Author: R. Ross

Fragilecologies Archives
11 June 1997

Black caviar. Not exactly the fare of most people. In fact, it is often eaten on buttered black bread and washed down with champagne or a fine wine. Although caviar-producing sturgeon species can be found in several countries, from Canada to China, it is generally agreed that the best and most costly caviar comes from three species of sturgeon in the Caspian Sea, which is located in southwestern Asia. These three species supply an amazing 90 percent of the world’s trade in caviar.

Sturgeon is one of the oldest types of living vertebrates on earth. This fish is considered to be a living fossil, as pointed out in a United Nations report. Fossils of their species are known to go back 250 million years, to the Spielberg (oops!) Jurassic period.

In past decades, Caspian sturgeon could live to be 48 years old. Some of them nowadays survive until they are 28, but this is rare. They can grow to seven feet in length and can weigh up to 250 pounds. Females are taken for their eggs, which are marketed as caviar. A female can yield up to 14 pounds of caviar.

This sturgeon population has been slowly declining since the 1970s. Dams along the Volga River and other rivers that feed the Caspian Sea blocked the natural migration routes of spawning fish, and their ability to reproduce began to decline. Due to heavy overfishing, pollution and sea level changes have also had a negative effect on the sturgeon’s ability to survive.

Until the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, the management of the Caspian sturgeon fishery was in the hands of the only two countries that bordered the sea at that time …. the Soviet Union and Iran. Then, fishing was not allowed in the central part of the sea, in an attempt to ensure that the younger fish would be able to return to the rivers in order to spawn. Spawning would ensure a healthy standing stock, enabling sturgeon to reproduce.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union, three new countries and two new autonomous republics operating within the Russian Federation were in a position to catch sturgeon and to harvest their eggs. The newly independent countries challenged the existing legal status of the Caspian Sea. Each of the new countries claimed part of the Sea as being within its territorial waters. This was an important move on each of their parts, not because of the caviar exports, but because the Caspian seabed is rich in oil and natural gas. Who owns what has yet to be determined in international law. Thus, no single country has the responsibility to monitor or to protect the sturgeon fish stock.

Caviar is a lucrative international trade item. Its major markets are in Europe, North America, and Japan. Most of what is produced is sold abroad because the countries bordering the Caspian Sea are in dire need of foreign exchange (dollars, pound sterling, yen, etc.).

But, alas, sturgeon numbers have declined sharply in the past several years. There is great concern that the species could disappear altogether — kaput, extinct, gone forever. Unfortunately, the high price of caviar, coupled with the poor state of the Caspian region economies and, perhaps most important of all, the lack of control by any single authority over the fishery, has drawn many poachers into the equation. Even if governments agree to cut catches to zero for a few years, Caspian fishermen will not obey. These fishermen are under great pressure to find creative ways to generate money in order to feed their families. For them, it is a “Catch-22” and also a downward spiral for the sturgeon population and the Caspian caviar trade. The end result of poaching will inevitably be the collapse of the sturgeon fishery.

In a unique move, Germany has proposed to save the sturgeon by putting Caspian sturgeon (and other such species around the world) on the endangered species list. If officially approved, trade in caviar would be banned or, at least, closely monitored. This idea has captured the attention of Caspian countries involved in the caviar trade. Serious international discussions about the fate of the sturgeon and attempts to control illegal poaching are now under way.

CNN recently ran a news story about the plight of the caviar-producing sturgeon and the plight of the fishermen whose families depend on catching them. The fishermen have watched their catches dwindle. But, they have also watched the region’s socialist economies crumble. They are in dire need of cash to buy even the most basic food and health items. Their only recourse, they argue, is to continue to catch fish, take the roe, and sell it illegally on the black market. They need work.

Making a bad situation even worse is the fact that the money they get for caviar has declined as the quality has declined; they are catching less mature fish, in part because of the pollutants dumped into the spawning sites, and in part because of the wretched conditions in fish-processing and caviar-canning factories.

But how can they be blamed for trying to feed their families when their governments seem incapable of, if not uninterested in, helping them? They are seemingly locked on a course of destroying the fish population and industry on which they depend in order to weather short-term economic problems. In the meantime, they are destroying their future.

But what can anyone do? The situation seems hopeless — or is it? Enter CITES (pronounced sight-eze).

