Archive for April, 2009

As the debate about how to revive our economy while sustaining our environment heats up, it’s important to remember that the economic driver truly “too big to fail” is Mother Nature herself.

It’s been calculated that nature’s “Ecosystem Services” are worth over $33 trillion dollars a year – nearly double the size of the global economy. And while that figure is important for putting a value on Nature’s contributions to the economy, it belies the fact that without nature we could not survive at all.

So the true value of natural services? Priceless.

In their seminal work “Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on BioDiversity,” Harvard M.D.’s teamed up with Oxford University Press, the U.N. Environment Program, and famed biologist E.O. Wilson to compile a comprehensive picture of how diverse species and ecosystems provide “materials, conditions, and processes that sustain all life on this planet, including human life.”

Here’s a look at the Top 10 things Mother Nature does for us for free, year after year, that we couldn’t even begin to do ourselves without her:

1. Net Primary Production (NPP)

While economists fret over the GDP, many are unaware of the NPP, which is the total amount of plant material produced during a year through photosynthesis. This organic matter is not only the base of the entire food chain, but also the foundation for all other ecosystem services.

So how big is the NPP? Land ecosystems on the planet produce an estimated 132 billion tons, and the NPP of the oceans is similar.

The problem? Humans are consuming and degrading nearly 40% of terrestrial NPP, and the oceans aren’t faring much better.

The real problem? When ecosystems collapse, there is no way to bail them out.

2. Plant and Animal Products

For thousands of years people have relied on nature to provide our food, clothing, shelter, tools, fuel and medicine.

The annual catch from the world’s fisheries alone is valued at $100 billion a year, besides being the primary source of protein for millions of people in Africa and Asia. The world’s grasslands support the animals that give us meat, milk, wool, and leather, while forests give us timber for shelter, furniture, and paper.

Organic material from plants and trees also supply 15% of the world’s fuel – 40% in the developing world. In addition, the world’s medicines are all derived from the work of nature’s invisible bio-chemists; as are hundreds of other industrial products including resins, dyes, and insecticides.

We’re talking trillions of dollars here, folks.

3. Pollination

We know we need plants to survive, but we often forget that plants need pollinators to reproduce. Bees alone pollinate a third of the nation’s food supply, and are vital to major economic drivers like California’s billion dollar agriculture business.

The onset of Colony Collapse Disorder among the nation’s overworked, pesticide-laden bees has brought attention to this issue.

Less known is the economic impact of having forests and the wild pollinators they support near to our fields and farms.

In Costa Rica, WWF researchers found that preserving forest fragments near coffee plantations nearly doubled pollination rates which increased yields by 20%, raising average incomes $62,000 a year.

On the flipside, places in China that have killed off their bees, are having to pollinate apples and pears by hand. Women and children are climbing through the trees dusting each flower with tiny brushes. Can you imagine how expensive food would be if we had to do that with all our crops?

Now how valuable is that patch of forest?

4. Cleaning the Air

Plants, especially forest canopies, clean the air we need to breathe. By filtering out the particulate matter from our fossil fuel combustion, cement production, waste incineration, and crop burning, plants can greatly reduce the toxins we spew into the air.

Trees along roadsides, freeways, and in congested urban areas absorb nitrous oxide with their leaves, not to mention soaking up carbon dioxide and giving off fresh oxygen in return.

5. Purifying the Water

Nature’s forests, soils and wetlands are so effective at removing toxins, heavy metals, and organic matter from water that engineers are now building “living machines” – constructed wetlands to treat wastewater. Sand and gravel filter particulates from water, while microbes and bacteria feed on organic matter. Mussels and oysters are being cultivated by NASA as a natural solution for treating wastewater during long-range space missions.

Fresh water is our most precious resource, and it is nature’s clouds, snowbanks and watersheds that cleanse, store and transport that water for us.

