People Before Profit blog

This month in history: Are you aware of manatees?

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 10:53:00 +0000

November is Manatee Awareness Month, a time to reflect on the gentle giants that are Florida's official state marine mammal.

Yeah we've all heard the quip where people brag they have a swimmer's body, and you reply, "Sure, so do manatees."

But how much do you really know about this amazing animal?

Manatees comprise three of the four living species in the order Sirenia. The fourth is the Eastern Hemisphere's dugong. Unlike the usual pattern of evolution of species from sea to land, Sirenia are believed to have evolved from four-legged land mammals over 60 million years ago. Their closest living relatives are elephants and hyraxes.

Mostly herbivorous, manatees spend a lot of time grazing on seagrasses in shallow warm water, and are sometimes referred to as sea cows. Florida manatees are endangered by human-made threats, so it's especially important that people know more about them and what we can do to protect them. As Pope Francis reminds us, everything is connected.

The name manatí comes from the Taíno, a pre-Columbian people of the Caribbean. Manatee range is from the Mid-Atlantic states of the U.S. down to Florida, much of the Gulf of Mexico, the entire Caribbean, the Caribbean coast of Central America and the northern coast of South America. They measure up to 13 feet long, weigh as much as 1,300 pounds, and have paddle-like flippers. The females tend to be larger and heavier.

When born, baby manatees have an average mass of 66 pounds. They have a large, flexible prehensile upper lip used to gather food. Adults have no incisor or canine teeth, just a set of cheek teeth, which are not clearly differentiated into molars and premolars. These teeth are continuously replaced throughout life, with new teeth growing at the rear as older teeth fall out from farther forward in the mouth. This process, known as polyphyodonty, occurs among other mammals only in the kangarooand elephant. Females have two teats, one under each flipper,a characteristic that was used to make early links between the manatee and elephants.

Manatees inhabit slow rivers, canals, saltwater bays, estuaries, and coastal areas. They are a migratory species, inhabiting the Florida waters during the winter and moving as far north as Virginia and as far west as Texas in summer. They have a lifespan of about 60 years with no known natural enemies, although in the past they were exploited for their meat, fat, and hides.Today, most of their deaths are the result of human activity, particularly watercraft collisions; however, the most significant challenge they face today is the loss of habitat. Coastal development has significantly reduced the size of their population.

There are currently an estimated 3,200-5,000 manatees living in U.S. waters. The year 2013was the deadliest year on record for the number of manatees killed, close to a thousand, due in large part to unusually significant algal blooms traced to global warming. Population viability studies have found that decreasing adult survival and eventual extinction are the probable future for Florida manatees, without additional protection.

Humans are the only life that endangers manatees. Aside from loss of habitat, fishing nets and lines cause injuries to manatees that often lead to serious infections. Many manatee deaths are the result of collisions with boats when the mammals are surfacing for air. They are not fast enough to elude the boat propellers, and thus suffer from fatal gashes. Pollution also affects mortality, as chemicals introduced into their environment lead to impaired immune systems. The fact that manatees tend to gather in the warm water outflows of power plants furthers the likelihood of the spread of disease.

Seasonal slower-speed manatee protection zones go into effect in November: Boaters must reduce their speed and be alert to the presence of manatees, such as seeing a snout, tail or a large swirl on the surface of the water.

There are other ways that everyone, whether or not we live and boat in Florida, can help manatees. We can support organizations and programs that strengthen the Endangered Species Act, which has been vital to manatees' survival, and Everglades restoration, which will be extremely important to their future. We can encourage international cooperation with our neighbors. Needless to say, we can also work to elect political leaders who will prize the environment we all live in over unchecked greed and profit.

Sources: Defenders of Wildlife and Wikipedia.

Photo: Sailors for the Sea

A cease-fire with nature?

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 12:25:00 +0000

The rural Southwest feels vast and empty. Driving from Los Angeles to New Mexico, my wife Susan and I saw sweeping landscapes of alluvial fans and sheer cliffs, and mesas that stretched as far as we could see. Just the idea that people carved out a way of life on these lands left us in awe of our ancestors and, before them - centuries before them, millennia even - the first people who lived here.

People still live on this arid earthscape. They populate the small towns along the railroad tracks. They dwell in pueblos at the tops of mesas. They survive tucked into corners of cliff sides and in the bottomlands of rivers. Driving through such rugged beauty made us aware of the power of nature and the relative powerlessness of human beings in that kind of environment.