CITES is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which was originally formed to protect elephants from being massacred by poachers for their ivory. It protected the rhinoceros from being killed for its horn, considered to be an aphrodisiac in several Asian countries. By banning international trade in tusks and horns, the incentive for poaching would be sharply reduced (penalties for being caught buying or selling such items were raised). Thus, the sturgeon and other endangered animals could be saved for the betterment of future generations.

Fragilecologies Archives
28 May 1997

The waters are warming up, the westward-blowing winds are slackening, the fish are changing their normal patterns. All this is currently happening in the Pacific Ocean, along the equator. Scientists who monitor these sorts of things believe that an El Niño event is emerging. If that is true, science writers and environment reporters will be dusting off their pens, and the public will be bombarded with new stories about El Niño and its impacts on environment and people in various parts of the globe.

El Niño is the appearance of warm surface water in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean off the coast of Peru and Ecuador. The return of El Niño happens, on average, roughly every four to seven years, and they tend to last between 12 and 18 months. However, there have been times when none have occurred during that period of time and other times when they have seemingly lasted for more than a few years, such as in the early 1990s.

For much of this century scientists, among others, thought that El Niño was a local phenomenon affecting only the Peruvian coastal waters by, for example, having a negative effect on fish along the coast and on fish-eating, guano-producing birds. Guano birds are pelicans and cormorants which eat the fish that swim near the ocean’s surface; the birds then deposit their droppings on rocky islands and along the rocky coast. The droppings were identified in the early 1800s as having considerable value as a fertilizer for agricultural production. They were mined and, in the early 1900s, Peru created the Guano Administration Company to monitor mining activities and to protect the bird colonies from predators.

Before scientists started to pay attention to El Niño, one sign to local people that an event was in progress was the appearance of thousands of dead birds along the Peruvian shore. When an El Niño is coming, warm water covers over the cold water that normally comes up to the surface; the cold water is rich in nutrients which serve as food for fish. With the disappearance of the fish that feed in the cold coastal waters, the birds do not eat, so they grow weak and fall into the sea.

Later, after Peru developed a fishing industry, interest in El Niño centered around the fact that it was blamed for the collapse of Peru’s fishing industry in the early 1970s. It was after the major event of 1982-83 that interest in El Niño’s impact on weather events around the world developed. It was the largest El Niño event in a hundred years and was so big that its impacts around the globe were easy for everyone to see: droughts throughout most of Africa, Australia, Central America, the Soviet Union, Southern Africa, and northeast Brazil; flooding in Kenya; cyclones in the Pacific; and so on. The impacts were so devastating and widespread that popular magazines such as National Geographic and Reader’s Digest ran stories on the phenomenon.

An El Niño can be a big event or a small one, depending on several things: how warm the ocean’s surface waters get, how large an area of the equatorial Pacific warms up, and how much damage it causes around the globe.

The most recent reports on the possibility of an upcoming El Niño are now arriving from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center and from the Peruvian Sea Institute. The scientific community is all abuzz about the possibility of another El Niño. They see it as an experiment that is carried out by Nature every few years or so. They get to forecast it, observe it, analyze it, and generate new ideas about what causes it and about what its impacts might be.

El Niño s worldwide impacts are referred to as teleconnections, or the connections between the warming of sea surface waters in the Pacific and weather around the globe (from the Greek prefix tele, meaning “at a distance”). Its impacts are strongest from Latin America across the Pacific and the Indian Ocean and to the African continent. It also affects weather patterns outside the tropics.

Researchers are trying to identify El Niño’s impacts on North America. Some people believe that during an El Niño event, winter in the Pacific Northwest will be warm and dry, winter in the Northeast US will be mild and wet, and winter in the southeastern US will be wet and cool. However, its impacts on the Rocky Mountain West and California remain unclear.

This El Niño gives us another opportunity to think about how El Niño might affect us over the next year or so, assuming that an event actually does occur.

Having just published a book on El Niño (Currents of Change) I had not planned to write about it again for some time to come. However, early warnings of an El Niño event at this point in time can be used to alert you to the barrage of El Niño-related stories that will appear in the media in future months.

The discussion of El Niño in high school science books is minimal at best. Yet, after the natural flow of the seasons from spring to summer to fall to winter, El Niño is perhaps the next major force affecting our weather patterns from year to year.

If forewarned, the reader can track new stories as they develop over time. Upcoming TV and newspaper stories will most likely proceed from an initial focus on the science of El Niño and forecasting it to a focus on the damaging impacts that are sure to follow. Here s a chance to get ahead of the media and to use this developing event as a “virtual” classroom experience.

