Dancing Star Foundation President Michael Charles Tobias, in an Exclusive Discussion About the Fate of the Earth - Part One

This is the first part of my personal dialogue with Michael Charles Tobias, PhD, one of the world's most influential ecologists. He is a prolific author, filmmaker, and lecturer. In a career to date spanning 45 years, and as President of Dancing Star Foundation for 16 of those years, Tobias' work has taken him to nearly 100 countries, where his field research has resulted in some 50 books and 150 films that have been read or viewed throughout the world. He was the 62nd recipient of the Courage of Conscience Award, and is an honorary Member of the Club of Budapest. Tobias is best known for such works as his massive tome, World War III: Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium, and with his partner Jane Gray Morrison, the ten hour dramatic mini-series, Voice of the Planet.

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EmanPDX - When I was born, there were about 2.5 billion humans on Earth. In just over six decades, that number has tripled to nearly 7.3 billion. Humans have always been a rapacious species, using the planet's resources as if without consequence.  Up until the late 20th century, we pretty much got away with it, because the Earth's bounty was so vast. It's clear now that our indiscriminate hubris has caught up with us. The sheer weight of humanity is driving unprecedented levels of ocean depletion, deforestation, the loss of critical top soils, the squandering of fresh water resources,   the dangerous warming of our atmosphere, and perhaps most significant, the devastating loss of biodiversity.  In the face of all this, the response of our political leaders has been tepid at best.    There do seem to be some encouraging signs, with humanity beginning to give some attention to the reckless course we've set for ourselves. What is your assessment of the prospects for human civilization, given our deeply destructive life choices?

Michael Tobias - Good question, not easily answered.  Homo Sapiens has never been at such a crossroad, where in we are responsible for the future of life on Earth. It is a catastrophic position to be in, unless, presumably, you are God. Barring any God-like interventions, we are left with a chilling predicament that indicts our nearly every activity.

For example, seize the news from any single morning, and you come up with such statistics as follows, today, May 6, 2015. You have a senior biologist, Dr. Haakon Hop, with an expedition called the Norwegian Young Sea ICE:Cruise ( www.npolar.no/nice2015 ), who - as reported by science editor David Shukam for the BBC News - declares , "So, what has been around the Arctic is these animals that live underneath the ice - crustaceans, amphipods, and copepods - the biodiversity has gone down, and their abundance and biomass have also gone down in the areas that have been measured" ( "Climate Drives 'New Era'  in Arctic Ocean." http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32553668 ). This expedition has noted a terrifying truth about the rapidity of Arctic sea ice melt, and the impacts upon every ecosystem there. Moreover, other BBC news this morning  suggest findings from the Antarctic citing that when the Arctic weather changes, ice core samples now unambiguously show that within 200 year the Antarctic begins to melt rapidly. The trouble is these trends are not happening 200 years apart, as was the case for many millennia.  They are happening simultaneously, as the oceanic currents in both the northern and southern hemisphere warm up at the same time. Every country is feeling the wrath and blow-back of our collective emissions.

Then, there is the grim headline in today's Los Angeles Times, "Millions of 'Red Trees' - National forests across California are turning brown from lack of water, raising concerns about wildfires," by Veronica Rocha and Hailey Branson-Ports (pp, B1, B5) pertaining to the fact that "Instead of the typical deep green color, large swaths of pine trees now don hues of death, their dehydrated needles turning brown and burnt-red because of the state of worsening drought." "The situation is incendiary," William Palzert of JPL is quoted. "The national forest is stressed out."  

And on the very cover, today's L.A. Times is writ front and center and bold, "A STATE OF DENIAL - Data suggest the need to slash water use hasn't sunk in," by Monte Morin, Matt Stevens, and Chris Megerian (pp: A1, A11).

Also on the cover of today's L.A.Times, Chris Kraul's piece entitled "Chile's Race to Save it's Mummies," (pp A1, A4). Because of climate change, the oldest mummies in the world are melting, turning into a mysterious black ooze.

Again, in the same L.A. Times, today. Pat Morrison speaks with Stanford University professor, Jon A. Krosnick about his two decades of looking at public opinion regarding climate change. Krosnick speaks to the fact that "...we've started looking at states and haven't found a single state where a majority of residents are skeptical, but legislatures think they are." (p.A.15)



Egyptian Vulture on the Island of Socotra, Yemen© M.C. Tobias

But, then people, even serious students of the environment, read a piece like that by Jason G. Goldman, writing in the May 1st, 2015 issue of Conservation, in an article entitled "National Park Visitors Inject billions into the US Economy,"  and they see that there were "292 million" visits to America's 401 national parks in 2014, generating income exceeding "$16 billion" in park gateway regions(not even including money spent inside the parks) and creating cumulatively, as of 2014, 277,000 jobs." http://conservationmagazine.org/2015/05/national-park-visitors-inject-billions-into-the-us-economy/ And the temptation is to feel better about things, almost as if to nullify in one's mind the truth of what is happening all around us.

