“Will Big Business Save the Earth?” – NYTimes.com

A persuasive article in the NY Times from Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, and WWF board member, on how big business can sometimes be a great force for good:

I’ve discovered that while some businesses are indeed as destructive as many suspect, others are among the world’s strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability… Lower consumption of environmental resources saves money in the short run. Maintaining sustainable resource levels and not polluting saves money in the long run. And a clean image — one attained by, say, avoiding oil spills and other environmental disasters — reduces criticism from employees, consumers and government.

He goes on to discuss case studies from Coke, Chevron and Wal-mart, then dismisses typical objections to business taking the environment seriously.

On climate change, he argues that there is now no significant disagreement about climate change:

[Experts disagreed about the reality of climate change] 30 years ago, and some experts still disagreed a decade ago. Today, virtually every climatologist agrees that average global temperatures, warming rates and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are higher than at any time in the earth’s recent past, and that the main cause is greenhouse gas emissions by humans. Instead, the questions still being debated concern whether average global temperatures will increase by 13 degrees or “only” by 4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, and whether humans account for 90 percent or “only” 85 percent of the global warming trend.

And that it’s absurd not to act now on the basis of remaining uncertainty:

In other spheres of life — picking a spouse, educating our children, buying life insurance and stocks, avoiding cancer and so on — we admit that certainty is unattainable, and that we must decide as best we can on the basis of available evidence. Why should the impossible quest for certainty paralyze us solely about acting on climate change? As Mr. Holdren, the White House adviser, expressed it, not acting on climate change would be like being “in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog.”

How the West was lost

Following my last optimistic post, back to doom and gloom: Rebecca Solnit reviews Dead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming and the Future of Water in the West by James Lawrence Powell, in the London Review of Books:

The docks and ramps at both [dams on the Colorado River] have had to be relocated and rebuilt in pursuit of the fleeing waterline, and one simply closed. One ramp at Lake Powell grew to 1300 feet long, another to more than 1500 feet, new additions to the collection of landscape follies across the American West. Phoenix and Vegas seem fated, Powell argues, to become dusty ruins, for the water to sustain them is already vanishing (though Vegas has a murderous scheme to drain much of the rest of Nevada for its golf courses and casino fountains, to the detriment of rural communities and wildlife). If the lack of water doesn’t get them, climate change might: Powell predicts that summer temperatures in the 120s (above 48°C) will be routine in Phoenix. Aridity, he proposes, could well kill off much of the agriculture and two of the biggest cities of the South-West by the middle of this century. (In California, my local paper reports that a severe drought, now into its third year, is forcing state and federal water agencies to cut water deliveries to farmers in the Central Valley, perhaps the world’s single richest agricultural region, by ‘85 to 100 per cent’. A 100 per cent cut would be a death sentence in this Mediterranean climate without rain between May and October.)

The majesty and beauty of ecological restoration

I frequently write posts here that are worrying and alarming, so it’s wonderful to be able to share some links and stories that are incredibly heartening and inspiring.

A couple of weeks back, being in London, I attended an Earthwatch-hosted debate at the Royal Geographical Society. The topic was the water crisis, or water crises, that are growing around the world, and the debate invited five people to propose solutions, after which, the audience voted on what they thought was the best one. It was not a format that provided much space for seriousness, but the most impressive and inspiring presentation, was by Simon Maddrell of the NGO Excellent Development, who talked about sand dams (and won the audience vote, which included mine).

I’d never heard of sand dams! I like to think I know about such things, so was simultaneously peeved and delighted to discover this extraordinary story of ecological restoration in Kenya.

A sand dam, it turns out, is a low retaining wall built across a river bed that traps sand and silt in times of flood. The sand and silt, in turn, trap water (up to 60% by volume) which is then accessible to local people, is automatically filtered, begins to restore the water table, and to restore local ecology. People who have had to walk literally days to get water, now have ready access to it again, and rates of intestinal disease decline rapidly. Combined with terracing, tree-planting and the restoration of local vegetation, sand dams can become the centre of whole new micro-climates. In fact, as whole regions start to follow this process, regional climate soon begins to change.

Before the sand dam.

The effects of building a sand dam in Kenya.

You can view a six-minute video on sand dams and the work of Excellent Development, which has now supported the construction of over 200 sand dams, here on YouTube.

Excellent Development’s echoes the story of the Loess plateau in China, a huge region which has been rendered dry and barren by thousands of years of badly managed subsistence agriculture. A new short film, Hope in a Changing Climate (streamed online), tells this amazing story:

In the Loess Plateau, an area the size of Belgium has been successfully restored over ten years. A barren, brown landscape, denuded and degraded, has been brought back to life; a people entrenched in back-breaking poverty now work, farm, herd and live, in a functioning, green ecosystem where rainfall infiltrates, water is retained and crops are readied for export.

Hope in a Changing Climate not only covers the story in China, but shows how the same techniques have been used to great effect in Rwanda.

The full importance of this kind of restoration is perhaps only emerging now, as we begin to understand how important vegetation forests are to generating the planet’s winds, not least those that pull rain deep into the interiors of continents. In a recent New Scientist article, Fred Pearce writes about an emerging meteorological theory called the biotic pump, postulated by Russian researchers Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva of the St Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute:

The acres upon acres of lush tropical forest in the Amazon and tropical Africa are often referred to as the planet’s lungs. But what if they are also its heart? This is exactly what a couple of meteorologists claim in a controversial new theory that questions our fundamental understanding of what drives the weather. They believe vast forests generate winds that help pump water around the planet.

