- "Protecting the oceans through marine protected areas can provide higher and more sustained income through tourism and controlled fisheries than continued exploitation. This is the result of IUCN’s new compilation of case studies about the economic benefits of marine protected areas"
- Southern Nevada Water Authority (Las Vegas), which has per capita use of 235gcd (double everyone else) and plans to double their population served is looking for MORE SUPPLY. Surreal but mostly irresponsible!
- A special report (good articles!) on San Diego's water crisis.
- "Nearly 80 percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon results from cattle ranching, according to a new report by Greenpeace. More than 38,600 square miles has been cleared for pasture since 1996, bringing the total area occupied by cattle ranches in the Brazilian Amazon to 214,000 square miles, an area larger than France. The legal Amazon, an region consisting of rainforests and a biologically-rich grassland known as cerrado, is now home to more than 80 million head of cattle. For comparison, the entire U.S. herd was 96 million in 2008."
- "The Center for Integrated Water Resources Management, hosted by the US Army Corps of Engineers in Alexandria, Virginia, is set to become UNESCO's first US-based institute." Check out that acronym! ICIWaRM -- Icky-Warm? Can we get some PR folks on this?
- Wanger's Memorandum decision and order and Finding of Facts and Conclusions of Law on the case ruling that people need to be considered wrt water management devoted to the health of the Delta Smelt.
- "In Syria and also in Jordan, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, climate change threatens to reduce the availability of scarce water resources, increase food insecurity, hinder economic growth and lead to large-scale population movements, the report said. This could hold serious implications for peace in the region." 160 Syrian villages have already been abandoned.
- Meanwhile, Kofi Annan's Global Humanitarian Forum says "325m people around the world are seriously affected by climate change every year and that this number could more than double, to around 660m, by 2030."
Thursday, June 4
Speed Blogging
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8 comments:
David
I'm a big fan of your blog. The only shame is that you've hook, line and sinkered the climate change spin that is out there.
Firstly, a typo - it's 1000s not millions.
More importantly, the Kofi Annan report is crass both methodologically and spinwise.
Try:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/a-methodological-embarassment-5314
or this quote on a previous estimate:
The statistic of 150,000 climate change deaths is from the WHO’s The World Health Report 2002, page 72 of which says:
Climate change was estimated to be responsible in 2000 for approximately 2.4% of worldwide diarrhoea, 6% of malaria in some middle income countries and 7% of dengue fever in some industrialized countries. In total, the attributable mortality was 154 000 (0.3%) deaths.
If you spent just 1 day looking beyond the spin you would find that the skeptics have a point.
Me bad!
It is millions - I thought you were quoting the deaths figures.
Apologies.
So we agree that people are dying of bad water and that millions will be affected by climate change? Good.
The fact is that little political movement is made on the negative externalities that intense and concentrated "animal food production" has on a number of fronts, such as: climate change (cow methane, deforestation/destruction of carbon sinks, etc.), water and soil health (factory farm manure runoff/lagoons [e.g., collapse of Chesapeake Bay ecosystem], groundwater contamination, nutrient and heavy metal soil overloads), as well as human health (swine flu, e. coli, over-eating cheap meat leading to obesity and heart disease, etc.).
Mind you, I am a true omnivore, but there certainly has to be a change in the way animals and their subsequent meat are produced. This is especially true as China is completely excited about raising their meat consumption, and I don't blame them for wanting to eat like Americans nor do I blame Brazilian farmers for wanting to expand production and make a buck (or Brazil real) while they ship their beef to East Asia.
That doesn't mean that the current track is sustainable. What Al Gore and his ilk need to realize that the most difficult issue to tackle on climate change is how people eat because it is in the center of the energy-economics-food security-water security nexus. And let's face it, we need to eat.
I enjoy your blog. I came across this NOAA opinion that might be of interest to you.
NOAA Biological Opinion Finds California Water Projects Jeopardize Listed Species; Recommends Alternatives
June 4, 2009
NOAA released its final biological opinion today that finds the water pumping operations in California’s Central Valley by the federal Bureau of Reclamation jeopardize the continued existence of several threatened and endangered species under the jurisdiction of NOAA’s Fisheries Service....
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090604_biological.html
"So we agree that people are dying of bad water and that millions will be affected by climate change? Good."
- well we agree on the first one - but the second not really.
Millions if not billions are affected by climate. Period. Most of humanity's development has been spent fighting/taming climate/weather from housing/clothing/umbrellas all the way through to water storage and treatment.
Whether US cap n' trade or the UK's reduction targets will have a measurable impact on the few baly estimated percent is highly suspect.
Whilst I shot myself in the foot with my post - most headlines had been about 300K deaths rising to 600K - the real point was about the methods used to link poverty to climate change. These are frequently crass even disingenuous.
To change the subject slightly - have you read Dambisa Moyo's Dead Aid (Or Easterly's White Man's Burden or Bauer)? I'd be interested in your thoughts on this issue.
@Anon -- good point, and you are getting at the mitigation vs. adaption debate. I have said that developed countries should work on the former, developing on the latter (probably with $$ from developed countries, the guilty).
Developing countries have more pressing needs, of course. I think they should follow the copenhagen consensus to get more bang (or lives saved) for the buck.
OTOH, I KNOW that most aid to developing countries is wasted (so, yes, I am pro-Easterly and anti-Sachs wrt development). I think I've read one of Bauer's papers, but I know I should read more.
http://aguanomics.com/search?q=easterly
http://aguanomics.com/search?q=sachs
Thanks
I'm 'guessing' from your response and the Sachs is batshit crazy piece, you might find this review interesting
http://blogs.nyu.edu/fas/dri/aidwatch/2009/06/how_to_reach_closure_after_blo.html
A summary of Sach's recent catfight (from the biased view of the planner) and spurious ad hom and other attacks on Easterly and Moyo.
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