Tag Archives: climate change

Shades of Green: Parenting in an Uncertain Age

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When Elijah was four years old, he wanted to dress as a polar bear for Halloween trick-or-treating so his mother, Sandra, sewed him a costume from an old white bed sheet. As she was making his costume, it occurred to her that global warming may mean the costume may outlast the polar bears. So she began to wonder how a loving and caring parent is supposed to explain the extinction of a species to a child. If parents are the heroes of children, why didn’t they do something to prevent it?

The continued existence of polar bears was not the only species that worried her. She knew that within Elijah’s lifetime, scientists are expecting one in four mammals to go extinct – for marine mammals the prognosis is one in three. And this doesn’t count species of fish, insects and plants. If iconic species such as tigers, whales, tuna, sharks, sea turtles and butterflies should disappear off the face of the Earth, what will this mean to children? How much will it shrink their experience, stunt their imagination and darken their expectation? If the world that adults bequeath to children is depleted and impoverished, will it diminish their respect for humanity and warp their values when they become adults?

These are just the first of the issues that prompted Sandra Steingraber to write Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis. As a conscientious and protective mother living in the 21st century, these are the concerns flooding over her. If sex and the mystery of procreation are difficult to explain to a child, how does a parent explain climate change, species extinction, ocean acidification and global pollution, all of which are stories of de-generation and de-construction, of de-creation rather than re-generation? How does a mother dispel the anxiety that the life she is offering to her child may be less secure and promising than the life she was offered? How does she reconcile this prospect with the obligation of parents to protect their children from harm and to open their future to opportunity?

Raising Elijah is powerful because it asks the important questions that a responsible parent should ask. It steps outside the realm of thoughtless consumerism into the world of protective nurturing, giving focus and clarity to those hidden doubts lurking below surface worries. She cites disturbing US health trends for children – trends in Canada will be similar – that are the likely result of their exposure to toxic chemicals prevalent in air pollution, pesticides, heavy metals and miscellaneous plastics.

  • 1 in 8 is born prematurely, the leading cause of death in the first months of life and the leading cause of disability.
  • 1 in 11 has asthma, the most common chronic childhood disease and a leading cause of school absenteeism. Asthma’s incidence has doubled since 1980.
  • 1 in 10 has a learning disability.
  • Nearly 1 in 10 has attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. 
  • 1 in 110 has autism or is on the autism spectrum. Causes are unknown, but exposure to chemical agents in early pregnancy is one of several suspected contributors.
  • 1 in 10 girls begin breast development before the age of eight. On average, breast development now begins nearly two years earlier (age 9) than it did in the early 1960s (age 11). Early puberty is a known risk factor for adult breast cancer. One of the suspected causes is estrogen mimicking chemicals found in plastics.

Once considered unusual, these “new morbidities of childhood” now appear almost normal or inevitable, writes Steingraber. The authors of a US pediatric health investigation, whose work was recently published in Environmental Health Perspectives, came to a more damning conclusion: “In the absence of toxicity testing,” they concluded, “we are inadvertently employing pregnant women and children as uninformed subjects to warn us of new environmental toxicants. Paradoxically, because industry is not obligated to supply the data on developmental neurotoxicity, the costs of human disease, research, and prevention are socialized whereas the profits are privatized.”

For a mother who is passionately protective of the health and wellbeing of her child, Steingraber finds herself trying to raise Elijah in a toxic environment of unavoidable risk. So she must take protective measures that seem strange in a culture that purports to be civilized. How much mercury-tainted tuna can she safely feed to Elijah? Because she knows that children are smaller than adults, their metabolic rates are higher and they are in a vulnerable growing phase, can she trust the safety of approved exposure standards? Is exposure to any toxin safe for a child? What industries are nearby that might render the air unfit to breath or the water hazardous to drink? What kind of toxins are being emitted from the rug on which her child is playing? Will their dog track in herbicides from the neighbourhood lawns? Can she be sure no residue pesticides taint their fruits and vegetables? Are genetically modified foods safe? The ethical and regulatory lapses in our modern industrial state have forced her into a defensive position laden with fear.