If correct, the theory would explain how the deep interiors of forested continents get as much rain as the coast, and how most of Australia turned from forest to desert.

Zakes Mda, proteas and climate change

South African novelist Zakes Mda writes on climate change for the New York Times.

Climate change and marauding camels

Trying to imagine what climate change will look like?

Think … Australia.

Think … Record bush fires. Record dust storms. Possible ghost cities (Perth’s water supply has dropped by two thirds, and they’re building carbon-dioxide-spewing desalination plants to make things “better”.) And now, herds of marauding camels:

The camels, which are not native to Australia but were introduced in the 1840s, have butted water tanks, approached houses to try to take water from air conditioning units and knocked down fencing at the small airport runway… The carcasses of camels killed in stampedes at water storage areas were contaminating the water supply…

Or skip to the LA Times: “What will global warming look like? Scientists point to Australia…“

The unexpectedly venerable history of concentrated solar power (CSP)

These are images from a CSP power station built in Eypt by the British nearly 100 years ago. Originally published in a long defunct electrical engineering magazine, they are now reproduced on an alternative energy website (which also appears to carry details of some rather unscientific or at best unproven ideas). The site reproduces the full article from the original magazine. I stumbled on these via Joseph Romm’s highly recommended Real Climate blog.

SA firms ‘not preparing for climate change risks’ – Business Report

Ingi Salgado writes in Business Report that:

Law firm Webber Wentzel, a sponsor of the South African Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), is warning companies that climate litigation has started to become a reality – and is likely to increase as the effects of climate change become more acute.

Webber Wentzel partner Johann Scholtz said potential claimants included individuals whose health had been affected, those who had suffered property damage or economic loss, NGOs and local and national governments.

“An analysis of these lawsuits shows that they comprise actions against regulators for failing to have adequate standards, challenges to the application of laws and regulations, cases alleging liability for the costs of combating and adapting to climate change and cases based on the failure to curb emissions, including class actions, actions against directors and product liability cases,” he said.

The rest of the article is here.

Why nuclear energy is just another quick fix that will make things worse in the long run

I have mixed feelings about nuclear energy. Part of my rational mind sometimes says maybe there’s a place for it in an interim energy mix before we shift to renewables. But my gut doesn’t like it at all. And my gut reaction is only strengthened by reading articles like this one in today’s Guardian, which outlines the potentially devastating impact of uranium mining on the Kalahari. (And explains that when the UK has tallied up the likely carbon footprint of its combined nuclear-coal-renewables strategy, it has completely excluded the carbon footprint associated with extracting and transporting the uranium that strategy will demand, much less its impact on the Namibian environment.)

Let’s not forget that the UK’s own Sustainable Development Commission carefully considered the virtues and disadvantages of nuclear energy, and recommended against it. Which means some hard questions need to be asked about why that government is proceeding against the advice of its own experts

$500m for clean energy in South Africa

A media statement from the Department of the Environment:

$500 MILLION INFUSION GIVES SOUTH AFRICA CRITICAL BOOST TO MEET AMBITIOUS CLEAN ENERGY GOALS

Clean Technology Fund endorses South African plan to scale up grid-connected renewable energy, solar water heaters for a half million South African households, energy efficiency

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 05, 2009 – On Tuesday, October 27, developed and developing countries endorsed a Clean Technology Fund (CTF) funding envelope of $500 million for South Africa’s CTF Investment Plan (IP). This paves the way for South Africa to move closer to its vision of generating four percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2013, improving energy efficiency by 12 percent by 2015, and providing 1 million households with solar water heating over the next five years.

South Africa’s Long Term Mitigation Scenarios (LTMS) have allowed for the development of a national climate policy based on what is required by science to limit temperature increase to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. In response to the LTMS, the Government has adopted mitigation strategies that focus on accelerated energy efficiency across all sectors, ambitious low carbon technology research and development, new clean energy sources and behavioral change, as well as regulatory mechanisms and economic instruments. As a result of these strategies, South Africa’s emissions would grow at a reduced rate in the short term, plateau by 2030, and decline thereafter. In support of the Government’s strategies,

Creating new habits

We’re not going to create a more sustainable civilisation, unless we change our habits. And changing habits is not the easiest thing to do.

Here then, some links and thoughts from those who consider these matters. A New York Times article entitled Can You Become A Creature of New Habits discusses a Japanese technique…

… called kaizen, which calls for tiny, continuous improvements.
“Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain,” Ms. Ryan notes in her book. “If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”

Kaizen seems interesting to me because of the scorn that that, for example, more energetic environmentalists often direct at some of the more trivial lifestyle changes recommended in popular articles on ‘How to go green’, which may (for example) talk about unplugging cellphone chargers but neglect getting a smaller car, or just consuming less. Perhaps there is indeed a place for these seemingly trivial adjustments in a bigger continuum of change.

Personally, I find the deluge of news about climate change and other planetary disasters, to which I expose myself, often overwhelming and depressing. One of my antidotes to this despair is keeping a list of websites that make me happy, and visiting them quite often. And one of those sites is Zen Habits.

Which covers some very useful ideas about habits, and how to change them:

How to Establish New Habits the No-Sweat Way
13 Things to Avoid When Changing Habits