ONE TOWN SQUARE: at the intersection of peak oil, climate change, and land use

Rep. Dennis Kucinich issued a statement explaining he opposed Waxman Markey because the bill creates only the “illusion of addressing the problem” while instead virtually guaranteeing catastrophic levels of warming.

James Lovelock in the U.K. Guardian warns of the desperateness of our situation, comparing today’s environmentalist movements to the peace lobbies of the 1930s and calling for a “new Churchill” to stir us from our lethargy and lead us from the “clinging, flabby, consensual thinking of the late twentieth century”:

Gaia, the Earth system, is no cozy mother that nurtures humans and can be propitiated by gestures such as carbon trading or sustainable development. . .

The climate war could kill nearly all of us and leave the few survivors living a Stone Age existence.

A “senior Chinese climate change official” berated the U.S. for setting the bar too low and offering the world a poor example. Li Gao, a division director with the Climate Change Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, said the U.S. climate change bill did not live up to international expectations and warned the bill’s woefully inadequate mid-term carbon emission target would probably be seized upon as the new standard by developed countries in the battle against global warming.Here’s Kucinich’s full statement:

“I oppose H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.  The reason is simple.  It won’t address the problem.  In fact, it might make the problem worse.

“It sets targets that are too weak, especially in the short term, and sets about meeting those targets through Enron-style accounting methods.  It gives new life to one of the primary sources of the problem that should be on its way out– coal – by giving it record subsidies.  And it is rounded out with massive corporate giveaways at taxpayer expense.  There is $60 billion for a single technology which may or may not work, but which enables coal power plants to keep warming the planet at least another 20 years.

“Worse, the bill locks us into a framework that will fail.  Science tells us that immediately is not soon enough to begin repairing the planet.  Waiting another decade or more will virtually guarantee catastrophic levels of warming.  But the bill does not require any greenhouse gas reductions beyond current levels until 2030.

“Today’s bill is a fragile compromise, which leads some to claim that we cannot do better.  I respectfully submit that not only can we do better; we have no choice but to do better.  Indeed, if we pass a bill that only creates the illusion of addressing the problem, we walk away with only an illusion.  The price for that illusion is the opportunity to take substantive action.

“There are several aspects of the bill that are problematic.

1.      Overall targets are too weak. The bill is predicated on a target atmospheric concentration of 450 parts per million, a target that is arguably justified in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but which is already out of date. Recent science suggests 350 parts per million is necessary to help us avoid the worst effects of global warming.2.      The offsets undercut the emission reductions. Offsets allow polluters to keep polluting; they are rife with fraudulent claims of emissions reduction; they create environmental, social, and economic unintended adverse consequences; and they codify and endorse the idea that polluters do not have to make sacrifices to solve the problem.

3.      It kicks the can down the road. By requiring the bulk of the emissions to be carried out in the long term and requiring few reductions in the short term, we are not only failing to take the action when it is needed to address rapid global warming, but we are assuming the long term targets will remain intact.

4.      EPA’s authority to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the short- to medium-term is rescinded. It is our best defense against a new generation of coal power plants.  There is no room for coal as a major energy source in a future with a stable climate.

5.      Nuclear power is given a lifeline instead of phasing it out.  Nuclear power is far more expensive, has major safety issues including a near release in my own home state in 2002, and there is still no resolution to the waste problem.  A recent study by Dr. Mark Cooper showed that it would cost $1.9 trillion to $4.1 trillion more over the life of 100 new nuclear reactors than to generate the same amount of electricity from energy efficiency and renewables.

6.      Dirty Coal is given a lifeline instead of phasing it out.  Coal-based energy destroys entire mountains, kills and injures workers at higher rates than most other occupations, decimates ecologically sensitive wetlands and streams, creates ponds of ash that are so toxic the Department of Homeland Security will not disclose their locations for fear of their potential to become a terrorist weapon, and fouls the air and water with sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, particulates, mercury, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and thousands of other toxic compounds that cause asthma, birth defects, learning disabilities, and pulmonary and cardiac problems for starters.  In contrast, several times more jobs are yielded by renewable energy investments than comparable coal investments.

