People Before Profit blog

A crucial tipping point for the environment

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 11:20:00 +0000

Many studies and writings about climate change discuss the essential tipping points for hospitable human life on earth, sometimes referred to as planetary boundaries. These range from the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to ozone levels to ocean acidification. Some studies propose nine, others break it up a bit differently.

Many scientists argue that humanity has already forced nature to pass four of these tipping points - some, especially the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (now consistently over 400 ppm), by a wide margin.

Other discussions of tipping points are geared to limits that we must not exceed without causing damage we can't recover from. For example, due to global warming, the Arctic is heating up at a rate about four times that of the world as a whole. That affects the massive areas of permafrost across the top of the northern hemisphere. Within that permafrost, much of it frozen for tens of thousands of years, are buried billions of tons of organic material that once defrosted will release massive amounts of carbon dioxide and methane - enough to potentially overwhelm all human efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. We don't know with precision where the exact tipping point is which will result in this runaway train of emissions, but we certainly don't want to find out by crossing it.

While this approach still has many unknown variables and uncertainties, it offers a framework to understand the whole range of environmental crises that humanity faces. Climate change is in some ways the most basic, and in other ways the most crucial because it makes all the other environmental crises worse. But climate change, as the planetary boundaries framework makes clear, is not the only serious and potentially deadly to humanity environmental threat we face. We have to meet many challenges on many fronts to address the imbalance between how humans create the energy which enables developed human existence on the one hand, and the needs of nature upon which humanity depends in even more fundamental ways. We need water and air, and there is no other "product" which can be substituted if they become completely polluted with toxic substances.

Some commentators wish to frame these boundaries as opportunities. They point to spectacular growth in sustainable, renewable energy, and to many other technological advances being made.

However, there is an even more crucial tipping point that has been ignored - environmental movement tipping points.

Environmental movements have the sentiment of billions of people, though the actual organizations and the specific campaigns have been confined to much smaller groups. But the environmental movement and the other organizations and movements it allies itself with are reaching a crucial tipping point.

Millions have taken to the streets in many demonstrations around the world over the last several years, from the Peoples Climate March in September 2014 to innumerable smaller local marches on local environmental issues. Demands to "Keep It in the Ground" and to divest from fossil fuel corporations have taken root and are spreading. Major sections of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline have been stopped by President Obama, following years of demonstrations, petitions, and creative acts of opposition. These movements played a big role in forcing the UN COP20 Conference in Paris last December to reach an unprecedented worldwide agreement, limited and inadequate though it was. And more is being planned for this year.

Issues of climate change and environmental policy will certainly play a role in the elections this fall. All the Republican contenders for their party's nomination reject climate change. Both Democratic candidates offer themselves as ready to take on the tasks of addressing how to slow climate change. All the Republican candidates want to eliminate or handcuff the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Democratic candidates want to strengthen it. Bernie Sanders spoke out early against the Keystone XL pipeline, forcing Clinton to join him in urging Obama to reject it, which he did. These conflicts will be one test of how close to a U.S. political tipping point we are.

Though many species are becoming extinct or having their habitat reduced or destroyed, it will take human action to fix the problem. For example, polar bears are "canaries in the coal mine" for global warming. However, we can't organize the polar bears to stop global warming - that will take organizing people.

The problem was created, at least in large part, by people, and only people can make the necessary changes. But it is really not people in general: It is the economic system within which people function - capitalism. Capitalism is based on a paradigm of infinite economic growth, but we live in a world which is finite. These two facts come into conflict. Furthermore, capitalism is based on capitalists paying as little as possible for the production which creates their profits, and that leads most of them and their managers to ignore the needs of nature to be able to reproduce itself.

So to the 9 Planetary Tipping Points, I propose we add as a counterweight the Environmental Movement Tipping Point, the event horizon which will signal a movement large enough, united enough, and militant enough to challenge the system which is creating or exacerbating the many environmental crises we face.

Photo: AP

Flint pediatrician says kids can make it with lots of help

Thu, 11 Feb 2016 13:47:00 +0000

ROYAL OAK, Mich - Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the Flint pediatric physician who first discovered high rates of lead exposure in Flint children, said "lead is a neuron toxin. It causes irreversible damage." Michigan Governor Rick Snyder had initially dismissed and scorned reports of extensive lead poisoning. "It's not a 9 to 5 issue. For the Governor it was. You don't mess around with lead."

