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Addenda
to the Third Edition A. Articles on Climate Change and Copenhagen Summit 1. Prior to the Copenhagen Summit a. WED 2009 Message of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon The economic and financial turmoil sweeping the globe is a true wake-up call, sounding an alarm about the need to improve upon old patterns of growth and make a transition to a new era of greener, cleaner development. The theme of this year’s World Environment Day -- "Your planet needs you" -- is meant to inspire all of us to do our part. The Earth faces the grave threat of climate change. While all countries will suffer, the poor will bear the brunt of the impact. But we also have an opportunity to change course. Crucial climate change talks will take place in Copenhagen in December. Together, we must press Governments to "Seal the Deal" for a new climate agreement. The world also needs a "Green New Deal" focused on investing in renewable sources of energy, eco-friendly infrastructure and energy efficiency. This will not only create jobs and spur recovery but also help tackle global warming. If we invest even part of the substantial new economic stimulus packages in the green economy, we can turn today’s crisis into tomorrow’s sustainable growth. Moreover, countries that make the transition to a low-carbon society will reap more than significant environmental benefits; they will be well placed to share their new technology with others. But our planet needs more than just action by Governments and corporations; it needs each of us. Although individual decisions may seem small in the face of global threats and trends, when billions of people join forces in common purpose we can make a tremendous difference. On this World Environment Day, I encourage all people to take concrete steps towards making the planet greener and cleaner. Switch off the lights. Take public transportation. Recycle. Plant a tree. Clean up your local park. Hold corporations responsible for their environmental practices. And urge your Government representatives to seal the deal in Copenhagen. b. WED 2009 Message of WED-Phils. Secretary-General Ed Aurelio C. Reyes In his message for this year’s World Environment Day, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon underscored the power of billions of individual people all doing their bit for a greener and cleaner development. In the Philippines, this translates into a concerted teamwork of a hundred million Filipinos being turned into active stakeholders in effective environmental conservation, not a mere million activists and functionaries doing the caring for the environment, being applauded by the 99 million other Filipinos or, worse, being ignored or, much worse, even counteracted by the latter. For this reason, the World Environment Day-Philippines (WED-Phils.) network strengthens itself in two interrelated but distinct ways. As it keeps growing through the years and making significant strides this year, WED-Philippines takes a direct role in pushing for grassroots organizing for environmentalism, with home- and barangay-based formations in the youth sector and among their parents. And strengthens as well the interlinkages among the green associations among those millions of people right , in the most local of all localities in their own homes and villages. Strides are about to be made by the WED-Phils network which would in all probability be birthing this week the Green Families and Communities Network (GFCN). Well beyond the annual highpoints in the work of WED-Phils., the GFCN will be more determined and capable to perform the two components embraced in the single banner call that we raised a few years ago: Synergize the Local Environmental Movements! Surely we cannot even begin to think of synergizing local movements if they have no energy in themselves to begin with, thus the locality-focused environment formation organizing; and to keep such synergy locally-grounded and vibrant nationwide, effective mechanisms of inter-locality cooperation do have to be laid out and refined. One such mechanism for integrating the dynamics of inter-locality partnerships for the environment is a new network for green entrepreneurship – combining environment conservation with enhanced productivity and robust enterprise, scheduled to start this month. Another, started a couple of years earlier, has been the integration of three basic advocacies on the agenda of concern and action for each family and each community – the advocacy of safe food, healthy environment, and sustainable economy. And issue-specific coordinative formations (on mining, on ecological waste, on GMOs, etc.) have been with us for years, doing very meritorious work. In such necessary proliferation of overlapping but distinctly-focused formations, our attitude and our aptitude for working well in healthy teaming-up are crucially vital, As individuals among our people go about their respective focuses of attention according to their varying circumstances, capabilities and choices, division of labor shall only be allowed as lines of delineation of their respective priorities. These should not erect walls of division, walls of narrow overspecialization, walls of competition. Let us all keep the long view to combat impatience and disorientations, the coming months being a period of electoral campaign and exercise. Let us help educate the people in gradually gaining green political power mainly on the basis of principle and platform, and at the scope of localities and also, wherever really possible, on other scopes of governance. Most of all, to combat all residues of narrow-mindedness in all our efforts from the scope of the household to that of the nation itself, let us keep in mind this combination of two thematic calls, the first one coming from the WED's international this year and the second one being a refinement of our earlier call: "Your Planet Needs You!"; "Strengthen and Synergize the Local Environment Movements!" In the context of all our environmental problems big and small, we can ill afford to do any less. Batangas City June 5, 2009 2. Post-Copenhagen a. Article from Group of 77 Negotiator Bernaditas Muller The Copenhagen Discord ,Divide and Rule in Climate Change [The Filipina who was removed from the Philippine delegation by Pres. Gloria Arroyo apparently upon pressure from the US government, was adopted as delegate by The Sudan so she could remain a heroic spokesperson-negotiator for the Group 77 in the recent Copenhagen summit.] The conspiracy ...began in Bali, where, after a two-year long-term dialogue for cooperative action which was agreed not to result in negotiations, the Bali Action Plan was hatched by a selected group of countries. The only new thing in climate negotiations under the Bali Action Plan was the provision on « nationally-appropriate mitigation actions » for developing countries, subsequently to be known as NAMAs. The rest simply watered down commitments of developed countries under the Convention. Drama marked the last day of the Bali session, when the lines were drawn. The final plenary meeting clarified the developing countries’ understanding of NAMAs, and the United States was shamed into joining the consensus. The waiting game ...was played over two years, when endless debates were held clarifying positions, wrestling with procedures that could prejudge the outcome, even trying to understand what this outcome would be, finally giving birth to a « negotiating text ». But contrary to normal growth, the text first grew and then was pared down to a « manageable » size. In Barcelona, in November, the text appeared to take shape. This spurred developed countries, in particular the EU countries, to intensify their efforts, began even before Bali, to influence and pressure developing countries which in turn began to show increasing signs of cohesiveness. In the meanwhile, ...everybody waited to see which way the US would go. The whole process was put on slow motion until the new US administration took over early in 2009, and then hope was revived that the US would now engage in the process. They did, but only to make more noise in the negotiations, dampening hopes for a US target of emissions reductions, promising recycled financing, most of it to be spent domestically, and above all, warning that everything depended on US congressional approval. This ensured that nothing would happen until mid to late 2010. The EU was busy ...spending time and money to divide and influence developing countries. Bribing where they can, promising the same recycled financing and maybe more to come if countries are amenable, bullying where they cannot bribe. The UK financed workshops in selected vulnerable countries, deploying climate envoys, in particular one on Climate Security for Vulnerable Countries, who in so many words, told « intransigent » negotiators that they are putting up a group of vulnerable countries in order to pressure the major developing countries into taking on emissions reductions commitments. Small « circles of commitment » were formed, the G8 summits came out with double declarations that contained conflicting declarations from the developed countries and a group of « major developing economies », and meetings with selected developing countries, including bilateral ones, were intensively pursued. Significantly, the Danish lead negotiator was suddenly taken ill in thelast Bonn meeting, and never showed up again. Cracks were beginning to show in the conspiracy. Their efforts partly paid off, as a couple of these « vulnerable » countries stoutly defended the Copenhagen Accord which came out of the (Danish design) woodwork in Copenhagen. One even claimed to represent the African Group, whereas it was clear that the African Group was among the most cohesive within the group of 132 developing countries called the Group of 77. Not all were fooled, however, and Tuvalu, a strong defender among truly vulnerable small island developing countries, likened the Accord’s US$30 billion financing provisions to the biblical « 30 pieces of silver.» What really occurred in Copenhagen ...was the culmination of all the frustrations of many developing countries in the total lack of transparency and inclusiveness in the process. Rumors of a Danish text were circulating weeks before Copenhagen. Whenconfronted with these rumors, the Danish presidency firmly denied the existence of a text. The secretariat also affirmed before a G77 presessional meeting that only one Danish president would be elected « the next day » . We forgot to ask about the day after that, and indeed two days before the final plenary, a new Danish president was named. And at the same time, it was announced that Danes would come up with not one, but two texts.