7.      The $60 billion allocated for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) is triple the amount of money for basic research and development in the bill. We should be pressuring China, India and Russia to slow and stop their power plants now instead of enabling their perpetuation. We cannot create that pressure while spending unprecedented amounts on a single technology that may or may not work. If it does not work on the necessary scale, we have then spent 10-20 years emitting more CO2, which we cannot afford to do. In addition, those who will profit from the technology will not be viable or able to stem any leaks from CCS facilities that may occur 50, 100, or 1000 years from now.

8.      Carbon markets can and will be manipulated using the same Wall Street sleights of hand that brought us the financial crisis.

9.      It is regressive.  Free allocations doled out with the intent of blunting the effects on those of modest means will pale in comparison to the allocations that go to polluters and special interests.  The financial benefits of offsets and unlimited banking also tend to accrue to large corporations.  And of course, the trillion dollar carbon derivatives market will help Wall Street investors.  Much of the benefits designed to assist consumers are passed through coal companies and other large corporations, on whom we will rely to pass on the savings.

10.  The Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) is not an improvement. The 15% RES standard would be achieved even if we failed to act.

11.  Dirty energy options qualify as “renewable”: The bill allows polluting industries to qualify as “renewable energy.”  Trash incinerators not only emit greenhouse gases, but also emit highly toxic substances.  These plants disproportionately expose communities of color and low-income to the toxics.  Biomass burners that allow the use of trees as a fuel source are also defined as “renewable.” Under the bill, neither source of greenhouse gas emissions is counted as contributing to global warming.

12.  It undermines our bargaining position in international negotiations in Copenhagen and beyond. As the biggest per capita polluter, we have a responsibility to take action that is disproportionately stronger than the actions of other countries. It is, in fact, the best way to preserve credibility in the international context.

13.  International assistance is much less than demanded by developing countries. Given the level of climate change that is already in the pipeline, we are going to need to devote major resources toward adaptation.  Developing countries will need it the most, which is why they are calling for much more resources for adaptation and technology transfer than is allocated in this bill.  This will also undercut our position in Copenhagen.

“I offered eight amendments and cosponsored two more that collectively would have turned the bill into an acceptable starting point.  All amendments were not allowed to be offered to the full House.  Three amendments endeavored to minimize the damage that will be done by offsets, a method of achieving greenhouse gas reductions that has already racked up a history of failure to reduce emissions – increasing emissions in some cases – while displacing people in developing countries who rely on the land for their well being.

“Three other amendments would have made the federal government a force for change by requiring all federal energy to eventually come from renewable resources, by requiring the federal government to transition to electric and plug-in hybrid cars, and by requiring the installation of solar panels on government rooftops and parking lots.  These provisions would accelerate the transition to a green economy.

“Another amendment would have moved up the year by which reductions of greenhouse gas emissions were required from 2030 to 2025.  It would have encouraged the efficient use of allowances and would have reduced opportunities for speculation by reducing the emission value of an allowance by a third each year.

“The last amendment would have removed trash incineration from the definition of renewable energy.  Trash incineration is one of the primary sources of environmental injustice in the country.  It a primary source of compounds in the air known to cause cancer, asthma, and other chronic diseases.  These facilities are disproportionately sited in communities of color and communities of low income.  Furthermore, incinerators emit more carbon dioxide per unit of electricity produced than coal-fired power plants.

“Passing a weak bill today gives us weak environmental policy tomorrow.”

Dmitry Orlov at Club Orlov writes that the depletion curves touted by the Peak Oil community are ‘way too optimistic. Oil production will likely not drift down gently over the coming decades. Rather, it will collapse as the economic and social systems that support it collapse. Orlov points to the ex-Soviet Union as the cautionary example.

If the future unfolds as Orlov foresees, the climate change psychodramas we are witnessing (such as the kerfuffle over the shameful Waxman-Markey bill) will prove to be nothing more than a distracting sideshow. Emissions will collapse of themselves as the industrial economies collapse.

