The 11th Hour
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor April 24, 2009
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2174195060267517042
Comments (3)Play the McDonald’s Video Game!
Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Society — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor April 23, 2009
Today we look at another environmental feedback loop, and also put you in the driver’s seat of the world’s biggest fast food chain.
Over the last few years, the term ‘feedback loop’ has become common terminology. For the uninitiated, it’s a concise way to describe how the results of an activity cause a change in the activity itself – subsequently amplifying the outcome of the activity, and beginning an increasingly rapid, and potentially runaway, cycle of change.
If this all sounds a bit confusing, here are few of good examples to illustrate:
- Increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are causing permafrost in the arctic tundra to melt – releasing enormous quantities of methane (approximately 20x more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2), thus escalating the pace of warming, thus releasing more methane, and so on….
- Shrinking forests, like the Amazon, reduce the ability of the forest to water itself through evaporation and precipitation – thus resulting in a rapid drying and an escalating reduction in forest cover, causing forests to transform from carbon sinks into carbon sources – amplifying atmospheric warming, escalating forest drying, and so on….
- Increased CO2 levels cause the oceans (the world’s largest carbon sink) to become over saturated with carbonic acid, causing acidification and stratification of seawater until phytoplankton (also an enormous carbon sink – using photosynthesis to take CO2 out of the water) are no longer able to function (and being at the bottom of the food chain, this has direct consequences for all other creatures…).
Today we learn of a feedback loop that is more economic than it is scientific.
Comments (7)Shrinking Forests: The Many Costs
Deforestation — by Earth Policy Institute April 8, 2009
by Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute
In early December 2004, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo “ordered the military and police to crack down on illegal logging, after flash floods and landslides, triggered by rampant deforestation, killed nearly 340 people,” according to news reports. Fifteen years earlier, in 1989, the government of Thailand announced a nationwide ban on tree cutting following severe flooding and the heavy loss of life in landslides. And in August 1998, following several weeks of record flooding in the Yangtze River basin and a staggering $30 billion worth of damage, the Chinese government banned all tree cutting in the upper reaches of the basin. Each of these governments had belatedly learned a costly lesson, namely that services provided by forests, such as flood control, may be far more valuable to society than the lumber in those forests.
Community-Based Rainforest Restoration Work is Huge Success in Borneo
Aid Projects, Biodiversity, Community Projects, Deforestation, Demonstration Sites, Food Forests, Global Warming/Climate Change, Plant Systems, Regional Water Cycle, Rehabilitation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Trees, Village Development — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor March 30, 2009
In his twenty minute talk, Willie Smits (a Dutch forestry scientist who emigrated to Indonesia 20 years ago to help the country grow trees) explains how a chance encounter with a dying baby Orangutan changed the direction of his work – culminating not only in his creating the biggest orangutan rehabilitation center in the world, but also in restoring large tracts of rainforest in a community-based endeavour that is bringing work and prosperity to the people too.
The word ‘Permaculture’ is never mentioned in the following TED presentation, but the project that is the subject of this talk certainly contains many elements of Permaculture design. Among the spectacular results of the project is a documented cooling in local climate, increased cloud cover and rainfall, and a rapid increase in biodiversity of flora and fauna.
Pyrolising the Planet
Biodiversity, Deforestation, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Soil Erosion & Contamination — by George Monbiot
The debate over biochar hots up.
by George Monbiot – journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist
Well that got ‘em going. So far James Lovelock, Jim Hansen and Pushker Kharecha, Chris Goodall and Peter Read have all responded in the Guardian to my column on biochar.
Reading their responses, I realise that it was unfair of me to include James Lovelock and Jim Hansen on the list of those who have been suckered by the charleaders. Their position is more nuanced than I made out. Chris Goodall, to his credit, has accepted that he was too bullish about the technology. The points he makes in its defence seem fair and well-reasoned.
On the other hand, I wasn’t harsh enough about Peter Read. In his response column today he uses the kind of development rhetoric that I thought had died out with the Indonesian transmigration programme.
Comments (2)A Farm for the Future
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Population, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor March 26, 2009
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2750012006939737230
Seeing Permaculture promoted on the BBC is yet another positive sign of the times. In this 50 minute presentation, wildlife film-maker Rebecca Hosking returns to her farming roots – hoping to take over the reins of her family farm in Devon, UK – and duly considers exactly what kind of farm she wants to develop. Significantly, Rebecca looks at where the world is heading in regards to food production, and, in particular, thinks about the serious implications of peaking oil supplies on our fossil-fuel dependent agriculture.
After talking to energy experts, Rebecca seeks out a few UK-based Permaculturists in a bid to learn how some are managing their land without fossil fuel inputs, and on the way discovers the key lesson in Permaculture – that nature is just waiting to work for us, and very productively, if we’d only exercise a few observational skills.
