Waxman-Markey Bill: A Suicidal Move For Humanity
If I wasn’t such a cynic, I swear I wouldn’t have believed my eyes when I saw Greenpeace on the same side as the American Petroleum Institute and the National Pork Producers Council. But then I looked in the other column, and found that the Sierra Club and the Union Of Concerned Scientists were siding with Rio Tinto and DuPont. What the hell!?
The title of this article is a big giveaway, but that doesn’t make the split between different interest groups any less remarkable: take a look at http://maplight.org/map/us/bill/83265/default for yourself.
It’s really difficult to summarise Waxman-Markey, or the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 in a few sentences, but David at The Good Human has done a decent job, so if you want to read what it’s all about then go here first. But why would a Bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions cause such a remarkable alignment of apparently opposing interests? The clue is in the subtitle:
To create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.
Of the four key points, only one of them indicates a desire to protect the natural environment in any way; the other three, in order: promote economic growth, promote economic growth and promote economic growth. The main supporters of the Bill are therefore, unsurprisingly, all those companies and lobby groups that sit in the mainstream of the global market, among them some of the most destructive companies ever to disgrace the planet. In the best traditions of greenwash, the “environmental” supporters are largely organisations that have historically been comfortable working with these corporate monsters.
“So what’s wrong with economic growth?” you may ask. You can go to The Earth Blog for the full story, but here is a quick extract:
Trade is synonymous with Economic activity in the modern, globalized world. Unlike the self-sufficient Amazonian tribe that finds all it needs within walking distance, nations are no longer content to remain within their Economic borders: they cannot gain the diversity and level of growth they “need” simply by using (and exhausting) what they have, especially not if their consumers have become accustomed to a materially high standard of living. They must trade to create the necessary flow of materials, goods and capital to feed a growing Economy. More that just this, though, as corporations demand transparent borders and global channels, they – not the national governments – end up dictating the way the Economy operates: workers in China, raw materials in Uganda, oil in Saudi Arabia, customers in the USA – no problem! Who needs local economies when you can have a global Economy?
So Trade is the measure of the strength of the Economy and, as only a person immersed in an ocean of denial could refute, the production of Carbon Dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere, the oceans and the exhausted biosphere is a direct function of the power of that economic machine.
The listed opponents are those groups that either oppose any attempt to cut greenhouse gases (which makes them look pretty stupid, considering the nature of some of the supporters) or have seen through the pseudo-environmental veneer of the Bill and stared into its pro-industrial, inhuman heart. You only have to consider the trivial greenhouse gas cuts that are being bandied around — anywhere between 12% and 17% by 2020 — in relation to the urgent need to cut emissions by a minimum of 95% in the USA by 2030, to realise that support of Waxman-Markey is support for the continued, irreversible destruction of the global ecology and thus humanity itself.
James Hansen puts it like this:
Burning just the oil and gas sitting in known fields will drive atmospheric CO2 well over 400 ppm and ignite a devil’s cauldron of melted icecaps, bubbling permafrost, and combustible forests from which there will be no turning back. But if we cut off the largest source of carbon dioxide, coal, we have a chance to bring CO2 back to 350 ppm and still lower through agricultural and forestry practices that increase carbon storage in trees and soil.
The essential step, then, is to phase out coal emissions over the next two decades. And to declare off limits artificial high-carbon fuels such as tar sands and shale while moving to phase out dependence on conventional petroleum as well.
This requires nothing less than an energy revolution based on efficiency and carbon-free energy sources. Alas, we won’t get there with the Waxman-Markey bill, a monstrous absurdity hatched in Washington after energetic insemination by special interests.
For all its “green” aura, Waxman-Markey locks in fossil fuel business-as-usual and garlands it with a Ponzi-like “cap-and-trade” scheme.
As I explained in “Time’s Up!” there are, in fact, no solutions to our terrible position that lie within the realms of Industrial Civilization: the addiction this system has to economic growth means that it has to effectively gut itself before it can ever be sustainable; nevertheless, a good start would be to recognise that nothing that is being supported by such chemical and carbon monoliths as DuPont, Ford and Alcoa, has any chance of giving us a survivable future.
If you still support Waxman-Markey after this, then I can only assume you have a death wish.
Most Of Earths Biodiversity Found In The Soil
“I wonder if I shall fall right through the Earth!” mused Alice-in-Wonderland as she tumbled down the rabbit-hole.” How funny it’ll seem to come out among people that walk with their heads downwards! The antipathies, I think …”
Alice’s experiences in a below-ground world, written about by Lewis Carroll in 1865 in his famed Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, were fiction.
Or were they?
If the work of biologist Diana Wall of Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins is any indication, life indeed imitates art.
Wall, who studies life beneath the surface, and her colleagues are using modern DNA-based methods to discover the extent of the biodiversity under our feet. Soil, it turns out, provides habitat for millions of species, an array of animals every bit as varied and strange as those Alice encountered.
“You have roundworms, or nematodes, the lions of the underground,” says Wall. “These animals rule the Kingdom of Soil.”
A nematode worm is extracted from tundra soil near Toolik Lake.
For example, some 89 nematode species are found in just over 90 cubic centimeters of soil below a tropical forest in Cameroon.
“The unseen, and mostly under appreciated, realm beneath us is teeming with life,” says Wall. “Earth is really brown and black, not green.”
Increasingly, soils are recognized as one of the most species-rich habitats on Earth, according to Matt Kane, a microbiologist and program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Environmental Biology, which funds Wall’s research.
“Soil animals and their interactions with microorganisms influence many ecosystem processes,” says Kane, “including decomposition, nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, plant community dynamics and the soil structure itself.”
NSF's Arctic LTER Site (ARC) and Toolik Lake field research station are on Alaska's North Slope.