For example, Russia is proposing a target level of 10-15% below 1990 levels by 2020. That’s far more than Waxman-Markey,  - but would actually allow Russian emissions to grow by 30% from 2.2 billion tons in 2007 to 3 billion tons in 2020. From a climate perspective, economic collapse has proven to be the most powerful measure imaginable - far more powerful than the policies proposed by the world’s politicians, which are limited by the proviso that they be politically “realistic.”

Orlov describes how events unfolded in the Soviet Union:

Firstly, the crash in oil production preceded collapse in USSR’s Gross Domestic Product. The lag time between the two, and the severity of the collapse are clear enough to ascribe causality: to say that the oil crash caused the economic collapse. On the other hand, coal and natural gas production, which also crashed, did so after the GDP collapsed, again, with a significant enough lag time to say with confidence that it was economic collapse that caused coal and gas production to crash.

What actually happens to an economy and a society under such circumstances? With oil in short supply, industrial production plummets, the economy stalls, there is a financial crisis because of debts going bad, followed by a commercial crisis because of falling demand and lack of credit, followed by political collapse caused by dwindling government revenues, followed by social collapse as unemployment rises and crime becomes rampant. After a while of this, the idea of you and your friends going out to the oil field and pumping some more oil starts to seem rather odd, and so oil production heads to zero.

We will soon see how prescient Orlov’s vision proves to be.

But don’t forget the bright side - averting climate catastrophe may not prove impossible after all!

Kingsley Dennis and John Urry in their new book After the Car argue the car system is absolutely batty:

The car system gives the illusion of freedom while glueing users into a dependence on traffic management, oil, and money to pay for oil. Meanwhile, the local administrator of the system in question - your government, in other words - is forced to spend most of its own time and money maintaining good relations with suppliers of oil, in order to sustain that illusion in the name of economic growth.

That’s how Lynsley Hanley sums it up in a review in the U.K. Guardian. More than a million people worldwide are killed every year by cars - yet there’s no outrage. Cars are a major contributor to global warming, which is even now leading to the end of the Earth as we know it. Yet we refuse to entertain giving it up.

The authors foresee the end of the car system as resources become increasingly scarce and the threat of climate change induces policy responses. They present several possible future scenarios:

The most frightening, for its depressing plausibility, is that of “regional warlordism”, based on the fight for post-peak oil. We may already be living in this period.

A more enlightened outcome would be the model of “local sustainability”, in which all travel, but especially car travel, is reduced hugely and people return to living in compact urban neighborhoods and getting around on foot.

But don’t bet on that coming to pass. That would require we act boldly and wisely.

Chris Nelder at The Oil Drum in one sentence summarizes the economic effect of peak oil:

It now seems possible that we have reached an inflection point in economic history, where the price at which energy is high enough to sustain new production is the same price at which things become too expensive, leaving us no option but to downsize.

Because of its previous abundance, the centrality of energy has heretofore been invisible to economics. We are seeing now that energy is not simply another commodity.

Declining energy supplies will inevitably result in progressive decline of “the economy” as we have come to think of it.

Spiking energy and commodity prices lead to destruction of the economy, which then gathers itself at a lower overall level until prices spike again, and back around the wheel we go. As energy declines, the ceiling will get lower and lower, and it will take more and more money to buy the same things.

No amount of tinkering with monetary policy can change that. Unlike money, Btus can’t be printed out of thin air.

The best analysis of Waxman-Markey I’ve seen is by a Brit - George Monbiot, writing in the U.K. Guardian:

The cuts it proposes are much lower than those being pursued in the UK or in most other developed nations. Like the UK’s climate change act, the US bill calls for an 80% cut by 2050, but in this case the baseline is 2005, not 1990. Between 1990 and 2005, US carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels rose from 5.8 to 7bn tonnes.