For tens of thousands of years the whim of the natural world determined the lives of human beings. When it got hot, they sweltered. When it snowed, they froze. When it rained, they grew crops and ate. When it was dry, they ate what they could - or left their homes and villages and headed somewhere else.

Then about a century and a half ago, that seemingly eternal pattern began to change. Human societies developed the capacity to direct Nature. We created new ways to get about. We built systems to bring water to deserts. We generated power from sources people had never known much about. Soon refrigeration changed the climate inside our homes, offices, factories. We tore down mountains, dug deep into the earth, diverted rivers.

Now, in a brief time of only a few decades, our conquest of Nature has turned in on itself. By expanding the reach of human power, we have gained the ability to alter everything. We've poisoned the earth, dirtied the air, fouled the water and burned what took Nature millennia to create. "Wild" no longer exists, even in the vast expanses of the Southwest. Humans touch everything.

The alternatives that 20th-century philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead and theologians like John Cobb have proposed would break out of the adversarial dualism of Nature vs. Human. Pope Francis points in that direction also. In his Encyclical, he wrote:

"Ecology studies the relationship between living organisms and the environment in which they develop. This necessarily entails reflection and debate about the conditions required for the life and survival of society, and the honesty needed to question certain models of development, production and consumption. It cannot be emphasized enough how everything is connected."

Instead of accepting their traditional roles as "opposites," we could see the human and the environment in terms of an interrelated communion. We could respect the integrity of every entity - the animate (animals, including humans) and the inanimate (the earth and her resources). We could see how we and they interconnect. We could take responsibility for these entities, not just use them up or have our way with them.

Taking the option of seeing all entities as interconnected means stepping back from our domination behavior and putting human life on the earth in perspective. We cannot crush the earth - but she can crush us. We can make life as we know it on earth uninhabitable, but she will go on because she is bigger and much older than we are. In this alternative approach, we would act as if (as if!) we are interrelated. Driving across the backcountry of the Southwest made that opportunity absolutely clear to us.

Rev. Jim Conn is the founding minister of the Church in Ocean Park and served on the Santa Monica City Council and as that city's mayor. He helped found Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Los Angeles, and was its second chair, and was a founder of Santa Monica's renter's rights campaign.

Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Capital & Main.

Photo: Travel Blog

Crimes against nature: the power of polluters

Wed, 28 Oct 2015 12:25:00 +0000

Five trillion tons.

That's how much ice melted in Greenland and Antarctica between 2002 and 2014 - and the reason why the seas already rise above low-lying islands in the South Pacific, displacing tens of thousands of people and threatening coral reefs that nurture uncountable numbers of sea creatures. Because of the climate change crisis we've become used to reading this kind of metric, along with the science-class comparisons that make it easy to visualize the colossal numbers involved. (Those five trillion tons, we are told, could make an ice cube 11 miles long on each side.) What we don't always grasp, however, is the domino effect that one environmental disaster can have on the other side of the world.

A few years back, my wife Susan and I camped at Malakoff Diggins State Park, just north of Nevada City in Northern California. The place is famous for its earth formations that are similar to those of Bryce Canyon National Park, except the scale is smaller, and these were made by humans. Beginning in the mid-19th century, gold-mining operations blasted water against the hillsides to wash away the earth and rock. They moved so much water and debris that it caused major flooding of towns and farm land in the Sacramento Valley. The disaster led to a successful 1882 lawsuit that held the mining operator responsible for the downstream damage.

It was the first time in this state that industrialists were held accountable for their collateral damage, and the decision established a major environmental principle.

Most of us still think that what happens in one place has little effect on another. We ignore the side effects. We may believe an oil spill, like that created by the Exxon Valdez supertanker, may make a mess but that we can clean it up. End of story. Except now, more than two dozen years after that disaster, we know the spill didn't just get some birds dirty and pollute a pristine bay. It has caused misshapen hearts in embryonic fish, as Scientific Reports recently revealed. That problem means the fish can't swim as fast and don't grow as well, which could have implications for a major food source.

Or take wildfires. California has suffered the worst fire season in its history, and the drought gets most of the blame. But we also know that drought conditions overlap with heat spells. They come concomitantly, says a University of California, Irvine report, and this situation not only affects the likelihood of fires here, but occurs pervasively across the continent. That's big, bodes ill and feels obvious.