Fragilecologies Archives
14 May 1997

About a year and a half ago, I was contacted by the Marshall Institute in Washington, D.C. to see if I would consider becoming a member of the Independent Commission on Environmental Education (ICEE), an autonomous panel they were forming to review the state of K-12 environmental education in the U.S.

I was taken aback by the request because the Marshall Institute is a politically conservative organization. Its members are well-known in scientific circles as having, for example, challenged those scientists who believe that the burning of coal, oil, and gas is contributing to a global warming of the Earth s atmosphere. Some people at the Institute have even challenged the generally accepted theory that human-made chemicals, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), have caused the now-infamous Antarctic ozone hole, despite the fact that most scientists now believe otherwise.

I asked the caller if he had called the right Glantz and told him that I was the “tree-hugging” Glantz. He assured me that I was the right Glantz. I said that I would try to control my pro-environment bias, expecting that others on the Commission would do the same with their biases. I agreed to serve.

The task of the ICEE was to evaluate environmental education in the United States, in order to see if there were a bias against, for example, industry or a bias in favor of political advocacy for the environment.

At the very first meeting, one of the most conservative members of the 11-person Commission circulated copies of a popular article discussing environmental education in American schools. The writer claimed that environmental education was a plot to create “Eco-Nazis” out of unsuspecting little kids. The writer felt that pupils taught about the environment would be inundated with pro-environment, anti-industry literature (brainwashed, more or less), and that they would be sent home to badger their parents to “do the right environmental thing” — that is, either recycle or re-use appropriate items in the home.

When I saw the Eco-Nazi article and listened to some of the fears of the more conservative members, I began to wonder whether rational discussions on environmental education would be possible.

After a year and a half of meetings and debates among Commission members, the final report of the ICEE (“Are We Building Environmental Literacy?”) has been published. It represents a major shift from the conservative end of the political spectrum toward the center.

Its tone is positive toward the value of environmental education (originally, I had the fear that the Commission would find it too political to recommend teaching about the environment in grades K-12). It supports the teaching of environmental education in the schools and suggests that scientists have a responsibility to make sure that the
science is correctly explained, that publishers have a responsibility to produce better books, and that telling students to write their Congressional representatives in support of a specific policy is inappropriate (although writing based on their own views is OK).

The commissioners also found that teachers require expert help in dealing with the science of environmental issues. These findings are a far cry from what was expected of a Commission put together by (but operating independently of) the Marshall Institute.

The report was released to the public in early April at a press conference in Washington, D.C., which was attended by CNN, the Associated Press, National Public Radio, Time, USA Today, and the like. The questions from the press centered on the messenger and not the message. We were asked: “Why should we believe anything that comes out of the Marshall Institute?” or “That sentence on page so and so could have been written by an industrialist.” or “The Commission’s funding came from conservative foundations.” and so forth. One reporter told me that he thought the report was balanced but that his editor didn’t like the Marshall Institute and was not likely to agree to run a story.

There were also a few attacks on the report BEFORE it had been seen. For example, a writer for the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) delivered a blistering attack on the Commission’s report, making all sorts of claims against what she expected the report to say. She had never read it but assumed that, since the messenger was the conservative Marshall Institute, therefore its message must be anti-environment. Wrong. The Commission’s favorable report on environmental education attests to the fact that people with different political persuasions can cooperate effectively on serious issues … when they negotiate in good faith.

I must say that I am pretty angry about the response of some of the environmental groups to the ICEE report. If environmentalists can let go of their bias and get to a point where they can focus on the message instead of the messenger, they will see that the report is a step toward finding a permanent niche for environmental education in K-12 classrooms.

Fragilecologies Archives
30 April 1997

Boulder, not unlike other college towns, is filled with people on the go. Researchers from our town are constantly trekking to all corners of the Earth. Others travel for pleasure — desiring to get away from it all by going on vacation to an idyllic spot — and people from everywhere visit Boulder.

During a recent trip to Bangkok, Thailand, I looked for books on the environmental situation in Thailand. I found that searching in Bangkok bookstores for books on the environmental situation in Southeast Asia is like looking for water in a desert. It may be there, somewhere, in an oasis or deep underground, but it is not on the surface or easily found.

During this search for popular environmental publications, I was attracted to a unique travel book — the first I’ve ever seen on the Antarctic! Fascinated by the fact that such a travel book existed and by the fact that I would come across it in a Bangkok bookstore, I looked through it. In addition to the usual travel information about what to wear, how to get there, and what sites to visit, the book contained sections on environmental problems and on scientific research in The Antarctic. What a great idea … a travel guide that serves not only the interests of tourists who want to visit exotic cultural and natural sites but also the more adventuresome or curious tourists who want to know everything about the places they have always dreamed of visiting, warts and all.