It's called, of course, the Anthropcene. We've known about it for decades, despite huge biological gap analyses. We're losing species at a rate that goes well beyond our comprehension. Out of the possible 100 million or so species, if one includes all lifeforms, we may well be losing thousands of species every day. More than half of all life is headed toward extinction - we know that, particularly all large vertebrates  (those animals over 100 kilograms). Herbivores like mountain gorillas and rhnios, elephants, giraffes, are particularly in trouble. But so are all charismatic carnivores, like tigers, wolves and grizzly bears. Among reptiles and amphibians, and the parrot groups of birds, the crisis is overwhelming. And this doesn't begin to factor in overall loss of habitat, key nurseries of the planet, like the neo-tropics and coral reefs.

Critically Endangered Arabian Leopard © M.C. Tobias

 Nor does it touch upon the most enormous area of all in which human cruelty is meted out in lethal forms to animals used for food, leather, fur, and a number of other material goods (a very dubious phrase: indeed, 'material goods' since there is nothing good about dead animal hides, or palm oil, whose origins coincided with  the human destruction of tropical peat swamps and the orangutans, for example, that depend solely on such habitat for their waning survival. 

Some three trillion animals killed last year, including cows, chickens, fish, turkeys, dogs, horses, pigs, sheep, and so on, for human consumption.

We are in a colossal mess like never before. So, my "assessment for the prospects of human civilization" as you ask? Not good.

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Stay tuned for more of  my conversation with Michael Tobias

Plastic Crap In The Oceans

The tawdry attitude we humans have about nature and the Earth is reflected in our penchant for dumping our plastic crap in the ocean. Eight million tons a year according the report below from the University of Georgia.

Have you ever heard of something called a mid-ocean gyre? They are places in the world's oceans where currents come together in gigantic swirls. They are huge. One in the North Pacific ocean is the size of the state of Texas. They are places where all the plastic we humans dump in the oceans come together. Imagine a toilet bowl clogged with plastic bits, from very large down to microscopic. This stuff does not occur naturally. Every last tiny piece of it amounts to human waste.

The fact that we allow our plastic crap to end up in the oceans in such massive volume says a lot about mankind's very poor record of stewardship toward the environment we all depend on. There is no excuse for it. We humans simply must do a better job of cleaning up after ourselves.

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Magnitude of plastic waste going into the ocean calculated: 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the oceans per year

 

The 192 countries with a coast bordering the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, Mediterranean and Black seas produced a total of 2.5 billion metric tons of solid waste. Of that, 275 million metric tons was plastic, and an estimated 8 million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste entered the ocean in 2010.

Credit: Lindsay Robinson/UGA

A plastic grocery bag cartwheels down the beach until a gust of wind spins it into the ocean. In 192 coastal countries, this scenario plays out over and over again as discarded beverage bottles, food wrappers, toys and other bits of plastic make their way from estuaries, seashores and uncontrolled landfills to settle in the world's seas.

How much mismanaged plastic waste is making its way from land to ocean has been a decades-long guessing game. Now, the University of Georgia's Jenna Jambeck and her colleagues in the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis working group have put a number on the global problem.

Their study, reported in the Feb. 13 edition of the journal Science, found between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons of plastic entered the ocean in 2010 from people living within 50 kilometers of the coastline. That year, a total of 275 million metric tons of plastic waste was generated in those 192 coastal countries.

Jambeck, an assistant professor of environmental engineering in the UGA College of Engineering and the study's lead author, explains the amount of plastic moving from land to ocean each year using 8 million metric tons as the midpoint: "Eight million metric tons is the equivalent to finding five grocery bags full of plastic on every foot of coastline in the 192 countries we examined."

To determine the amount of plastic going into the ocean, Jambeck "started it off beautifully with a very grand model of all sources of marine debris," said study co-author Roland Geyer, an associate professor with the University of California, Santa Barbara's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, who teamed with Jambeck and others to develop the estimates.

They began by looking at all debris entering the ocean from land, sea and other pathways. Their goal was to develop models for each of these sources. After gathering rough estimates, "it fairly quickly emerged that the mismanaged waste and solid waste dispersed was the biggest contributor of all of them," he said. From there, they focused on plastic.

"For the first time, we're estimating the amount of plastic that enters the oceans in a given year," said study co-author Kara Lavender Law, a research professor at the Massachusetts-based Sea Education Association. "Nobody has had a good sense of the size of that problem until now."

The framework the researchers developed isn't limited to calculating plastic inputs into the ocean.

"Jenna created a framework to analyze solid waste streams in countries around the world that can easily be adapted by anyone who is interested," she said. "Plus, it can be used to generate possible solution strategies."

Plastic pollution in the ocean was first reported in the scientific literature in the early 1970s. In the 40 years since, there were no rigorous estimates of the amount and origin of plastic debris making its way into the marine environment until Jambeck's current study.

Part of the issue is that plastic is a relatively new problem coupled with a relatively new waste solution. Plastic first appeared on the consumer market in the 1930s and '40s. Waste management didn't start developing its current infrastructure in the U.S., Europe and parts of Asia until the mid-1970s. Prior to that time, trash was dumped in unstructured landfills--Jambeck has vivid memories of growing up in rural Minnesota, dropping her family's garbage off at a small dump and watching bears wander through furniture, tires and debris as they looked for food.