...at closed negotiating rooms, continually bracketing texts, coming out with new proposals, clarifying former ones, drawing out developing countries anxious to come to textual agreements, with the EU mainly staying quiet, restating positions, biding for time until the Danes get the high-level officials into a climate « green room » of exclusive negotiations. And to the press outside, the message continued to be « the G77 is blocking negotiations. » At the same time, the message was reinforced that the US and China, the US and India, France and Brazil, France and Ethiopia, claiming to represent Africa, all were agreeing to the « deal » to be sealed in Copenhagen. At the last minute, after a parody of the Danish presidency of putting up the negotiating groups once again at the insistence of the G77, three main issues were taken out of the negotiators’ hands, the same three issues which resurfaced later in the Copenhagen Accord reflecting EU positions. These issues were the long-term global goal », the controversial market mechanisms and trade discussions, and most of all, financing. We were to have reconvened in a « contact group » setting, to decide whether to have a « friends of the Chair » small meeting with countries selected by the whole, but we never did. The G77 negotiators continued bravely to engage in negotiations, hoping for these to be part of the final agreed outcome. We waited in vain.
...was the backroom wheeling and dealing. I took part, accidentally, as part of the Sudanese team, in the first meeting, where the big G77 countries were trying to revise the text, with some other developing countries defending the original text. Small gains were made, but largely the revisions suggested by developing countries were ignored. Sudan dropped out of the final backroom negotiations, by choice, when it became increasingly clear that little more could be accomplished for small developing countries. The Accord mainly reflects the EU positions on most issues. In particular, financing is to continue to be channeled to the failed delivery systems of the past, through «international institutions», « public and private, bilateral and multiateral, including alternative sources of finance, «without acknowledging the commitments to provide financial resources under the governance of Parties. The final plenary broke out in confusion when the Danish Prime Minister, now Chairman, marched in after making the delegations wait for nearly five hours without any explanation, took the microphone to announce that a deal was done, called the Copenhagen Accord, as secretariat personnel frantically distributed the text, and instructed the rest of the meeting to break out in « regional groups » and to take one hour to come up with their positions. He then closed the session precipitately without following normal procedures of soliciting views of Parties and proceeded to march out again when pandemonium broke out as Parties demanded to be heard. The only way to be given the floor was to ask for points of order, which were not heeded until nameplates were banged on the table. During the interventions, the Chairman looked on, glaring at the proceedings, turning now and then to consult the secretariat. No courtesy nor proper attention were accorded to the speakers their expectations have to be kept realistic. More local steps will have to be undertaken together by the poor nations forging people-to-people team-ups are necessary to exert pressures on their governments and big businesses to effectively mitigate the effects of the global climate change crisis and adapt to these effects. which included ministers and ambassadors heading delegations. The claim that only three or four countries spoke against the Accord and the procedures followed is false, as proven by subsequent interventions, punctuated by applause, from other developing countries or their supporters. Developed countries and their followers also applauded their own spokesmen, which included two developing countries. The intervention of Ed Miliband of the UK focused on a threat that the paragraphs concerning financing would not be «operationalized» unless countries signed up to the accord. This was followed some time later by the United States which in turn elaborated on what one could get in terms of pledges of financing if one accepted the accord. Sad to say, pledges of financing have a way of evaporating over time, and financing done through existing institutions are unpredictable, difficult to access, conditional, and selective. Any governance system set up outside of the Convention itself is just another layer of bureaucracy, and equal representation of developed and developing countries outside of the UN system is subject to interpretation. What happens now ? The Parties decided to continue with the ongoing process of negotiations, while taking note of the Accord which, on many of its provisions, undermines the developing countries’ positions in these negotiations The Parties took note of the Accord which would be open to participation by Parties, if they wish to avail of the promised financing, the terms of which are still uncertain. What mainly happened is the complete breakdown of trust among Parties. To build it up again, under the shadow of an Accord that would be pursued at all costs, is immensely challenging. The holidays might provide time for reflection, and the firm resolve of the New Year should be to do something, finally, please, to address climate change and its adverse effects. Geneva, 20 December 2009 b. Article from President Isagani Serrano, Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement ‘Hopenhagen’ turns ‘Brokenhagen’ IT STARTED on high hopes and ended up heart-broken. The outcome of the Copenhagen event that drew the participation of more people than any seen in previous UN summits indeed broke the hearts of millions. People around the world expected their leaders to help avert climate catastrophe. Which means coming out with nothing less than strong, bold, and legally-binding agreements to stabilize the global climate system. But the Copenhagen climate conference (UNFCCC COP 15) might be remembered more as a rare summit of failure than Obama’s claim of a ‘step forward’. A rare gathering of 192 heads of states, and for what? The Obama-brokered Copenhagen Accord is a non–binding hodgepodge of promises of keeping global temperature under 2°C; an ambiguous assistance of USD 30 billion over three years till 2012 to rise (through best efforts) to USD 100 billion by 2020; and, most of all, of passing on the burden of cutting CO2 emissions to everyone, over emitters and under emitters alike. First, the 2°C goal is already gambling with humanity’s future. That means the present concentration of greenhouse gas (GHG) in the atmosphere of about 390 ppm (435ppm already \ according to Sir Nicholas Stern), and well beyond the safe 350 ppm, will still be allowed to rise to 450 or more. At 450ppm corals would die. Rice might still grow, but without grains. Second, nobody knows what that promised money looks like and how it’s going to be raised. It might just be like the ‘bacon’ the Philippine president seemed so proud to bring home from Copenhagen—some $310 million climate funding of which $250 million is loan from the World Bank and ADB. To begin with, the money quoted falls short of the already scaled-down minimum estimate of USD 50 billion yearly to cover the costs of mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, especially those most vulnerable to climate change impacts. Third, the mitigation burden sharing that high-emitting countries want goes against the bedrock principle of the climate convention. And that is, that any agreement to address the climate crisis should be based on common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Annex I countries are mandated by the climate convention and its Kyoto Protocol to cut or mitigate their emissions. Non-Annex I countries do not have similar obligation but would do well to check their emissions consistent with pursuit of low-carbon economy and sustainable development. This non-binding Copenhagen Accord merely confirmed what many had already feared before the start of the negotiations. Halfway through the two-week long Copenhagen negotiations the process hit an impasse following the expose of a secret Copenhagen Agreement drafted by the supposedly neutral host Denmark. Instant reactions to the leaked document previewed what was coming. The leaked draft Copenhagen Agreement and the Obama-brokered Copenhagen Accord caricature the stubborn running dynamic in these climate negotiations. Or should we say the stubborn refusal of the rich, US in particular, to put their lifestyle on the chopping block, so to say. High-emitting countries, led by the US, would summon everything they’ve got to avoid deep and urgent cuts on their CO2 emissions. The trick is to emphasize the ’common’ and under-mine’differentiated’ which is at the heart of climate justice. The aggressor (Annex I parties) seems to say to the victim (non-Annex parties) "We’re all, both in this together", "What’s done is done, and no point rubbing the past in, time to move on, look to the future not the past", "It’s to everyone’s interest that you play ball and come on board or we all go down together". Or some such Hilary-Obama-speak. Ironically, countries go to war on the very same principles they say they want to make peace. The leaked draft Copenhagen Agreement and Obama’s deal did just that. Same principle—common but differentiated responsibilities—or set of principles, as in Article 3 of the climate convention. Same goal and shared vision—climate stabilization, as in the convention’s Article 2. The interlocking challenges on the table are very clear—combat human-caused global warming and end global poverty and advance human rights, as the Social Watch statement puts it. The agenda for Copenhagen was equally clear—rich countries must commit to deep and urgent cuts on their emissions to avoid climate catastrophe and transfer money and technology to developing countries. Carrying on business as usual, according to Stern, risks a rise of 5°C or more to levels not seen for 30 million years. These levels are way beyond what humans who have been around for only 200,000 years have been used to. Humans might perish before they could adjust to the changes. Global annual emissions of GHGs in 2010 are likely to reach up to about 47 billion tons. Thanks to global recession, the aggregate emissions were down a few billions! To have a 50:50 chance of avoiding a rise in global average temperature of more than 2°C, emissions must be reduced to no more than 44 billion tons in 2020, to below 35 billion tons in 2030 and much less than 20 billion tons in 2050. These are the stabilization levels our shared vision must shoot for. These cuts would translate in dramatic lifestyle changes in the developed world. Each person must have to reduce their carbon