When Climate Change Denial is Almost Laughable -- Were It Not So Lamentable

I'm a huge fan of permaculture. (It's an integrated design system for permanent (agri)culture that's modelled on nature's patterns. Its founder, Bill Mollison, says: "Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour; of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system.") 

I love permaculture and its principles and strategies so much that when the climate change emergency has me down in the dumps, it's the thought of permaculturing the world that puts a smile on my fence and gets me out of bed in the morning. 

So you can imagine my consternation bordering on distress when a very well known and highly respected permaculture author, teacher and practitioner wrote a blog post called Is Food the Last Thing to Worry About? and didn't once mention the climate crisis. 

"Our food system is woefully dependent on petroleum," he starts with, pointing to writers such as Richard Heinberg and Michael Pollan. Yes, and since we have to get to zero carbon emissions as rapidly as possible in order to have any chance of stabilizing global temperature increase and ocean acidification, we therefore need a huge fossil-fuel-free revolution in the way we grow food. 

"Soaring food costs have brought on riots in some countries, and in unstable nations, famine continues to be a regular visitor." Yes, and many of those problems are being caused in large part or at least exacerbated by global warming and the newly unpredictable climate. Remember Russia's summer of 2010? 

That country lost 30% of its grain crops due to heat waves and wildfires. The Arab Spring began in 2011. Think there was no connection? Well, Russia had to stop its grain exports that year. Imagine what that did to food prices in the Middle East! (And that's not even mentioning or mourning the 56,000 people who lost their lives due to the smog and heat.)

This author goes on to talk about "post-Peak Oil" (rather than climate disruption), and how people are worrying needlessly about food. "In the developed world, especially the breadbasket nations such as the US, Canada, and other food-exporting countries, the food network may be one of the last systems to fail during energy descent." 

Hey buddy, can you say "disappearing Arctic summer sea ice"? (That sea ice is the air conditioner for our Northern Hemisphere growing season.) Do you even know that central continental regions (those "breadbaskets" -- already in decline) warm faster than the global average? And what's going to happen if our breadbaskets become responsible for feeding the whole world (for as long as they can) because we haven't mitigated the climate crisis?

"I think there are many reasons not to be focusing primarily on food as the system most likely to fail. This isn’t to say that industrial, oil-based agriculture is invulnerable, let alone sustainable. And we may see temporary shortages of specific foods. But there are many reasons why our fears of a food collapse [...] may be distracting us from focusing on more immediate and likely risks."

Risk equals probability times magnitude. That's the equation for risk. So even if "food collapse" were unlikely (it's not ... it's already happening to varying degrees all over the world -- look at California and its drought, for Earth's sake!), when it happens, its magnitude is going to be life-or-death. That immediately makes it a risk that we need to pay attention to. 

"Distracting?" Here's something distracting: "I suspect we focus on food in part because providing it appears much more possible than, say, keeping the financial, health care, or automotive industries running." Cuz sure, keeping those automotive industries running is just so much more important than ensuring food security around the world. Not! See what happens when we don't think in systems? When we don't look at all the variables? We get ridiculous. 

And no, providing food is not going to be "much more possible" once we factor in droughts, floods, other extreme weather events, destructive wildfires, and heat waves that kill off crops and make it impossible for labourers to work on farms. 

Why would someone who is a permaculture hero -- and an otherwise highly intelligent person -- be so short-sighted on climate change? Denial comes in all shapes and sizes, it would appear.

Clinton Wasn't Completely Right - It's the Food, Stupid

I know, I know. I talk about this a LOT. But today is Blog Action Day, and the theme this year is food! So how could I not talk about the relationship between food security and the climate change emergency?

There. Maybe I've said it all already. Climate change is threatening our food security. Bam. Done.

Okay, I'll keep going. While pundits are still — if they talk about global warming and climate change at all — drawing our attention to rising sea level and the plight of polar bears, the biggest, gravest, fastest growing and most urgent threat to all human beings on the planet (with tens of millions already impacted) is drought and wild fires, which lead to crop failure, which leads to food shortages, with ensuing famine (and then the violence).

I know that we in the developed part of the world feel immune. Our grocery store shelves are stocked with provisions, and our home pantries are full of pasta and canned peaches. What do we possibly have to worry about?

Well, as the summer Arctic sea ice extent continues to decrease (summer of 2011 was the second lowest in satellite history), our Northern Hemisphere growing seasons will become hotter and drier = loss of crops. Witness Russia 2010. If we get a few bad summers in a row, food prices will go through the roof and food shortages could lead to violence, even here "at home." (Remember, our grocery stores only hold about three days' worth of food!)

