Overfishing has depleted fish-stocks the world over. Subsidies and lack of enforcement of sustainability measures drive the fishing industry to deplete the very stocks on which its existence depends, while climate interference and global contamination are leaving oceans so hypoxic (oxygen deprived) they cannot support marine life. At least 405 such ‘dead zones’ have been identified across the globe.
According to a NASA report, hypoxia is so extreme in some areas, that total anoxia (zero oxygen availability) can be found, allowing for no animal life to exist. In the Mississippi River delta, feeding into the Gulf of Mexico, it is thought that agricultural waste is creating a glut of nutrients for phytoplankton, which leaves excess organic matter for bottom-dwelling bacteria to feed on.
LANDMARK REGULATORY MOVE STEMS FROM ENVIRONMENTAL, PUBLIC HEALTH CONCERNS
A report in the New York Times cites an anonymous Canadian government source as saying Canada will soon declare bisphenol-a (BPA), a chemical found in some plastics, toxic. The move is prompted by concerns over observed effects on animals, potential environmental contamination, and fears of public health impact in the human population.
The same Times article also reports that “a draft report from the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ National Toxicology Program endorsed a scientific panel’s finding that there was “some concern” about neural and behavioral changes in humans who consume B.P.A.”
The HHS draft came on the same day as the Health Canada story was first reported in the Toronto newspaper, the Globe and Mail. The US may be the next country to take regulatory action against the chemical, though the next step will likely be further studies, with no toxic classification.
The official announcement of the designation opens a 60-day comment period for both the general public and industry. In all, a two-year review process will be followed which could end with “a partial or complete ban on food-related uses of plastics made using B.P.A.”
Rick Smith, the executive director of Canadian activist group Environmental Defence, is quoted as saying “If the government issues a finding of toxic, no parent in their right mind will be using products made with this chemical”. He also said the group, which already campaigns against BPA, “will be arguing strongly for a ban on the use of this chemical in food and beverage containers”.
Professor Jack Bend, an expert in pathology at London’s University of Western Ontario, has said studies make clear that BPA is “an endocrine disrupter”, meaning it interrupts the normal function of hormonal systems, though it is not known to what degree this negatively impacts human beings.
A new study has found that selective seratonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRI, or anti-depressants), sex-hormones, painkillers and anti-biotics in significant quantities in the drinking water of 24 out of 28 major metropolitan areas in the United States. Though the term “trace amounts” appears multiple times in today’s reporting of the findings, that term does not necessarily speak to quantity.
According to the Washington Post:
Pharmaceuticals, along with trace amounts of caffeine, were found in the drinking water supplies of 24 of 28 U.S. metropolitan areas tested. The findings were revealed as part of the first federal research on pharmaceuticals in water supplies, and those results are detailed in an investigative report by the Associated Press set to be published today.
Health effects are not known, as the question of prolonged unplanned exposure to sub-medical dosages has not been adequately researched, if at all, by the pharmaceutical community or by public health authorities. As the Toronto Daily News points out, in reference to the drugs found in drinking water: “Experts say medications may pose a unique danger because, unlike most pollutants, they were crafted to act on the human body”.
Utilities insist their water is safe for human consumption, but the Associated Press investigation found that water authorities are more often than not reluctant to disclose any information about testing for pharmaceuticals in the water supply. The AP also found that “while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combinations of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies — which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public — have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife.”
Among the more astonishing findings in the study was the range of pharmaceutical contaminants found in the Philadelphia metropolitan area:
Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city’s watersheds.
18.5 million people across southern California are reported to be affected by potential exposure to anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications found in “a portion” of the drinking water supply to that region.
The AP also reported that
The federal government doesn’t require any testing and hasn’t set safety limits for drugs in water. Of the 62 major water providers contacted, the drinking water for only 28 was tested. Among the 34 that haven’t: Houston, Chicago, Miami, Baltimore, Phoenix, Boston and New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection, which delivers water to 9 million people.