footprint (read consumption footprint) deeply and drastically. According Stern, in 2009 annual per person emission in the US is 23.6 tons. In the EU it’s 12 tons per European each year. These numbers mean that US with a population of 305 million must be polluting the atmosphere by over 7 billion tons and EU with a population of 830 million by about 10 billion tons in 2009. In comparison, China, the pet-peeve of Annex I countries, the one country they love to blame in Copenhagen, is home to 1.3 billion people and therefore must be doing some six billions tons a year. But the world seems not ready yet to credit China for accommodating so many—one of six of humanity—in such a small place, for being a producer for much of humanity and absorbing the shit for it in its own backyard. Obama promised 17 per cent cut from 2005 level by 2020. In contrast, the Chinese offered 40 to 45 per cent from 2005 level by 2020 along with progressive reduction of the carbon intensity of their overheating economy. Stern says that, to help the developing world, rich countries should provide an extra $50 billion a year by 2015, rising to $100 billion a year beginning 2020. More, he says that $50 billion is only about 0.1 per cent of the rich countries’ 2015 gross domestic product, a very small sum compared with the costs of dealing with the impacts of unmitigated climate change. What Stern didn’t say though is, that the Annex I countries are under obligation in the climate convention to transfer money and clean technology to those in harm’s way. On both obligations—emissions cut and transfers—the Copenhagen outcome falls miserably short. It’s amazing how anyone would see the US offer as the ‘deal breaker‘in Copenhagen. Big deal! So what now? The 350 movement advises us to get over our frustrations and keep on pushing. Good counsel. But then again, what’s the sense in continuing to expect political leadership from those who have nothing to show for it? Yet, reality, as we know it, is such that politicians are far from being an endangered, much less extinct, species. They can easily reproduce themselves and find suckers all around. And they will continue to dominate the UN system and processes. We just have to find better ways of engaging them to deliver better outcomes. Leadership in Copenhagen clearly had shifted to the social and environmental movements. Under the banner of climate justice they came out in tens of thousands to express the voices of millions around the world. Excluded from the Bella Center, they have braved the freezing cold to have a say in crafting any agreement and demand action from politicians. There’s enough lesson to draw from Fallenhagen. And one of them is that ordinary people in their communities need to brace up for the worst on their own. Farming, fishing, IP/forest communities, the workers, urban poor, the women, the young of today must muster what they know best and can do to deal with the climate crisis, with or without government. Copenhagen, December 21, 2009 B. Message of the "Prophets of Profits" ("Dream-sequence monologue toward the ending part of the story of "Major Tom," main character in Biped on the Blue Ball.) "Pardon us for forcibly intruding in your dream, Major Tom. We have developed the technology to violate at will your understandable preference to dream in complete privacy, no doubt a petty human fixation. "This is a legitimate assertion of our superiority over humans, you who would qualify only to be our maleable minions if you could muster enough wisdom to understand and accept our superiority. "Appearing to you like white-costumed versions of the Dark Vader, we are machine-created message carriers who have all the reason to gloat that our power over the human race is invincible, we have taken over the minds of men so you would do the justifying for us for this ongoing operation of conquest we are undertaking, for your own good, and for our ever-legitimate interest to draw profits from these most noble endeavors. You may call us the ‘Prophets of Profits.’ Completely helpless as you are now to try to do anything against us, we dare to categorically identify ourselves to you, while many economists of your governments and the academe on your planet still see fit to deny who they really have become. "As Prophets of Profits we now enlighten you of the supreme importance and invincibility of the full Logic of the Profit Principle, as somehow explained in detail in the ‘Ten Commandments of the Golden Calf,’ that your governments have signed decades ago as the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade. Listen closely: "Earth is now being transformed into a planet inhabited by individuals in complete competition for needs, completely rejecting the grossly unproductive concept of Nature as a generous benefactor and the concept of people unproductively sharing the abundance of the Earth. "Humans have harbored these concepts of 'Dignity' and 'Rights,’ without understanding that all ‘human dignity’ worth talking about is the distinction one human can have over others in terms of ownership and command of resources. These resources are not available to the common people because they allow themselves to be limited in their ‘absolute right to acquire, accumulate and control these infinitely.’ Your philosophers have even maligned this basic right as ‘greed,’ and promoted the unproductive superstition that having enough is enough so the others could also have enough! Bah, those others are just lazy, or stupid, or unlucky! " We have conditioned you to worship the ‘Profits Principle’ for the productivity efficiency, progress, prosperity and convenience that we have promised to all and delivered mainly to a powerful handful. We have also vowed ‘trickles down’ and many of you actually believe it. "All resources on your planet should be delivered only to those who have the ability and skill to acquire and exploit them; let all fiercely compete, peacefully or otherwise, by fair means or foul, for them In this mutually-annihilative competition for survival – humans must be capable of competing for everything; the most important is to win. Losers don’t deserve to control anything, even their own lives. They don’t even deserve to survive and exist. "And if parts of your planet get utterly destroyed while you nobly pursue profits and more and more profits, consider that as ‘natural selection’ – Nature is selecting which parts deserve to continue in existence! You have to repudiate such conceptual integrations in ecosystemic approaches as watershed, airshed, and ‘state-range conservation of migratory animals.’ Treat them all as many individual properties. "Develop every part of the Earth, such that it will acquire monetary value for selling. "We are helping you to completely abandon your primitive sense of thinking of the Commons. We are helping you discard common sense. You don’t need it, and it only impedes you from optimal pursuit of profits, the real fulfillment of Human Dignity. "Your species has been described to be in a two-legged run for further consciousness evolution. But through the predominance of the Profit Principle permeating all societies as adopted by them or enforced on them by the powerful among you, all consciousness about commonalities, about synergetic systems, about synergetic collectivities – the second foot — is being pushed to atrophy by separative selfishness. We’re that powerful! "The two-legged run of human consciousness evolution has been transformed into a "monoped pogo-walk" by those who have limited every human being to what his or her skin contains, denying even the aura and mental energies. "The accumulated profits of The Corporations of the world can easily refute and paralyze, silence permanently, in our euphemistic word, neutralize all opponents of the Profits Principle. "We have been buying off governments and mercenary scientists to bless our inventions, including those most deadly to health and to life itself. Our biotechnology on genes has created plants that need no spraying with pesticides; they are themselves poison! And they are raping and contaminating similar plants and stopping these from having seeds. We shall soon be producing and selling all the seeds, and holding hostage all the staple food supplies of your planet, and our stockholders will be much richer and more powerful than before! "We have employed mercenary economists to bless our schemes on trade rules, currency rates and financial policies. We have bought off many of our foes. We can buy their not so glamorous sudden demise. We can buy you off or ‘neutralize’ you... if we need to." C. EARTH SYNERGY POEM/PRAYER: A Giant Leap for Humankind. For Earth Synergy in
the New Millennium, / This is
a giant leap for Humankind / Amen.
// (For translations into more than a dozen other languages, please click here) D. POEMS FOR LOVING LIFE 1. Rewriting Kilmer [Projecting a sigh of the near future when the Philippine Islands shall have been renamed as "Philippine Deserts."] I fear again I’ll never see The lovely po’m that WAS the Tree, The whose roots drank up the rain, Lest floods wash out the whole terrain, And bury homes and crops a-bud, And dams and streams and reefs in mud; The Tree whose lovely blades breathed out, Supplied, for years, the needed cloud That kept the tunes of gentle rain And shortened much the hot refrain; The Tree, in short, who kept alive The humans who made Earth OUR hive. Trees were sold by fools like me, Who pray, "Renake this poe-Tree!"
Ed Aurelio Reyes, March 1990.
Live. [Written in Puerto Princesa, Palawan, in the morning of Feb. 7, 2000, as a morning-after recap of his input module for the environmental video framework, content and scripting strategy, during the 4th video-making semi-nar of Tanghalang Lakbay Pinoy’s Ta-Nood Kali-kasan Video Festival for Earth Day 2000 held at the Crocodile Farming Institute in that city.] live every breath, enjoy every bite of food and drop of drink, feel every pulse, cherish every living cell within you ...and without.
revere every leaf and smile at the Sun. live life fully ...and all around.
Love All Life! [Written in January 2000, originally intended to be proposed as a covenant among members of the newly-organized Love All Life Consciousness Campaign Network.] Life is a magical gift, that has been so lovingly…
Live - 2 [Written by Ed Aurelio Reyes in Guimaras Island, off Negros in Central Philippines, on February 26, 2000.]
revere every leaf, smile at the Sun, wrote I... but on second more ponderous thought... i’d fancy doing that the other way around: revere the Sun and smile out my thanks to each and every living leaf for giving each and every one of us all our food and breath ever made from the lighted magic in its green blade. and i’d tenderly smile out my fondness, and fondle each pale and fragile baby leaf, curled and snuggled between older siblings, as it baby-sleeps in the exquisite tapestry of life and majesty, of all foliage!
