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Wake up! (Kelpie Wilson interview)
George Kenney, Electric Politics
Shredding an entire planet isn’t just an act of stupidity. It isn’t just being harsh. It isn’t just an oversight. It’s bloody-minded wickedness. Surely this crime is greater than all others? So when do we hold the perpetrators to account? A start would be in the November mid-term elections. To get some perspective on environmental issues I turned to Kelpie Wilson, the environmental editor for truthout. She writes widely on environmental subjects and her first novel, Primal Tears, has recently been published. Kelpie, btw, is Gaelic for water spirit. A wonderful name. This podcast runs about 41 minutes. Enjoy!
(20 April 2006)
Energy issues are discussed about 55% through the interview.
Kelpie Wilson has written numerous pieces that appeared in Energy Bulletin.
Yelling ‘fire’ on a hot planet
Andrew C. Revkin, NY Times
… There is enough static in the air to simultaneously confuse, alarm and paralyze the public. Is global warming now a reality? What do scientists know for sure and when are they just guessing?
And what can truly be accomplished by changing behavior? After all, there are still the traditional calls to limit heat-trapped greenhouse-gas emissions, but a growing number of experts are also saying what was once unthinkable: humans may have to adapt to a warmer globe.
Here, an attempt to shed a little light in all the heat.
Between the poles of real-time catastrophe and nonevent lies the prevailing scientific view: without big changes in emissions rates, global warming from the buildup of greenhouse gases is likely to lead to substantial, and largely irreversible, transformations of climate, ecosystems and coastlines later this century.
…By the clock of geology, this climate shift is unfolding at a dizzying, perhaps unprecedented pace, but by time scales relevant to people, it’s happening in slow motion. If the bad stuff doesn’t happen for 100 years or so, it’s hard to persuade governments or voters to take action.
And there is the rub. Many scientists say that to avoid a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations, energy efficiency must be increased drastically, and soon. And by midcentury, they add, there must be a complete transformation of energy technology. That may be why some environmentalists try to link today’s weather to tomorrow’s problem. While scientists say they lack firm evidence to connect recent weather to the human influence on climate, environmental campaigners still push the notion.
(23 April 2006)
One hesitates to quibble with the NYT’s long-term correspondent on global warming, but he has omitted significant developments from his generally helpful summary:
- In decrying the confusion over global warming, he neglects to mention the concerted disinformation campaign run by Exxon, some fossil fuel companies and the right-wing. This campaign has been documented in the NY Times and elsewhere. The purpose of this campaign has been to confuse and demoralize, and it has been eminently successful.
- He attributes the growing urgency to environmental campaigners. In fact, as “New Yorker” journalist Elizabeth Kolbert has pointed out, this is one issue in which the scientists are more worried than the activists. Many science journalists are equally worried.
- He neglects to emphasize the uncertainty involved in climate projections. Recent studies have drawn attention to the possibility of feedback loops which could push the climate to extremes.
- He neglects the scientific argument that extreme weather events are impacted by climate change — for example the growing intensity of hurricanes.
More at Revkin’s blog
Comments by David Roberts at Gristmill
-BA
Not a drop to drink
Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon
Pointing out that it takes 800 gallons of water to make one hamburger, a British writer argues that water shortage is the “defining crisis” of our time.
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Leave the tap running while brushing your teeth, and you’re dumping four and a half gallons of water down the drain, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
That’s the kind of shiny stat trotted out to inspire profligate water-wasters to conserve. Just shut off the tap, save water. It’s easy! Huzzah! Yet, as British science journalist Fred Pearce makes crystal clear in “When the Rivers Run Dry,” the water we consume — and waste — in everyday life is hardly limited to what comes out of our own faucets.
Pearce, a longtime editor for New Scientist, who is now an environmental consultant for the magazine, calculates that it takes 40 gallons of water to grow the ingredients for the bread in a single sandwich, not to mention 265 gallons to produce a glass of milk and 800 gallons for a hamburger. And that’s just what’s for lunch. Don’t get him started on what you wear to this water-rich feast. Even a simple cotton T-shirt bearing some hopeful green slogan like “Save the Bay” is a huge water user. Pearce figures it takes 25 bathtubs-full of water to grow the scant 9 ounces of cotton for such a shirt.
…Most of the water that each one of us uses comes from the water used to irrigate the crops that we consume. That’s principally food, but not only. Cotton for our clothing is a major user of water around the world.
We don’t really know as we pick up the food from the store whether our purchases are responsible for making some local crisis elsewhere worse, but it is often the case. Many countries are facing serious water shortages; often their rivers are running dry, or their water tables falling very fast, and in many cases much of that water is being exported by those countries in the form of goods. Yet, when we pay market price for those goods, that price doesn’t usually include any estimate of the cost to the water resources. We still think of water as an unlimited resource rather like the air we breathe.
(25 April 2006)
Related:
Talk or Action at World Water Forum? (AlterNet)
Flush With Success (“How companies are tapping the benefits of saving water”) by Joel Makower at Grist
Global warming behind record 2005 storms, U.S. expert says
Thom Akeman, Reuters via ENN
MONTEREY, Calif. — A leading U.S. government storm researcher said Monday that the record hurricane season last year can be attributed to global warming.
“The hurricanes we are seeing are indeed a direct result of climate change and it’s no longer something we’ll see in the future, it’s happening now,” said Greg Holland, a division director at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Holland told a packed hall at the American Meteorological Society’s 27th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology in Monterey, California that the wind and warmer water conditions that fuel storms that form in the Caribbean are “increasingly due to greenhouse gases. There seems to be no other conclusion you can logically draw.”
His conclusion will be debated throughout the week-long conference, as other researchers present opposing papers that say changing wind and temperature conditions in the tropics are due to natural events, not the accumulation of carbon dioxide emissions clouding the Earth.
(25 April 2006)
RFF’s Bell examines possible problems with CO2 cap-and-trade efforts (video, transcript)
Ruth Greenspan Bell, E&E TV
Many climate experts feel that a cap-and-trade plan for carbon dioxide is one of the most efficient ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But who will verify claims of emissions reductions in a global CO2 market? And will developing nations be willing to tackle greenhouse gas reductions instead of more pressing environmental problems? During today’s OnPoint, Ruth Greenspan Bell, resident scholar at Resources for the Future, talks about these questions and more as she addresses some of the challenges facing emissions trading plans. Bell, director of RFF’s program for International Institutional Development and Environmental Assistance, also draws on her experience helping several Asian and European nations implement new environmental laws.
(25 April 2006)
