Collide-a-scape

**UPDATE: Stuart Pimm, the highly respected conservation biologist at Duke University, emailed me his thoughts on the climate change/global land use dichotomy that is implied by my post. It’s an important perspective. Stuart has given me permission to publish his email in its entirety. You can find it below at this comment.**

Perhaps the biggest problem I have with the debate over climate change science, politics, and policy is that it’s elbowed all other environmental issues off the public stage. This has to drive ecologists crazy. But it seems they’re all laying low in the (invasive) weeds. I don’t see any of them challenging the dominant belief that global warming is the single biggest environmental threat of the day.

Note that I said, of the day. Because I agree with the notion that climate change could well wreak havoc on society and life-supporting ecosystems later in this century. However, we got another tiny little problem on our hands that may do us in long before we overdose on carbon emissions. It’s known within the ecological community as global land use, an innocuous-sounding term even more confusing and vague than global warming. Who knows, maybe that’s one reason why so few are paying attention to it.

Fortunately, some scientists have tried to raise the worrisome profile of global land use. Last October, at Yale Environment Environment 360, Jonathan Foley wrote that there was “an unintended downside” to the sudden emergence of global warming as the most popular environmental concern:

In the rush to portray the perils of climate change, many other serious issues have been largely ignored. Climate change has become the poster child of environmental crises, complete with its own celebrities and campaigners. But is it so serious that we can afford to overlook the rise of infectious disease, the collapse of fisheries, the ongoing loss of forests and biodiversity, and the depletion of global water supplies?

Although I’m a climate scientist by training, I worry about this collective fixation on global warming as the mother of all environmental problems. Learning from the research my colleagues and I have done over the past decade, I fear we are neglecting another, equally inconvenient truth: that we now face a global crisis in land use and agriculture that could undermine the health, security, and sustainability of our civilization.

Just so we’re clear: Foley is not pulling this out of the clouds. As he mentions, there’s a solid body of work on global land use that’s been accumulating over the last decade. The trends are very, very worrisome. Chew on this and this just for starters, if you need to get up to speed. Last spring, when I was a Fellow at the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism, I took a course in global land use that blew my mind. Midway through, I was convinced that it easily rivals climate change as a meta environmental issue of urgent concern.

Since then, I’ve also become convinced that the Resilience Alliance represents one of the best conceptual paradigms to address the complex human/ecological relationship.  I wish their blog played a meaningful role in the public debate, but they don’t seem to have the appetite for engaging in the messy and cacophonous daily conversation.

Anyway, all this brings me to a news release from earlier this week that Tom Yulsman made me aware of. It’s a commentary on the ecological factors that have led scientists to informally define the current age we live in as the “Anthropocene.” As the authors of the essay note, the term was coined a decade ago,

at a time of dawning realization that human activity was indeed changing the Earth on a scale comparable with some of the major events of the ancient past. Some of these changes are now seen as permanent, even on a geological time-scale.

The authors carefully argue that the immensity of human-induced change on the earth warrants serious consideration of the “Anthropocene” term being adopted as a new, formal geological designation. But in my reading, they use the build-up of greenhouse gases to make their case. The equally large impacts from agiculture and urbanization seem to be downplayed.

To me, this represents a missed opportunity to put global land use on an equal par with climate change. But it does perhaps reflect the zietgeist that Foley was lamenting in his Yale 360 piece. It also makes me think that a reframing of the climate change debate–centered on “jumpstarting a clean energy revolution,” rather than combating future environmental harms–is the way to go. It not only would chart a less contentious path to a carbon-free energy policy, but it would free up the necessary political and media space for present-day environmental concerns, such as those already in evidence from global land use.

UPDATE: In a perceptive comment below, Geoff Dabelko, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, explains why it’s necessary to find ways to bridge the land use vs climate change dichotomy. He also cautions:

It cannot be a zero sum game in examining one versus another in part because the interconnections make it impossible and counterproductive but also because action will ultimately be limited on key fronts.

Which will win: peak oil or global warming?

If you follow both narratives in the blogosphere, which is where the debate is most kinetic, you already know that peak oil and global warming are flip sides of the same coin.

I come at this mainly as a journalist, but also as someone who is interested in archaeology and the collapse literature of recent decades. I’ll leave the modern-day parallels to Jared Diamond, though I tend to think he oversimplifies his case studies.

What fascinates me about the respective peak oil and global warming narratives is that both revolve around the same meme: that civilization is on the fast track to collapse, unless we make systemic changes to the way we live. The peak oil camp take the argument to its logical extension and talk earnestly about such things as overshoot, or carrying capacity. The gobal warming camp dabbles in this debate, but because they have a big tent (which must accomodate politicians), their overriding goal is to replace the world’s carbon economy with one that doesn’t spew greenhouse gas emissions. And hey, that is plenty formidable.