Less visibly, drier and warmer weather makes trees vulnerable to bugs. Attacks of bark beetles and other insects weaken the trees and make them more combustible. Also, species migrate to higher altitudes. I have always liked backpacking in the High Sierra because it is above the rattlesnake habitat threshold of about 5,500 feet. But heat and drought have changed that. This year a friend on a camping trip at 7,500 feet had one of their party suffer a bite. The woman had to be airlifted to Fresno. Later backpacking, they found another snake mid-trail at 9,000 feet. These snakes migrated out of their customary ecological zone.

As animals change surroundings they have new predators, find new victims and skew the entire ecology at their new elevations. Perhaps as many as one in six species could perish due to temperature-caused habitat changes. That's not unprecedented. The Earth has seen dramatic die-offs before - but this one, we created.

So the oceans warm. We hope that a monster El Niño - a strong Pacific Ocean-driven rainy season - will end the California drought, but it does not guarantee a record snowpack in the Sierras or in the Rockies, from where we Southern Californians get most of our water. Nor is warm sea water good for the fishing off South America. Nor is it good for the phytoplankton that provide food for bigger fish along the coastline. It also turns out that beyond supplying fish food, the microorganisms that grow on the surface of the seas have a role in generating clouds. The microscopic bits get blown up into the sky where they help ice to form, creating clouds that make precipitation. We are just beginning to document the extent these temperature changes impact at a distance.

Here's one more metric: We know that the exhaust from cars, trucks, ships, factories and fossil fuel power plants weakens people's lungs and makes them vulnerable to illness. Apparently, the air in areas where 60 percent of Americans live is so polluted it also damages brain cells. Typical dirty air in urban and suburban areas can cause the brain to age faster, causes inflammation and increases the probability of "silent strokes" that lead to dementia.

These unexpected consequences affect changes over such distances of time and space that we cannot quite absorb their impact. We don't see these phenomena with our eyes, but studies verify an invisible reality that damages us. As it did with the gold miners at Diggins, the law must hold the creators of these complications responsible. That the rules and the regulators are hamstrung by the power of the polluters is a crime against all of us.

Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Capital & Main.

Photo: Rev. Jim Conn

Austerity linked to increase in suicides: science news roundup

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 14:23:00 +0000

Links to some of the most interesting science stories reported this week relating to both political and social affairs and health news from which everyone may benefit. You can comment on these reports at the end of the round up.

Male suicide on rise as result of austerity, report suggests

"These results have profound health and economic policy implications and raise substantial questions on the prolonged application of fiscal austerity without any safety nets...." Thousands of young people (ages 10-24) as well as the elderly (age 65+) are killing themselves out of desperation due to the imposition of austerity measures on people in the EU. These measures cause a rise in unemployment, a cut in pensions and other effects bringing about extreme hardships. Capitalism's Profit Before People drive is causing widespread misery throughout the EU (and not only there).

Emissions targets are out of reach without a massive technological shift in Europe's basic industries

Unless there is a serious retooling the industrial base in Europe to halt massive pollution it will be impossible to reach the emissions reduction goals set for midcentury. It is possible to save the climate but will private profit driven industries actually make the changes needed? Will bourgeois governments force them to do so? If not capitalism will destroy us all sooner rather than later.

Preventive care drops when government cuts close women's health clinics, research says

This article shows that when women's health care clinics are closed as a result of the Republican assault on the constitutional right to abortion large numbers of women can no longer receive the preventive care necessary to detect cancers and other illnesses. The claim that other clinics and health services will cover those formerly receiving treatment at the closed clinics is not true. Republican politicians, in their attacks on Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, are engaged in a massive assault on women's health, especially the health of lower income and minority women, and their policies will lead to needless deaths that preventive medical care could have avoided. These reckless unremorseful misogynists must be removed from power.

Sobering picture of urban education in the U.S.

A study of 50 major cities shows that urban school districts are failing to provide

a basic education to many students especially low income and minority students.

It is the responsibility of the state to provide proper educational opportunities to all students and in failing to educate low income and minority students the state is perpetuating institutional racism. Parents, students, and teachers and their unions will have to organize to remove from office those racist politicians who refuse to fully upgrade and fund equal education for all.

Fracking industry wells associated with premature birth

"Expectant mothers who live near active natural gas wells operated by the fracking industry in Pennsylvania are at an increased risk of giving birth prematurely and for having high-risk pregnancies, new research suggests." What else needs to be said to convince the state not to issue tracking permits! The scientists suggest that state officials "consider" these finding when giving out permits. Who can tell? Maybe it is just a coincidence.