"It is incredible how far we have come in environmental engineering, advancing recycling and waste management systems to protect human health and the environment, in a relatively short amount of time," she said. "However, these protections are unfortunately not available equally throughout the world."

Some of the 192 countries included in the model have no formal waste management systems, Jambeck said. Solid waste management is typically one of the last urban environmental engineering infrastructure components to be addressed during a country's development. Clean water and sewage treatment often come first.

"The human impact from not having clean drinking water is acute, with sewage treatment often coming next," she said. "Those first two needs are addressed before solid waste, because waste doesn't seem to have any immediate threat to humans. And then solid waste piles up in streets and yards and it's the thing that gets forgotten for a while."

As the gross national income increases in these countries, so does the use of plastic. In 2013, the most current numbers available, global plastic resin production reached 299 million tons, a 647 percent increase over numbers recorded in 1975. Plastic resin is used to make many one-use items like wrappers, beverage bottles and plastic bags.

With the mass increase in plastic production, the idea that waste can be contained in a few-acre landfill or dealt with later is no longer viable. That was the mindset before the onslaught of plastic, when most people piled their waste--glass, food scraps, broken pottery--on a corner of their land or burned or buried it. Now, the average American generates about 5 pounds of trash per day with 13% of that being plastic.

But knowing how much plastic is going into the ocean is just one part of the puzzle, Jambeck said. With between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons going in, researchers like Law are only finding between 6,350 and 245,000 metric tons floating on the ocean's surface.

"This paper gives us a sense of just how much we're missing," Law said, "how much we need to find in the ocean to get to the total. Right now, we're mainly collecting numbers on plastic that floats. There is a lot of plastic sitting on the bottom of the ocean and on beaches worldwide."

Jambeck forecasts that the cumulative impact to the oceans will equal 155 million metric tons by 2025. The planet is not predicted to reach global "peak waste" before 2100, according to World Bank calculations.

"We're being overwhelmed by our waste," she said. "But our framework allows us to also examine mitigation strategies like improving global solid waste management and reducing plastic in the waste stream. Potential solutions will need to coordinate local and global efforts."

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Georgia. The original article was written by Stephanie Schupska. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

1.     J. R. Jambeck, R. Geyer, C. Wilcox, T. R. Siegler, M. Perryman, A. Andrady, R. Narayan, K. L. Law. Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 2015; 347 (6223): 768 DOI: 10.1126/science.1260352

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Cite This Page:

       

University of Georgia. "Magnitude of plastic waste going into the ocean calculated: 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the oceans per year." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 February 2015. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150212154422.htm>.

 

The Nature of Sustainability

 

Over the years, I have tried to be a student of good planetary stewardship.  The ultimate prize is a humanity that functions in harmony with nature. This is what comes when what we take from the biosphere balances out with what we give back to it.  

In the U.S. and in other economically advantaged countries, People mostly take for granted their supply of fresh water, the ready availability of inexpensive food, cheap energy to heat our homes and power our transport options, and esthetically pleasing and healthy living environments.  Up until recently, we have also been accustomed to living with minimal risk of extreme, destructive weather.

These days, the natural systems and resources that we count on for stability in our lives are rapidly disappearing.  If the Earth was a bank with a fixed amount of equity assets, healthy living would equate to getting along on just the interest generated by that equity. In fact, our consumption goes way beyond that. We are drawing deeply into the Earth’s resource equity, and putting economic stability and our lives at ever greater risk because of it.   

It doesn’t have to be that way. We can live in balance with our planet’s ability to provide. We can, but it requires making some hard and some not-so-hard choices on a local, national, and a civilization scale.   

We are using up our fresh water. We are sucking the life out of our oceans. We are stripping our living landscapes bare. We are on a truly reckless path with the only home we have.

Energy is a very big sore spot on Planet Earth. The human consumption of fossil hydrocarbons like coal and oil has put our atmosphere in a perilous state.  Climate change is driven by human lifestyle habits; not just the burning of dirty forms of energy, but also our ever expanding appetite for animal flesh.  These days, the sun, and the wind are inexhaustible in supply.  Moreover, both small and massive scale technologies are now available to convert these clean and natural forms of energy into heat and electricity at costs that are competitive or even cheaper than the dirty energy we’ve depended on since the beginnings of the industrial age.   

There is also a personal lifestyle decision that could dramatically reduce the 80 million tons of methane produced annually by the livestock animals we consume.  The answer is simple:  eat less beef, pork, and poultry. The less, the better.   Keep in mind that methane is twenty times more potent as a greenhouse pollutant than carbon dioxide.  Even a small cut in a person’s animal protein consumption, if widely adopted, could really make a difference. It’s an easy and also a healthy way to move to the right side of history.

Sooner or later, humans will get to the right side of history. We will learn to live in harmony with nature. We  have the technology to take us there.  This much is clear: the longer we put off a transition to a life-affirming path, the bigger the mess we leave for future generations.

If we are going to build a future worthy of our species, a sustainable future, living in harmony with the gifts of nature, we the people must step up and be the change we wish for.    

Earthmanpdx - My Home

I just finished work on a video titled, My Home. I made this video as a signature piece for a social media presence that I am nurturing for my net alter ego, Earthmanpdx.