6. Mitigating Floods

The earliest civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China and India sprouted on the fertile flood plains of the world’s great rivers. These floodplains are nature’s safety valves, allowing the river’s natural cycles to overflow its banks and deposit fresh soil on the land.

But as urban development and farmland have encroached on the rivers, we have drained the wetlands, and put ourselves in harm’s way. In 1993, the flooding Mississippi River swept through tens of thousands of homes in nine states, killing 50 people and damaging millions of acres of farmland worth $12 billion dollars.

7. Controlling Erosion

Plant canopies intercept and soften rainfall. Their roots bind the soil in place, while root channels and animal burrows act like natural drainage networks, helping water soak deep into the ground.

By clearing plants, we expose dry, unbinded soils to pounding rains which simply wash it away. The U.N. Food & Ag Organization estimates that erosion ruins over 10 million acres a year of cropland. By 1978, China had abandoned one-third of its arable land due to erosion.

Lands cleared for agriculture have increasingly suffered devastating mudslides in winter storms and hurricanes. The devastating tsunami that struck Thailand and Indonesia in 2004 was significantly less damaging in places with intact coral reefs, vegetated dunes and healthy mangrove forests.

8. Detoxifying Pollutants

As we burn and churn chemicals from the earth into the atmosphere, we are depositing toxins, heavy metals, and radioactive materials all over the place. We have also created tens of thousands of chemical pesticides, pharmaceuticals and industrial compounds which we’re now finding in alarming concentrations in our drinking water – and our own tissues.

But many common plants can absorb these chemicals. Mustard plants can absorb lead, nickel, copper and a host of other metals. Aquatic hyacinth has been used to remove arsenic from drinking water, while the common sunflower was used to soak up radioactive substances in ponds after Chernobyl. Both mustard and sunflower were used to soak up lead at a DaimlerChrysler site in Detroit at half the cost of carting the toxic soil to a hazardous waste dump.

The increasing use of “bioremediation” shows promise in cleaning up vinyl chloride – found in one-third of all Superfund sites – as well as DDT, and other toxins.

9. Controlling Pests and Disease

We have learned the hard way that nature works in complex, interdependent cycles, and that targeting one particular “pest” often creates unintended consequences. But in many cases we still don’t know what species are necessary for ecosystems to properly function, or in what proportions they must be present.

What we have found is that maintaining natural places, with their complex webs intact, is often a safer, more reliable way to deal with pests than simply killing them off.

In Germany for instance, hedgerows, small stands of trees, are used to separate fields. By harboring insects and attracting birds, Germany is one of the few places farmers don’t need to spray for aphids – because Nature does that work for them.

10. Regulating Climate

Lastly, nature is what makes our planet habitable. It was microorganisms that created our oxygen atmosphere, and plants that sustain it.

The rainforests of South America play a large role in transpiring moisture into the air that falls as rain on our crops. Forests and soils are also the world’s largest storehouses of carbon. Nature cycles the hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur – which together with carbon and oxygen comprise 95% of the biosphere.

 

It is the beautiful places of the world, and the wonderful weather we find there that make tourism the world’s largest industry.

Nature is what soothes us, heals us, inspires and invigorates us. A few urban trees, a park or a small patch of forest can improve health, increase worker productivity and reduce crime. Preserving wild places – Nature’s Corporate Headquarters – not only helps sustain our basic life-support systems; it’s also the kind of common sense economic policy we so sorely need right now.

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We found this press release on Fin24. Not only is our power some of the dirtiest around it is also unfeasibly cheap. But that will change soon…

Johannesburg – South Africa’s state-owned utility Eskom said on Tuesday it needed a significant rise in tariffs to build new plants because the global financial crisis had made borrowing difficult.

The utility plans to spend R385bn over the next five years to build new power plants, and part of that money will be funded by tariffs.

“We come from a base of low tariffs and hence tariffs will have to increase significantly to begin to match what is required so that we can have this investment,” Eskom chief executive Jacob Maroga told a power conference in Johannesburg.