Ancient genome from Africa sequenced for the first time

The first ancient human genome from Africa to be sequenced has revealed that a wave of migration back into Africa from Western Eurasia around 3,000 years ago was up to twice as significant as previously thought, and affected the genetic make-up of populations across the entire African continent. (Science Daily)

Photo: A demonstrator wears a headband reading " 9 suicides a day, 3 because of evictions" during a protest near the Spanish Parliament in Madrid, April 25, 2013. The protest, mostly against austerity measures, comes on the day that Spain's jobless figures were released. Spain's jobless rate shot up to a record 27.2 percent. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Activists redecorate LNG pipeline office with clean water signs

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 14:01:00 +0000

MEDFORD, Ore. - An office for the LNG pipeline project was plastered with clean water and clean environment signs during a demonstration against the LNG project in the southern Oregon town of Medford.

According to Southern Oregon Rising Tide: across Oregon, fossil fuel and pipeline corporations are trying to sell their plans to export fracked gas through communities, forests, and rivers. This fall, activists are turning up the heat and taking direct action to send the message that they won't allow communities to be sacrificed for fossil fuels.

The Medford action took place during the rush hour, only one of many actions taken on a state-wide basis by a dozen different groups. Though the building had been plastered by the signs, the police force in Medford dismissed the idea that the building had been defaced or harmed in any way. As a small town, Medford police still retain a common sense that police forces in larger cities in Oregon (notably Portland) have long since lost.

Some of the signs were of trees, "My roots don't eat gas," water and schools of fish "Keep our water clean" and "Leave our riverbed alone!" Some signs expressed the strong opinions of the protesters: "LNG = Climate Crime." A large banner carried by the crowd showed Justice carrying her balance scale with a pile of cash in one balance pan and a beaver (the symbol of Oregon) in the other balance pan.

Activists including 350 Eugene, Southern Oregon Rising Tide, and Cascadia Forest Defenders organized "Stop the Pipe! A Weekend of Direct Action Against LNG Exports" for October 16-19.

Oregon Governor Kate Brown has the authority to turn down the building of the frack-gas pipeline, as the former governor did, and as have the governors of several surrounding states. But the governor is under ferocious economic pressure. For instance, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has recently issued its rubber-stamp approval for the LNG project, as expected for an agency that some say does nothing but approve what industry claims it needs.

A demonstration was unusual business for Medford, a small retirement town of 78,000 in southern Oregon. Its more normal business is the two hospitals that serve the whole region of southern Oregon. Medford is a hundred miles south along the I-5 corridor from Roseberg, where the massacre at Umpqu Community College took place. The killing was described as the largest in the history of Oregon, a false claim, since the genocide of the Native Americans was the largest mass murder in the history of the state.

Activist agree that Oregon does not need more frack-gas and neither does America. Why not save it for future generations? Has the idea of putting things aside for a rainy day become an obsolete idea under capitalism?

California sets pace on climate change

Fri, 16 Oct 2015 10:30:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. - California's groundbreaking initiatives are setting the pace, on multiple fronts, in the race to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But not without the vigorous and often vicious opposition of Big Oil companies and related corporate interests.

Aiming to encourage meaningful action among the world's nations at the December United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, California is spearheading a global movement of subnational governments pledging to sharply slash greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050.

"We're just getting warmed up," said California Governor Jerry Brown, who helped launch this growing movement called Under 2 MOU, to which so far 43 states, provinces and major cities in 19 countries and five continents have become signatories.

Signatories to the MOU commit to either reduce GHG emissions 80 to 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 or achieve a per capita annual emission target of less than two metric tons by the same year.

The overall goal is to limit the rise in global temperature to below 2 Celsius - the warming threshold at which scientists say catastrophic climate disruptions will be likely.

Brown said agreements such as the Under 2 MOU, while voluntary, help "make sure the world takes the turn."

At the same time, Glen Murray, Ontario's environmental minister, told the Washington Post that "without the complexity of treaties" usually necessary to reach tangible agreements between nations, subnational governments are already "making commitments and supporting one another."

For example,

California's power grid operator is helping Mexico set up its own independent grid-management body.
Chinese officials, who are developing their own massive renewables program, have been consulting with California's energy experts.

So, what accounts for the Golden State's environmental prowess?

California is an economic powerhouse which, if it were a nation, would be rated eighth in the world just behind Brazil.

Then, as Brown has said, "It's easy to say 'de-carbonize,' but to actually carry it out takes political will."