“The great moral issue of our own day,” she contends, is “the environmental crisis, an unfolding calamity whose main victims are our own children and grandchildren.” She suggests that it can be viewed as a tree with two main branches. “One branch represents what is happening to our planet through the atmospheric accumulation of heat-trapping gases. The second branch represents what is happening to us through the accumulation of inherently toxic chemical pollutants in our bodies. Follow the first branch and you find droughts, floods, acidifying oceans, dissolving coral reefs and faltering plankton stocks. Follow the second branch and you find pesticides in children’s urine, lungs stunted by air pollutants, abbreviated pregnancies, altered hormone levels and lower scores on cognitive tests.”

To a thinking and protective mother, the original Tree of Life is undergoing a disturbing transformation.

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Emergency Oil Reserves Tapped: Conservation Plan Gathers Dust

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Last week a global oil emergency was declared and the response rolled out, but almost nobody noticed. The International Energy Agency (IEA) started tapping into member state’s emergency oil reserves, something that has only happened twice before. While the crisis in Libya has removed only a tiny percentage of world oil supply from the market, about 1.5 million barrels a day, IEA member countries agreed to release 2 million barrels of oil per day from their emergency stocks over the next 30 days.
 
So what was the emergency? According to the IEA media release, “the ongoing disruption of oil supplies from Libya . . . threatens to undermine the fragile global economic recovery.”
 
The “economic recovery” the IEA talks about implies the return to ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions, which was only briefly interrupted in 2009 by the global economic disruption following the 2007-2008 oil price spike. What they want to recover is the economic growth that has pushed greenhouse gas emissions to record levels in 2010, setting our planet on track for two real emergencies – run away global warming and economic chaos when the next major oil supply disruption happens.
 
According to a recent IEA report, energy-related carbon emissions in 2010 were 5 percent higher than the previous record set in 2008. Fatih Birol, IEA chief economist, was widely quoted ringing the alarm bells about how this means we are on the brink of exceeding 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels – the point at which many scientists believe global warming would spiral out of our control to absolutely catastrophic levels. “Our latest estimates are another wake-up call,” said Birol. “The world has edged incredibly close to the level of emissions that should not be reached until 2020 if the 2ºC target is to be attained.”
 
We need to learn to burn much less oil sooner or later, so why not take ‘bold and decisive’ action this summer? If the IEA, which represents the wealthiest countries including Canada, was serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and vulnerability to oil price spikes they have a number of options. The most obvious is to blow the dust of their 2005 report Saving Oil in a Hurry which asserts that “In the case of a moderate reduction in oil supplies, a reduction in IEA transport fuel demand of even a few percent could have a substantial dampening effect on surging world oil prices.”
 
The transport sector accounts for over half of oil use in IEA countries and is expected to account for nearly all future increases in oil use. Increases in oil consumption now must come from destructive unconventional sources such as the Canadian tar sands.
 
More and more countries are admitting that major changes in transportation policy are needed to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets. More and more experts are also warning that the peaking of conventional oil supplies will likely lead to a destructive roller coaster of price spikes and economic downturns. Saving Oil in a Hurry lays out measures to rapidly reduce oil demand in ways that could translate into a long-term positive response to both of these daunting challenges.
 
Some of the changes suggested are what was recently tested during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. For example, rush hour bus-only lanes were converted to 24 hour operation on many main streets including Broadway. Lower or free transit fares are also suggested in Saving Oil in a Hurry; during the Olympics many buses operated without fare boxes – offering free transit on a random basis. Increased transit service is also part of Saving Oil in a Hurry the report advocates increasing off-peak transit service including weekends and evenings to capture recreational travel and keeping older buses in service longer to increase peak service as new buses come into service – as was done during the Olympics. All of these measures have been reversed since the Olympics but transit ridership is still significantly higher than before.
 
Other measures suggested in Saving Oil in a Hurry include lowering highway speed limits to 90 km/h, introducing aggressive driving efficiency education campaigns, and converting existing general purpose lanes to high occupancy vehicle lanes.
 
All of these measures could lead into the larger changes needed over the medium and long term. But our governments and international agencies seem determined to waste this perfectly good emergency and make us more vulnerable to the next oil price spike – which could be a big one if Saudi Arabian oil extraction is disrupted.
 