E. "New Seed": for Active Defense of the Environment by Green Families and Communities (with translations) “New
Seed” was first proclaimed in unison in Castillejos, Zambales, in the
Sunday morning mass of May 2, 2010, by about 80 leaders and members,
mostly belonging to the aeta indigenous groups, of people’s organization
among organic farmersin that part of Zambales. The line-by-line chorused
recitation was led by Ed Aurelio C. Reyes, secretary-general of the World
Environment Day-Philippines (WED-Phils) Network, and Conrado Esemple,
leading functionary of theTask Force for Justice, Peace and the Integrity
of Creation (JPIC) in the project area.
Addenda
to the Second Edition APPENDIX
A: INFORMATION
ON MAJOR CONCERNS Climate
stability for the last few thousand years has allowed humans and their
environment to develop the complex systems of today. By the end of the past millennium, however, human activities
have evidently disrupted climate enough to endanger the lives of nearly
everyone. The 1980s and
1990s were the hottest decades recorded in the century.
In 1995, an international panel of climate experts confirmed
human influence on global
climate, and estimated that global
temperature can increase by 1-3.5 degrees Celsius in the later part of
this century, if we
continue to release greenhouse gases at the same rate as today. CO2
(carbon dioxide) is the largest and most studied greenhouse gas.
Others include Methane, Nitrous Oxides, CFC11 and 12.
Fossil fuels are the major source of greenhouse gases. Source:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I.
The Science of Climate
Change. Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Earth's Surface Temperature A worldwide rise in Earth's surface temperatures is "undoubtedly real" and appears to have sped up over the last 20 years, according to a major new report released yesterday by a panel of the National Research Council. The panel estimated that temperatures over the last century rose between 0.7 and 1.4 degrees F, a 30 percent increase from earlier projections that reflects the record-shattering temperatures of the late 1990s. The report also partly refuted a key argument used by global warming skeptics, dismissing as insignificant the contradictions between data from land-based weather stations, which have observed warming, and data from satellites monitoring the upper atmosphere, which have found little or no warming. Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 13, 2000, citing reports from Washington Post and the Associated Press. Coalition
Ignores Warning There
is a Global Climate Coalition, an industry group that argues against the
reality of climate change. Still, DaimlerChrysler -- like Ford, which
withdrew from the coalition last month -- said it will continue to
oppose the Kyoto climate change treaty, which would require
industrialized countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
DaimlerChrysler's decision is another major blow to the coalition, which
is comprised of more than 40 corporate members, including General
Motors, oil companies, and mining firms. Other high-level defectors from
the industry group have included British Petroleum, Shell Oil, and Dow
Chemical. Environmentalists
applauded DaimlerChrysler's move. Source:
Grist Magazine, Jan. 7,2000,
citing reports from Vancouver Sun
and the Associated Press The Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility -- an activist network of Catholic and Protestant groups -- is waging a campaign to get ExxonMobil to acknowledge and address the issue of global warming. Wielding the power of the $90 billion pension fund portfolio owned by its member groups, Interfaith is using its stockholder status to try to pressure ExxonMobil to pursue renewable energy and reduce its emissions from burning fossil fuels. Meanwhile, religious leaders in 16 states are launching efforts to educate their congregations about global warming, urging them to use resources more wisely and be politically active. Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 1, 2000, citing a report from Dallas Morning News Faster
Ice Melting The melting of ice sheets and glaciers around the world accelerated during the 1990s, the warmest decade on record, and the melting is now happening at the fastest rate since record-keeping began, according to a new report by the Worldwatch Institute. Many scientists believe the increased melting is one of the first observable signs of human-induced climate change. For example, Arctic Ocean sea ice has shrunk by 6 percent since 1978, with a 14 percent loss of thicker, year-round ice, and in the Tien Shan mountains of central Asia, 22 percent of the glacial ice volume has disappeared in the last 40 years. Retreating ice can have serious effects on wildlife, the report notes, altering the habitats as well as feeding and breeding patterns of penguins, seals, polar bears, and other animals. Source: Grist Magazine, March 7, 2000, citing a report from BBC News. The amount of sea ice in Arctic waters has been shrinking since 1978 by an average of roughly 14,000 square miles a year, an area larger than Maryland and Delaware combined, according to a new study by an international team of scientists published in today's issue of the journal Science. The researchers say the shrinkage is very likely due to human-caused climate change, with less than a 2 percent chance that the melting of the past 20 years is due to normal climate variation and only a 0.1 percent chance that the melting over the past 46 years has been natural. The scientists combined 46 years of data and analyzed it with what are considered to be the world's most sophisticated computer models. Source: Grist Magazine, Dec. 3, 1999, citing a report from the Washington Post. The winter of 1999-2000 was the warmest winter in the U.S. since the government began keeping records 105 years ago, marking the third year in a row of record warm winters, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. From December 1999 through February 2000, every state in the contiguous U.S. was warmer than its long-term average, and in many places from the Northern Plains to New England, the first snowfall and first freeze came later than ever. Since 1980, more than two-thirds of U.S. winters have been warmer than the long-term national average. NOAA attributes the warming in part to human-caused global warming. Milder winters are consistent with a global warming trend that most scientists believe is at least partially caused by humans. straight to the source: Source: Grist Magazine, March 13, 2000, citing a report from the New York Times. If
climate change proceeds, the melting of Greenland's glaciers could pose
a serious threat, say scientists. In a study published in today's issue
of the journal Nature, researchers found that the glaciers of Greenland
are more susceptible to melting than the West Antarctic ice sheet, which
scientists have been watching for years for signs of melt. The study
authors warn that if nothing is done to stabilize our climate,
Greenland's melting glaciers could contribute significantly to rising
ocean levels and the flooding of low-lying coastal areas in the coming
century. Source: Grist
Magazine, April 6, 2000, citing
a report from the Ottawa Citizen. Earth Rotation Affected? Global warming may have a new foe: the aerospace industry. According to recent calculations from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, rapid melting of the Antarctic ice caps may skew the earth's rotation by a few thousandths of a degree -- not enough to cause earthquakes or other geophysical effects, but more than enough to scramble the world's network of communications satellites. Particularly hard-hit will be the Global Positioning Satellite system, which allows users to identify their locations to within a few meters; the orbital shift could cause these satellites to be off by as much as a third of a kilometer. More than a quarter of all communications satellites could be rendered useless, and virtually all will have to be reprogrammed. Source: Grist Magazine, April 1, 2000 citing a report from the Washington Post. Warmer Oceans The world's oceans have warmed dramatically over the past 40 years, according to a major new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, published today in the journal Science. The study of long-term ocean temperature data, the first of its kind to be conducted on a global scale, confirms what many scientists have long believed -- that the world's oceans have soaked up much of the global warming of the last four decades. The research provides new evidence that computer models may be on target when they predict the planet's warming. Some experts believe that about half of greenhouse warming is being absorbed by the oceans and will inevitably percolate to the air in the coming decades. Source: Grist Magazine, citing reports from Washington Post and New York Times. 2.
DEFORESTATION Only 22% of the world’s original forest cover remains intact in large tracts. Every year, an additional 16 million hectares is lost to timber harvest and land conversion. Source: Byrant, Dirk, Nielsen, Daniel and Tangley, Laura. The Last Frontier Forests: Ecosystems and Economies on the Edge. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 1997. In Indonesia Indonesia's forests are disappearing even faster than expected, according to the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry and Estate Crops, which used satellite imagery to produce new forest cover maps. The Ministry now estimates that the deforestation rate is 1.5 million hectares per year, nearly twice what the World Bank estimated in 1994. Since 1985, at least one-fourth of the nation's forest cover has been lost, and lowland dry forest, the richest forest in terms of biodiversity, is disappearing at the fastest rate. Illegal logging has become rampant, even in national parks, and now eclipses the level of legal logging. Fires burned more than 5 million hectares in 1997 and 1998, and the large plantation companies that set many of the fires received no real punishment from the government. Source: Grist Magazine, January 25, 2000, citing a report from International Herald Tribune. Indigenous peoples from Alaska and the Peruvian Amazon joined environmentalists Monday in calling on the U.N. to act quickly to stop a global crisis of deforestation. This week in New York, the U.N. opened a final session of talks on forest protection that may result in the establishment of a legally binding convention to regulate forest management on a global level or a permanent forum to discuss forest policy issues. Rick Steiner, a professor at the University of Alaska and a representative of the enviro group Coastal Coalition, said that two acres of forest disappear every second and that some 400 million people depend on forests for their livelihoods, including about 50 or 60 million indigenous peoples. The environmentalists said they have little confidence that the U.N. forum will result in meaningful change. Source: Grist Magazine, February 1, 2000 citing a report from the Associated Press. 3.