My Home is a reflection of my worldview. It includes some great animation from NASA and a lot of quality stock video material from the Videoblocks website.  The music is titled Aurora. It came from the Envato music library. 

Here is a link to My Home... https://vimeo.com/113040561

Our Home in 4K Video

Here we have a marvelous, high definition video of the Earth from space over four cycles of day and night. It was taken in May, 2011 by the  geosynchronous Electro-L weather  satellite.

I find myself in awe. The real Earth, the place we live, just seems so beautiful, so full of color, so alive.  It looks vibrant and alive. It doesn't look fragile, not at all... but what you can't see from 23,000 miles in space are the planet's 7.26 billion human residents. What you can't see are the relentless demands we humans put on the Earth's finite fresh water, forest, and  living ocean resources.  What you can't see is just how badly we humans have shredded the planet's living fabric.

When I look at this video, I want to nurture and protect this place. I want to stop people from abusing it.

This Earth is the only home we have...


Here is the link to a gorgeous view of planet Earth... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybh11kcDhfM#t=73
 

Ebola - Nature's Response to Human Overshoot?

Years ago, I read a couple of books about Gaia, by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. The Gaia concept is that the Earth is a self-regulating, living organism, in and of itself.  Check out the Wikipedia link for an understanding of the Gaia hypothesis. 

This biological theory suggests that the Earth can and does respond to large scale biological opportunity and large scale biological stress with natural forces that can themselves be massive in scale.

Ebola is a  highly infectious viral disease that has no cure. It kills up to 90% of victims by massive hemorrhaging and loss of bodily fluids.  Ebola, so far,  has been confined to the African continent. Treatment puts medical workers at very high risk.  It's hard to imagine a more horrible way to die. There have only been a couple of serious outbreaks of Ebola over the years.  The worst ever is happening right now in the West African countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, and Nigeria. Nearly 800 have perished horribly from Ebola, and the outbreak is far from contained.

Ebola Patient Being Treated

Right now, contracting Ebola requires that one come in contact with contaminated bodily fluids from an Ebola patient.  The pathogen is difficult and very expensive to contain, very dangerous for medical workers to treat, and once a victim dies, just disposing of the corpse safely is a vexing problem.

On top of that, you add the cultural distrust of western medicine in African communities,  Ebola becomes even more of a challenge to contain. 

Because Ebola is a virus, it is constantly mutating into new forms. There is no vaccine that can make a person immune to Ebola.  The medical people on the front lines are some of the most courageous people one could ever imagine.  They go into it  knowing that if they are infected by the Ebola virus, they are very likely going to suffer terribly and lose their lives.

Ebola Virus

Could Ebola become a pandemic? Could it get loose and, like the plague did to 14th century Europe, could it wipe out a very high portion of  humanity?  The answer is yes. It could happen, particularly if it mutates into and becomes infectious in an airborne form.  If that were to happen, a person infected with Ebola but not yet symptomatic could get on a commercial flight and infect many of the other passengers, and those newly infected passengers could get on other airline flights to other places and potentially spread Ebola to the most highly populated areas of the Earth in a matter of a few days. 

The fact is, just a few days ago, a man infected with Ebola did get  on a flight from Liberia. He carried the disease with him to Lagos, the capitol of Nigeria. Every person he came into contact with from boarding of the flight in Liberia, to everyone in the airport and other places in Nigeria where he travelled is now being monitored.  So, the story of the current, largest ever Ebola outbreak, is still unfolding.

I very much hope they can contain the current Ebola outbreak, and minimize the suffering and loss of life. If things work out that way, and the outbreak is put down, that is hardly the end of the story.

As time goes on, as the population density in Africa rapidly expands,  the possibility of new Ebola outbreaks is very real.

Disaster fatigue is a  consequence of too many deadly dangerous events piling on in short succession. We are seeing that happening right now. We're seeing bigger, more powerful tropical storms, floods, droughts, wildfires, mega-tornados, and other natural disasters than ever before. High human population density translates into huge costs for cleanup and recovery. In economically disadvantaged countries, the financial resources available to deal with any kind of human disaster are limited. Moreover, given the increasing number of disasters around the world, the rich nations find themselves less and less able to respond with the resources and financial support each disaster demands, especially when they happen in distant lands. Haiti is not a distant land. It's a couple hundred miles distant from our shores.  The recovery from the massive earthquake disaster that devastated Haiti in 2010 has been woefully inadequate. The people of Haiti have  largely been abandoned by the rest of the world.

So, where does that leave humanity as population growth and massive, global scale problems like climate change  create the conditions for more and more mega-disasters and economic disruption?

Imagine twenty years from now, when the human population has expanded from 7.2 billion as it is now to something like 9 billion. Imagine the impact of climate change an order or two in magnitude worse than it is  now. Imagine, in those increasingly vulnerable conditions, that Ebola breaks out again in a mutated form that can be spread through the air, like a common cold virus.

Ebola is a nightmare of the very worst kind.  Could it end up being tantamount to  Gaia's way of relieving the extreme, broadly realized stress we humans have put on the planet's natural systems? Could Ebola ultimately become what the plague was to 14th century Europeans?   It's an ugly scenario, but unfortunately, it is a genuine possibility.