Part of the problem is that pharmaceuticals are not entirely absorbed by those who taken them for medical reasons and water treatment systems are not as yet capable of removing trace pharmaceuticals from water that will be released back into the general public water supply.
Last August, AlterNet published in its environment section a report on apparent behavioral and physical mutations in fish and wildlife exposed to prolonged persistent doses of pharmaceutical runoff. The article specified that long-term effects of such exposure in human tissue are not yet well-studied or well-known, though:
A 1999 (EPA and German) study of pharmaceutical and other personal-care products concluded the “undetectable effects on aquatic organisms are particularly worrisome because effects could accumulate so slowly that major change goes undetected until the cumulative level of these effects finally cascades to irreversible change — change that would otherwise be attributed to natural adaptation or ecologic succession.”
Also, the AlterNet story warned that “Pharmaceuticals have already been linked to behavioral and sexual mutations in fish, amphibians and birds, according to EPA studies.” As such, the EPA was by August 2007 planning “preventative measures” to protect against adverse effects on the human population, though there was some suspicion the doses might be high enough to indicate expired pills being flushed by consumers.
The UN climate change policy conference on the Indonesian island of Bali has ended in dramatic fashion, as EU and US delegates found themselves in a war of words over differences in how to reach long-term reductions in “heat-trapping gases” emitted by human societies, essentially: carbon emissions.
In a tumultuous final session at international climate talks in which the U.S. delegates were booed and hissed, delegates from nearly 190 nations committed Saturday to negotiating a new accord by 2009 that, in theory, would set the world on a course toward halving emissions of heat-trapping gases by 2050.
The dramatic finish to the negotiations came after a last-minute standoff during a day of see-saw emotions, with the co-organizer of the conference, Yvo de Boer, fleeing the podium at one point as he held back tears and the representative from Papua New Guinea telling the U.S. delegation to lead, follow or “please get out of the way.”
The standoff started when developing countries demanded that the United States agree that the eventual pact not only measure poorer countries’ steps, but also the effectiveness of financial aid and technological assistance from wealthier ones.
The United States did capitulate in that open session, which many observers and delegates said included more public acrimony and emotion than any of the treaty conferences since 1992, when countries drafted the original United Nations climate pact, the Framework Convention on Climate Change.
A significant part of the hostility involved in the negotiations has to do with mounting evidence that climate change is not only accelerating, but that it will adversely affect certain poorer countries more than the wealthy industrialized nations or fast-growing developing nations (like India or China) blamed for the lion’s share of the greenhouse-effect-related emissions.
The current US position, which differs from what Democratic leaders in Congress have suggested might be an alternative policy in coming administrations, is in part based on the economic analysis that aggressive efforts to enforce emissions reductions would slow or even reverse economic growth in coming years. Part of this analysis is a lack of planning for a broad industrial reorganization, which would imply millions of new jobs, increasingly dynamic new economic structures, and the ability to meet ever-more-costly energy needs afffordably for the average consumer.
Over the long term, it will benefit wealthy economies to lead not only in emissions regulations but also in the shift to incentivized clean energy technologies. Cooperating with the plans for a global emissions regime and working strict standards into the policy guidelines will help ensure that developing nations are not able to fall back on high-contamination production methods to achieve unsustainable levels of short-term growth.
An integrated policy direction among developed and developing nations will help ensure that ‘seepage’ of policy direction toward apparently cheap but economically adverse polluting production methods not undermine the capacity for international regulations to reduce the risk of damaging climate change. This will benefit all parties economically over the long-term, though short-term considerations continue to drive much of the policy of major players.
Due to the science we already have, the laws we have to govern our own activity and to force government to act for the public health, we face the real possibility of being forced, in American courts, in the future, to pay for damage done to the most affected populations in other parts of the world, as a result of inaction by our government. And if not in court, then as a matter of the de facto urgencies of international political stability.
If we do not find a way to work to mitigate global climate change, future generations will look back and will see clearly that a zeitgeist of selfish convenience and primitive disregard for the wellbeing of our fellow human beings led to a reckless attitude with regard to this snowballing crisis. The public voice, and those campaigning for the level of public respect needed for election to office, should bring this issue to the fore, push for real initiatives to tackle the problem boldly, in a collaborative way, now.