And so it is.

Last week the Golden State upped the ante when Brown signed into law a bill, SB-350, requiring state-regulated utilities to increase by 50 percent the electricity generated from renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind and geothermal power, by 2030.

The bill also mandated a 50 percent increase in energy efficiency in buildings by the same year.

These were among a number of ambitious environmental initiatives the governor championed in his second term inaugural address in January.

Twenty six percent of California's electrical power this year will come from clean sources like the sun and wind, without counting the large contribution from home solar generation. The national average is around 10 percent.

Previously California utilities had been required to provide 33 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Contracts already in place are expected to guarantee the state reaches this goal.

The new law's improved target of 50 percent within 15 years, while challenging, is realizable given the way things are going now, William Nelson, head of North American analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, told the New York Times.

A robust solar panel installation and financing industry has emerged and is now expanding elsewhere in the country. Nearly 55,000 Californians are employed in solar.

California's expertise and experience is likely to serve as a valuable resource, given President Obama's Clean Power Plan requires every state to devise its own carbon emissions plan.

But more than cutting-edge high tech, entrepreneurial initiative and political will account for the Golden State's lead.

It's the balance of political power.

Unlike many states in the grip of the Republican rightwing, California is controlled by a Democratic governor and strong Democratic majorities in both legislative chambers, with a sizeable core of progressive legislators. All the state's top elected officers are Democrats.

A combination of factors accounts for this, not least of which are a relatively strong labor movement and other progressive social movements, including racial, immigrant, gender, and LGBTQ rights, environmental, and anti-war organizations.

While this has not always been the case, at the base is a racially and ethnically diverse populace with an increasingly liberal and progressive bent along the coastal areas and in larger cities, where the bulk of the population is concentrated.

Still, powerful financial and corporate forces are arrayed against Californians, with Big Oil among its most reactionary.

The original version of SB-350 - cited by Brown in his inaugural remarks - included a mandate to cut the state's consumption of petroleum by 50 percent by 2030.

After the Senate passed the original bill, 20 Assembly Democrats, constituting an informal conservative caucus, ganged up with the Republican minority to strip it of its petroleum mandate.

In the end, conservative Democrats joined with the majority to approve the other two parts of SB-350.

Senator President Pro tempore Kevin de Leon, author of the original bill, said, "I didn't anticipate the tens of millions of dollars, the distortions" generated by oil companies in a massive advertising campaign.

A determined de Leon pledged to re-visit the fight over petroleum reduction use in the future.

Gov. Brown, who vowed to use his executive powers to cut petroleum consumption, declared, "I'd say the oil (industry) won a skirmish, but they've lost the bigger battle."

Photo: Gov. Brown signs into law SB-350 at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California. | Damian Dovarganes/AP

Today in history: National Food Bank Week and World Food Day

Wed, 14 Oct 2015 11:52:00 +0000

This week is National Food Bank Week, a great time to start thinking about helping others as the holiday season approaches. Food banks are, sadly, an all too necessary and ubiquitous feature of life in the United States today, where wages (if you're employed) or the lack of wages (if you're unemployed) just do not provide enough for sustenance for millions of people living in America. National Food Bank Week occurs each year during the week that also marks World Food Day on October 16, a day of action against hunger.

During this week, and especially on October 16, people around the world come together to declare their commitment to eradicate hunger in our lifetime. Because when it comes to hunger, the only acceptable number in the world is zero.

World Food Day celebrates the creation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on October 16, 1945, in Quebec, Canada. First established in 1979, World Food Day has since been observed in almost every country by millions of people.

From hunger walks and World Food Day dinners to meal packaging events and food drives, there are many ways for people to be a part of solutions to hunger.

Each year, advocates come together to raise awareness and engage their neighbors in the movement to end hunger. Led by the FAO Liaison Office for North America, the World Food Day USA & Canada Network includes over 60 organizations, universities and companies that are working to achieve a zero hunger world.

In a world of plenty, 805 million people, one in nine worldwide, live with chronic hunger.The costs of hunger and malnutrition fall heavily on the most vulnerable:

• 60 percent of the hungry in the world are women.

• Almost five million children under the age of five die of malnutrition-related causes every year.

• Four in 10 children in poor countries are malnourished, damaging their bodies and brains.

Every human being has a fundamental right to be free from hunger and the right to adequate food. The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child has the physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement.