Hanna-Attisha was speaking as an invited guest at the Royal Oak Democratic Party meeting last Saturday. She said her commitment to environmental justice began while in her early teens as a high school student at Royal Oak's Dondero High School. She was active in the school's Environmental Science Club that helped close an incinerator in neighboring Madison Heights. "A few activists can sometimes make an incredible difference," she said.

Another member of that high school science club, Elin Batanzo, a specialist in water quality and water infrastructure issues who had spent ten years at the Environmental Protection Agency, told Hanna-Attisha she had never heard of a water authority switching from a clean source of water (the Detroit water system) to a dirty source (the Flint River) and then not using phosphates for corrosion control.

Calling it a "perfect storm," Hanna-Attisha noted the Flint River water was very corrosive, it was going into an aging infrastructure, and the city had lots of lead plumbing.

She told the standing room only crowd that Flint residents did not sit silently by when foul water started coming out of their faucets in April of 2014. She said Flint, the city that gave birth to the United Auto Workers union, has a "proud history." Residents immediately began protesting at town council meetings. Pastors and their congregations joined the fight.

Hanna-Attisha said what happened to the children of Flint is horribly amplified because on top of every disparity Flint's population already has, (forty percent poverty, lower life expectancy) "you give them lead which can impact IQ and behavior."

She stressed there is still hope for Flint's children. The effects of lead are irreversible but we can do a lot. "We need to throw every resource at them." She has over ten pages of suggestions from early childhood intervention, to expansion of WIC (Women, Infant and Children program), to breast feeding education, expansion of mental health services, nutritional services and mobile food banks.

Expressing gratification for the nation's response and saying enough water has been collected, she urged those wanting to contribute to give to the Flint Child and Health Development Fund at www.Flintkids.org

Oakland County Commissioner Dave Woodward commented that Flint was the result of austerity policies meeting poverty, racism, and anti-democratic rule that caused the catastrophe, referring to the lack of action by the Governor and his appointed Emergency Manager, Darnell Earley.

Michigan Congressman Sander Levin (D-9^th) said Flint is a "wake up call for America." Levin warned we are going to have major crises in the country as long as we have people who refuse to raise taxes and allocate the necessary money.

He called for the passage of a Families of Flint Act introduced by Michigan Congressman Dan Kildee (D-5^th). The act calls for $1.5 billion, to be equally shared by the Federal government and state, to pay for infrastructure repairs in Flint, services to families exposed to lead and economic development and expanded youth employment opportunities.

Levin had a quick retort to those who say Democrats are politicizing the issue saying "that's the only way to get changes."

Photo: Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha speaks at U-M School of Public Health, Feb. 3, in Ann Arbor, Mich. Junfu Han | The Ann Arbor News via AP

Trashing the oceans: More plastic than fish by 2050

Thu, 04 Feb 2016 10:35:00 +0000

Large swaths of the world's oceans are filled with floating garbage patches, which wash up on islands and beaches, end up in the stomachs of marine animals, and continue to pile up with harmful plastics. And according to a recent study by the World Economic Forum (WES), much more trash will be floating into the oceans in the coming years, with plastics predicted to outweigh fish, pound for pound, by 2050.

Oceans will be in huge trouble

According to the report, the increasing flow of plastic is positively choking the waters and their life - 90 percent of sea birds have consumed some form of plastic, said a separate study by the National Academy of Sciences. The threat of plastic pollution has been called "global, pervasive, and increasing." And the oceans will be in huge trouble much sooner than 2050. The WES abstract noted, "We calculate that 275 million metric tons of plastic waste were generated in 192 coastal countries in 2010, with 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons entering the ocean. Without waste management infrastructure improvements, the cumulative quantity of plastic waste available to enter the ocean from land is predicted to increase by an order of magnitude by 2025."

Despite this data, and the responsibility on the part of human beings to recycle, the same study also shows that people are doing a terrible job of properly disposing of plastics. Roughly one third of all plastics produced manage to escape collection systems, whereupon they end up in the sea or the stomach of a bird. Basically, that means that about eight million metric tons of the stuff is avoiding proper collection and disposal methods each year. That's like "five bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world," according to Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia, who published a paper on the matter this week in Science. The amount of plastic is "much larger than what they're currently finding in the water," she added. "Of course, as you know, they can only count what they find, and they can only find where they look."