If we humans don't do something to relieve the extreme pressure we are putting on our resources and our biological systems, nature may well inflict it's own terrible, global scale stress reliever in the form of something like an airborne strain of Ebola.  If that happens, we will only have ourselves to blame. 

If Lovelock and Margulis are right about Gaia, the Earth biosphere will survive, even if humanity is brought to its knees in the process. It's a circumstance I would not wish on my worst enemy.  For the sake of future generations, I hope we wake up and make things right on planet Earth, before it's too late.

Hope on Earth

Hope on Earth, is a highly engaging dialogue between two  remarkable human beings,  Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich, President of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology,  and global ecologist/author/anthropologist/filmmaker Michael Tobias.   Ehrlich is best known for The Population Bomb, a book co-written with his wife Anne more than four decades ago.  I should mention that I was a young man when I read the Ehrlich’s book back when it first came out.  Chilling as its message was, then and now, that book had a profound impact on my understanding of the world.  Dr. Tobias’ work is also well known to me. He is the author of more than fifty books, including World War III – Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium and, with his colleague, partner, and wife, Jane Gray Morrison,  Sanctuary – Global Oasis of Innocence. Tobias has also had a distinguished career as a film maker – more than 150 productions - on subjects (mostly non-fiction, but some fiction) related to animal rights’, biodiversity, and humanity’s tenuous relationship with the environment.  Tobias is also the long-time President of The Dancing Star Foundation, a global animal protection, biodiversity conservation, and environmental education non-profit.

 

 

 

Both men have spent much of  their lives investigating and reporting on the massively expanded pressure on our biosphere caused by human population growth.  To put this in perspective, the number of people on Earth when The Population Bomb was first published in 1968 was 3.5 billion. In all of human history, it took till then to get to 3.5 billion. In the 46 years since that time, the population has more than doubled to 7.25 billion. This massive human expansion is not sustainable. The Earth’s resources are finite. We humans are pushing our freshwater, our farmland, our forests, our marine resources rapidly  to exhaustion. Our dependence on fossil fuels like oil and coal is pumping billions of tons of pollutants into the Earth’s atmosphere, causing a planetary warming that puts the very livability of our tiny dot in the galaxy at great risk. Human exploitation is pushing unprecedented numbers of plant and animal species to the point of extinction.  In fact, the consensus seems to be, for humanity to live within the planet’s long term ability to provide sustenance for most sentient beings, including Homo Sapiens,  the human population should no more than about one to two billion.  The current condition for humanity is one of extreme overreach.  Can we turn it around? Can we change our ways sufficiently to roll back  human demand so it does not exceed the planet’s ability to provide?   

Ehrlich and Tobias are skeptical. Despite that, they remain hopeful. They have both  been aggressively sounding a warning for decades. They both clearly detest the general state of public indifference, and even hostility in some cases,  despite the powerful warning signals we are getting from nature; signals like the melting of our glaciers and the collapse of the polar icecaps, the increasing incidents of extreme draught, wildfire, floods, and massive and highly destructive weather events like Hurricane Sandy and Super Typhoon Haiyan. 

In Hope on Earth, Ehrlich warns, “The past is over. We’re here now, and we’d better damn well make our ethical decisions.”  He goes on to say, “If we don’t solve the issues of population growth and consumption, all the rest of these issues won’t stand a chance of being remedied.”

Ehrlich and Tobias agree that humanity must find a path to achieving critical mass in awareness, and beyond that, a thoughtful, ethical approach to the unprecedented global-scale challenges that have emerged. The course we are on is a dead end.

I really enjoyed reading Hope on Earth. In the end, it is a dialogue about ethics. I loved being a fly on the wall, absorbing this great conversation between two exceptional minds, who understand and care deeply about the ugly turn human history has taken. Their prescription: Wake up and embrace a life-affirming cultural paradigm built on a foundation of compassion, and commitment to planetary stewardship. Do it now, before it is too late.

I give five stars to Hope on Earth. Highest recommendation.

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Court Ends Japanese Whaling in the Antarctic

I have done several postings about the TV show, Whale Wars, that chronicle the ongoing struggle of the Sea Shepard Society to confront Japanese factory whaling in the Antarctic ocean.  Sea Shepard has been fighting this battle with Japanese whalers for about the last ten years.

The International Whaling Commission had imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling in the 1980s.  To get around that ban, Japan had been claiming that their whaling activities were based on research that required them to kill and slaughter hundreds of whales every year.  Of course, all of the whale meat taken this way has ended up in Japanese meat markets.

Australia and New Zealand went to the UN's International Court of Justice to challenge Japan's 'research' whaling.    This past week, a panel of judges ruled 12-4 that Japan's 'research' whaling was a sham. It ordered an immediate end to the practice. Though it has publicly regretted the court's decision, Japan agreed to comply.

This is a huge victory of the Sea Shepard Society and those of us who believe that whales should be protected from human exploitation.