I thought about how interesting it might be to have information about Thailand’s environmental situation. When people first glimpse Thailand, it is usually in a tourist brochure that pictures beautiful statues of religious icons, exotic architecture, pristine waterways (klongs) in Bangkok, or perhaps lush agricultural fields contouring the mountain slopes.

However, the real environmental situation in Bangkok, for example, serves as a rude awakening. The streets are full of trash, and beggars tug at your heartstrings and your wallet. Air pollution is as thick as pea soup at midday. In fact, many motorcycle taxi drivers and tuk tuk drivers wear masks in an attempt to filter out pollutants. Traffic is often gridlocked, and there seems to be little that city planners can or want to do about it.

A few years ago, I had proposed to oversee for a publisher a series of travel books for tourists who might want to visit areas facing environmental crises. These areas could vary from the rainforests in the Brazilian state of Rondonia or deforestation in the African country of Gabon, to the site of the worst-known nuclear accident in Chernobyl (in the former Soviet Union).

There is a risk in publishing such books. A travel guide book that discusses environmental problems could discourage potential tourists from visiting that “dream” vacation spot. But, is a tourist better served by not knowing about the real environmental conditions they will face when they travel? Or, is a tourist better served by knowing what to expect with regard to the environmental realities of their dream spots?

Personally, I think such information inserted into travel guides, such as what I found in the “Lonely Planet Travel Survival Kit: Antarctica,” would not only make us better tourists but would also make us better citizens of the world.

Fragilecologies Archives
16 April 1997

Each part of America has its own natural hazards. Tornadoes, fires, blizzards, droughts, and floods — each in its own way takes a heavy toll on people and property … AND … on pets and on other living creatures.

Some people think that the number, intensity, and frequency of disasters have increased in recent years. Recent news clips have told us about the human hardships brought about by sub-zero temperatures in Minnesota, floods in North Dakota, hurricanes along the southeast coast of the US, earthquakes in California, drought in Texas, and so forth. These are heart-wrenching stories, often accompanied by photos or video clips. These visuals make it possible for others, far removed from the particular disaster area of the moment, to watch people anguish over the loss of their property and, in some cases, their family, friends, and neighbors.

In isolated instances we get to hear about the miraculous rescue of a dog on a rooftop in a flood, a cat trapped in a closet during a fire, a horse rescued by helicopter from rising floodwaters, or whales trapped by ice floes in Arctic waters. But these instances represent only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, of animal rescue efforts during natural and manmade disasters.

People from around the country are being trained to search for and rescue animals that are separated from their owners as a result of natural disasters. They are also trained in reuniting pets and their owners after they have become separated during a disaster situation. Many of these animals are not voluntarily abandoned by their owners.

What do you do when the police bang on your door at some ungodly hour, telling you that you have five minutes to evacuate your home because of rising flood waters or noxious chemical fumes that have been released nearby in a railcar crash? You get dressed, grab a few photos perhaps and some valued items, and then you are forced to leave for a few hours. The pet stays. There’s no room in the evacuation vehicle for all the pets in the neighborhood. Furthermore, it will take time to round up many of the pets. And, assuming you could do this, pets are not allowed in Red Cross emergency shelters. So, the pets are often left behind. Then, after several hours, you find out from the authorities that you may not be able to return home for a week or two. What then?

The American Humane Association (AHA), often working with local SPCA and other groups, comes to the rescue. Based in Englewood, Colorado, this organization has been called upon for decades by local authorities from all around the country to rescue animals at risk from all kinds of disasters. The AHA has created a Disaster Designee Team to assess a community’s and animal shelter’s needs immediately after a disaster hits, to coordinate animal rescue operations, and to provide emergency veterinary care if local veterinary services are disabled. The AHA’s Animal Disaster Relief Unit has produced a list of things you can do to protect your pets in the event a disaster should strike (have a recent photo of your pet, store food and water in a portable kennel, identify motels that allow animals, etc.). It has also recently commissioned a mobile, all-purpose communications unit to dispatch to disaster areas in order to save time.

Concern about the welfare of pets is not recent. The AHA has its roots in the need to take care of the horses and mules that were used for military service during World War I. These animals transported supply wagons, ambulances, traveling kitchens, water carts, light artillery, and shells. The AHA also distributed gas masks for horses, fearing the use of poison gases. In that war, about 250,000 horses and mules served the country’s military effort, at home and abroad.