We can end hunger in our lifetime. It's possible. The world produces more than enough food to feed every person on the planet. In September 2000, world leaders signed a commitment to achieve eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015. MDG #1 is eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and includes three targets. Since then:

• Forty countries have already achieved the first target, to halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015.

• In addition, over the past 20 years, the likelihood of a child dying before age five has been nearly cut in half, which means about 17,000 children are saved every day.

• Extreme poverty rates have also been cut in half since 1990.

The challenge is significant, but these results show that when we focus our attention, we can make big strides.

The cost of neglect is too high. No one in the world should have to experience hunger. In addition to the cost of human suffering, the world as a whole loses when people do not have enough to eat. Hungry people have learning difficulties, are less productive at work, are sick more often and live shorter lives. The cost to the global economy because of malnutrition is the equivalent of $3.5 trillion a year. Hunger leads to increased levels of global insecurity and environmental degradation. Ending hunger is not just a moral imperative, but also a good investment for society.

Hunger can happen to anyone.In the U.S., by many standards the richest country in the world, one in seven Americans - 14.3 percent - does not have enough to eat. Nutritious food can be expensive, making a balanced diet a luxury for many. Loss of a job, a family tragedy, poor health, or an accident can make anyone, anywhere, go hungry in a moment. Globally, extreme climate events, war, or even financial crisis can dramatically affect a person's ability to feed themselves and their families. These small and large events can set off a cycle of hunger and poverty.

Some societies do better at feeding their people than others. In some countries hunger is virtually unknown. Is it merely a question of capitalism vs. socialism, or totalitarianism vs. the welfare state, or North vs. South, or religious vs. secular? No, it's not that simple. Without adequate social safety nets, resiliency measures and good policy in place, whatever the system, hunger is bound to appear. It's our job to set those nets, measures and policies in place, now and for everyone worldwide.

Source: World Food Day USA

Photo: Feeding America

Antarctic meltdown: Continent at risk by 2100, cities to pay price

Tue, 13 Oct 2015 15:34:00 +0000

Antarctic ice is now melting at such a rapid rate, say scientists, that the continent could be at risk by 2100. And as that happens, widespread collapse of ice shelves could cause a dramatic rise in sea level. This could have disastrous consequences, including putting several U.S. cities underwater, and the window of time in which to avert this crisis is quickly shutting.

The new research, conducted by Nature Geoscience and published Oct. 12, predicts that surface melting of ice shelves will double by 2050, and lead to shelf collapse, demolishing the natural barrier against ice flowing from glaciers into the oceans. It found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their present rate, those ice shelves could collapse by the end of the century; and that's not even taking into account the possibility that emissions could increase before that time.

Luke Trusel, lead scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said the results of the study "just how rapidly melting in Antarctica can intensify in a warming climate. This has already occurred in places like the Antarctic Peninsula, where we've observed warming and abrupt ice shelf collapses in the last few decades. Our model predictions show that similar levels of melt may occur across coastal Antarctica near the end of this century, raising concerns about future ice shelf stability."

The study's co-author Karen Frey, from Clark University, Massachusetts, added, "The data presented in this study clearly shows that climate policy, and therefore the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions over the coming century, has an enormous control over the future fate of surface melting of Antarctic ice shelves, which we must consider when assessing their long-term stability and potential indirect contributions to sea level rise."

A separate study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showed just what would happen if this came to pass. Rising sea levels, it found, would vastly erode the U.S. coastal states, and leave several major cities underwater. By 2200, cities including Cape Coral and Hollywood in Florida, and New Orleans and Metairie in Louisiana, would be completely submerged. Other cities would be partially submerged, including Virginia Beach, Va.; Sacramento, Calif.; Miami, Fla.; and Boston, Mass. And New York City, too, would be partly underwater, displacing an estimated 1,870,000 people.

According to Scientific American, the only way to avoid these scenarios is to achieve a worldwide goal of zero carbon emissions - a highly unlikely feat. For some cities, like Miami and New York, it could mean the difference between surviving and not, while others, like New Orleans, are doomed no matter what happens.

Malcolm Bowman, an oceanography professor from Stony Brook University in Long Island, spoke in particular about New York, and how it will be affected when all that ice melts and the sea levels go up. "We could expect FDR Drive to be underwater. We could expect the water to be lapping around Wall Street. We could see vital infrastructure, hospitals, sewage treatment plants, communication conduits all paralyzed by flooding with seawater, which is very corrosive."