Even with this very positive step, there is much that needs to be done to mend humanity's relationship with our oceans. Beyond our continued overexploitation of the ocean's fisheries, humans are responsible for billions of tons of plastic and other kinds of toxic materials being dumped into the oceans. Making this right will take a massive effort by humanity. Accepting responsibility for the mess we've made means new policies that prohibit  our waterways and oceans from being used as dumping grounds. We must also aggressively develop technologies that will allow us to clean up the mess we've already made.   Rather than seeing this as a financial burden, we should be looking at it as an important pathway to sustainability that will create jobs and improve the quality of life of all the world's people.

Time to get busy and take care of our planetary home.

Pale Blue Dot - Take Two

On August 14th, I posted a blog entry titled, a Pale Blue Dot, narrated by Carl Sagan and produced by Michael Marantz. 

A Pale Blue Dot is a term used by Sagan to put some perspective on our Earth's place in the vastness of the solar system and the universe.

Here is another short video. This one is also called 'A Pale Blue Dot'  It is from something called The Sagan Series and includes Carl Sagan's wonderful perspective on humanity's place on the Earth and the greater universe...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=923jxZY2NPI

Grocery Stores Without Bees

Found this piece on the net. We depend on bees to pollinate the plants that provide much of our food. Bees and other beneficial insects are in big trouble. Very likely, our use of dangerously toxic pesticides and herbicides has a lot to do with it. Yet another example of how out of step we humans are with the rhythms of nature. It doesn't have to bee that way.

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PROVIDENCE, R.I., June 12, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- One of every three bites of food comes from plants pollinated by honeybees and other pollinators. Yet, major declines in bee populations threaten the availability of many fresh ingredients consumers rely on for their dinner tables.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130612/DA27199)

(Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121015/DA92273LOGO)

To raise awareness of just how crucial pollinators are to our food system, the University Heights Whole Foods Market store temporarily removed all produce that comes from plants dependent on pollinators. They pulled from shelves 237 of 453 products – 52 percent of the department's normal product mix.

Products removed included:

• Apples
• Onions
• Avocados
• Carrots
• Mangos
• Lemons
• Limes
• Honeydew
• Cantaloupe
• Zucchini
• Summer squash
• Eggplant
• Cucumbers
• Celery
• Green onions
• Cauliflower
• Leeks
• Bok choy
• Kale
• Broccoli
• Broccoli rabe
• Mustard greens

 

"Pollinators are a critical link in our food system. More than 85% of earth's plant species – many of which compose some of the most nutritional parts of our diet – require pollinators to exist. Yet we continue to see alarming declines in bee numbers," said Eric Mader, assistant pollinator conservation director at The Xerces Society. "Our organization works with farmers nationwide to help them create wildflower habitat and adopt less pesticide-intensive practices. These simple strategies can tip the balance back in favor of bees."

 

Whole Foods Market offers four more ways to "bee part of the solution." Details are online at www.wholefoodsmarket.com/sharethebuzz.

• Bee organic: Buying organic is an easy way to support pollinators.
• Bee savvy at home: Most pest problems can be solved without toxic and persistent pesticides.
• Bee a gardener: Plant bee-friendly flowers and fruits.
• Bee a smart shopper: Look for the "Share the Buzz" signs throughout stores to support vendors also donating to The Xerces Society.
  • "Queen Bee" partners ($25,000): Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day and Hain Celestial (MaraNatha, WestSoy, Terra Chips, Arrowhead Mills)
  • "Worker Bee" partners ($5,000): Attune Foods, Cuties, Kashi, Sweet Leaf Teas, Muir Glen Organic, Talenti Gelato, So Delicious, Udi's Gluten Free.

 

SOURCE Whole Foods Market

The Pale Blue Dot

This is an achingly lovely ode to the beauty of planet Earth. Richly colored, high dynamic range video of our land, sea, and sky in all their natural splendor.  A mellifluous music track accompanies  the visual feast, along with a voice track of the great citizen of the Universe, Carl Sagan.

This wonderful media piece was created by gifted photographer/composer, Michael Marantz.

Here is a link to this gorgeous video...http://vimeo.com/2822787

The Red List

The International Fund for Conservation and Nature (IUCN) has thus far assessed the status of 70,000 of the world's plant and animal species.  That's a very small sample of the world's estimated 1.82 million living species.  But of that small number assessed to this point, more than a third - 20,934 to be exact - have been declared threatened with extinction.   Moreover, a very high percentage of these threatened plants and animals have been pushed toward the precipice by human activity: the destruction and usurpation of natural habitat; the overexploitation of species considered economic resources; the introduction of toxins into natural environments.  Humans use and abuse the land and the living fabric of the natural world with little consideration of the consequences.

We have no choice. We must mend our ways.  Anything short of that translates to a very dismal picture for the generations yet to come.

Here is a brief overview lifted form the Common Dreams webpage that reports on the increasingly perilous state of the biological health of planet Earth.

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Published on Tuesday, July 2, 2013 by Common Dreams

"Extinction Crisis": 21,000 of World's Species at Risk of Disappearing

Latest update to Red List of threatened species provides "further evidence of our impact on the world's threatened biodiversity"

- Lauren McCauley, staff writer

An "extinction crisis" is at hand. Roughly 21,000 species, ranging from shrimp to pine trees, are at risk of complete extinction according to an update released Tuesday to an ongoing risk assessment of the world's 1.82 million species.