The list of animal disaster relief activities is long. Some examples are as follows: provided food for 8,000 starving elk in Yellowstone; aided animals suffering from the Midwest drought in 1931; helped injured and homeless animals affected by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, Hurricanes Andrew and Iniki in 1992, and the 1994 earthquake in California; coordinated the shipment of tons of pet food to the southwestern US and to the 150 flood-affected communities along the Mississippi, and so on.

It is good to know that organizations concerned with animal disaster relief do exist. The AHA has had a partnership with the American Red Cross since the mid-1970s. Most recently, they have been trying to work out an arrangement so that pets can be rescued at the same time as are their owners.

It was only by accident that I discovered the AHA on the Internet. Now, when I watch the evening news and see stories about abandoned pets, I will feel somewhat more comfort in knowing that there are professionals focusing their efforts on rescuing the animal victims of every kind of natural disaster.

Fragilecologies Archives
2 April 1997

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), based in Nairobi, Kenya, is in deep trouble. Its funding has been greatly reduced by the United States and other governments throughout the world. The US says that the UN system is corrupt, and it probably is in many traditionally corrupt ways (mishandling of funds, hiring of friends and family, competence not valued as a job criterion, etc. — although I haven’t yet heard of the UN Secretary-General renting out space in the UN to those who want to influence UN decisions). Despite all of the system’s negatives, what most often comes to my mind is the adage we use about democracy: It may not be the best form of government, but it is better than the others. Perhaps the same is valid for the UN system.

In the absence of a global watchdog for the environment, what organization is capable of mustering enough political clout to get nations to pay attention to common environmental concerns? Without a UNEP, would there have been a climate convention to deal with global warming? Would there have been a convention to end the use of ozone-depleting chemicals? UNEP was the first agency to form a coordinating committee to monitor ozone depletion around the
world in the late 1970s. The attempt to halt the process of desertification (the creation of desert-like landscapes where none had existed in recent times) is yet another area of success for UNEP, in the sense that it drew attention to this creeping environmental degradation faced in a variety of ways by almost all countries around the globe.

While UNEP cannot take credit for all actions at the global level to save the environment, it should get a good share of it. The work done and the morale of UNEP’s workers reflect the ethics and interests of the particular person heading UNEP. Since its creation in 1972 at the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, there have only been three Executive Directors: Maurice Strong, Mustafa Tolba, and Elizabeth Dowdeswell. Dowdeswell was put in charge to clean up the system; instead, she paralyzed it with even more bureaucratic tasks. She has just resigned amidst charges that the organization has been ineffective. But is it her fault or the fault of the governments that elected her to that position for political reasons and not for her administrative talents?

Is it time to start opening up the UN system to leaders of industry who have efficiently and effectively managed companies with budgets larger than UNEP’s? How about finding a Lee Iacocca or a Ted Turner or some other corporate mogul who has the ability to run the organization, is concerned about the environment, is committed to protecting what’s left of the global environment, and who knows how to generate funding at a time when money seems to be disappearing for essential tasks such as environmental protection?

What happens if UNEP disappears? Organizations with poor track records on dealing with environmental issues and which are under pressure from those who want to exploit their resources (such as the World Bank) will step in.

UNEP is currently being reduced to a shadow of its former self by severe budget cuts. It could be dismantled completely. We should not let this happen. We should call on national governments to look beyond their own narrow political interests and establish a UNEP that is not subject to the petty international politics of the day but, instead, can operate with autonomy. An autonomous organization could monitor environments everywhere and alert governments and the global public about environmental practices and changes that have the potential to harm us all. One example is the rapid cutting down of the rainforest in tropical Africa. Companies from Europe and Asia (regions that have denuded their own forested areas) are now focused on Africa, which is in dire need of cash. For a proverbial few dollars, African countries are encouraged to chop down their precious rainforests.

We can sit at home in Boulder or New York or LA and shake our heads at such wanton practices, BUT where is that tropical hardwood going? To North America and to Europe. Where is the tropical wood from Southeast Asia going? To customers in other developing countries? It is going to Japan and to Europe. An old Pogo cartoon comes to mind regarding this destruction — the one that says, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

The world needs a UNEP. What will it take to fund it at a size that makes sense, so it can do its job effectively (assuming that governments really want it to do so)? Governments have to pick the right Executive Director and then stand back. Instead, they seem to be trying to destroy it by raising issue of bureaucratic corruption or inefficiency (which, by the way, happens to plague their own governments as well).