The cut proposed by 2020 is just 17%, which means that most of the reduction will take place towards the end of the period. What this means is much greater cumulative emissions, which is the only measure that counts. Worse still, it is riddled with so many loopholes and concessions that the bill’s measures might not offset the emissions from the paper it’s printed on. You can judge the effectiveness of a US bill by its length: the shorter it is, the more potent it will be. This one is some 1,200 pages long, which is what happens when lobbyists have been at work.

There are mind-boggling concessions to the biofuels industry, including a promise not to investigate its wider environmental impacts. There’s a provision to allow industry to use 2bn tonnes of carbon offsets a year, which include highly unstable carbon sinks like crop residues left in the soil (another concession won by the powerful farm lobby). These offsets are so generous that if all of them are used, US industry will have to make no carbon cuts at all until 2026.

Like the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS), Waxman-Markey would oblige companies to buy only a small proportion (15%) of their carbon permits. The rest will be given away. This means that a resource belonging to everyone (the right to pollute) is captured by industrial interests without public compensation. The more pollution companies have produced, the greater their free allocation will be - the polluter gets paid. It also means, if the ETS is anything to go by, that the big polluters will be able to make windfall profits by passing on the price of the permits they haven’t bought to their consumers.

In one respect the bill actually waters down current legislation, by preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating coal-burning power stations. If the new coal plants planned in the US are built, it’s hard to see how even the feeble targets in this bill can be met, let alone any targets proposed by the science.

Monbiot compares the U.S. to a failed state:

Why do we treat the world’s most powerful and innovative nation as if it were a failed state, rejoicing at even the faintest suggestion of common sense?

The U.S. may soon prove to be a failed state in fact, if California is a harbinger of things to come.

Monbiot blames a combination of corporate money and an unregulated corporate media for America’s inability to seriously address any one of the big issues we face, be it climate change, health care, or the class warfare the rich have been waging against everyone else.

Would that Obama had the courage to throw the moneychangers out of the temple. It was naïve to ever believe he would.

Charles Eisenstein writes at Reality Sandwich that the corruption permeates every institution of our society, even to our language. Our personal and political lives are immersed within an “ubiquitous matrix of lies.” The challenge is to stay honest by grounding ourselves again and again in the “reality outside representation”:

When environmentalists focus on cost-benefit analyses and study data rather than real, physical places, trees, ponds, and animals, they end up making all the sickening compromises of the Beltway. Liberal economists with the best of intentions cheer when a poor country raises its GDP; invisible to their statistics is the unraveling of culture and community that fuels the money economy. Visit a real “mountaintop removal” operation and you know that there is no compromise that is not betrayal. Visit a real third-world community and the vacuity of free-trade logic is obvious. See the devastation of a bullet wound or a bomb strike, lives strewn across the street, and the logic of national interest seems monstrous.

Eisenstein warns we can not for much longer hide the gathering collapse of environment and polity, economy and ecology - eventually, reality will break through. When stories fall apart, the world falls apart. As we rebuild from the wreckage that follows, the stories we tell with words unite masses of people toward a common goal, and assign the meanings and roles necessary to attain it.

And words will once again matter, and truth will mean the difference between life and death.

Even if we could freeze-frame the atmosphere as it is today, sea levels would still rise by 25 meters, says the latest study into the effects of climate change on melting ice sheets.

Predicted effects on US coastline assuming sea level rise of 2 metres (red) and 25 metres (yellow).

And here’s Europe.

Red is area affected by 2 metres of sea level rise. Yellow shows 25 metres of sea level rise, which will take a couple thousand years

Of course, that’s in the year 4000, 2,000 years from now. So why worry?

Albert Bates has a great piece at Energy Bulletin titled “Summer Solstice in Tennessee” about how the climate in southern Tennessee is already changing - and not for the better.

Here in the bottom of Tennessee, where the next county south is in Alabama, we have been watching the summers grow steadily hotter. When we arrived here, a band of ragtag hippies in 1971, the climate wasn’t as bad as rumors would have it. . . . The climate we had in 1971 is now up near Lexington, Kentucky. The local summer heat of ‘09 was what folks down in Nashoba County, Mississippi, had regularly in 1971. . .