“In the current context borrowings are difficult. Capital markets are tight, our credit rating is under threat, so access to borrowings is a challenge.”

Maroga said Eskom – which charges among the world’s lowest tariffs – would apply for new tariffs “very soon”.

Maroga said the utility was now in consultation with the country’s power regulator over the new tariffs, but was yet to make the actual application.

The utility had delayed the submission to take into account the impact the financial crisis would have on consumers, and its own ability to borrow given the state of the global markets.

A decision last year by ratings agency Moody’s to cut Eskom local and foreign currency ratings also added pressure on the firm’s abilities to secure funding from markets.

The regulator said it would take three to four months to process an application at any given time.

Eskom, which provides 95% of power in Africa’s biggest economy, has rationed electricity since January last year, when a near collapse of the grid forced mines and smelters to shut for days, costing the economy billions of dollars.

Maroga said power supply had stabilised since early last year, and the utility has not rationed power since last April.

“We have seen no load shedding since April 2008,” he said.

“January 2008 was our black January.”

He said a late start on a new power generation programme, uncoordinated industry planning, a low reserve or spare capacity margin and the utility’s own lack of risk management and contingency planning had led to the crisis.

“It was the most disruptive power disturbance in the history of this country,” he said, noting the crisis had dented South Africa’s global image and rattled investor confidence.

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Douglas Fischer is editor of the Daily Climate. This article originally appeared at The Daily Climate, the climatechange news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

BOULDER – Drastic, economy-changing cuts to greenhouse gas emissions will spare the planet half the trauma expected over the next century as the Earth warms.

And that’s the good news.

Because failure to significantly curb these planet-warming gases will truly transform our world in less than 100 years.

A new study to be published by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research finds that a 70 percent cut in emissions should stabilize temperatures at a mark not too much higher than today.

Such a cut, most experts agree, would require vast retooling of a fossil-fuel-based economy and an unprecedented level of global cooperation.

But that major effort to slash emissions, the scientists warn, won’t stop global warming. The question confronting politicians throughout the world, in other words, is not whether they want the planet to warm: It is to what degree.

“We can no longer avoid significant warming during this century,” NCAR scientist Warren Washington, the lead author, said in a statement. But “we could stabilize the threat of climate change and avoid catastrophe.”

The study, employing the latest-generation computer models, will be published next week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Mitigating emissions, the authors reported, blunts projected climate impacts and avoids the most dangerous potential impacts of climate disruption:

*The late-summer polar ice cap, already at historic lows today, would shrink only another quarter and hold steady by century’s end, instead of melting by more than three-quarters with no let-up in sight.

*Arctic warming is potentially cut in half, stabilizing the northern Bering Sea and reducing impacts on commercial and subsistence fisheries.

*Regional heat wave intensity also drops by half, with the greatest reduction occurring over the western United States, Canada and most of Europe, Russia and Northern Africa.

*Flooding risk drops in half for the western tropical Pacific, Northeast United States and Canada, eastern Asia and South America.

But the emissions slash will not stem the tide: Global average temperatures would still rise by nearly 1º F, about what scientists attribute to date from industrial emissions since 1900.

Sea levels would creep up nearly six inches as a result of that extra heat, with any additional rise due to melting ice sheets unaccounted for in the study’s calculations. And they would keep rising beyond 2100, given the oceans’ thermal inertia.

“Note that despite a 70 percent reduction in emissions over the 21st century,” the authors write, “there is virtually no cooling.”

And while the cut would stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, it holds them at about 450 parts-per-million, according to the study. That’s nearly 20 percent higher than today’s concentrations and at or even above a threshold many scientists fear will trigger a series of cascading and transformative catastrophes.

Pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels were 284 ppm. Unchecked, emissions are on track to reach 750 ppm by 2100. Scientists don’t even know what that would look like: Assumptions used by the computer models were drawn up before recent large emission increases from China and elsewhere, leaving scientists to conclude that their “business-as-usual” benchmark is a conservative estimate for what might actually happen.Those models do suggest that failure to stem industrial exhaust will push global temperatures four degrees Fahrenheit above today’s readings – well beyond a threshold many scientists fear will produce dreadful consequences. Sea levels under such a scenario rise at least nine inches – likely more – by century’s end. Massive ice sheets are destabilized. The Arctic, hit the hardest, would undergo dramatic change.

“We are now completely in charge,” said NASA scientist James Hansen, who was not a part of the study but who first urged Congress to stem emissions in 1988.

“We are going to determine the climate for our children and grandchildren. We’re much more powerful than the natural forces…. We could be sending the planet back toward an ice-free state.”

Hansen and others argue that the only way to avoid such a fate is to slap carbon-based fuels with a significant tax – $115 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted, or about $1 extra on each gallon of gasoline – as well as a heavy push into renewable and nuclear fuels.

A poll conducted by the London Guardian and published today exposes that gulf between what scientists and politicians think possible. While world leaders – and this NCAR study – suggest prompt action can still avert the worst consequences, a majority of scientists polled at a major international conference last month told the paper they fear society is incapable of such action and faces dangerous warming.

The NCAR study, whose authors also hailed from the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich and from Climate Central, a website founded by NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, took no sides in that debate.

The scenarios, the authors state, should be seen as “storylines” illustrating the outcomes of different choices. “It is clear that emissions reductions in the 21st century need to be large,” they said.

“We do not claim they are necessarily politically or economically feasible…. The aim is to provide policy-relevant information for a range of options.”

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Insurance companies might not come to mind as key environmental advocates, but they have a vested interest in climate change: billions—if not trillions—of dollars. As sea levels rise, storms gain force and even as agricultural patterns change, insurance companies will have to shell out more and more cash to cover losses. Hurricane Ike, which struck the Texas coast in 2008, cost insurers in that state $6.6 billion, according to a report by The New York Times. Hefty price tags get passed along to consumers, taxpayers and investors alike.

But a new industry survey by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), a nationwide advisory organization, aims to ensure that insurers are taking a long, hard look at climate change and what it means for their bottom line.

“Once they’re aware of the risk,” says Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario, “they’ll mitigate it.” Mitigation in this case doesn’t just mean upping premiums or dropping coverage, but actually working to reduce climate change overall. Just as insurance companies helped to make workplaces safer (not because they’re altruistic, rather because it makes good business sense—lower risk cuts costs), they “can help foster improvements in global warming,” says Peter Kochenburger, executive director of the Insurance Law Center at the University of Connecticut School of Law.

The survey covers eight topics—from what insurance companies are doing to decrease their own emissions to what computer modeling they’re using to assess climate-related risk. “These are legitimately good questions to ask,” says Kochenburger. The deadline for the first round of surveys from major insurers (those with more than $500 million in premiums) is May 1, 2010; the NAIC plans to expand the survey annually. Responses will be made available to the public by summer 2010.

What will a better picture of climate change risk mean for consumers? “It will mean higher premiums, possibly, depending on new risks,” says Ario, also chair of the NAIC’s Climate Change and Global Warming Task Force who spearheaded the survey. But he adds that some of the changes “will create new opportunities for possibly better rates.”

And money talks. “Insurance can make a really big difference in how people act,” Kochenburger says. Because rates and policies seep into so many facets of life—from health to business—the insurance sector actually acts as a quasi-regulator, he says. Insurance companies can, for example, offer incentives for drivers who drive less and who own cars that get better mileage. The industry will also begin favoring businesses that use alternative energy and “buildings that are less susceptible to power outages and [therefore] business disruption,” Ario explains.

The NAIC develops model laws and regulations, which states can choose to enforce. Kochenburger believes most insurance companies will participate in the survey, which doesn’t require hard figures or terribly detailed reports. In the meantime, he notes, “You can look at insurance companies as a useful tool and a useful ally in climate change” because a greener, more stable global climate will mean more green for them.

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