Fragilecologies Archives
20 November 1996

If the 1990s can serve as a guide to the future, the 21st century will be the century of sound bites. CNN, USA Today, the world-in-brief sections in most local newspapers are all thriving on the use of sound bites to inform their viewers and readers about what’s going on in the world.

We have heard people state that the technologies available today have made this possible, taking as an example, CNN and its 24-hour news reportage. It has also been said that the explosion of the information on and access to the Internet and World Wide Web have also changed the way we get our news and information. The truth of the matter is that we have had access to similar information around the globe on a 24-hour basis for some decades now. Recall the Vietnam War and how reports of the day’s battles were brought into our dining rooms as American families watched the carnage and ate their evening meals together. No, it’s not the technology that has changed the way we are spoon fed bits and pieces of the news. I think that it is the approach that has been adopted by the media that has helped to develop our appetite for sound bites.

Perhaps the idea for brief news items came out of a “scientific”
survey of the TV viewing public, and what has happenend is a caving in
to the lowest common denominator, i.e., the viewer or listener with the
shortest attention span or with little interest in the world at large (or at least the world outside of his or her nation’s borders). These are the same people who can sit in front of the “boob tube” for hours,
if not days, on end, mesmerized by sporting events. But try to get them
to sit for more than a minute to listen to national or international news, and their interest plummets.

Books, too, seem to be following the lead. Sections in newer reference books are no longer written at varying lengths, no longer given sufficient length to fully explain a process or an event. Today there is a tendency to put everything the publisher wants to say on two facing pages per topic, maybe 4 pages total for a complex topic. So, now all one needs per topic is two or four pages of text.

As a columnist for a local paper that is part of a national syndicate, I had been writing columns on global environmental issues for the past 6 years. About a third of them had some link to the community in which I live. But, the newest editor of the paper felt that all the columns must have a tie-in to a local story. I rejected this parochial idea as just another step in the process of Dumbing Down America.

It is not just the fault of the media. It is our fault as well. We don’t want to take the time to keep abreast of important issues. It is a bit like the chicken and egg problem: which came first? Is the media dumbing us down, or are we asking the media to provide us with the barest minimum of infomation so that we can feel informed even if we are not? Sure, sound bites are useful for chitchat at parties, but are they useful for helping us to understand the complexities and nuances of issues that confront us, be they social, cultural, political, environmental, or scientific?

Shouldn’t we be demanding more depth of information on important issues and less information or none at all on less important ones (case in point: do we really care if Brooke Shields and Andrei Agassi have two or three kids after her sitcom career takes off? Do we really need to know about Michael Jackson’s baby?).

Maybe Generation X wants sound bites to live by. From my perspective
(someone in his upper 50s) I think we are cheating future generations out of knowledge that may be required by them to cope in an ever-changing world. If we want to become a sound-bite country, then let’s do so knowingly and not do it by accident. There’s still time.

Fragilecologies Archives
4 November 1996

As all things must change, so too do the editorial policies of the Daily Camera. In response to those changes, this is the last of the Environmental Minutes. I’ve spent considerable time thinking about how to end the series. Thanking my loyal readers was a strong contender. They are the ones who put up with all kinds of ideas, good and bad. Then, I thought of thanking the occasional reader who, by accident, came across my article on the second Thursday (at first) or (later) the second Monday. Then I thought of thanking those who have taken the time to send me letters about the form or content of my Minutes. Finally, I thought about the possibility of writing the ultimate Minute, a blockbuster expose or challenge.

Lacking any great environmental insights at the moment, I opted to end the six-and-a-half year series by emptying the queue of ideas for future Minutes. So, here goes.

Climate Changeability

There’s a tension in the world of climate research. That tension exists between those researchers who believe that research on climate variability from one year to the next is much more important today than research on a potential climate change decades in the future. Climate change is, as you know by now, another phrase for global warming.

Those involved in climate change studies put climate change research as the highest priority for a variety of reasons. I was recently at a climate meeting in Switzerland where the split (and animosity) between these groups was extremely vocal — a veritable shouting match.

But this, I believe, is needless tension. Climate changes on all time scales — from years to decades to centuries to millennia and beyond. Both groups are focused on “climate changeability.” This phrase leaves out the time factor. What the climate change researchers are concerned about is the human contribution to the natural changes in the climate system. What is it that we do that heats up the atmosphere? This is, in fact, an important but relatively small part of the research agenda that scientists are focused on. Putting our climate-related research under the label of “climate changeability” could help us to focus on the science of the problem rather than its politics.