Essentially, in 200 years, the Big Apple could look a lot like Venice, where storms at certain times of year swell the New York Harbor until water fills the streets. The avenues of the financial district would be canals. "You may have to build bridges or get Venice-style gondolas or your little speed-boats ferrying yourself up to the buildings," said Klaus Jacob, a Columbia University research scientist.

And New York is just one of example out of many cities that will suffer. Climate Central has made an interactive map, which anyone can use to see how their own city or town will fare a couple hundred years from now. For states including California, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, New Jersey, and New York, the prognosis is not a good one.

Photo: John McConnico/AP

Diverse movement for justice grows in Detroit

Wed, 07 Oct 2015 15:05:00 +0000

DETROIT - This past Saturday, Michiganders from across the state joined Detroiters in solidarity as they marched down Michigan Ave to rally at Hart Plaza by the Detroit River. Called the Detroit March for Justice, the diverse coalition of environmental, peace, labor and racial justice organizations took to the streets to fight back against injustice in all its forms. Whether inadequate housing, racial injustice, earning a livable wage, dirty air and water, or the effects of climate disruption, Detroit is hit hard by all.

"See the diversity, this is what a movement looks like," said Aaron Mair,

Sierra Club national president, as he looked back over his shoulder to the many hundreds assembling before the march. His organization played a leading role in mobilizing for the demonstration.

Dozens of organizations including the Blue Green Alliance, Metro-Detroit AFL-CIO, and Peace Action of Michigan helped to bring the message of uniting their movements for a better quality of life to this city.

We have to find solutions "together" was a theme I heard from all I spoke to.

Regina Strong directs the "beyond coal" campaign for the Sierra Club. She said

"We're all focused on justice, just different aspects. We'd thought we build strength by doing it together." Dirty coal joins economic, racial and environmental issues, she said.

Many carried signs shaming the Detroit Water Board for the thousands of water shutoffs plaguing the city. "No man should have the power and authority to cut off anybody's water," said former City Council member JoAnn Watson at a post march rally.

Labor too was represented. "Every justice they are fighting for, labor supports. It would be foolish for us not to be a part of this," said Metro Detroit AFL-CIO leader Tanise Hill. She noted Council President Rick Blocker is a strong supporter of environmental issues.

Vicki Dobbins came on a bus from River Rouge, one of the most polluted areas in Michigan. "Our children have been found to have more asthma, bronchitis, colds, breathing problems than any other area. I'm here because we need clean air."

Mair said the Sierra Club is "stepping up and stepping back. This is not the Sierra Club. This is a grassroots effort that began last year with the huge climate march rally in New York City."

He said Detroit has the know-how, skilled labor, and skilled unionized labor, to move from a destructive coal based, carbon based industry to one that creates green jobs. He called on Michigan Governor Snyder to help make it happen. "This city powered America out of World War Two and the Great Depression. We are facing species and climate extinction. It can also power us to save humanity."

Photo: John Rummel/PW

Science round-up: Cancer, China, and climate change

Mon, 05 Oct 2015 12:49:00 +0000

Almost one-third of families of children with cancer have unmet basic needs during treatment

These basic needs include food, housing, clothing, transportation, as well as incidental expenses.

These families are mainly low income workers and people in poverty. The United States not only does not provide the needed assistance to these families with sick children, it tolerates the knowledge that this situation has a negative influence on the survival rate of these children many of whom die of their cancers who may have lived if they were not poor. This is one more reason to oust the Republicans from power wherever they are so that they can no longer block legislation and programs that could remedy this problem.

Legal drinking age of 18 tied to high school dropout rate

Research indicates that there is a strong relation between lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18 and the increase of the dropout rate of high school students. The last time the age was dropped to 18 the dropout rate increased anywhere from four percent to 13 percent and minority children were the most likely to dropout. The current discussions on lowering the drinking age back to 18 should consider the facts that only the alcohol producers will really benefit due to market demand and that minority students will be the most vulnerable due to the lack of social services and the social pressures many are under to dropout of school.

Goods manufactured in China not good for the environment, study finds

While the development of the Chinese economy has lifted millions out of poverty and turned China into an economic world power, their manufacturing sector spews forth more CO2 by far than similar sectors in other countries. This makes their system more detrimental to the environment than it should be. This is due to their dependence on burning coal for fuel and the fact that many of their factories are technologically out of date. To its credit the Chinese government has taken steps to remedy the situation by closing down coal fueled plants, investing in alternative energy sources, and beginning to upgrade the manufacturing sector.