What is really needed to deal with the twin crises of peak oil and global warming is a major transformation of transportation and economic policy. Ensuring that more and more oil and other resources are consumed every year is no longer a sane policy. Either one of these challenges justifies action on the scale of the mobilization for World War II, which saw civilian automobile manufacturing plants converted to military production almost overnight.
 
Transportation Transformation: Building complete communities and a zero-emission transportation system in BC, a recent report I co-authored, proposes taking many of the measures in Saving Oil in a Hurry much further. We envision transit lanes painted on almost every major arterial in BC, lower transit fares, and electricity replacing oil as the fuel for public transit. We also propose rapidly creating more complete communities with much better cycling and pedestrian facilities to reduce the need to travel by car or transit for everyday tasks such as grocery shopping. Longer distance freight and passenger service would be provided by electric trains.
 
We need a declaration of emergency to mobilize the resources needed for the transformation. One opportunity has been squandered, but the next and likely more dramatic oil price shock could be right around the corner. Our governments and institutions seem set to squander the next opportunity for change as well, unless they feel real pressure to face up to reality. You can get involved in creating the Transportation Transformation we need, start by signing up for action updates at www.StopThePave.org.

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Al Gore in Rolling Stone: Climate of Denial

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Op-ed by Al Gore in Rolling Stone. Excerpt: “The answer to the question ‘Is [professional wrestling] real?’ seemed connected to the
question of whether the referee was somehow confused about his role: Was
he too an entertainer?

“That is pretty much the role now being played by most of the news
media in refereeing the current wrestling match over whether global
warming is ‘real,’ and whether it has any connection to the constant
dumping of 90 million tons of heat-trapping emissions into the Earth’s
thin shell of atmosphere every 24 hours.

“Admittedly, the contest over global warming is a challenge for the
referee because it’s a tag-team match, a real free-for-all. In one
corner of the ring are Science and Reason. In the other corner:
Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues.”

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Germany goes back to black in snub to green power

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From Reuters – June 20, 2011

by Peter Dinkloh and Christopher Seitz

(Reuters) – Germany
is set to turn back to coal, gas and imports to fill the energy chasm
left by its fast-track exit of nuclear power, refusing to boost green
power and threatening its efforts to lower emissions.

The government permanently shut eight nuclear power plants immediately after the Fukushima crisis in Japan, and is closing the remaining nine in stages up to 2022.

However,
Europe’s largest economy is shying away from pushing for renewable
energy to replace those plants, even though opinion polls show people
are willing to accept higher bills to support green power.

In
2006, Germany envisaged producing 35 percent of its power through
renewable energy by 2020, and has retained this target even though it is
shutting 13 percent of its generation capacity.

Analysts
and industry experts see a return of conventional power and imports as a
stopgap, endangering the country’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas
emissions by 40 percent by 2020, compared with 1990 levels.

“It
seems Germany will replace lost nuclear generation by coal and gas, and
imports, rather than adding new renewable capacities,” Societe Generale
analyst Didier Laurens said.

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A Tyee Series – Coming to a Shore Near You: Acidified Water

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From TheTyee.ca – June 14, 2011

by Jennifer Langston

[Editor’s note: The Tyee is pleased to bring you
the second in an occasional series of articles, ‘Northwest Ocean
Acidification: The Other Cost of Carbon Pollution’, produced by the Sightline Institute.]

Five years ago, many scientists probably
thought they’d never see large pools of corrosive water near the ocean’s
surface in their lifetimes.

Basic chemistry told them that as the oceans absorbed more carbon dioxide pollution
from cars and smokestacks and industrial processes, seawater would
become more acidic. Eventually, the oceans could become corrosive enough
to kill vulnerable forms of sea life like corals and shellfish and
plankton.

But scientists believed the effects of this chemical process — called ocean acidification — would be confined to deep offshore ocean waters for some time. Models projected
it would take decades before corrosive waters reached the shallow
continental shelf off the Pacific Coast, where an abundance of sea life
lives.

Until a group of oceanographers started hunting for it.

“What we found, of course, was that it was everywhere we looked,” said Richard Feely, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, who was one of the first to recognize the trouble ahead.