 A species of cedar, among the world's oldest and largest organisms, is now considered 'critically endangered' according to the IUCN's updated Red List of Threatened Species. (Photo: billandkent/ Flickr) 

 

According to the Red List of Threatened Species, 20,934 of the roughly 70,000 species assessed thus far are threatened with extinction. This year saw an additional 4,807 species to the list.
Calling the news "alarming," Jane Smart, of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) which is behind the list, said, "We must use this knowledge to its fullest – making our conservation efforts well targeted and efficient - if we are serious about stopping the extinction crisis that continues to threaten all life on Earth."
This update "is further evidence of our impact on the world's threatened biodiversity, further evidence that extinction is real, and that we must all act, and act now, if we are to prevent this most tragic reality for many more of the world's species," added Richard Edwards, Chief Executive of Wildscreen, a partner of IUCN.
Among this year's addition are the results of the first-ever global assessment of freshwater shrimps—animals vital to freshwater ecosystems—of which 28% are threatened with extinction. According to the list, one such species, the Macrobrachium leptodactylus, was declared extinct after it fell "victim of habitat degradation and urban development."
Tuesday's release also includes the first global reassessment of conifers—the oldest and largest species on the planet—which found that "34% of the world’s cedars, cypresses, firs and other cone-bearing plants are now threatened with extinction – an increase by 4% since the last complete assessment in 1998."
"We are sending a warning," IUCN's Red List Manager Craig Hilton-Taylor told AFP, stressing the huge importance of conifers for their role in the sequestering of carbon.
"The more we have deforestation in the northern hemisphere, the greater the impact will be in terms of climate change," he said.

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Here is a link to the IUCN's Red List webpage...  http://www.iucnredlist.org/

Earth Day

These cartoons showed up in an email I received today from the Population Media Center.  The message they deliver is pretty clear.  The Earth is the only home we have. We have to take better care of it.

Here is a link to the Population Media Center...  www.populationmedia.org

Chasing Ice

James Balog is a climate warrior. A few years ago, the acclaimed environment photographer  launched the Extreme Ice Survey [EIS].  The mission of the EIS is to create a visual record of the human induced destruction of  the world's great ice fields. These glaciers are a critical source of fresh water during the dry season in many parts of our planet. What Balog's EIS documents is the extreme rapid melting and destruction of this seriously underappreciated resource.  The cause of this melting is well known. It is the massive human consumption of fossil hydrocarbon fuels like coal and oil.  The pollution from the burning of these fuels causes too much of the sun's radiant energy to be trapped in our atmosphere rather than reflected back into space. As a consequence of this greenhouse effect, atmospheric temperatures are elevated; sea levels rise,  storm systems become more extreme, and glaciers that have been in place for a thousand years  begin to melt away.  We humans are caught in a downward environmental spiral of our own making.  Too many of us remain in denial.

The primary focus of the EIS is to create a visual documentation of climate change's impact on glaciers.   James Balog and his team set up time lapse cameras to document the rapid changes taking place with glaciers in Iceland, Greenland, and Alaska. 

The first result of this multi-year effort is a remarkable, feature length documentary titled, Chasing Ice.    It's stunning imagery presents a clear and unambiguous picture of the frightening impact of climate change.

Here is a link to a video tease of James Balog's, Chasing Ice...http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eIZTMVNBjc4

Matt Damon's Potty Video

Matt Damon is a celebrity I admire.  He uses his fame and influence to make a difference in the lives of people much less fortunate than himself.  There is a whole cabal of good people like Damon in Hollywood.  I'm talking about Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie,  Charlize Theron, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, Leo DeCaprio, and Ryan Gosling, to name a few.  All of these 'A' list personalities distinguish themselves by stepping up and seriously engaging on some of the most difficult challenges of our time.

In Matt Damon's case, he co-founded a group called Water.org.   Matt Damon is a champion for clean water and sanitation.  Matt Damon doesn't just talk the talk, he walks the walk.


Here is a link to Matt's very clever message about water and sanitation on World Water Day...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Sc2_HFv88&feature=player_embedded

Here is a link to another video about the work of Water.Org...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5hsLsBIzB0&feature=player_embedded

Permafrost - The Scary Tipping Point

One aspect of the threat from climate change that doesn't get much press is the situation  in the polar regions with permafrost.  When temperatures are cold enough year round the ground remains in a permanent frozen state. Scientists have long known that gigantic quantities of methane hydrate, one of the world's most potent greenhouse gases, is locked up in the permafrost at the poles. 

The problem we have now is the warming of our Earth's atmosphere has caused the permafrost to start thawing during Summer months. The more the permafrost thaws, the more greenhouse gases are released in the atmosphere, creating a situation that feeds on itself...in effect a runaway greenhouse feedback loop.

The prospect of this is very frightening. Once it reaches a tipping point, it appears there will be no stopping it, no matter how much we reduce human or anthropocentrically generated greenhouse gases.