Since 1970 our average temperature in this region has risen 2 degrees, which is roughly the same change for the Southeast as occurred between now and the last time glaciers extended below the Great Lakes. So, just to begin with, 2 degrees is huge. It is the difference between southern Mississippi and Nashville, Tennessee. Trying to grasp what “about 4.5°F by the 2080s” will mean, never mind 9°F… fuggeddaboudit.

Bates quotes from the new federal report on “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States:

The number of very hot days is projected to rise at a greater rate than the average temperature. Average temperatures in the [Southeast] region are projected to rise by about 4.5°F by the 2080s, while a higher emissions scenario yields about 9°F of average warming (with about a 10.5°F increase in summer, and a much higher heat index). . . Because higher temperatures lead to more evaporation of moisture from soils and water loss from plants, the frequency, duration, and intensity of droughts are likely to continue to increase.

and adds, that’s just the half of it. Higher temperatures, and higher nighttime temperatures, mean that some crops will no longer be able to be grown:

If summer rains and the groundwater or rivers dry up, it will be hard to sustain field crops. If it is consistently above 95°F, corn will not generate ears, or the kernels will wilt on them. Above 102°F, soybeans will not set bean pods, or the seed will shrivel and die. Even our shiitake logs will lose the mycelium that makes the mushrooms grow. . . Snap beans will fail if nighttime temperatures are consistently above 80°F.

Bates reports that forests are already succumbing:

We are already watching our hardwood forests fall of their own accord. Last year it was the oaks. This year it’s the hickories. Loblolly pine, a species that favors the sandy soils of Mississippi, was planted abundantly back in the late 1970s, when we worked as tree-planters and had lots of leftover stock, and also the forest service and ag-extension agents gave them away for free. Those are now thriving, happy to have the climate they most favor come their way. Loblolly will now move up into Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and New York, even as the sugar maples, spruce, beech, and wild plum go extinct.

As Bates points out:

Already droughts are becoming more common, forest fires spreading, lakes shrinking, and coastal storms increasing. Still, they may still be able to make a bean crop there by mid-century.

The most affecting passages describe the human discomfort and even bodily dysfunction resulting from higher temperatures. Bates points out that average temperatures are deceptive - what really hits hard are the extremes. He suggests that migration may be an option - it may prove to be the only option.

By the time lands in the southeast are lost to flooding, they may not have been habitable for hundreds of years, anyway.

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science finds that wind power could provide for the entire world’s current and future energy needs. The study, Global potential for wind generated electricity, was authored by Xi Lu, Michael McElroy, and Juha Kiviluoma.

Here’s the abstract:

The potential of wind power as a global source of electricity is assessed by using winds derived through assimilation of data from a variety of meteorological sources. The analysis indicates that a network of land-based 2.5-megawatt (MW) turbines restricted to nonforested, ice-free, nonurban areas operating at as little as 20% of their rated capacity could supply >40 times current worldwide consumption of electricity, >5 times total global use of energy in all forms. Resources in the contiguous United States, specifically in the central plain states, could accommodate as much as 16 times total current demand for electricity in the United States. Estimates are given also for quantities of electricity that could be obtained by using a network of 3.6-MW turbines deployed in ocean waters with depths <200 m within 50 nautical miles (92.6 km) of closest coastlines.

The world’s two largest carbon emitters, China and the United States, could easily use wind to replace coal.

Large-scale development of wind power in China could allow for close to an 18-fold increase in electricity supply relative to consumption reported for 2005. The bulk of this wind power, 89%, could be derived from onshore installations. The potential for wind power in the U.S. is even greater, 23 times larger than current electricity consumption, the bulk of which, 84%, could be supplied onshore.

The study is open access and the full PDF is available here.

Scientists have unearthed striking evidence that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels 200 million years ago led to a sudden collapse in plant biodiversity. At 900 parts per million, ancient biodiversity crashed.

Until this research, the pace of the extinctions was thought to have been gradual, taking place over millions of years.

Carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere has now risen to about 387 ppm - its highest level in at least 2.1 million years and probably 20 million years. If current rates of emissions continue, carbon dioxide levels could reach as high as two and a half times today’s level by the year 2100 - leading not only to hell and high water, but to global ecosystem collapse.

We’re truly playing with fire. And the best we can manage is the disastrous Waxman-Markey? Our political efforts, measured against the enormity of the challenge before us and the consequences of failing to act responsibly and decisively, are so feeble as to be laughable.

What else to do but laugh, faced with a catastrophe that is all but inevitable? Lucky for humanity that there will be no day of judgment.

A group of about 20 German firms are forming a consortium to build enough solar plants in the deserts of North Africa to supply 15% of Europe’s electricity needs.

The project could generate 100 gigawatts of electricity, the equivalent of 100 conventional power plants. The first electricity could begin flowing to Europe in 10 years.

Moving all that electricity around would require new transmission infrastructure such as the Supergrid.

The supergrid as envisioned by German energy consultant Dr. Gregor Czisch would stretch from Britain to Kazakhstan, and Scandinavia to Morocco, and transport huge amounts of renewable power back and forth to marry supply with demand.

Czisch has published a study titled Realisable Scenarios for a Future Electricity Supply based 100% on Renewable Energies that shows Europe could build an electricity supply based entirely on renewable energy by 2030.

When Oregon’s land use planning program began 36 years ago, its aim was to protect commercial forest and farm land from development.

Nobody was thinking about carbon storage and reducing emissions back then. A new study by Jim Cathcart, forest resource trust manager with the Oregon Department of Forestry, and Jeff Kline, a research forester with Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station in Corvallis, quantifies these contributions.

Kline and Cathcarts estimated carbon benefits for two scenarios: one assuming Oregon’s land use planning program as enacted in 1973 and another assuming Oregon’s land use planning program was not enacted in 1973.They estimate that 1,221,000 acres of forest and agricultural land in western Oregon would have been converted to more developed uses without the land use planning program.

By maintaining these lands, the gains in carbon storage are equivalent to avoiding 1.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year. That’s the amount of carbon that would have been emitted by 395,000 cars in a year (assuming each car gets 25 mpg and is driven 12,000 miles annually).

Had the additional 1.7 million metric tons of stored carbon been released through development, Oregon’s annual increase in CO2 emissions between 1990 and 2000 would have been three times what it actually was.

By 2024, avoided development on an additional 205,000 acres of forest and agricultural land will yield an additional 3.5 million metric tons of avoided carbon losses, equivalent to roughly a 12.8 million metric ton reduction in CO2 emissions, or 0.64 million metric tons CO2 per year.

Kline says the study’s findings are pretty conservative because carbon stored in soil and dead wood wasn’t considered. The study just looked at avoided forest loss and changes in carbon stock arising from development, not at the higher carbon footprint of average domestic use over agriculture. If other factors such as more compact development, people driving less, and using public transportation were to be considered, the reduction in emissions would be even higher.

Cathcart says we shouldn’t sit back and wait for stronger climate change policies such as market-driven cap-and-trade schemes or carbon taxesto be adopted:

It may simply be the act of maintaining or increasing the amount of land area in forest cover that is the most important action to take.

A post by Jason Bradford at The Oil Drum: Campfire is particularly interesting because it features a lengthy quote from Eugene’s Mary Wood in which she explains how a “carbon challenge” from Mayor Kitty Piercy asking residents to do two new things a month to reduce carbon resulted in changing her and her family’s life. Here’s just a bit of it:

At some point along the way, I noticed that Mayor Kitty Piercy’s carbon challenge had evolved into a new - and infinitely richer - way of life for us. The challenge of two carbon-reducing initiatives a month had grown into a family enterprise, a source of joy and pride, a learning experience, a family identity, and a well-spring of self-esteem and responsibility for our children. Perhaps most important, it had become a shared statement of purpose, a moral fabric for family life - a daily expression of the trust covenant shared with our children. My husband often comes in from the garden and says, “It’s a wonderful life.” And I have to agree. I invite you to embrace this new world ahead — with courage, passion, and a sense of adventure — and join in the Great Family Turning.