The researchers found surprisingly acidic water
— corrosive enough to begin dissolving the shells and skeletal
structures of some marine creatures — at relatively shallow depths all
along the west coast, from British Columbia to the tip of Baja
California. Researchers hadn’t expected
to see that extent of ocean acidification until the middle to the end
of this century. But in a seasonal process called “upwelling,”
summertime winds pushed surface waters offshore and pulled deeper, more
acidic water towards the continental shelf, shorelines, and beaches.

Or as one Oregon State University marine ecologist put it: “The future of ocean acidification is already here off the Oregon Coast.”

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Shades of Green: Extreme Weather – Floods, Fires, Storms and Droughts

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The realization that we might be partly responsible for the recent spate of destructive weather is difficult to accept because it requires us to change the image of ourselves from innocent victim to guilty perpetrator. And, given the psychology of denial, we are inclined to avoid this sea-change of perspective. However, as climate science tracks the effects of the billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide we emit into the atmosphere from our burning of fossil fuels, its conclusions are forcing us to consider that our behaviour might be implicated in the extreme weather we are getting.

Weather, of course, is difficult to predict – this is why forecasts are often inaccurate. But climate is a much easier because general principles apply. Add heat and the weather becomes more active and extreme. Greater temperature differentials cause stronger convection activity and higher winds. When a 1.0°C rise in temperature increases the activity of the hydrological cycle by 7 percent, a modest warming translated into higher rates of evaporation and precipitation. (A disturbed hydrological cycle may explain why coastal BC is getting such a cold and wet spring this year – other places are getting our heat while we are getting their rain.) The climatic energy of warmer places always generates more dramatic weather.

Now apply these general principles of climate to the weather extremes that have recently traumatized Canada and the US:

  • The Richelieu River in Quebec reached a record level in early May of 30.7 metres above normal. The unprecedented flooding was attributed to heavy rainfall combined with exceptional melt from the high snowfall in the Adirondack Mountains. The excessive rain and snowfall have been attributed to an increase in the activity of the hydrological cycle.
  • Flooding has ravaged Manitoba, the worst in at least 300 years. The cause, as in Quebec, is excessive rainfall and the melting of unusually heavy snowpacks.
  • Similarly, US states along the Mississippi River have been hit by record floods as unprecedented volumes of water make their way into the Gulf of Mexico.
  • In a tragic irony, nearby Texas and the adjacent states of New Mexico and Oklahoma have been hit by record droughts and fires.
  • “Unprecedented wildfires” were burning in 30,000 hectares of northern Alberta. Winds of 100 km/h swept one of the province’s 115 forest fires into the town of Slave Lake, burning nearly half the buildings in the settlement of 7,000 people. Similar conditions threatened Russia last year and are of concern again this year as some 400 forest fires burn uncontrolled through its dry forests. Last year, Australia ended a record drought with record floods. Pakistan got only an unprecedented flood. The Amazon, in four years, is in its second once-in-century drought.
  • The tornado season in the US has been particularly destructive. April saw a record 600 twisters hit the South, causing widespread damage and a death toll of over 300. On a single day in May, a record of 226 tornados terrorized southern states. Then, on May 23, a horrendous tornado touched down in Joplin, Missouri, flattening a 1.6 km swath through the town, obliterating 2,000 buildings and killing 142 people – 90 more are missing. Two days later, 13 people were killed by a twister in Oklahoma. And the tornado season isn’t officially over until the end of June.

No one can be certain that global warming and the resulting climate change are implicated in these extreme weather events. Meteorologists are particularly careful to avoid the implication because the detailed causal connections are characteristically complex and uncertain. But indisputable global measurements show the biosphere is warming and the hydrological cycle is becoming more active. Extreme weather events are consistent with the computer models predicting the consequences of rising concentrations of greenhouse gases. The science is clear. It’s the specifics of weather that confuse us. We can’t be certain whether an individual weather event is extreme because of mere probability or because something more systemic and sinister is occurring.

But the simple physics of climate tell us that a gradual increase in global temperature will cause more frequent and sudden outbursts of extreme weather, extremes that we can erroneously attribute to the normally unusual. Such extremes that arrive in the guise of ordinary exceptions are particularly dangerous because each individual event can be rationalized, excused, overlooked and dismissed as if it were nothing portentous.