I’m reminded of the following very astute quote:
Comments (4)Woodchips With Everything
Biodiversity, Deforestation, Global Warming/Climate Change, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by George Monbiot March 25, 2009
Here comes the latest utopian catastrophe: the plan to solve climate change with biochar
by George Monbiot – journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist
Whenever you hear the word miracle, you know there’s trouble just around the corner. But however many times they lead to disappointment or disaster, the newspapers never tire of promoting miracle cures, miracle crops, miracle fuels and miracle financial instruments. We have a bottomless ability to disregard the laws of economics, biology and thermodynamics when we encounter a simple solution to complex problems. So welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the new miracle. It’s a low-carbon regime for the planet which makes the Atkins Diet look healthy: woodchips with everything.
Biomass is suddenly the universal answer to our climate and energy problems. Its advocates claim that it will become the primary source of the world’s heating fuel, electricity, road transport fuel (cellulosic ethanol) and aviation fuel (bio-kerosene). Few people stop to wonder how the planet can accommodate these demands and still produce food and preserve wild places. Now an even crazier use of woodchips is being promoted everywhere (including in the Guardian(1)). The great green miracle works like this: we turn the planet’s surface into charcoal.
Comments (5)In Memory of Dorothy Stang
Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Society — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor March 21, 2009
Preamble: I post the following today, as next Wednesday night (8pm March 25, 2009) HBO2 in the U.S. is running the new documentary They Killed Sister Dorothy. If you have opportunity, be sure to watch it. Read the following to find out what it’s about.
If you have opportunity to pick up a January 2007 copy of the National Geographic, take it. It’s easily recognisable by the startling image of a forlorn looking tree, standing alone where was once a thick bio-diverse rainforest. The author, Scott Wallace, unfortunately doesn’t follow through very well on the external connections that are causing the Amazon to shrink, instead focusing on some of the main local antagonists in the battle over the land the forest sits on. Despite this weakness, however, I believe that meeting these characters helps bring the whole tug-of-war over the environment a little closer to home, and in this he’s done an excellent work.
When Population Growth and Resource Availability Collide
Deforestation, Food Shortages, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination — by Earth Policy Institute February 13, 2009
by Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute
As land and water become scarce, competition for these vital resources intensifies within societies, particularly between the wealthy and those who are poor and dispossessed. The shrinkage of life-supporting resources per person that comes with population growth is threatening to drop the living standards of millions of people below the survival level, leading to potentially unmanageable social tensions.
Access to land is a prime source of social tension. Expanding world population has cut the grainland per person in half, from 0.23 hectares in 1950 to 0.10 hectares in 2007. One tenth of a hectare is half of a building lot in an affluent U.S. suburb. This ongoing shrinkage of grainland per person makes it difficult for the world’s farmers to feed the 70 million people added to world population each year. The shrinkage in cropland per person not only threatens livelihoods; in largely subsistence societies, it threatens survival itself. Tensions within communities begin to build as landholdings shrink below that needed for survival.
Comments (0)Tree Terminator
Deforestation — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor January 27, 2009
A strange video for a Permaculture site, I know, but I can’t help but marvel at the ingenuity. Imagine if we could harness these smarts for a better cause?
Comments (9)BR-319 – Amazon’s Highway to Hell
Consumerism, Deforestation, Global Warming/Climate Change — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor January 16, 2009
An old road through central Amazonia, that became overgrown and impassable in the 1980s, may get reopened and fully paved — threatening to escalate destruction of one of the world’s last remaining stands of tropical rainforest
To date, one fifth of the Amazon forest has been destroyed, that’s an area the size of France. Will it stop? It must, but will it? To stop it will require planning, foresight, and political and consumer awareness, determination and restraint. If the choice is left to industry alone, they won’t stop until it’s all gone.
It is said that if the Amazon shrinks much more, its inability to water itself from its own cycles of evaporation and precipitation will begin a spiralling cycle of drying – a tipping point that will be nigh impossible to return from. One of the greatest threats is the increasing demand for meat.
Comments (2)Planting Trees and Managing Soils to Sequester Carbon
Deforestation, Global Warming/Climate Change, Rehabilitation, Trees — by Earth Policy Institute January 2, 2009
by Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute, Washington D.C., U.S.A.
As of 2007, the shrinking forests in the tropical regions were releasing 2.2 billion tons of carbon per year. Meanwhile, expanding forests in the temperate regions were absorbing 0.7 billion tons of carbon annually. On balance, a net of some 1.5 billion tons of carbon were being released into the atmosphere each year, contributing to global warming.
Comments (2)