In November, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon wrote a piece entitled “At the tipping point“, in which he explained some of the most dire aspects of the advancing effects of global climate change. Among the serious potential crises is the evidence that 20% of of Antarctica’s territory, in the form of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, may break up. “If it broke up, sea levels could rise by six meters”, he writes.
Added to that, such massive events may take some time to unfold, but once they reach their respective tipping point, the event itself could happen “quickly, almost overnight”. It’s worth considering what effect such a sudden sea-level rise would have on low-lying coastal cities, like New York, Mumbai or Shanghai, Dubai, Sydney or Hong Kong. The storm surge that breached New Orleans’ levees and plunged the city into chaos was roughly six meters.
The IPCC is one of the most comprehensive and prestigious bodies of scientists ever gathered from around the world, and it has been unequivocal in its reports this year. Every major player in world politics, including Pres. Bush, has acknowledged that global climate change is happening, and is the result of human activities. 2007 will be remembered as the year the climate crisis went public and stayed on the global public interest radar, for good. The United States cannot afford to be lagging behind, not now, and not in the eyes of history.
Senator Barack Obama’s campaign website explains the problem as follows: “Global warming is real, is happening now and is the result of human activities. The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years. Glaciers are melting faster; the polar ice caps are shrinking; trees are blooming earlier; oceans are becoming more acidic, threatening marine life; people are dying in heat waves; species are migrating, and eventually many will become extinct.” In fact, large-scale mass extinction already appears to be underway, with the IPCC predicting 15% to 37% of all species may be wiped out by climate change alone.
The campaign issue write-up continues: “Scientists predict that absent major emission reductions, climate change will worsen famine and drought in some of the poorest places in the world and wreak havoc across the globe. In the U.S., sea-level rise threatens to cause massive economic and ecological damage to our populated coastal areas.” Many may disagree, but the science supports every word of the problem as stated. US presidential candidates are, for the first time, seriously contending for the climate-responsibility prize.
So, for those candidates serious enough to work across ideological rifts, a proposal for responsible legislation to deal with this crisis (to be pushed for and initiated in advance of the November 2008 US elections):
1. Push a 90% emissions reduction goal for 2050, and make it global. (There’s no reason this cannot be done. Wind-energy resources in Texas, Kansas and North Dakota alone could power the entire US economy and more, if properly funded and developed. Most nations have a surplus of wind resources; the secret is local development and responsible construction and implementation. Other new technologies and a rebuilding of transport infrastructure can help reach this goal, without undermining economic stability.)
2. Work to punish all forms of corruption associated with energy production, and implement stiff sanctions against any nation that does not severely punish such corruption (whether it’s bribery is Appalachian coal mining schemes, Saudi authoritarianism and arms trafficking, Uzbekistan’s megalomaniac leader, or China’s support for the Bashir government in Khartoum).
3. Ensure that the US economy is incentivized, from top to bottom, to adopt renewable resources and that we can fund through innovation, entrepreneurship, research and development grants, the green technology boom, which if properly carried out, will far surpass the 1990s economic expansion related to the building and popularization of the world wide web.
4. Institute in US law a “limited use” doctrine for nuclear plants, which means they will be employed in a period of transition (with no new construction) as a means of softening the price pinch that could come to sectors that lag in the renewables transition. This is not meant to allow new growth or prolonged use of fossil fuels, but rather to avoid punishing the underprivileged for their lack of access to easy capital. Eventually, a plan will need to be implemented that will transition away from these extremely costly plants with unequaled capacity for contamination (in case of accident).
5. Greening the military: begin immediately the funding and incentivization for defense contractors of a comprehensive transition to a military made more efficient, flexible and green in its global reach by way of the ecological (which in the very near future means economic) sustainability of its technologies and deployment systems. This will soon be a measure of rapid-deployment capacity, i.e. the ability to project power without bankrupting the state, so there is a direct security motivation involved in this. (The US military is a massive source of research and development, and cutting-edge technologies could emerge for civilian use, if the fossil fuel addiction is broken.)
6. Plan for “jump” generation innovations: energy resourcing is still in its infancy, comparatively (fossil fuels are square one; nuclear a bold but ill-advised ‘spur’; renewables are the first step toward rational sustainable energy policy; after renewables, or within the context of, there will come a more advanced mode of powering the global economy). Geothermal still relies on risky construction methods, wind requires massive construction and solar occupies space (ever less, but still a constraint), whereas new capabilities may be lying in wait beyond the scope of current scientific methods.
Let’s think ahead and privilege the “zero emissions” criterion. The more we can do to implement large-scale energy solutions that are in themselves zero-emissions processes, the larger the percentage of current emissions we can do without. It’s that simple.
We are on the cusp of an energy revolution, which is synonymous with acting to save the relative homeostasis of the global environment, to which our civilization is accustomed and which it requires for long-term stability. We can phase out fossil fuels, then nuclear, while building a global renewables grid, and (parallel to that) jumping ahead to what’s next. Integrated thinking will help us to serve the needs of a global systems ecology imperiled by our current practices.
Lastly, I propose that it is of the utmost urgency to examine security risks involved with climate change. We already have water wars in Africa. There are potential hydrological conflicts brewing in South America and south Asia. Australia faces the possibility of the Sydney region becoming near uninhabitable in a century’s time. And Bangladesh, with more than 150 million inhabitants, is caught between India’s overpumping of vital rivers and the constant threat of mass death and chaos from monsoon flooding.
We need to look at the potential for crop failure on massive regional scales, resulting economic or political collapse, or the unplanned migration of tens of millions of refugees, and what happens when local militia start responding (reference: Darfur, or Afghanistan, on a much larger scale).
We need to find a collaborative framework wherein:
1. democracy is not in any way curtailed nor are totalitarian measures elevated by the global protocols;
2. global treaties are bold, viable, respected and implemented;
3. the median wealth of the human population globally is increased (to de-incentivize violations).
The world is facing a major environmental crisis, with multiple serious battles to fight on various fronts, if we are to avert crippling long-term environmental degradation. One fundamental problem is that post-industrial societies have not sufficiently divorced their economic activity from extreme contaminants like carbon-based fuels, so that special cases of exorbitant economic growth continue to bring with them high levels of particulate air pollution.
Barcelona, with a liberal government and policies designed to make its bus system less emissions intensive, congestion taxing on cars and a vast public transport network, has been listed not as one of the most polluted cities in the world, but as having on average across the metropolitan area the 8th worst concentration of particulate matter small enough to be ingested by respiration, out of a limited survey of 26 cities worldwide. Part of the reason is that the city has, despite its reputation as a progressive political stronghold, never implemented the EU’s caps on particulate-matter pollution.
The regional government now says it seeks to meet those goals with a series of new initiatives, and that by 2010, the city will be able to prevent more than 1,000 deaths per year attributable to ailments derived from breathing high levels of pollutants. But part of the global problem tied to pollution is that cities, regions and nations that see intense economic expansion (Barcelona’s tourism and real estate markets have expanded massively each year of this decade) tend to see an intensification of air pollution.
Two years ago, China was listed as host to the 8 most polluted cities in the world, and 10 of the 15 most polluted. While it is not clear that Beijing has effectively reduced nationwide pollution, and we have numerous stories each year of chemical spills, contaminated waters flooding cropland, cover-ups of environmental degradation and the massive desertification of the country’s northwest, it is true that playing host to the Olympic Games in 2008 has meant that strict measures are being taken to reduce the capital’s epic levels of smog.
We must ask ourselves: what policies can be implemented, rapidly and on national scales, to bring into practice environmentally sustainable industrial methods of production? And, what is needed to ensure that assistance and incentives are provided to cities and regions whose economic growth might not coincide with a political drive to clean up the air or regulate emissions?