Still, in the global warming camp, there is no real engagment with underlying, socio/economic forces. There really can’t be when much of the rest of the world (understably) aspires to live like average Americans. Copenhagen is proof of that. Ironically, Andy Revkin, one of the few persons who has used his prominent platform to expand the intellectual sphere of the climate change debate, is often pilloried by hardcore climate advocates. Some of them hold to the notion that Revkin, despite a stellar body of work on the energy & climate change beat, has aided and abetted the guys in “black hats.” Go figure.

This recurring complaint against Revkin is part of a deeper animus that the the global warming camp has towards the media at large. The peak oil folks, for their part, are fighting just to be relevant. It’s mind-boggling to them that nobody but them seems to get the dire trajectory the world is on.

But some pretty famous climate scientists feel that way too about global warming.  Thus, as far as representatives from these two camps are concerned, the race to doomsday is on. Which will get their first? Will it be when the global demand for oil exceeds the supply, or will it be when the carbon load in the atmosphere tips a baking planet into ecological and social mayhem? Go ahead, flip a coin.

During George W. Bush’s two terms, environmentalists and archaeologists complained (with justification) that the oil & gas industry was allowed to run roughshod over Western public lands. I wrote a bunch about this for numerous magazines, from Audubon and Mother Jones to High Country News and Archaeology.

The same question arose in all these stories: can natural gas development coexist harmoniously with the preservation of scenic, environmental and cultural resources? Well, anyone who followed this issue during W’s era would obviously answer no, and that’s because the deck was stacked in favor of the oil & gas industry. Drilling permits were handed out like M & M’s. The two main overseers of Western public lands, the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service, exerted negligible regulatory oversight, with terrible consequences for wildlife, air quality, and ancient archaeology. There was no “multiple use” balance at all. One use took precedent over all others: gas drilling.

So now we have a new Administration that is promoting a different form of energy development. And guess what? That same question is popping up again, as this NYT story illustrates. But this time, the conflict is not over drilling rigs, but over whether solar and wind farms can coexist in spectacular places like the Mojave desert. As Todd Woody writes in his Times story, this latest debate over multiple use on public lands

encapsulates a rising tension between two goals held by environmental groups: preservation of wild lands and ambitious efforts to combat global warming.

Not only is the desert land some of the sunniest in the country, and thus suitable for large-scale power production, it is also some of the most scenic territory in the West. The Mojave lands have sweeping vistas of an ancient landscape that is home to desert tortoises, bighorn sheep, fringe-toed lizards and other rare animals and plants.

This new debate is likely to be fractious in the environmental community, pitting climate change advocates against preservationists.  There will also be rich doses of irony, courtesy of Cape wind opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is upset that Senator Diane Feinstein has kept renewable energy projects from going forward in areas of the Mojave desert that are slated to become National Monuments. Kennedy indignantly tells the Times:

This is arguably the best solar land in the world, and Senator Feinstein shouldn’t be allowed to take this land off the table without a proper and scientific environmental review.

You have to admire his chutzpa.

In the way this issue is now playing out–at least with respect to the Mojave lands–there are some interesting parallels beween the Bush Administation’s energy policy by executive decree and Senator Feinstein’s legislative fiat powers. As the Times notes:

Mrs. Feinstein heads the Senate subcommittee that oversees the budget of the Interior Department, giving her substantial clout over that agency, which manages the government’s landholdings. Her intervention in the Mojave means it will be more difficult for California utilities to achieve a goal, set by the state, of obtaining a third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020; projects in the monument area could have supplied a substantial portion of that power.

It’ll be interesting to see how environmental magazines cover this, including the one I worked at for nearly ten years, until 2008. Climate change is  the big environmental issue of our time; it really has overtaken all other issues, especially in the larger national debate. So it stands to reason that a headlong clash between competing environmental goals will provide much fodder for continuing coverage by environmental journalists.

As I said, we’ll see.

There’s much that intrigues me about this recently published study, but let’s start with the University of Utah press release, titled, “Is Global Warming Unstoppable?”

In case that didn’t catch your eye, here’s the dek: “Theory also says energy conservation doesn’t help.”

Now let’s go to the first three concise graphs of the release, which, like the headline, grabs you by the throat:

In a provocative new study, a University of Utah scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions – the major cause of global warming – cannot be stabilized unless the world’s economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.

“It looks unlikely that there will be any substantial near-term departure from recently observed acceleration in carbon dioxide emission rates,” says the new paper by Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences.

Garrett’s study was panned by some economists and rejected by several journals before acceptance by Climatic Change, a journal edited by renowned Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider. The study will be published online this week.