This has generally been our reaction to extreme weather events – we dismiss each one as a normal exception. Without the perspective of time, we fail to realize that once-in-a-century events are happening more frequently, or that melting ice is actually raising sea levels – BC government planners recently announced that all coastal structures with a design life to 2050 should allow for a 0.5 metre rise in sea level while those with a design life to 2100 should allow for a 1.0 metre rise.

Sea level rise, global warming and increasing storm intensity all came together in an “ecologically unprecedented” 1999 event in Canada’s Mackenzie Delta. High sea levels, the absence of Arctic sea ice to blanket waves, and a large surge from an intense storm all combined to send a flood of salt water 20 kilometres inland. This wide swath of the fresh-water Delta is still dead after 12 years. “It’s just another example of how recent climatic factors seem to be out of our normal range of variability,” said Professor John Smol of the Paleoecological Environment Assessment and Research Lab at Toronto’s Queen’s University. “We actually have evidence now that [global warming] has started happening and it isn’t just part of some natural variability” (Globe & Mail, May 17/11).

We all worry when weather’s variability becomes extreme. But we don’t want to accept that extreme weather events are actually linked to our greenhouse gas emissions, a reluctance that condemns us to be victims of our own doing – a sad irony that makes every weather disaster even more tragic.

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Canada leaves out rise in oilsands pollution from UN climate report

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From ipolitics.ca – May 30, 2011

by Mike De Souza

The federal government has acknowledged that it deliberately excluded
data indicating a 20 per cent increase in annual pollution from
Canada’s oilsands industry in 2009 from a recent 567-page report on
climate change that it was required to submit to the United Nations.

The
numbers, uncovered by Postmedia News, were left out of the report, a
national inventory on Canada’s greenhouse gas pollution. It revealed a
six per cent drop in annual emissions for the entire economy from 2008
to 2009, but does not directly show the extent of pollution from the
oilsands production, which is greater than the greenhouse gas emissions
of all the cars driven on Canadian roads.

The data also indicated
that emissions per barrel of oil produced by the sector is increasing,
despite claims made by the industry in an advertising campaign.

“The
oilsands remain Canada’s fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas
pollution, and they’re the subject of a huge amount of attention and
scrutiny in Canada and internationally,” said Clare Demerse, director of
climate change at the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based environmental
research group. “So it’s very disappointing to see Environment Canada
publish a 500-page report that leaves out these critical numbers —
especially when last year’s edition included them.”

Overall,
Environment Canada said that the oilsands industry was responsible for
about 6.5 per cent of Canada’s annual greenhouse gas emissions in 2009,
up from five per cent in 2008. This also indicates a growth in emissions
that is close to about 300 per cent since 1990, which cancel out many
reductions in pollution from other economic sectors.

The report
attributes the six per cent decrease in Canada’s overall emissions to
the economic slowdown, but it also credits efforts by the Ontario
government to reduce production of coal-fired electricity as a
significant factor.

Environment Canada provided the oilsands
numbers in response to questions from Postmedia News about why it had
omitted the information from its report after publishing more detailed
data in previous years. A department spokesman explained that “some” of
the information was still available in the latest report, which still
meets Canada’s reporting obligations under the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change.

“The information is presented in this way to be
consistent with UNFCCC reporting requirements, which are divided into
broad, international sectors,” wrote Mark Johnson in an email.

He
was not immediately able to answer questions about who made the decision
in government to exclude the numbers from the oilsands or provide a
detailed explanation about changes in emissions.

An industry
spokesman said it favoured more transparency from the government,
suggesting that some of the figures may be misleading because of changes
in methods used to identify and calculate emissions.

“It’s just
too bad you weren’t able to get a hold of (Environment Canada) on this
one, because here I am telling you my understanding of what’s going on,
but really it’s best to hear directly from them,” said Greg Stringham,
vice-president of oilsands and markets at the Canadian Association of
Petroleum Producers. “We report the information to them, and they choose
to pass it on — they must pass it on the UN. But then they choose how
to disclose it and put it out there.”

Although Stringham said that
the industry figures did not show any significant growth in emissions
per barrel of oil produced, the full report noted an intensity increase
of 14.5 per cent from 2008 to 2009, “mainly the result of a new
integrated mining and upgrading facility as well as a new integrated
in-situ bitumen extraction and upgrading facility,” that were not
operating at “peak efficiencies.”