Here is a very compelling  90 second video that explains that threat from melting permafrost.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdMLy--JxCQ&feature=player_embedded

A Fierce Green Fire

Those of us who care about our earth and are committed to saving the environment from polluters and people for whom profit is the be all and end all, can draw much inspiration from this new movie.

Here is a link to the movie trailer for A Fierce Green Fire...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94zbq5Vaod0&feature=player_embedded

Here is a link to the website for the movie...http://www.afiercegreenfire.com/

Personal Culpability

I am culpable. You are culpable. We all share responsibility for the mess we've made of our planet.

Example #1 -  The Bakken Tar Sands in North Dakota. A few years ago, this was just rangeland...quiet, windblown, life nurturing rangeland.  Satellites orbiting overhead at night would see nothing but darkness in Central North Dakota.  Now, it looks like a city spread out  over a broad area, the combination of lights from drilling rigs and natural gas being flared off.  Nearly 30% of the gas released from shale deposits by drilling in Bakken is wasted, flared off because they drilled for it before they had a way to collect all of it.  Gas that is flared off is burned to no use, just to get rid of it. All the hydrocarbon pollutants produced by that wasted flare gas end up choking the atmosphere.  Same thing has been going on for much longer in the tar sands of Northern Alberta, Canada.  The oil and gas collected from these places is the most environmentally destructive energy source on Earth.






?? is Bakken Tar Sands in North Dakota from space

Tar Sand mining

It's hard to imagine a more painfully destructive image of human exploitation than this. 


Meanwhile the oil and gas industry lull consumers into complacency with their misleading public relations campaigns and TV commercials that promise cheap, clean energy. The sociopaths that run big oil, coal, and even nuclear energy don't care about the destructive impact of their products.  They know very well what they are doing.  They are only interested in continuing to be the most profitable businesses the world has ever seen.  

Ultimately, it is us, the consumers of the toxic energy products they are selling that are responsible.  If we weren't buying, the energy industry sociopaths would have to change their ways.

All over the Earth, our finite land and water resources are being rapaciously exploited to meet public demand for cheap consumable products.  The course we are on is not sustainable. There are now seven billion plus of us humans, all demanding a piece of the pie.  It doesn't compute.  Unless we get our act together -  I'm talking about all of humanity - unless we start to forcefully demand answers to our collective needs that are non-destructive and sustainable over the long term,  our children and the generations that come after will suffer terribly because of our neglect. Many people are stepping up to be a part of the solution, but too many remain indifferent to this reality.  Time is not on our side. 

We are all responsible for the mess we are in. We will have only ourselves to blame for the consequences of our inaction.  There is no room for indifference. Every one of us has an obligation to be part of the solution.

A substantial share of humanity has already stepped up, by recognizing the reality we face.  They are already demanding change.  For those still in denial, time is up. Stop being part of the problem and become part of the solution. How do I do that, you say?   Cast off your fear and start using your brain;  the rest will be self-evident.

2012 - Hottest on Record!!!

Surprise. Surprise.  Another new record for average annual atmospheric temperature.   In fact, in the US lower 48, 2012 was the hottest year in recorded history.

You have to wonder when the public is going to get climate change sufficiently to demand an aggressive response from lawmakers. Right now, our system of governance selects for elected officials who are happy to trade favor for campaign money from corporations and the super rich.  It's a form of legalized bribery that can only be muted by a concerted response from a galvanized public. The best news is there are many clean energy alternatives that are already emerging that can replace our dependence on dirty fossil fuels

Young people in particular need to recognize the consequences of continued inaction on climate change.  It will be their children and the generations that come after that will suffer the most if we continue to allow the coal, oil, and gas industry to dictate energy policy. 

Here is a link to Climate Central's report on 2012 http://www.climatecentral.org/news/book-it-2012-the-hottest-year-on-record-15350

Alexandra Paul on Human Overpopulation

About 15 years ago, I joined forces with the actress Alexandra Paul and two friends,  Michael Tobias, and Greg Molina, to produce Jam Packed, our first of two education videos for teens about human overpopulation.  Later, Marc and Michelle Griffith joined us on the second project titled, The Cost of Cool,  which focused on the impact of human personal consumption on our planet and its rapidly eroding resource base.  Working with Alexandra and our colleagues was great fun and the two award winning videos we produced went on to be used in schools all across America. 

When we first began to work together, the world population was around six billion.  In the decade and a half since then, we've added another billion plus to the population. It's no wonder the world is in so much trouble on so many fronts. Deforestation, ocean resource depletion, fresh water scarcy, climate change; all of these global scale challenges are tied directly to a simple fact: too many people chansing after too few resources.

Alexandra Paul just delivered her first TED presentation on the population issue.  She believes curbing population growth is the most important thing humans can do. I agree wholeheartedly with her.  When I started this blog about ten months ago, one of the first people I wrote about  (3/14/12) was Alexandra. She's an extraordinarty person.  I urge everyone to take a moment to check out her TED presentation. It's only nine minutes long. In that brief time, she presents the ugly facts in powerful fashion and makes the case that we all have an obligation to be a part of the solution to this most basic of all human challenges.

Here is a link to Alexandra Paul's TED Presentation... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNxctzyNxC0