he would move forward with his plans to reduce emissions and improve fuel economy in spite of the economic downturn. He issued two orders, urging Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to finalize new CAFE standards, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to review California’s request to regulate auto tailpipe emissions. The order directed LaHood to finalize the 2011 standard by April before moving on to later years, indicating that the standards could grow stronger, a change supported by both environmental groups and some Democratic leadership, including chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, Ed Markey (MA).

If EPA grants the California waiver, the state would begin regulating automobiles’ greenhouse gas emissions in the current model year, according to the chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, Mary Nichols. The emission standards would force automakers to reduce CO2 emissions from new cars and trucks by 30 percent by 2016.

EPA administrator Jackson is expected to open the public comment period on the waiver request in the next few days.

California is the only state allowed by the federal Clean Air Act to enforce its own pollution standards, but only with a waiver from EPA. If the waiver is granted, however, other states would be permitted to enforce the same standard. So far thirteen states have moved to adopt the California standards, with another four indicating that they will follow if the waiver is granted. The 18 states represent about half of the U.S. auto market. The auto industry has been fighting to block the waiver request for years and has embraced CAFE standards in response, attempting to dissuade states from imposing the California standards by arguing that emissions regulation should take place at the national level.

The auto industry is also pushing for Obama to finalize the CAFE standards through model year 2015 as soon as possible, thereby precluding the chance of increased standards after 2011. But the change in administrations has taken a tremendous toll on the industry’s influence in Washington, as has the power shift in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where longtime industry proponent Representative John Dingell (D-MI) lost his chairmanship to the more environmentally focused Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) this year.

The February 3 Washington Auto Show reflected these changes, featuring numerous green products, a renewed focus on electric vehicle development, and the tagline, “Driven by the Environment.”

ENDANGERMENT FINDING

A 2007 decision by the Supreme Court ordered the Bush administration to begin anew its study via EPA on whether climate change endangers public health and the environment. The results of this study were the subject of a great deal of controversy last year, following allegations that EPA made an “endangerment finding” that was later revoked after talks with the Bush White House. Obama’s EPA is now tasked with completing the study-if the agency makes an endangerment finding, greenhouse gasses will be subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson sent an email to her staff listing the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions among her top priorities, and stating that she would be acting on the Supreme Court ruling in a matter of days. Her early climate moves will come with the help of top climate counsel Lisa Heinzerling, the lead author of the climate change briefs to the Supreme Court, as well as David McIntosh, former aide to Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who helped to draft the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill debated last summer on the Senate floor.

EPA PRIORITIES

Jackson’s email outlined four additional areas that will receive her personal attention:

1) Improving air quality: Jackson notes that many U.S. communities are out of compliance with air quality standards and thus face pollution levels high enough to harm human health.  She says that EPA will fill regulatory system gaps in accordance with both science and the law.
2) Managing chemical risks: Noting the inadequacy of present measures for evaluating and regulating chemicals in consumer products, Jackson says that EPA will revise and strengthen its chemicals management and risk assessment programs.
3) Cleaning up hazardous-waste sites: Jackson plans to accelerate the cleanup of the country’s many contaminated sites as a way of generating jobs while improving the environment and quality of life in surrounding areas.
4) Protecting America’s water: Jackson underscores the importance of protecting both freshwater and marine resources. She says EPA will intensify its restoration and protection efforts, work to improve drinking-water safety programs, and reduce pollution from both non-point and industrial discharges.

MIDNIGHT REGULATIONS

Although White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel put a freeze on all pending rules upon President Obama’s inauguration, many of the most controversial rules, including plans to revise the Endangered Species Act and to exempt some farms from Superfund reporting requirements, were already in place. The Obama administration could reverse these rules by reinitiating the rulemaking process, but Congress could achieve a resolution much sooner by using the Congressional Review Act. Under the Act, a simple majority in the House and Senate and the president’s signature would be sufficient to vote down regulations that took effect after May 15, 2008. Alternately, Congress could deny funding for the implementation or enforcement of the rules to which it objects.

House Democrats have introduced a measure that would use the Congressional Review Act to freeze the Endangered Species rule. Meanwhile, the proposed changes to both the Endangered Species Act and Superfund rules have already been challenged in court.

ROADLESS RULES

Throughout much of the Bush administration, the timber industry, environmental groups, and the White House battled in court over the 2001 Clinton roadless rule, which granted blanket protection to roughly 58 million acres nationwide. Prior to Clinton, two presidents, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, tried to implement national roadless rules, but in both cases the rules were challenged in courts and ultimately voided.

Although the 2001 roadless rule was not explicitly overturned, the Bush Administration put in place another rule allowing states to petition for their own roadless protections, effectively giving states the ability to develop lands protected under the 2001 rule. So far, two states have undertaken the process: Idaho, whose rule the Bush administration finalized before leaving office, and Colorado, whose plan is still in development.