Emissions from a mining
category, which includes oilsands extraction, saw a 371 per cent
increase in greenhouse gas pollution, according to the report. But other
categories showed significant decreases due, in part, to the recession,
but also because of changes in use of fuel and manufacturing
operations.

Environment Canada’s report recognizes that climate
change is occurring, mainly due to an increase in heat-trapping gases in
the atmosphere. The objective of the UNFCCC is to stabilize these
emissions in order to prevent dangerous changes to the climate.

Critics
have suggested the Harper government is deliberately trying to delay
international action to fight climate change, following revelations,
reported last fall by Postmedia News, that it had set up a partnership
with the Alberta government, industry and several federal departments to
fight pollution-reduction policies from other countries that target the
oilsands through lobbying and public relations.

Environment
Minister Peter Kent has said the federal government is committed to
reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions and will introduce its plan
to regulate pollution from the oilsands within months. But he has also
acknowledged that existing federal and provincial policies would still
result in an increase in emissions over the next decade.

Although
the report was due in April, during the last election campaign, Canada
was the last country to file its submission. Environment Canada even
filed its submission after earthquake-stricken Japan, and was unable to
explain in detail why its report was late.

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Growth: Time to Remove its Halo

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“No belief in industrial society is so pervasive and so essential to it as ‘progress’ defined in terms of economic growth. It sustains faith in the industrial system and reinforces the hope among the poor that they may also ‘strike it rich'”. – From Ark II by Dennis Pirages and Paul Ehrlich, 1974.

INTRODUCTION

Many years ago, the ecologist Paul Anderson wrote “The ecological childhood of man is over, and it has ended without ecological wisdom.” For the primary socio-political interests that control our society this, sadly, is still true. Ecological wisdom is more than understanding ecology. It implies understanding both what we are doing in “nature”, and what the consequences of our “doing” may be.

I have reached my own “ecological wisdom”, as it stands now, from decades of work in research, university teaching, and resource management. Such information is for the purpose of self introduction to help readers understand the basis of my perspective.

After 60 years of such experience I am inclined to look back a long way – clear back to my early life. By the same token, I find myself looking far ahead – at the future of my grandchildren, at the future of other grandchildren. This thinking, and the uneasiness it brings, is more than reminiscence about the past or casual thoughts regarding the future. It is a deep concern driven by the massive changes that I have seen, and see, coming in the world around us.  It is driven, in one of its dimensions, by the problems that I see in fisheries, my professional discipline.

Around the planet, across North America, and more particularly for this discussion, in B.C., we can witness an endless parade of growth-driven building and “development” projects. On the surface, the process is driven onward by the need for more jobs – jobs for more and more people, but less spoken of, profit and growth for business. The insatiable growth process is circular, there is no “end game”.  More people, need for more jobs, use of more resources and space, then more people yet, need for still more jobs, urgency to find more resources – around and around it goes.  In many respects this circular syndrome has come to define our culture. In one form or another it has come to define most human cultures. In its present scale, it has come to stress ecosystems at all levels.

We still have some chance to do far better in some parts of the world.  The time has come to change direction. Bigger, faster, and more are no longer better.

GLOBALLY – AN EARTH UNDER STRESS

Global ecosystems are under stress from our activities, demands, and impacts. Wherever we look, be it forests, soils, fish populations, water supply, or biodiversity, damage and overuse goes on and expands. The scale of stresses and risks as well is understood and has been spelled out by many authors.

In 2005, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report was released. It involved the work of an enormous number of people and organizations. It was designed to assess the consequences of ecosystem change, and to establish a scientific basis for actions to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems and their contributions to human well-being. The following are examples from among major findings:

  • Approximately 60%, 15 out of 24, ecosystem services evaluated in the assessment are degraded or are being used unsustainably. Most of this had developed in the past 50 years.
  • 20 % of the world’s major coral reefs have been lost, 20% more have been degraded.
  • 60% of the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (at 376 ppm in 2003) has taken place since 1959.
  • Humans have changed, to a significant extent irreversibly, the diversity of life on earth.
  • Many of the great fisheries of the world are already lost or are in danger of loss in the next few decades.

Much of the following part of my discussion is based on fisheries issues because of my education and experience. However, the challenging elements of human behavior involved transcend fisheries issues.

GLOBALLY – FISHERIES IN TROUBLE

In many regards the situation with fisheries is emblematic of a wider human dilemma. Many, if not most, of the fisheries of the world are in trouble. Among many of them sustainability hangs in the balance or is already lost. This damage to most fisheries has been done by people and fishing, driven in the end by our ever increasing numbers and collective appetites for food and profit.  Damage to some fishery resources is not exclusively from overuse.

In some instances the use of one resource has compromised the existence of another. In doing research for the book Fishes and Forestry – Worldwide Watershed Interactions and Management, edited by Northcote and Hartman, it was found that expanding forestry activities had damaged fish habitat and populations at a time before people cared or thought about it. Such damage carried on years after people did know about it. Although our book dealt with forestry effects, it is likely that similar books could be written about impacts on fish populations from mining, agriculture, urban expansion, or other human activities.

Beyond the effects of environmental impacts, growth in fishing, particularly for marine species, has put such resources in jeopardy. In an article in Nature, Aug. 8, Vol. 418, Daniel Pauly and co-authors showed that total catch of invertebrates, groundfish, and pelagic fish rose from about 20 million tons in 1950 to about 80 million tons in 1988. It fell to about 70 million tons by 1999. However, catch data do not tell the whole story. The composition of the total catch has changed through “fishing down”. In “fishing down”, the fishery over time takes a progressively higher fraction of the catch from species that are lower in the food chain.

B.C. – LIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD

In the B.C. salmon fisheries the pressures on the fish are double-barreled. We catch too many of them, and concurrently, we degrade their environment through growth in industry, housing, waste disposal, and resource extraction. Viewed in such a context, salmon in the Fraser River, and indeed in other major rivers face a very uncertain future.

The issues go beyond those of run forecast and allocation, which are regularly in the news. The Fraser River system is under the stress of a configuration of impacts and ongoing growth-driven change. In a chapter in the book Sustainable Fisheries Management – Pacific Salmon, Drs. Northcote, Groot and I listed twelve environmental impacts, including Alcan’s diversion, that endanger salmon runs in the river. Many of these impacts may well occur at low levels of effect, however, collectively they pose a threat.

Effective response to such threats, especially those which may have subtle effects, is difficult without well developed monitoring and assessment. The combinations of impacts that cause the threats may be different for different salmon populations depending on where and when they migrate. The research on cumulative effects, as they may be manifested for different populations in the Fraser River system, has not been done.

Concerned citizens and thoughtful managers do understand some of the “high point” impairments to salmon populations in the system. They recognize some of the most problematic impact sources. The issues and the conflicts involved in “high profile” problems may, however, divert attention from the complexes of current environmental issues and from the heavy duty impacts of long-term macro changes in the environment. The risks exist at two levels.

RISKS AT TWO LEVELS

Fisheries resources, at levels from local to global, are put in jeopardy by competitive fishing and overuse in the short term, and by macro changes in an array of environmental conditions in the long term.  Human population size is a pervasive element among the latter. In this regard, it is an interesting and indeed almost a hallmark of my profession, that most biologists struggle hard with issues of “allocation” and “management”, but stand aloof from discussing growth in human numbers as it contributes to fisheries failures. The book Salmon 2100 – the Future of Wild Pacific Salmon by Lackey et al is a notable exception.

Some fisheries can change quickly under the pressure to feed a rapidly increasing human population. I worked in Malawi, Africa, for 2 years on fisheries and environmental projects. In the short course of 3 decades (1960s to 1990s), during which the Malawi population came close to doubling, the fish stocks of the southern end of the lake were over-used and the size range of species captured decreased dramatically. Fish populations along the narrow fishing zones in the mid- and upper lake became over exploited and changed somewhat more slowly. It was acceptable for Malawian managers to search for ways to catch more fish, however, it was not acceptable for them to discuss the impacts of a population that doubled in 30 years or less.