KILLING THE ANIMALS Elephants Africa's elephants decreased from 1.2 million some 20 years ago to less than 650,000 a decade ago. Overall, ivory was bringing in $50 million a year to African countries. Despite a ban on the trading of rhinoceros horns, more than three quarters of Africa's black rhinos were killed in the decade of the 1980s [Source: Jeffrey Bartholet and Phil Williams, "A Tussle Over Tusks," Newsweek, July 24, 1989.] Just last year, poachers in Zimbabwe have killed as many as 400 elephants, according to park officials and internal park documents. Gangs have used AK-47 automatic rifles to kill the animals, then axes or chain saws to hack off the elephants' ivory tusks, leaving hundreds of carcasses in the remote Zambezi valley near the Zambian border. David Cumming of the World Wildlife Fund, which has conducted a not-yet-released census of elephants in the region, said the killings in the past year represent some of the most serious poaching incidents in Zimbabwe in the past 20 years. The international sale of ivory is outlawed by the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, but the body allowed sales from ivory stockpiles in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia this year. Some officials in other African nations blame these sales for a resurgence of poaching on the continent. [Source: Grist Magazine, Dec. 2, 1999.] Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the wild elephant population has declined dramatically in recent years and could disappear without a concerted conservation effort, according to Flora and Fauna International, a U.K.-based group. FFI's latest research shows a mere 111 elephants in the wild in Vietnam, down from about 2,000 in 1990. The group blamed the drop on the loss of forest habitat, the capture of elephants for domestic use, and hunting. FFI suggests creating sanctuaries for wild elephants and launching education campaigns about the plight of the animals. [Source: Grist Magazine, April 4, 2000.] Elephant poaching is rampant in Africa despite a 10-year-old international ban on the ivory trade, Britain's Environmental Investigation Agency announced on Sunday. Between April and December 1999, customs officers seized at least seven illegal shipments of ivory, including 1.8 tons at an airport and 221 pairs of tusks shipped to southern China. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species outlawed the ivory trade in 1989, but a special permit was given to Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe in April 1999 to sell their 60-ton ivory stockpile. [Source: Grist Magazine, January 16, 2000, citing a report from South Africa Independent.] Here 's word just in (as we finalized these pages for submission to the press): Grist Magazine, citing the Los Angeles Times, reported on April 7 that "South Africa has sparked a big controversy with its proposal to sell a large stockpile of ivory believed to be worth $5 million. Africa's elephant population was estimated last year at 620,000, down from 1.2 million less than 20 years ago. Although the decline seems to have been checked, in part because of a 1989 ban on international trade in ivory, many scientists are still worried about elephant populations. The South Africans argue that regulated sales of ivory acquired through natural elephant deaths and other legal means would provide badly needed funds, some of which would go toward elephant conservation programs. But wildlife officials Kenya and India warn that a resumption in ivory sales anywhere would encourage elephant poachers around the world. Orcas British Columbia's southern population of orcas may be in trouble, a point emphasized when one of the orcas washed up dead on shore, its body highly contaminated with PCBs, dangerous human-made toxins. Tests on the dead whale's body have not yet been completed, but a 1996 biopsy of the same whale found PCB concentrations of about 63 parts per million -- 90 times the normal concentration found in orcas and humans. Some environmentalists are arguing that the whale carcass is so contaminated that it should be treated as toxic waste. This most recent death brings the number of orcas in the region to 82, down from 98 four years ago. Aside from PCB contamination, the whales are threatened by declining salmon stocks and increasing boat traffic. [Source: Grist Magazine, March 21, 2000, citing a report from Vancouver Sun.] Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep gained endangered status Monday, eight months after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had given the species a temporary, emergency listing. An estimated 125 bighorns remain in the 400-mile-long Sierra Nevada range, less than half the population of 15 years ago. The bighorn herds have been devastated by hunting, domestic sheep diseases, and mountain lion predation. The April emergency listing gave the USFWS the authority to kill mountain lions to protect bighorns, even though the lions are protected from hunting by a 1990 California ballot measure, and Monday's action extends that authority. [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 4, 2000, citing a report from Sacramento Bee.] Frogs
and Toads Fertilizer levels that the US EPA says are safe for drinking water can kill some species of frogs and toads in the United States, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Oregon State University researchers were surprised to find that some tadpoles and young frogs raised in water with low levels of nitrates typical of fertilizer runoff ate less than frogs in clean water, developed physical abnormalities, suffered paralysis, and died prematurely. "We're looking at levels of nitrates so low we didn't think we'd get any effect," said Andrew Blaustein, a zoologist and expert on global amphibian declines. Fertilizer runoff may also be encouraging the growth of algae that feeds tiny parasitic flatworms called trematodes, blamed for causing deformities in frogs around the U.S. "The question I have to ask is, are you comfortable drinking water with levels of fertilizer that kills off frogs?" Blaustein said. [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 6m 2000, citing a report from the Associated Press, 01.06.00.] After more than a decade of puzzling over what is killing off frog species around the world, scientists are now postulating that there is no one factor to blame but rather a combination of factors. Contributing problems include pollution, habitat destruction, the introduction of non-native species, crop fertilizers that cause high concentrations of toxic nitrates, and rising levels of ultraviolet-B radiation in sunlight, say amphibian scientists convening this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Andrew Blaustein, a zoologist at Oregon State University, said the frogs' plight seems to indicate that a combination of environmental changes can lead to worldwide trouble, even if no single factor is enough to cause a problem. "Some of the things that are killing frogs almost certainly have implications for other animal species, including humans," Blaustein said. [Source: Grist Magazine, Feb. 18, 2000, citing a report from MSNBC.] Giant
Panda, Tiger The giant panda, Tasmanian tiger, and hundreds of other endangered species are living on the fringes of their historical habitats rather than in their centers, according to a study published yesterday in the journal Nature. Researchers from the University of Oklahoma and Fort Hayes State University in Kansas studied the geographical ranges of 245 endangered or recently extinct species and found that most of them had been driven by human interference to the edges of their historical habitat, areas more fraught with risk than the centers. The study could have major implications for conservation strategy because efforts to protect endangered species tend to concentrate on the centers of habitat areas. [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 7, 2000, citing reports from South Africa Independent and Agence France Presse.] Poachers are pushing tigers in India toward extinction, feeding a growing demand at pharmacies and fur shops in China and Japan for illicit products derived from endangered animals. A few weeks ago, park rangers in India's Madhya Pradesh state recovered a carcass tentatively identified as Sita, a famous tiger that had been featured on the cover of National Geographic and in numerous documentaries. Raids within the last month have also turned up dozens of tiger skins and claws, shocking Indian wildlife officials who were already very troubled about the tiger's future. Fears are growing that India, home to 60 percent of the estimated 5,000 to 7,000 tigers remaining in the wild, is losing the battle for the animal's survival. Enforcement of India's wildlife laws is lax, and shrinking habitat and declines in the tiger's natural prey are also taking their toll. [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 25, 2000, citing a report from Boston Globe.] Birds
vs. Windmills Some environmentalists tout wind power as the gee-whiz technology that will steer us away from climate disaster, but others worry about birds getting chopped to pieces by turbine blades. When these two interests run up against each other, some odd alliances emerge, like wildlife activists teaming up with developers who don't want wind farms near their new subdivisions. But does it make sense for environmentalists to pick on wind energy when sprawl is gobbling up bird habitat across the country? [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 10, 2000.] Lynx