That’s a wonderful lesson. Giving up our perverse obsession with growth doesn’t mean living poorer lives. Rather, it means living richer lives, lives infused with purpose, meaning, and joy.

New Scientist reports that over the last 40 years, the Caribbean’s spectacular branched corals have been flattened.

In the late 1970s, white-band disease swept through the reefs, killing 90 per cent of the most spectacular tree-like elkhorn and staghorn corals. In 1998, many of the remaining tree-like corals were wiped out during a massive bleaching event, probably driven by global warming. Fast-growing but short-lived “weedy” species of corals then took over the reefs, out-competing most of the remaining tree-like corals. “Flat” reefs now cover 75% of the Caribbean, compared to just 20% in the 1970s.

The intricate tree-like corals provide sanctuary for unique reef fish and other creatures and protect coastlines by sapping the energy of waves. At least they used to.

Acidification due to increased CO2 levels is also damaging corals and threatening life in Earth’s oceans. Corals and plankton, at the base of the marine food web, rely on sea water saturated with calcium carbonate to form their skeletons. As acidity intensifies, the saturation declines, making it harder for the animals to form their skeletal structures. Analysis of coral cores shows a steady drop in calcification over the last 20 years. Put more CO2 into the air above and it dissolves into the oceans.

Sharon Astyk at Causabon’s Book explains why the future of farming in this country rests on reform of our health care system.

Simply put, young people can’t afford to go into farming because of the unavailability of health care.

If we want people to commit to growing our food, we’re going to have to figure out a way to provide decent health care to everybody. Instead of wasting trillions bailing out bankers, we should be investing in the future of our food production system.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center’s daily update shows the 2009 decline in Arctic sea ice extent is on a pace to match or beat 2007’s record low.  The chart below, updated to June 11, shows ice extent has now fallen below the 2007 decline.

According to the NSIDC, whether or not Arctic sea ice reaches a new record low this summer will depend on the circulation patterns that set up over the next few months

A new study comparing “full life-cycle” emissions finds trains aren’t necessarily good for the climate.

The study, Environmental assessment of passenger transportation should include infrastructure and supply chains by Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath of U.C. Berkeley examined total car, train, bus and plane emissions - including not only emissions from running the vehicles, but also emissions from building and maintaining the vehicles and  their infrastructure and from generating the fuel to run them. The study found that total life-cycle energy inputs and greenhouse gas emissions contribute an additional 63% for on-road vehicles, 155% for rail, and 31% for air systems over vehicle tailpipe operation.

Ranges in passenger occupancy radically affect the relative performance of modes. Empty seats really hurt the performance of mass transit options such as busses and trains. And electric trains and electric cars aren’t “green” if the electricity is generated by burning coal.

More than half of the life-cycle emissions from rail comes not from the engines’ exhausts, but infrastructure development, such as station building and track laying, and providing power to stations, lit parking lots and escalators. Crisscrossing the US with a rail network would thus result in an up-front surge in emissions. Any effort to expand the rail network should take into account the emissions it will generate in doing so.

Chester says rail systems need to be carefully integrated with other modes if they are to be effective in reducing emissions:

New rail systems should serve as links to other transit modes, as is often the case in Europe and Japan. We should avoid building rail systems that are disconnected from major population areas and require car trips and parking to access.

Population density, not a sudden increase in human brain power, led to the emergence of modern human behavior. That’s the thrust of a new study by UCL (University College London) scientists published in the journal Science.

High population density leads to greater exchange of ideas and skills and prevents the loss of new innovations. Complex skills learned across generations can only be maintained when there is a critical level of interaction between people. It is this skill maintenance, combined with a greater probability of useful innovations, that led to modern human behavior appearing at different times in different parts of the world.

So it’s memes, not genes, that’s primarily responsible for civilization.