The Idaho plan creates five “management themes” for different areas, with the intent of balancing development, access, and conservation needs. Although some conservation groups support the plan, others sued the Bush administration in January, accusing the Forest Service of improperly approving Idaho’s rule, which they say would remove protection from 400,000 acres and weaken protections on an additional 5 million. They allege that the Forest Service failed to conduct the environmental analyses required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Many of the groups involved in the lawsuit called for President Obama to make reinstating the Clinton’s roadless rule one of his top priorities, some suggesting that he issue a directive giving the Forest Service chief, rather than local officials, decision-making power over the designated roadless areas. Obama expressed his support for the rule on the campaign trail but has not yet taken action.

ECONOMY: HOUSE PASSES STIMULUS BILL, SENATE DEBATES

On January 28, the House approved the economic stimulus package easily, albeit without any Republican support. President Obama had attempted on multiple occasions to reach out to Republicans, who maintained that their vote was not a rebuke of the President, who they praised for his efforts, but instead a vote against the process and legislation created by Democratic leaders in Congress. Specifically, House Republicans expressed concerns that the bill was put together with little minority input and that it contains billions in spending for federal programs that have long been on Democratic wish lists but do little to stimulate the economy. Senate Republicans have expressed similar concerns, but with a 58-seat majority, Democrats will not likely have a problem gathering the 60 votes needed to move the bill.

In the House, the bill underwent some relatively small changes before its final approval. Of particular interest to environmentalists was the addition of $3 billion for transit programs. Many environmental groups praised this addition, stating that the extra funding would significantly reduce oil usage while creating new jobs. The total cost of the House bill now stands at $819 billion, with roughly $275 billion in tax cuts and the remainder in direct investments.

The Senate is currently debating its version of the bill, which, as expected, does not include as much funding for the sciences as the House bill. Science infrastructure, which receives $2 billion in the House version, only receives $430 million from the Senate. The Senate is also directing less funding towards public lands programs, but Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has been circulating an amendment that would provide an additional $2.5 billion to related programs.

The amendment would divide the additional funds among several key areas including:

* National Park Service: $950 million, covering park construction and maintenance, as well as habitat restoration and exotic species management. With this addition, total funding levels would match those specified in the House version of the bill ($1.8 billion).
* Wildland Fire Management: $870 million, almost doubling the current allotment
* Bureau of Land Management: $350 million
* Fish and Wildlife Service: $125 million. This would bring the total resource management and construction spending for FWS to $425 million, almost three-quarters of the refuge system’s typical annual budget.
A committee spokesman said the measure is Bingaman’s top-priority amendment to the stimulus. Even if it fails, there is a good chance that park and refuge funding will be increased during House-Senate conference negotiations.

Some lawmakers, however, may push back against the higher spending amounts in the stimulus. For example, Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), who leads a coalition aimed at reducing stimulus spending, argued that many of the stimulus accounts would be better dealt with in an appropriations bill. Conversely, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has expressed hopes that national parks will receive significant funding through the stimulus, noting that they have an estimated $9 billion backlog of maintenance projects.

Meanwhile, other lawmakers have expressed concerns that the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) could hamper attempts to get the green energy projects-a large portion of the stimulus package-off the ground. Environmental groups and private landowners have used NEPA-related lawsuits in the past to halt the construction of green infrastructure (e.g. wind turbines and the transmission systems necessary to support them), claiming inadequate environmental review. Even strong opponents of NEPA hesitate to take action against it at the federal level, but California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has indicated that he may attempt to roll back state environmental laws, allowing for faster action on transportation projects funded by the stimulus. Several environmental groups suggest that this move would pave the way for Congress to revise NEPA in light of the economic crisis. Another option-increasing the staff at agencies that oversee environmental reviews-could allow for faster action on stimulus projects without compromising safeguards against environmental damage.

In spite of the many debates and complexities slowing the package, Democratic leaders hope to have it finalized and on President Obama’s desk by February 14.

BIOFUELS: OBAMA TEAM HALTS REVIEW OF RENEWABLE FUEL STANDARDS RULE

On January 26, the White House withdrew a prominent biofuels rulemaking from its Office of Management and Budget review. The rule, proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), would implement a 2007 law expanding the renewable fuels standard (RFS). The expansion would increase the RFS to 36 billion gallons by 2022, 21 billion gallons of which would be next-generation biofuels. It would also require that the greenhouse gas emissions from these biofuels have lifecycles considerably shorter than those of conventional fuels.

Although Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel ordered a freeze on all pending Bush administration rules, this freeze did not apply to regulations with deadlines already in place. The December 2007 RFS law gave EPA a year to craft the rule, so it remains unclear why it was withdrawn.

Worth noting, however, is the intense pressure EPA and the White House have received from both industry and environmental lobbyists on the details of the rule. In particular, industry representatives and environmental groups stand on opposite sides of a debate over how to address emissions from the so-called indirect land-use changes that would result from increased biofuels production. Environmentalists and scientists, concerned about the consequences of clearing additional land for agricultural production, cite studies indicating that clearing would release additional carbon into the atmosphere-significantly worsening the emissions profile of certain biofuels-by disrupting areas where it is naturally sequestered. Industry groups and biofuels investors argue, however, that the science is not advanced enough to accurately recalculate emissions profiles based on land use and that EPA should proceed without adjusting for indirect land-use.

The Ecological Society of America released a position statement on biofuels sustainability in January of 2008, which outlines the ecological principles necessary for biofuels to help decrease dependence on fossil fuels and reduce carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global climate change.