Many species of lynx are under threat across Europe, and governments are not taking the necessary steps to ensure their survival, according to a new report from the World Wildlife Fund. WWF lists 10 specific species that are in decline in most European Union countries, including the Iberian lynx, brown bear, monk seal, and loggerhead turtle. WWF is calling on European governments to implement the EU's habitats directive, which calls on them to designate special areas of conservation (SACs) to protect all species at risk. EU nations should have complied with the directive by 1995, but no country has yet done so, and the European Commission has begun legal action against several nations for failing to designate enough SACs. [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 28, 2000, citing a report from BBC News.] Butterflies Mexican officials are cracking down on illegal logging that threatens the winter habitat of hundreds of millions of migratory monarch butterflies, but they have yet to halt the tree-chopping completely. The government and sustainable development groups are working to promote monarch ecotourism in the nation's central Michoacan state as a way to create jobs and encourage locals to protect the butterflies and their wintering grounds. "The butterflies are really our only source of income now, so we want to see them cared for," said Jose Ramirez Franco, who makes a living driving tourists to a monarch reserve. An influx of tourists could take its own toll on the butterflies, and officials are working to minimize that impact. [Source: Grist Magazine, Feb. 3, 2000 Gorillas, Orangutan The orangutan population in the forests of Indonesian Borneo has dropped by about 30 percent to as few as 15,000, the state Antara news agency said. The main cause of recent declines was a rash of forest fires in 1997, which destroyed 1.3 million acres of forest, according to Nita Bustani, head of the Semboja Wanariset Orangutan Rehabilitation Project. As a result of the fires, many of the primates have begun to wander outside their habitat. The Wanariset project has launched a program to rescue the orangutans and return them to forested areas. [Source: Grist Magazine, Feb. 6, 2000, citing reports from Nando Times and Agence France-Presse.] Poachers are wiping out endangered gorillas in the war-ravaged eastern section of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Only 70 gorillas remain in the highlands of Kahuzi-Biega National Park, compared with 258 several years ago. Kahuzi-Biega has been officially closed to tourists since August 1998, when military conflict in the region escalated. Unarmed park guards patrol the small highland area of the park, but 95 percent of the park, which encompasses lowland areas, has been largely off-limits to park officials for three years because it is occupied in part by militiamen. Officials say that about 8,000 gorillas were believed to inhabit the lower regions of the park several years ago, but that number has certainly fallen. The population of bush elephants in the park has also dropped precipitously. [Source: Grist Magazine, March 13, 2000, citing reports from Planet Ark and Reuters.] Seahorses Seahorses are in serious decline, with some populations thought to have been cut in half in just five years and one species in South Africa now officially listed as endangered, according to researchers at the London Zoo. Pollution and development of coastal areas have taken their toll on the critters, but the biggest threat is fishing by humans. Hundreds of thousands are captured each year for the aquarium trade or for tourist souvenirs, and at least 20 million a year are taken for use in traditional Chinese medicine, where they are prized for treatment of asthma and impotence. [Source: Grist Magazine, Feb. 8, 2000, citing a report from BBC News.] Bears Biologists at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming are worried that climate change might set off a series of changes that could threaten the park's grizzly bear population. As temperatures rise, the atmosphere can hold more moisture, and in Yellowstone this could spur more cases of blister rust, a disease that attacks whitebark pines. These trees, which thrive in harsh high altitudes just below the timberline, produce pine nuts, which some experts believe may be the source of as much as 40 percent of a bear's layer of winter fat. Fewer nuts could mean fewer bears, and because there are only an estimated 200 to 400 bears in the park, a modest increase in deaths could have serious effects. Scientists are considering various steps to take if blister rust becomes more prevalent. [Source: Grist Magazine, Feb. 8, 2000, citing a report from the New York Times.] Dolphins Three Asian species of dolphins may go extinct by 2020 if governments fail to cut pollution and destruction of the species' habitats, according to scientists at the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation in Hong Kong. The first dolphin species to go will likely be China's baiji dolphin; there are only about 30 left in the Yangtze River. Pakistan's river dolphin, the bhulan, and the irrawaddy dolphin of southeast Asia are also in trouble. Insecticides and PCBs pollute Asia's river systems, and tests conducted on dolphins in the region have found high levels of mercury and heavy metals in their bodies. The animals are also threatened by dams, irrigation, development along coastal areas, and hunters who try to catch dolphins for Chinese aquariums. [Source: Grist Magazine, Feb. 14, 2000, citing a report from South Africa Independent, and Agence France Presse.] Sharks Sharks are in trouble, with their populations in serious decline around the world in large part because of overfishing, according to marine scientists gathered at a conference in California. More than 100 million sharks are caught each year by crews from 125 nations, and only four of those -- Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S. -- have implemented management plans for shark fisheries. Shark fins are increasingly sought as a delicacy. Off the Hawaiian islands, finning -- the practice of cutting off a shark's fin and tossing the rest of its carcass back in the ocean -- increased 2,000 percent between 1991 and 1998, according to the Ocean Wildlife Campaign. Reps. Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.) and Jim Saxton (R-N.J.) last month introduced a bill that would permanently ban shark finning in all U.S. waters and direct the Secretary of State to work toward a similar ban worldwide. [Source: Grist Magazine, Feb. 15, 2000, citing a report from MSNBC.] Flamingoes Pollution may have caused the deaths of up to 50,000 flamingos on Kenya's Lake Bogoria, which has the biggest concentration of flamingos in the world, conservationists say. Gideon Motelin of Kenya's Egerton University conducted tests on some of the corpses littering the shores of the lake and found that they contained nine or 10 heavy metals . Motelin said, "It is not normal to find arsenic, lead, mercury, chromium, and copper in the livers and kidneys of these birds." environmentalists believe the source of the pollution is large-scale farms near Lake Nakuru, about 60 miles south of Bogoria, an area that the flamingos abandoned two years ago. [Source: Grist Magazine, Feb. 28, 2000, citing reports from South Africa Independent and Reuters.] Environmentalists are rejoicing after winning a tough five-year battle against a proposal to build a giant salt plant on the pristine shores of a gray-whale breeding ground on Mexico's Baja Peninsula. Mitsubishi Corp. and the Mexican government announced yesterday that they are scrapping their joint plan for the $100 million facility. The salt plant, which would have been the largest in the world, was planned for an ecologically sensitive area that had been declared a U.N. World Heritage Site; opponents argued that it would have harmed gray whales and more than 300 other animal species. environmentalists mounted an international campaign against the plan, galvanizing scientists, artists, celebrities, and concerned citizens around the globe and motivating 700,000 people to send postcards to Mitsubishi opposing the plant. [Source: Grist Magazine, March 3, 2000, citing reports from Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.] In what researchers are saying could be a big advance for endangered species, a house cat gave birth three weeks ago to a rare African wildcat. Scientists at the Audubon Institute Center for Research of Endangered Species in New Orleans said that they had transferred a frozen embryo between species, and that the house cat, after giving birth to the wildcat, was now nursing and protecting it as if it were her offspring. Ron Foreman, chief executive of the institute, said, "If extinction happens in the wild, the technology will be there to bring the species back." However, Rebecca Spindler of the National Zoo's Conservation and Research Center cautioned that the process used by the New Orleans scientists was no substitute for conservation. [Source: Grist Magazine, citing reports from Nando Times and Associated Press.] Nearly 14 years after she was captured and placed in a breeding program to help save her species from extinction, a California condor known as Adult Condor No. 8 was set free yesterday in a wilderness area northwest of Los Angeles. The old-timer was joined by two 10-month-old condors born and raised in the Los Angeles Zoo. Biologists hope the older bird will be a mentor to the young ones. Adult Condor No. 8 was the last female and one of only six California condors remaining in the wild when she was captured in 1986. She subsequently produced 12 offspring in captivity. After an expensive federal breeding and reintroduction program, there are now 49 California condors flying free in California and Arizona. No condors have been hatched in the wild since reintroduction began, but scientists are hopeful. [Source: Grist Magazine, April 4, 2000, citing reports from San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner, Los Angeles Times and Associated Press.] Air Pollution, Ozone Depletion Chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs), consisting of chlorine, fluorine and carbon atoms are inert,
meaning they do not combine easily with other substances. Because they
vaporize at low temperatures, CFCs are perfect as coolants in
refrigerators and propellant gases for spray cans. Since CFCs are good
insulators, they are standard ingredients on plastic-foam materials like
Styrofoam. However, when they escape into the atmosphere, they work like
carbon dioxide and many times more efficiently in trapping heat.
Moreover, the chlorine that gets released when CFC molecules break up
destroy ozone molecules O3. The ozone layer, located in the
stratosphere, is vital to the well-being of animals and plants, because
its molecules absorb most of the ultraviolet rays that come from the
Sun. Ultraviolet rays are extremely hazardous to life on Earth. The
small amount that gets through to the Earth surface cause sunburns,
cataracts, and weakened immune systems in humans and other animals.
Ultraviolet rays carry enough energy toj damage DNA and thus
disrupt the workings of cells, which is mhy excessive exposure to
sunlight is thought to be the primary cause of some skin cancers.