The issue will come back to haunt people

And while it would seem that many a capitalist and climate denier has limited sympathy for the marine life being destroyed by plastic pollution, the issue will come back to haunt people - both economically and health-wise. The damage caused by plastic being washed into waterways costs about $13 billion per year in losses for the tourist, shipping, and fishing industries. And its disruption of marine ecosystems is nothing to shrug off - it severely threatens food security for people who depend on subsistence fishing - especially indigenous people.

In fact, the Indigenous Marine Debris Network released a statement on the matter, remarking, "Proliferation of marine plastic pollution disproportionately threatens indigenous people's health and environment due to a lack of infrastructure to deal with debris, an erosion of traditional lifeways and cultural sustenance, and a reliance on the world's oceans as an economic and food resource."

The area most negatively impacted, according to the National Academy of Sciences' report, is around the Southern Ocean boundary with the Tasman Sea (a stretch of water that lies between New Zealand and Australia). The authors noted that areas "where high plastic concentration and high seabird diversity coincide" are the most vulnerable. "We are very concerned about species such as penguins and giant albatrosses, which live in these areas," said co-author Erik van Sebille. "While the infamous garbage patches in the middle of the oceans have strikingly high densities of plastic, very few animals live there."

Co-author Denise Hardesty stated that finding plastic in birds' stomachs is an increasingly common occurrence, and that the kinds of plastic they eat mostly originate in urban rivers and sewers. Consuming these items, especially large pieces of plastic, can be deadly for the animals. "I've found nearly 200 pieces of plastic in a single seabird," said Hardesty. "I have seen everything from cigarette lighters to bottle caps to model cars." Still, she added, the problem is a solvable one. "Improving waste management can reduce the threat plastic is posing to marine life. Even simple measures can make a difference. Efforts to reduce plastics dumped into the environment in Europe resulted in measurable changes in plastic in seabirds' stomachs in less than a decade. This suggests that improvements in basic waste management can reduce plastic in the environment in a really short time."

Harsh facts about plastic

As noted previously in EcoWatch, here are some harsh facts about plastic that readers need to know:

In the Los Angeles area alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragments, like grocery bags, straws, and soda bottles, are carried into the Pacific Ocean each day. And this is a city that has recently banned plastic bags!

Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the Earth four times.

We only recover about five percent of the plastics we produce.

Every year, about 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. More than one million bags are used every minute.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is located in the North Pacific Gyre off the coast of California and is the largest ocean garbage site in the world. The floating mass of waste is twice the size of Texas, and its plastic pieces outnumber sea life six to one.

Although human beings are the perpetrators of this pollution, they are also the victims: plastic chemicals can be absorbed by the body - and 93 percent of Americans age six or older test positive for BPA, a chemical compound used to create polycarbonate plastic, according to National Geographic. Some of the compounds found in plastic have been found to alter hormones or have other potential health effects on humans.

Here's how to be a part of the solution

Reuse shopping bags, plastic utensils, and water bottles, rather than throwing them away. Bottled water and disposable cups in particular are problematic; water bottles produce 1.5 million tons of plastic waste annually, and the average U.S. office worker uses roughly 500 plastic cups per year.
Refuse excess packaging that uses too much plastic, and other disposable plastic items like straws. Opt instead for cardboard or glass containers - and wash out and reuse those!
Replace the use of sandwich bags with a reusable lunch bag or box, or a paper bag.
Bring a to-go cup to a café or restaurant instead of using the plastic cups there.
Download digital-format movies or music, instead of purchasing plastic CDs, DVDs, and jewel cases.
Volunteer at a beach cleanup.
Support plastic bag bans like those in LA and Olympia, Washington. A single plastic bag, after all, can take 1,000 years to completely degrade. As far as shopping is concerned, reusable bags are the answer, though paper bags can also be used. And if you're choosing the reusable option, avoid bags made from nylon or polyester because those are also made from plastic.
Inform friends and family about the dangers and nasty impact of plastic pollution.
And finally, recycle!

Photo: Birds like this unsuspecting seagull become entangled in pieces of plastic - and that's the best-case scenario; it is much more common for birds to actually consume large quantities of plastic. | Tom Grundy/Shutterstock