In B.C. and the Pacific Northwest states, population growth will, potentially, play an enormous role in determining the long-term future of salmon. If the current average annual human population growth of the last half of the 20th century (1.9%) continues, Lackey et al. predict that numbers in the Pacific Northwest will reach about 85 million by 2100. I present these numbers not so much as something of certainty, but rather to indicate that if we look into the long-term future, salmon in systems such as the Fraser River face a very problematic future.

Much of BC’s share of future growth will occur in the lower Fraser River basin from Hope to Vancouver with more water pollution, more gravel removal, more roads, more water removal, more subdivisions, etc.  Ongoing climate change, expansion of human population, and “development” will be the primary determinants that will shape the freshwater environmental future for the diverse Pacific salmon stocks in the Fraser River system.

A long-term strategy, involving research and related management responses which are scaled to the magnitude of the issues, must be developed for salmon populations of the southern half of B.C.  Such research must deal with the implications of expanding human populations and related development and infrastructure.

The rapid growth of human numbers, beyond “sustainability”, is the pervasive element in fisheries management whether in the Fraser River system or other parts of the world. It is the pervasive element in most ecological issues that face society(ies).  Whether it is in fishery matters in the Fraser River, fisheries issues around the globe or other some other resource-related concern,  biologists must put problems of human population growth, and its unending imbalance, into the “equation”.

TO THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS – CHALLENGE THE GROWTH ETHIC

It is the reality of our times that we must question not only the specifics of each resource use issue and each “development” issue of our time, but also the societal context in which it occurs. Over the past 30 years or more, I have witnessed cases in which people, who were concerned about the environment, questioned or opposed activities that ranged from small to large, and from moderate to heavy in impact.

We have not, however, questioned well the direction or the “end game” along which each step in the growth/development process takes us further. The numbers should wake us up. The UN medium growth projection has human numbers peaking at about 9.3 billion – 3 billion more than now. The US growth projection is for about 420 million by 2050. The Canadian projection is for about 42 million.  Based on growth rate from 1950 to 2000, B.C. will have a population of 8 million or more.

The question that we “environmentalists” must ask in regard to these kinds of trends is, “Where does the process take us?” Do we wait, passively, until the growth process takes the planet to the 9 billion plus mark?   Do we grow until nature says “Stop,” as it surely will, or do we begin an active discussion of the processes that envelope us? These are the issues. These are the questions that should be asked in every political campaign in which our “leaders”, perhaps in ignorance, take us one increment further along the road to greater environmental risks.

Such questions and issues must begin to be part of every discussion and every hearing as additional “development” projects come before society. The fact that project review formats and terms of reference may not openly permit such discussion, in this day and age, can only serve to emphasize their ultimate limitations.

REACHING FOR A HIGHER RUNG ON THE LADDER

To a large degree it is the political process that reflects the direction of a society. In a deeper sense this process reflects our relationship to our environment and to nature. The political discussion that we have heard is one in which the core of the debate is about the “individual” as opposed to the “collective”.  As such, these two perspectives are both about how we use the planet and about how nature may serve our species. It is in this context that we presently try to “write the rules.” A look at the conditions around us tell us that now such “rules” of societal operation are short-sighted. Too many people in our society live with their eyes on the stock market and their hands on their wallets. The environment is an abstraction “somewhere outside.”

My sense of the situation is that we are at a “break-point” at which the “political” context must also reflect rules of nature that are common to all species. Such a transition would reflect intellectual process as much as political doctrine. It would reflect, in the fullest sense, that we cannot “grow forever.” It would also reflect that “all things are interconnected in nature.” The Nuu–Chah-Nulth people on the west coast of Vancouver Island embraced this concept long ago in their expression, “hishuk ish ts’awalk.”

Historically, people have made positive transitional leaps in regard to some things in society, in particular, how they should operate and govern themselves. I think that we are due for another step. I believe that it is time that we recognized nature as a partner and a regulator rather than as a servant and a collection of resources. This idea is an abstraction on one hand, but a powerful reality on the other. In its fullest sense, the concept has no home in any present political organization. It is a concept based on perceived relationships rather than how we gain and own material wealth.  As such it may be elusive, and making it work would require new dimensions to our thinking and social depth. However, the consequences of failure to reach for and attain it, because we opt for “business as usual”, may be disruptive and dangerous.

My last hope is that it is not already too late.

G. F. Hartman, Ph.D.

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