Source: Michael D. Lemonick, "Deadly Danger in a Spray
Can," Time, January 2,
1989 ("Planet of the Year" issue.) Scientists first suspected the impacts of chloroflurocarbons on the ozone layer in the 1970s. This was confirmed when an ozone “hole” was found in the South Pole in the 1980s. In 1987, the Montreal Protocol was signed by 150 countries to phase out CFCs. Although this has reduced the amount of CFCs released into the air, other ozone-destroying chemicals are being discovered. Methyl bromide, a widely used pesticide, is 40 times more destructive than CFCs. Source: Dick Thompson "Patching the Holes," Time, November 1997 Air in many of the world’s biggest cities (e.g. Mexico, Los Angeles) is polluted yearly with thousands of metric tons of substances emitted from urban activities. Six of the most serious air pollutants in urban areas are particulates (smoke and soot), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), ozone (photochemical smog), carbon monoxide (CO) and lead. Both SO2 and particulates are respiratory irritants and are released by industries and vehicles, which rely mostly on fossil fuels. When NOx is released from fuel combustion, it can react with compounds to form photochemical smog dominated by ozone, which is a highly reactive gas toxic to most organisms. CO is released primarily by vehicles, and is the most prolific urban air pollutant. It can disrupt oxygen transport in the blood. Lead in the air has come mostly from gasoline, and can affect people through direct inhalation or secondary exposure. It can cause circulatory, reproductive, nervous and kidney damage. Lead can seriously affect the mental capacity of children. The hole in the ozone layer may be responsible for a dramatic decline in krill numbers in the Antarctic Ocean, according to U.S. and German scientists working on a Japanese Fisheries Agency ship. The krill population off the Antarctic Peninsula south of Tierra del Fuego has dropped by about 75 percent since the mid-1980s, according to the researchers. They say ozone-layer damage has increased the ultraviolet rays reaching the earth's surface, and as a result plant plankton on which the krill feed is being killed off. Krill, shrimp-like creatures of up to six centimeters in length, are the staple food of many whales and penguins. [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 2, 2000, citing a report from Tokyo Asahi Shimbun.] While most industrial nations and developing countries are pumping out more greenhouse gases than ever, Japan's carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 3.8 percent in 1998. About 60 percent of the decline is attributed to the country's economic slump, but some resulted from efficiency improvements, according to Japan's Environment Agency. The nation intends to continue reducing emissions in order to meet its goal under the Kyoto climate change treaty of a 6 percent cut from 1990 levels by 2010. Japan is also working to assist China in cutting its emissions, not only to help avert climate change but also to decrease sulfur-laden pollution from China that contributes to acid rain in Japan. Japan is pursuing joint public-private projects, like a $170 million proposal by Hitachi Corp. to retrofit four Chinese coal-burning power plants to boost efficiency and cut emissions by 21 percent. [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 29, 2000, citing a report from: Los Angeles Times.] Water Pollution:
Oil- and Cyanide Spills One billion people do not have access to safe water and 2 billion lack proper sanitation, according to a new report by the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century, a U.N.-sponsored panel. Without radical steps, the situation will only get worse as the planet's population surges from 6 billion to 8 billion by 2025. The report recommends that governments end water subsidies that encourage waste and that the private sector take the lead in providing water supplies because it alone has the money to make the massive investments needed. Access to clean water should be seen as a basic human right, the commission contends, as well as a key factor in the fight against diseases such as typhoid and cholera. [Source: Grist Magazine, March 14, 2000j, citing reports from South Africa Independent, Agence France Presse, and BBC News] Rivers and groundwater are being contaminated with minute amounts of everything from antibiotics and birth control pills to chemicals used in cosmetics, scientists said this week at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in San Francisco. The issue is only beginning to be studied, and scientists have no idea what the combined effects on humans are of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the environment. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey have found low levels of anti-depressants and many other compounds in water supplies, as well as notable amounts of caffeine, which they call "the Starbucks effect." European researchers have found high concentrations of chemicals from sunscreens, shampoos, and detergents accumulating in the flesh of fish, and some believe that estrogen replacement drugs have caused fish deformities. [Source: Grist Magazine, March 28, 2000, citing reports from Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Chronicle] Brazil may be facing an environmental disaster in the Amazon jungle after a barge containing nearly 500,000 gallons of oil sunk on Friday to the bottom of the Rio Para, part of the world's largest river network, in the remote state of Para. Teams of divers have begun work to remove tanks from the barge, which was transporting fuel for the U.S. oil giant Texaco. Authorities said there are no signs of leaks at this point, and Texaco's regional manager, Jose Ferreira Amin, claimed there was almost no risk of a spill because cool temperatures at the bottom of the river had thickened the oil. The accident came just two weeks after a big oil spill off the coast of Rio de Janeiro ruined the local fishing industry, killed wildlife, and contaminated a biological reserve. [Source: Grist Magazine, citing reports from Planet Ark and Reuters] Up to 170,000 sea birds have been killed by a large oil spill off France's western coast, which began on Dec. 12 when a tanker hired by the oil giant TotalFina spilt in two during stormy weather and sank in the waves, pouring 3 million gallons of oil into the Atlantic. Some of the oil is still floating at sea, but most of it has begun to wash up on a wide stretch of coastal islands and beaches in western France. TotalFina has been harshly criticized for its role in and response to the spill. After more than two weeks of failing to contribute to clean-up efforts, TotalFina on Thursday offered $6 million to help with the clean up and said it expects to spend $60 million total dealing with the disaster. Meanwhile, a smaller oil spill is threatening sea birds along the coastline of Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, where a Russian tanker ran aground in heavy winds on Wednesday, split in two, and leaked about 850 tons of oil into one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. [Source: Grist Magazine, December 31, 1999, citing reports from: South Africa Independent, and London Times.] While large oil spills threaten sea birds off the coast of France and in a Turkish shipping channel this week, scientists are warning that even small oil spills may harm marine bird populations to a much greater degree than previously thought. "Marine birds are slow to reproduce, and they're migratory. Even a small spill that is restricted to a localized area can have a major impact over a wide region," said Bill Sydeman, director of marine studies for the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. Sydeman said a growing body of evidence indicates that there's no such thing as a minor oil spill. [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 4, 2000, citing a report from San Francisco Chronicle] Some 250,000 gallons of oil were spilled into the waters off Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the worst ecological disaster to hit the region in 25 years. The oil, which poured out of a ruptured pipeline running from a nearby refinery operated by the state-owned oil company Petrobras, had spread across a 24-square-mile area by yesterday afternoon, turning miles of shoreline black and contaminating a protected mangrove swamp. Environmental officials blamed Petrobras for poor maintenance of its old pipelines. The spill could have a deleterious impact on cranes, crabs, mussels, oysters, and several species of small fish. [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 20, 2000, citing reports from Washington Post and Seattle Times.] A massive cyanide spill that has spread through rivers in Romania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia is being billed as the worst environmental catastrophe since Chernobyl. The Jan. 30 spill from a Romanian gold-mining operation has eradicated virtually all river life on 250 miles of the Tisza River, and has now made its way into the Danube, Europe's longest river. The contamination is expected to hit Bulgaria this week. The drinking water for some 2 million people is temporarily polluted, food supplies could be contaminated, and an estimated 15,000 fishers may be out of work for years, if not decades. Some 650 tons of dead fish have been hauled from the Tisza, and that figure is expected to double by next week. Hungary and Yugoslavia are demanding compensation for damages, and have threatened to sue. The offending gold mine is partly owned by the Australian mining company Esmerelda, which denies responsibility for the spill and claims damage has been exaggerated. [Source: Grist Magazine, Dec. 16, 2000, citing reports from Christian Science Monitor and San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner.] A Romanian mine has dumped a new load of pollution into the Tisza River, less than three weeks after the same mine spilled some 20,000 tons of lead, zinc, and other metals into the river, which flows through Hungary before reaching the Danube. On Sunday, heavy rains and melting snow washed away part of an earthen wall at a dam operated by the Baia Borsa mine, allowing additional tons of contaminated water to rush into the Tisza. The mine operators had not properly mended the wall after the earlier spill. On Monday, lead concentrations in the Tisza were three times European Union safety levels. A massive cyanide spill from a different Romanian mine in late January devastated the Tisza, killing hundreds of tons of fish and polluting the drinking water for millions of people. [Source: Grist Magazine, March 28, 2000, citing reports from South Africa Independent, Associated Press, Planet Ark, and Reuters.] Facing a severe shortage of fresh water, the sprawling Tampa Bay area is planning to build the largest desalination plant this side of Saudi Arabia by the end of 2002. If the plan is approved by state environmental officials, Tampa Bay envisions desalted sea water providing about 10 percent of the drinking water for the region, whose population has grown fivefold in the last 50 years to 2.3 million. Some locals welcome the plan because it calls for cutting down on groundwater pumping, which damages wetland ecosystems. But others argue that it could hurt sea life because Tampa Bay would have to absorb the main byproduct of desalination, a briny concentrate. The price of desalination is coming down and more U.S. cities are likely to consider it in the future. source: [Source: Grist Magazine, March 12, 2000 citing a report from the New York Times.] Fish and marine life in more than a third of the coastal areas in the U.S. are being killed by algae blooms caused by agricultural fertilizer runoff, according to a study released yesterday by a research arm of the National Academy of Sciences. Almost all of the nation's estuaries have been environmentally damaged to some extent by the nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, which can travel hundreds of miles downstream from farms. "Excess nitrogen in our coastal waters starts a dangerous chain of ecological events that is exacerbating harmful algae blooms such as red tides, contaminating shellfish, killing coastal wildlife, reducing biodiversity, destroying sea grass, and contributing to a host of other environmental problems," said study leader Robert Howarth, a Cornell University professor. [Source: Grist Magazine, April 5, 2000, citing a report from Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and Associated Press.] Land P The German government angered environmentalists yesterday by announcing that in August it will resume the shipment of highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, after a two-year ban established because of safety violations. Four of Germany's 19 nuclear power plants are near their capacity to store spent fuel rods, and the plant owners say that unless they can transport the waste to a temporary storage site near the Dutch border, the plants will have to be shut down. That would be just dandy with environmentalists and politicians from the Green Party, who are fighting for a fast phaseout of nuclear power in the nation. The government is working to develop a 30-year timetable for shutting down nuclear plants, but that pace is too slow for environmentalists. [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 27, 2000, citing reports from Planet Ark, Reuters and Associated Press.] Japan's worst nuclear accident -- a September 1999 incident at a nuclear fuel plant in Tokaimura -- exposed 439 people to radiation, up from a previous estimate of 69, government officials say. Greenpeace Japan thinks the new estimate is still too low. In other troubling nuclear news, Ukraine officials said yesterday that they had temporarily shut down the only operating reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant for the second time within days. A minor malfunction caused a shutdown last week, and excessive pressure in its water system is causing the current shutdown, which will last at least until tomorrow. Ukraine has said it would close Chernobyl this year if Western governments help it develop other power sources, but the West has not yet delivered promised funds. [Source: Grist Magazine, Feb. 2, 2000, citing reports from London Guardian South Africa Independent and Reuters.] Problems
caused by acid rain are the clearest evidence that pollution knows no
boundaries. Forests and
crops can be damaged by rain, snow, fog or even clouds carrying acids formed from SO2
and NOX emitted in another continent.
