Inconvenient Overindulgence: MONBIOT on Green Consumerism 27 July 2007

Thanks to Gail, whose political blog (LINK) is amazing.

Hopefully, you’ve already picked up Monbiot’s book, “HEAT: How to Stop the Planet Burning” (LINK) as it may well be the very best climate change-related text out there, in terms of showing exactly what we can to do make 90% reductions in the next 30 years. I challenge you to find someone else who presents actual solutions.

In Monbiot’s latest post, he details once again a concept I’ve been trying to get across for a long time: We must STOP BUYING SHIT. Instead, we tell ourselves it’s okay to consume like mad, so long as the product is ‘green’. Do you agree? No?
LINK TO MONBIOT’S SITE

Eco-junk

Posted July 24, 2007

GREEN CONSUMERISM WILL NOT SAVE THE BIOSPHERE

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 24th July 2007

It wasn’t meant to happen like this. The climate scientists told us that our winters would become wetter and our summers drier. So I can’t claim that these floods were caused by climate change, or are even consistent with the models. But, like the ghost of Christmas yet to come, they offer us a glimpse of the possible winter world we’ll inhabit if we don’t sort ourselves out.

With rising sea levels and more winter rain (and remember that when the trees are dormant and the soils saturated there are fewer places for the rain to go) all it will take is a freshwater flood to coincide with a high spring tide and we have a formula for full-blown disaster. We have now seen how localised floods can wipe out essential services and overwhelm emergency workers. But this month’s events don’t even register beside some of the predictions now circulating in learned journals(1). Our primary political struggle must be to prevent the break-up of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The only question now worth asking about climate change is how.

Dozens of new books appear to provide an answer: we can save the world by embracing “better, greener lifestyles”. Last week, for example, the Guardian published an extract of the new book by Sheherazade Goldsmith, who is married to the very rich environmentalist Zac, in which she teaches us “to live within nature’s limits”(2). It’s easy: just make your own bread, butter, cheese, jam, chutneys and pickles, keep a milking cow, a few pigs, goats, geese, ducks, chickens, beehives, gardens and orchards. Well, what are you waiting for?

Her book also contains plenty of useful advice, and she comes across as modest, sincere and well-informed. But of lobbying for political change, there is not a word: you can save the planet in your own kitchen – if you have endless time and plenty of land. When I was reading it on the train, another passenger asked me if he could take a look. He flicked through it for a moment then summed up the problem in seven words. “This is for people who don’t work.”

None of this would matter, if the Guardian hadn’t put her photo on the masthead last week, with the promise that she could teach us to go green. The media’s obsession with beauty, wealth and fame blights every issue it touches, but none more so than green politics. There is an inherent conflict between the aspirational lifestyle journalism which makes readers feel better about themselves and sells country kitchens and the central demand of environmentalism: that we should consume less. “None of these changes represents a sacrifice”, Sheherazade tells us. “Being more conscientious isn’t about giving up things.” But it is: if, like her, you own more than one home when others have none.

Uncomfortable as this is for both the media and its advertisers, giving things up is an essential component of going green. A section on ethical shopping in Goldsmith’s book advises us to buy organic, buy seasonal, buy local, buy sustainable, buy recycled. But it says nothing about buying less.

Green consumerism is becoming a pox on the planet. (more…)

Earth Policy Institute Update 24. July 2007 (Please Read) 24 July 2007

Earth Policy Institute
Plan B 2.0 Book Byte
For Immediate Release
July 24, 2007

WATER TABLES FALLING AND RIVERS RUNNING DRY

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch03_ss2.htm

Lester R. Brown

As the world’s demand for water has tripled over the last half-century and as the demand for hydroelectric power has grown even faster, dams and diversions of river water have drained many rivers dry. As water tables fall, the springs that feed rivers go dry, reducing river flows.

Scores of countries are overpumping aquifers as they struggle to satisfy their growing water needs, including each of the big three grain producers–China, India, and the United States. More than half the world’s people live in countries where water tables are falling.

There are two types of aquifers: replenishable and nonreplenishable (or fossil) aquifers. Most of the aquifers in India and the shallow aquifer under the North China Plain are replenishable. When these are depleted, the maximum rate of pumping is automatically reduced to the rate of recharge.

For fossil aquifers, such as the vast U.S. Ogallala aquifer, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer, depletion brings pumping to an end. Farmers who lose their irrigation water have the option of returning to lower-yield dryland farming if rainfall permits. In more arid regions, however, such as in the southwestern United States or the Middle East, the loss of irrigation water means the end of agriculture.

The U.S. embassy in Beijing reports that Chinese wheat farmers in some areas are now pumping from a depth of 300 meters, or nearly 1,000 feet. Pumping water from this far down raises pumping costs so high that farmers are often forced to abandon irrigation and return to less productive dryland farming. A World Bank study indicates that China is overpumping (more…)

Inconvenient Plague: World Losing Fight Against AIDS 18 July 2007

Not my typical fare (for this blog, at least), but as this article isn’t getting enough press in the U.S., I feel compelled to point you to it, dearest reader, lest you’ve not paid attention lately to the horrific disease that may well claim a number of those close to you:

WORLD LOSING FIGHT AGAINST AIDS

Is AIDS an environmental concern? Absolutely. Environmental degradation leads to environmental poverty leads to physical poverty equals lack of education, sanitation and medical facilities all of which contribute to rampant HIV/AIDS. Further, HIV/AIDS increases physical poverty which exacerbates environmental degradation. Yes, this is an overly-simplified loop but it’s accurate in its rough sketch.

Technorati Tags: africa, AIDS, poverty

Earth Policy Institute Update 10. July 2007 10 July 2007

CONSERVING AND REBUILDING SOILS

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch08_ss3.htm

Earth Policy Institute
Plan B 2.0 Book Byte
For Immediate Release
July 10, 2007

Lester R. Brown

In reviewing the literature on soil erosion, references to the “loss of protective vegetation” occur again and again. Over the last half-century, we have removed so much of that protective cover by clearcutting, overgrazing, and overplowing that we are fast losing soil accumulated over long stretches of geological time. Eliminating these excesses and the resultant decline in the earth’s biological productivity depends on a worldwide effort to restore the earth’s vegetative cover, an effort that is now under way in some countries.

The 1930s Dust Bowl that threatened to turn the U.S. Great Plains into a vast desert was a traumatic experience that led to revolutionary changes in American agricultural practices, including the planting of tree shelterbelts–rows of trees planted beside fields to slow wind and thus reduce wind erosion–and strip-cropping, the planting of wheat on alternate strips with fallowed land each year. Strip-cropping permits soil moisture to accumulate on the fallowed strips, while the alternating planted strips reduce wind speed and hence erosion on the idled land.

In 1985, the U.S. Congress, with strong support from the environmental community, created the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to reduce soil erosion and control overproduction of basic commodities. By 1990 there were some 14 million hectares (35 million acres) of highly erodible land in permanent vegetative cover under 10-year contracts. Under this program, farmers were paid to plant fragile cropland to grass or trees.

The retirement of 14 million hectares under the CRP, together with the use of conservation practices on 37 percent of all cropland, reduced U.S. soil erosion from 3.1 billion tons to 1.9 billion tons during the 15 years from 1982 to 1997. The U.S. approach to controlling soil erosion by both converting highly erodible cropland back to grassland or trees and adopting soil conservation practices offers a model for the rest of the world.

The conversion of cropland to nonfarm uses is often beyond the control of farmers, but the losses of soil and eroded land from severe erosion are not. Lowering soil losses caused by wind and water erosion below the gains in new soil formed by natural processes will take an enormous worldwide effort. Preserving the biological productivity of highly erodible cropland depends on planting it in grass or trees before it becomes wasteland. The first step in halting the decline in inherent land fertility is to pull back from this fast-deteriorating margin.

Terracing, a time-tested (more…)

LIVE EARTH

I’m sure the LIVE EARTH concert is forcing policy makers the world over to enact significant legislation.

That’s all I will say about Gore’s latest attention-grabbing spectacle.

(How does it feel to live in a world without leaders?)

Cindy Shehan to Boot Nancy Pelosi from Office! 9 July 2007

Finally, a ray of hope:
SOMEONE is  going to force Nancy Pelosi to act like an elected representative.

ARTICLE IS HERE. 

People are Ignorant and Perhaps Deserve What is Coming 7 July 2007

I haven’t been posting much lately. Why? Because the more I look around, the more I realize that very few people are really and truly dedicated to making significant changes, to really moving the ball on climate change and emissions reductions. Here in the United States, we have elected officials who care little about passing effective legislation. In fact, it’s the corporate world that is making the greatest effort as it seeks competitive advantage and cost savings.

In 2008, we’ll be lucky to choose from a whopping field of TWO candidates, neither of who will have a developed, effective climate-protection plan. And you know what? Those who profess concern for the ruinous effects of global heating will vote for one of these people irrespective, placing their lifelong conditioned voting reflex above their avowed concerns.

Read THIS SHORT ARTICLE, WHICH  DISCOURAGES ME MORE THAN A LITTLE

Song ‘o the Day? YOU are probably guilty of knee-jerk voting, am I right? You don’t deserve a song today, because you’re the problem, not the cure.