Are American schools making inequality worse?

The answer is yes according to analysis of math teaching around the world. The U.S. was included in this study, which revealed that social class was a major factor in getting a good math education. More content and better access to higher math classes are available to more affluent students while lower class students get a lower quality math education. This puts these students at a disadvantage in passing tests for better colleges and jobs in the future and helps to perpetuate the lower class status of low income students. Of course, in a country based on inequality and birth privilege the schools will reflect and reproduce the class and income structure of society as a whole.

Climate change negatively affects birth weight, study finds

Low birth weight babies are more likely to be handicapped as adults and they also have a higher mortality rate. These studies show that this negative affect is most pronounced in poor third world populations but as the climate worsens will eventually spread to the developed world as well.

Photo: According to an analysis, U.S. schools are worsening inequality. | Patrick Collard/AP

Fighting climate change: Just do it!

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 11:16:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Sometimes religious people tend to be slower to adapt to changes coursing through the culture, especially with concerns about human-caused climate change. Even though polling shows Catholics, for example, to be slightly ahead of the national curve of global warming awareness, further inspection reveals that only 53 percent of white Catholics think climate change is a critical or major problem, although 73 percent of Hispanic Catholics do. These figures were measured a year ago, but there are signs that most church members aren't even aware of the Pope's environmental Encyclical, released this past June.

Those figures still fall short of the nation as a whole. Some 91 percent of Democrats, 78 percent of independents and even 51 percent of Republicans think the government should be doing more about climate change. One would think that's too awesome a majority for a deadlocked Congress to ignore.

Meanwhile, many in those majorities appear not to be waiting for someone else to take action. Across the country - and around the world - people are making changes in the ways they live. Personal decisions to use public transportation or to replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents are being added to many people's bucket lists. Friends of mine have put solar panels on their roofs - the installation costs them nothing up front, and they now earn money selling their surplus to the power grid. When you think about the rooftops and parking lots across this urban region, you wonder why large solar panel projects are only considered for the desert.

Some homeowners have channeled their houses' graywater into irrigation for lawns and landscape. Another friend took a utility rebate to plant indigenous vegetation instead of grass. It's relatively more expensive at the beginning, but it saves money in the long run and uses water otherwise going into the waste system.

Californians have saved enormous amounts of water in recent months: A 27 percent reduction in June, followed by a 31.1 percent cut in July, according to the Los Angeles Times. That amounts to more than two proposed state dam projects combined. If we can take water seriously in a crisis - saving water and energy - we can do more on other fronts as well.

But perhaps what we need to do more than anything is talk about global warming. According to the National Catholic Reporter, a spring study showed that about 19 percent of Americans hear about climate change through the media weekly, but only 4 percent talk about it in their peer groups. We know that human behavior changes when friends talk. If that's the case, we have a long ways to go.

On the other hand, I am encouraged by what neighbors do together. Some people have been actively taking back the streets from cars. Many of us know about citywide bicycle days on designated streets, but pop-up green spaces in parking spots are not just a phenomenon of arts district impresarios in Los Angeles. They are happening across the country. Some are temporary, some become permanent. A friend in Washington, D.C. started spring plantings in the parkways in the neighborhood business district. They quickly became so popular - adding beauty and cooling the sidewalks - the merchants hired him to do more. Now he has a business.

Businesses that take human-caused climate change seriously appear to be making money too. The Los Angeles Times recently focused a story on a Costa Mesa company turning methane from manure into plastic. You can find entire wardrobes of eco-friendly clothing online. And investors seem impressed by Google's efforts to go green by:

Investing in its own wind farm to meet the company's energy needs in the Silicon Valley.

Improving the efficiency of their products and processes.

Investing some two billion dollars into renewable energy projects around the world.

Nations can lead the way, too. Across the planet, wind energy plays a larger role than ever, and the U.S. is on target for the biggest solar energy year yet. But Costa Rica gets the prize: It went 94 days in a row this summer using only renewable energy sources. Earlier in the year that nation went 75 consecutive days without drawing on fossil fuels.

This did not happen by accident. As Pope Francis' Encyclical notes, it takes intentional national public policies, as well as conscious decisions by businesses, groups and individuals to reverse human-caused climate change. Hopefully the Pope's visit has helped more of us understand the dimensions of the problem and how we can make a difference. Just maybe more people will be talking about it.

Reprinted by kind permission of the author and Capital & Main.

Photo: Capital & Main