An understanding of the biodiversity of soils is critical to maintaining the “ecosystem services” from which humans benefit.
“All above-surface organisms ultimately depend on soil biodiversity for food and habitat,” Wall says. “Human health and national economies are largely based on benefits derived from soils.
“What some call ‘plain old dirt’ in reality provides fertile grounds for our food, whether crops on land or fish and crustaceans from freshwater and marine sediments [soils].”
Soil biodiversity, she says, is also crucial to controlling human, animal and plant pathogens; floods and erosion; waste-processing; and water purification.
Some regions on Earth “have high-fertility soils, like the Nile Delta region,” says Henry Gholz, an ecologist and director of NSF’s Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program. “Others are underlain by permafrost, or are very shallow and less productive.”
Global changes have led to degraded soils through desertification, droughts and floods; many places are losing once-fertile lands.
Boreal forest stretches across mid-Alaska; NSF's Bonanza Creek LTER site is located here.
How do soil biologists uncover what’s usually obscured by roads, lawns, and golf courses, by forests and meadows?
“Soil animal biodiversity has only been researched in a limited number of ecosystems,” says Wall.
This dearth of information results partly from a lack of methods to rapidly and easily measure biodiversity below-ground, she and colleagues state in a paper published earlier this year in the journal Soil Biology & Biochemistry.
Current ways of studying the biodiversity in soils are based on traditional morphological identification (looking at animals under a microscope and “keying” them out).
With that in mind, scientists Wall and Ed Ayres at CSU, along with Richard Bardgett of Lancaster University in the U.K., and Jim Garey and Tiehang Wu of the University of South Florida, conducted research on the below-ground biodiversity of two Alaskan ecosystems using sophisticated DNA sequencing.
“It’s the most comprehensive molecular analysis of soil fauna to date,” says Wall.
The biologists studied life beneath the surface at two of NSF’s 26 LTER sites: the Bonanza Creek and Arctic sites in Alaska.
Bonanza Creek is in interior Alaska southwest of Fairbanks, below the Arctic Circle; the Arctic site, above the Arctic Circle, lies in the foothills region of the Brooks Range on Alaska’s North Slope. Bonanza Creek is mostly boreal spruce forest, while the Arctic site is largely flat, open, heath-like tundra.
Wall and colleagues found that nematodes were the dominant soil animals, whether under boreal forest (60.9 percent) or tundra (69.8 percent). Rotifers, microscopic wheel-shaped animals, made up 26.1 percent of the soil animals in the Arctic tundra and 18 percent of life beneath the boreal forest.
Arthropods such as spiders comprised some 19.4 percent of the boreal forest underground, and 2.6 percent of that of the tundra. Tiny tardigrades, better known as water-bears, were rarer, at 1.3 percent and 1.5 percent of boreal forest and tundra, respectively.
“A molecular approach [DNA sequencing] to ‘gazing through the looking glass’ provided new information on what lives below the surface, at least in two ecosystems in Alaska,” says Wall. “It adds to our understanding of soil animal biodiversity, especially in locations rapidly affected by global warming.”
Climate change is happening faster in Alaska than almost anywhere on Earth.
“Life beneath the surface at the Bonanza Creek and Arctic LTER sites is already showing changes,” says Gholz. “It’s imperative that we know what’s there now, to better plan for the future.”
In Lewis Carroll’s century-plus-ago tale, Alice finally reached bottom on her long fall down the rabbit-hole. Landing in unfamiliar surroundings, she wondered what the name of the country was. And whether it was warm there.
A century hence or sooner, the answer to her question might be “yes”–even above the Arctic Circle.
For Alice, the White Rabbit led the way. For the denizens of Earth’s soils, scientists like Diana Wall are shining light on underground darkness.
“How late it’s getting!” cautioned the White Rabbit. “There’s not a moment to be lost.”
Diana Wall might sound exactly the same warning.
Watch two videos about this here and here
Senate Subcommittee Approves Massive Service Bill
Anyone who knows me, knows that I have a huge crush on AmeriCorps. I spent 4 years of my life serving this country through AmeriCorps and it was the best time I have ever had. So great in fact that I am constantly telling people they should sign up (if you are reading this, you should sign up for AmeriCorps).
The Senate Labor, Health & Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee reported out a funding package that includes $1.157 billion for the Corporation for National and Community Service for FY 2010.
This is huge. Not only is this a record amount of federal funding for service — $267 million more than last year — but it’s $98 million more than the House appropriated last week, and even $8 million more than President Obama requested!
Please click here to thank Senators Harkin and Cochran, the Chair and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, for their strong commitment to service.
Again – thank you. But our work is not yet done. Now that the House and Senate have spoken, the appropriations debate will go to a joint conference committee. The date hasn’t been scheduled yet, but it will take place soon.
In the meantime, please take this time to thank Senators Harkin and Cochran. The dream of a fully-funded Serve America Act has never been closer to reality.
http://tools.bethechangeinc.org/appropsthx
Thank you for your continued dedication.
The Yes Men Fix The World
Have you ever wished that big companies would stop thinking about what is best for the bottom line and start thinking about what is best for the earth (and thus their own long term survival). Well The Yes Men decided to stop waiting and to give those big companies a “gentle push.”
Their infiltrate and destroy style of satire is hilarious and a stinging social commentary all at once. I am actually going to get a chance to view a preview screening of this movie, so I will let you know how it is, but even if the movie sucks The Yes Men are awesome, and what they do is amazing. We have covered them before hereand here.
Presser for the movie below:
Read the rest of The Yes Men Fix The World
Co2 Per Passenger Per Mile
This goes well with the Amtrak article I posted a bit ago.
Clearly biking/walking is the best. But look at how little co2 is added per new passenger. If you must drive, cram as many people as possible into your car people!
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