Future Eaters

During a recent trip to Australia, I came across a book by Tim Flannery called “Future Eaters.” A best seller “Down Under,” it is hardly known by, although highly relevant to, North Americans. It
suggests that we are all “eating our future” in the sense that we are consuming our natural resources. Some societies consume them slowly (he spoke of the aboriginal populations in this regard), while others (like our industrial society) consume them rapidly. By destroying the resource base on which we and future generations depend for our livelihoods, we are creating what Boulder Economist Kenneth Boulding once called an “utterly dismal scenario” for future generations. The eventual resource-population balance will be worsened by the use of new technologies that keep us going just a little longer at high rates of consumption. Collapse awaits distant future generations. Technology has gotten us this far in terms of economic development. How much further can it take us? Blind faith that technology will save us is not the answer. The solution rests with a better understanding of and improved interactions with the Earth’s resources, including improved interactions among its inhabitants.

“Experts Come From Out of Town”

This is a sign on the wall of Murphy’s Bar & Grill at the corner
of Iris and 28th Streets in Boulder. It is one of “Murphy’s Laws.” As someone who has gone to scores of meetings and workshops in the US and around the world, I can attest to the fact that it is one of Murphy’s Laws that is absolutely true. It seems that local people tend to trust the views of outsiders in many matters, viewing them as experts. Yet, there are many experts within these towns that are much better equipped to address environmental issues with facts instead of with vague thoughts about the particular problem or with universal platitudes.

Credentials aren’t everything. Because I head an environmental group in a national center does not mean that I am an expert on all environmental issues everywhere. I have been invited to make presentations on a variety of issues that are clearly environmental but are not at all within my area of expertise. No matter. Those inviting me to speak want me to do so, perhaps for any insights that might happen to appear in my talk.

Standing at a podium, I have often looked over the audience and wondered (a) why I was asked to be there, (b) why I ever accepted the invitation to be there, and (c) wouldn’t they have done much better by choosing a keynote speaker from amongst their own locally based experts?

Boulder, Colorado is filled with local people who are experts on a variety of issues: global warming, ozone depletion, clearcutting, tropical deforestation, the environmental media, space research, environmental ethics, deep ecology, new environment-friendly technologies, and so on. The list is almost endless. Articles appear in the local media from writers based in L.A., New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. that discuss environmental issues in which experts in our community are deeply involved.

Boulder is not unique in this regard. Experts do not necessarily have to come from out of town. Let’s exploit and expose our local expertise more effectively than we have done in the past. At the least, it will cut down on airplane traffic!

As a final comment, I want readers to know that I have neither been offered nor sought any compensation for the Environmental Minute column. It has been done as a labor of love and will likely continue on the Internet as such.

Thank you for your interest and support.

6 May 1996
Fragilecologies Archives

In 1979 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which is in Geneva, Switzerland, convened the first World Climate Conference. The idea for this developed out of concern on the part of industrialized countries for the need to improve our scientific understanding of atmospheric processes. At that time, I recall that there was a new-found, albeit small, interest in climate and its impacts on agriculture, water resources, and energy. I would argue that, although this Conference came out of the scientific community, politics was involved in various aspects of the Conference (especially the Cold War rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union).

A decade later, in 1990, a Second World Climate Conference was convened. It was centered for the most part on issues related to science and climate change. I would argue that this conference was in part a response to bureaucracy and to politics. With respect to bureaucracy, the first conference had been considered a success by all observers, and it seemed to have been a good thing (it was a high-visibility activity for the United Nations, the WMO, and the scientific community) to continue on a decadal basis well into the next century.

With regard to politics, in the late 1980s the climate change issue
was wending its way up to the front of the line of environmental concerns of a global nature. European countries, the US, Canada, the Soviet Union, and Japan were among the major political actors.

There is now talk of preparing for a third World Climate Conference.
This one will surely be much different from both the first and second.

Today, governments are much more savvy about the importance of climate variability and climate change in their attempts at sustainable development in their countries. They are also aware that climate science (physical, social, and biological) can provide important insights into how atmospheric processes affect human activities in positive as well as negative ways. Such information, at least in theory, should help guide policy-makers in developing tactics and strategies to mitigate, adapt to, or capitalize on those impacts.

But governments around the globe are also aware of the costs that might be associated with trying to prevent human-induced changes in atmospheric processes. This Conference comes at a time when even the rich, industrialized countries claim to be “poor.” No one seems to be blinking at the negotiating table, lest they be asked (if not forced) to give up their hopes for achieving their development goals.

A key phrase that is now appearing in the discussions about what governments might do about climate change is that all countries have a “common but differentiated responsibility” to stabilize the global climate regime. “Common” refers to the fact that global climate change will affect everyone, like it or not, and in yet-to-be-identified ways, for good or for bad.

“Differentiated” means that not all countries will have the same responsibility to fix the problem. Developing countries point to the industrialized ones as having caused the problem. So, they feel that it is the primary responsibility of those countries to clean it up. Yet, the industrialized countries say that the costs are too high or too painful for them to “go it alone.”

The climate change issue is filled with factions and with opposing
interests at all levels of government. Some are worried about climate change; others are not. Some want to take action, even precautionary action; others do not.

Just as there are opposing views on climate change in the US and other industrialized countries, so too are there opposing views in the developing world (for example, oil-rich Saudi Arabia wants the global community to do absolutely nothing, whereas the small island states in the Pacific, in fear of sea-level rise, want action now).

The discussions that emerge with regard to the third World Climate
Conference will likely be much different from those that emerged at the
first two. As all eyes focus on the reactions of developing countries to proposals for dealing with climate change, it might be wise for the Third World to convene a Third World Climate Conference of their own in preparation for the Third World WMO Climate Conference that is sure to take place at the end of the century.

Fragilecologies Archives
26 February 1996

Sometimes you have to go away from your home to appreciate it. While in Lima, Peru for a research project on El Niño, I got to thinking about doing research in another country.

Everyone seems to think that a scientist is a scientist wherever he or she may be. But if one travels frequently around the globe, it does not take long to see that this is not so. Visits to developing countries and talks with scientists who live in the Third World paint a much more realistic picture.

In the USA we have all kinds of things that we, as scientists, take for granted: a telephone system that works, an industrial sector that invests in research in no small way, access to the latest scientific journals, and a government that has placed value on its scientific research community. And then there are such “luxury” items as computers, laptops, fax machines (that work), photocopiers, and copier paper in adequate supply.

The picture in developing countries is much less favorable. For starters, some governments do not put much value in their scientific community. Those that do, want that community to focus on short-term problems confronting society, specific problems that national political leaders may deem important.

I have been in Third World countries where manual typewriters are still a luxury, batteries are unavailable, finding a copier almost impossible, and carbon paper non-existent. Electricity blackouts occur with regularity, and phone lines malfunction when it rains.

More importantly, the salaries of the scientists are extremely low — so low, in fact that, despite their love for their work and profession, they are forced to find other ways to make enough money to feed their families. For example, one ecologist in Vietnam sought to work on an international project in an African country for two years as a manual laborer in order to send his meager wages back to his family in Hanoi. Another resorted to selling single cigarettes on a street corner in the hope of supplementing his $10-a-month university salary. Yet another scientist in Turkmenistan (making $6 a month!) lived in a third-floor apartment with no running water. Several times a day, he has to fetch water in buckets for cooking, bathing, and flushing.

Meanwhile, as we approach the end of this decade, scientists in the USA are worried about the reduction in or loss of financial and moral support for their research. With the end of the Cold War and budgetary problems in many countries (especially the rich, industrialized ones), the roles of science and scientists have become clouded.

In past decades our society has praised and honored its scientific research establishment. Today, that status is being re-evaluated. It seems that science as we have known it is undergoing profound change. Scientists, like other people, fear change.

American scientists have been lucky. Many will continue to be lucky, receiving continued support to study topics in which they are deeply interested. Others, however, will be forced to get involved in problems in which they have no interest or will have to leave the profession. Students who once considered science as a field will likely be discouraged from pursuing that career.

It is easy to see the costs to societies that have failed to provide adequate support for their scientific establishments. We must take a long, hard look at the risks that American society is generating as it reduces its support for scientific reserach — basic, applied, and even curiosity-driven.

The relatively few dollars saved today as a result of downsizing the scientific establishment will likely take its toll in American leadership in the global scientific community. Many countries in the past have looked to America for leadership and funding of scientific endeavors. That position is rapidly being eroded as we close out this millennium.

The cumulative costs of that erosion, while painful today, will likely be much greater in the next few decades and will be borne by future generations. I can only wonder if our society, and especially our Congress, is fully aware of the risks to future economic progress with the erosion of support for American science.