In Europe and North America, both highly industrialized regions,
sulfur deposition in some areas is more than 10 times the natural
levels. [Source: Henning
Rodhe,. "Acidification in a Global Perspective,"
Ambio, Vol. 18, No. 3
(1989) p. 156.]. In the
past 50 years, the soil in many European forests has become 5-10 times
more acidic. [Source:
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis,
Working Together to Reduce
Acid Rain. Laxenburg,
Austria, March 1989. It is estimated that about 75% of Europe’s commercial forests are damaged by sulfur deposition. Source: William Stevens, "Researchers Find Acid Rain Imperils Forest Over Time". New York Times, Dec. 31, 1989, p.1.] Positive Side The UK is aiming to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 21.5 percent below 1990 levels by 2010, a reduction almost twice as large as the one the nation committed to under the Kyoto climate change treaty. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced the goal yesterday as he unveiled a draft plan for complying with the Kyoto Protocol. The UK expects to meet this ambitious goal by producing 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010, imposing a tax on energy use, and promoting programs to improve energy efficiency in homes and autos, as well as through other efforts. Meanwhile, the European Commission yesterday proposed an emissions trading system to help the European Union meet its Kyoto commitments. The system would allow companies that are having trouble cutting their emissions to buy pollution credits from other companies that exceed their emission reduction targets. [Source: Grist Magazine, March 9, 2000, citing reports from BBC News and Planet Ark.] Cargill and Dow Chemical are teaming up to make a biodegradable plastic from renewable resources such as corn or wheat instead of from petroleum. The companies say their joint venture, branded NatureWorks, is ready to go into full-scale commercial production, putting the companies at the front of a race among agriculture and chemical firms to find cost-effective ways to make a durable plastic from common plants. The new plastic, dubbed polylactide, is said to be versatile and strong enough to compete with other plastics used for clothing, carpets, food containers, and plastic window envelopes. Cargill and Dow plan to construct a manufacturing plant in Nebraska that will produce 300 million pounds a year of the new plastic, and they say they have lined up enough customers to sell out its first year of production. [Source: Grist Magazine, citing a report from Wall Street Journal] Businesses that seek out ways to reuse and recycle products and cut their emissions save money, in addition to helping save the environment, according to a new economic study conducted in the Pacific Northwest. Over the last seven years, 137 Northwest businesses polled saved a total of $42 million by reusing and recycling items. The study authors contend that environmental regulations -- such as those prompted by recent endangered species listings for Northwest salmon -- push businesses to use resources more efficiently, in ways that are both environmentally and economically sound. The study found that small businesses like auto shops can save money by reusing materials, and large companies like Boeing can save hundreds of thousands of dollars by cutting their energy use. The study was conducted by the nonprofit Center for Watershed and Community Health and economists at Puget Sound University and Lewis and Clark College. [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 27, 2000, citing a report from Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.] 5. BIO-TECHNOLOGY Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and other environmentalist and public interest groups trekked to Montreal, Canada, and raised their voices against genetic engineering as U.N. talks on the issue start Monday. Representatives of 134 nations will convene to discuss a proposed Biosafety Protocol, which is intended to establish rules for the international movement of genetically modified organisms in order to protect the world's plants and animals from potentially adverse effects. Many scientists and activists are concerned that GM crops could cross-pollinate and contaminate native species, potentially wrecking havoc on ecosystems. International trade issues will play a large part in protocol talks. The U.S. and Canada, as well as other exporters of genetically modified crops, are expected to try to sway countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America that want the right to ban GM crops to protect the environment and public health. [Source: Grist Magazine, Jan. 21, 2000, citing reports from Planet Ark, Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner and Associated Press.] Farmers in the U.S., Canada, and Argentina are expected to slash their plantings of genetically modified (GM) crops by 20 to 25 percent this year because of growing uncertainty in the market, the Worldwatch Institute said yesterday. A growing number of food manufacturers and retailers have said they will stop selling foods containing GM ingredients. Last month, a straw poll of 400 farmers by Reuters found that they planned to plant 24 percent less BT corn and 22 percent less RoundUp Ready corn, two widely used GM crops. The U.S. Agriculture Department said last week that grain buyers were paying eight to 10 cents more per bushel of non-GM corn in Illinois than for GM corn. Meanwhile, biotech companies are bringing fewer new GM crop varieties to market. A scientific advisory panel to the EPA this week recommended that the U.S. government conduct more testing and monitoring of GM crops to ensure they aren't killing butterflies and other unintended insects. [Source: Grist Magazine, Feb. 17, 2000, citing reports from Planet Ark, Reuters, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner, and Associated Press.] In a dramatic turnaround, British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Sunday acknowledged what most people in his country have long believed: that genetically modified crops may pose risks to human and environmental health. "There is no doubt that there is potential for harm, both in terms of human safety and in the diversity of our environment, from GM foods and crops," Blair wrote in the London Independent, in marked contrast to comments he made a year ago when he was aggressively promoting GM technology and blaming the media and enviro groups for stirring up public outcry. Blair still contends that GM technology could bring benefits to society, but he says the government will proceed with caution. environmentalists welcomed Blair's change of heart, and some senior government sources said the shift likely indicates a turning point in British GM policy. [Source: Grist Magazine, Feb. 27, 2000, citing a report from London Independent.] American farmers are expected to plant 24 percent less genetically modified (GM) corn this year than they did last year, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture study released on Friday. Declines are also expected in plantings of GM soybeans and cotton, a reaction to growing consumer resistance to biotech crops, particularly in Europe. Meanwhile, the number of acres of U.S. farmland certified for organic growing more than doubled between 1992 and 1997, a separate USDA study found. New national organic standards, expected to be finalized by the end of this year, are likely to give the U.S. organic market an added boost. Despite recent growth, less than two-tenths of 1 percent of U.S. farmland is under organic production. In contrast, more than 1.5 percent of European farmland was farmed organically in 1997, and some are predicting that 10 to 20 percent will be organic by 2010. [Source: Grist Magazine, April 2, 2000, citing reports from Spokane Spokesman-Review, Associated Press and Washington Post.]
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