Who ever wrote this copy had to have previously worked in journalism. And when was the last time you saw a press release provide that kind of a back story to a study? (Hey, this research was panned and rejected well before it found a publisher.) It’s just brilliant stuff. And so is the rest of the release, which lucidly lays out the study’s methodology, key findings, and implications. There’s even a colorful bit on the researcher’s own “green” lifestyle, set up by this exchange:

So is Garrett arguing that conserving energy doesn’t matter?

“I’m just saying it’s not really possible to conserve energy in a meaningful way because the current rate of energy consumption is determined by the unchangeable past of economic production. If it feels good to conserve energy, that is fine, but there shouldn’t be any pretense that it will make a difference.”

Yet, Garrett says his findings contradict his own previously held beliefs about conservation, and he continues to ride a bike or bus to work, line dry family clothing and use a push lawnmower.

The only thing missing, if this were a typical newspaper story, are the obligatory quotes from fellow scientists applauding and trashing the study.

So allowing that this study is indeed “provocative” and credible, since it found a home in the journal Climatic Change, why hasn’t it gotten greater pick up in the science media or the blogosphere? After googling the researcher, Tim Garrett, I see that ScienceDaily distributed the University of Utah release and that a few bloggers and local journos noted the study. Beyond that, however, pretty much a black hole. No way you can fault the PR release. It all but screamed, LOOK AT ME. So what gives?

If Garrett is on to something here, then shouldn’t his study be getting more attention?

H/T: Michael Tobis

UPDATE: My hunch was correct. Lee Siegel, the writer of the press release, is a former reporter of 25 years–12 spent with the AP. He also has a flair for headlines and sizzling copy. Check out this one, which gained worldwide notice.

Are they coming? You can find out by listening to this CBC radio show.

On the program’s website, Gwynne Dyer discusses how his interest evolved a few years ago from passing curiosity to a serious exploration

into this idea that global warming could lead to wars. It turned into a year-long trek talking to scientists, soldiers and politicians in a dozen different countries. I have come back from that trip seriously worried, and there are four things I learned that I think you ought to know.

The first is that a lot of the scientists who study climate change are in a state of suppressed panic these days. Things seem to be moving much faster than their models predicted.

The second thing is that the military strategists are right. Global warming is going to cause wars, because some countries will suffer a lot more than others. That will make dealing with the global problem of climate change a lot harder.

Ah, you want the rest? Check out the site and maybe have a listen. I’m already interested in this, so I will.

We interrupt the bloggy flame wars to bring you this important discussion on global warming from the Colbert Report.  Extra bonus coverage of Al Gore’s most appealing trait. As anyone who remembers his hot tub experience with a Joe Lieberman stand-in on Saturday Night Live, the man can be very funny.

This Jon Stewart interview with Superfreaks co-author Steven Levitt will surely make Joe Romm et al reach for their Rolaids. Stewart doesn’t merely play it down the middle–he defends Levitt.

Roger Pielke Jr. highlights the one quote that will no doubt earn Stewart daggers from environmentalists.

But for me, what Stewart said in reference to the book’s controversy was more in tune with my own perspective on this and all other environmental issues:

Why does it have to be so dogmatic?

Guess what? Your dog is part of a carbon emissions, greenhouse gas factory. I can only imagine the horror my crunchy green, dog-loving friends in Boulder, Colorado, will feel when they read this post at High Country News.

For the record, no pets in my household, thanks to wicked allergies on both sides of the family.

The NYT has a nice round-up of perspectives on this recent Pew poll, which finds:

There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising.

I tend to think this poll is more a snapshot in time. We’re still in a major economic downturn, as Pew research director Andrew Kohut alluded to in this AP story:

The priority that people give to pollution and environmental concerns and a whole host of other issues is down because of the economy and because of the focus on other things. When the focus is on other things, people forget and see these issues as less grave.

Then again, this is a fascinating picture from a war zone. It suggests that some people who have good reason to be distracted from enviromental issues are still focusing on global warming as a major concern.

If we really want to lick this global warming problem, then we need to be scared straight, says an Australian ethics professor:

There is a view we should not scare people because it makes them go down their burrows and close the door but I think the situation is so serious that although people are afraid they are not fearful enough given the science. Personally I cannot see any alternative to ramping up the fear factor.

A lot of smart people who are concerned about global warming believe this in their hearts–that fear is the best (and possibly only) motivating tool. But absent the kind of visceral connection that gets ordinary people worried about the environment, real mass concern remains elusive. Hence the temptation by many climate advocates to play up fearsome links between individual weather disasters, like a flood or wildfire, and climate change.

Do environmental ethicists have anything to say about this political strategy?