If that sounds ominous, then get serious about solutions that create local community resilience:

• grow as much food as possible at your own home (lawn = food, porch = food, apartment balcony = food, sunny window sill = food)
• work with others to start as many community gardens as possible
• start a program whereby people without land tend the gardens of people who can't
• talk to others about food security (supermarkets have lulled us into forgetting that our species now depends on a stable climate and successful agriculture)
• create a community kitchen, where people teach each other how to prepare food that is locally grown
• eat lower on the food chain (I see lots of grazing land around my community that could, with some work, grow food for humans instead)

And while you're at it, help to create the political will that will lead to serious international action on the climate change emergency at the next climate negotiations, coming up this December in Durban, South Africa. Help your elected officials and your local, regional and federal governments see that climate change is a threat to our food security.

p.s. As the worst famine in many, many decades continues to ravage the Horn of Africa, can anyone tell me where the "militants" (do they even know what they're fighting for anymore?) of Al Shabab are getting their food from?

By the way, it's never just one thing, is it? But in this case, the famine has been exacerbated by global warming and climate change — and the violence makes it even more tragic.

The Cake is Burning! The Oven's Still On!

We had a lovely dinner here last night with two wonderful young friends. Over ratatouille (it's that harvest time of year) on couscous with pain de campagne (sounds fancier than it was), we talked about a lot of fun things as well as harrowing life experiences — as friends do over dinner.

And then, sometime during dessert, C sat back in his chair and said, "I guess this is a debate that could go on all night.... [long pause to leave us in suspense] ...but a lot of people are saying that there's no such thing as global warming and that the Earth is actually cooling."

I'm happy to say that I avoided spewing my blood orange sorbet with fresh cherries all over the table! My beloved very calmly explained that the temperature has gone up — and it hasn't gone back down again, therefore the Earth can't be cooling.

Then he used the analogy that's so easy to understand, our friends were nodding in no time.

If you put the oven on at 350ºF (my stove hasn't gone metric yet), the temperature of the oven will rise until it hits 350, and then stop rising. That's when the little light goes out and we put the pan full of cake batter in. Now, if we don't at some point (about 30-40 minutes later) turn the oven off and take the pan out, what happens to that cake? It is going to go past "baked" to dried out and then to burned.

Globally, we have turned the oven up by 0.8ºC — AND WE HAVE NOT TURNED THE OVEN OFF! Hence there's no way the Earth can be cooling.

I know that a 0.8ºC increase in global average temperature doesn't sound like much, but it's been enough to rough up the climate in numerous parts of the world: I'm freezing (okay, chilly) in early August where I live, Russia is ablaze with forest fires and heat records, precipitation patterns are changing (hence more droughts and floods), and on it goes.

Remember, we've evolved to be an agricultural species since the last Ice Age, and our agriculture has been based on a stable climate (and stable global average temperature) over the last 10,000 years.

Folks, we have to turn the oven off (mitigation) or at least start taking the pan out of the oven (adaptation) — and we have to start yesterday. Why are so many people still listening to the progenycidists, children haters, and fossil fuel investors?

What's stopping us from drumming up a little courage and compassion, putting on our metaphorical oven mitts, and simply getting the job started?

Burning the Candle at Both Ends Can't Last Long, Let Alone Forever

Two very big bad "newses" this week:

1. Russia is burning.
2. Phytoplankton populations are plummeting.

So, on land, our food sources and forests are burning up. In the oceans, the very foundation of the marine food web (which extends onto land) is disappearing. Is it possible that someone might NOW announce the climate change emergency?

As reported by the BBC, a United Nations team, "shocked by the destruction it saw on the island of Sakhalin and the vast region of Khabarovsk near the border with China," has said that "the scale of the damage caused by recent forest fires in Russia's Far East amounts to a world-wide ecological disaster."

"The experts said the damage would have far-reaching consequences not only for neighbouring countries, but for the entire northern hemisphere." Russian Prime Minister Putin has called in the army to help with the devastation.

According to Alexei Lyakhov, director of Moscow's meteorological service, temperatures for July were 8 degrees Celsius (14 degrees F) higher than normal!! He sees the heat as evidence of global warming.

Lyakhov also says that in 130 years of daily weather monitoring in Moscow, there has never been such a hot summer. "This is not normal weather, this has never happened."

Imagine. Siberia, the coldest place on the face of the planet in winter is experiencing a heat wave — temperatures are hitting 32 degrees C! (That's pushing 90 degrees F!) And Moscow has broken temperature records, reaching 37.2 degrees C (99 degrees F) on Monday, July 26.

According to Agence France Presse (reported at WeatherOnline), "an emergency drought situation has been declared in 19 of Russia's 83 regions with crops dying on an estimated 9.6 million hectares of fields."

So not only are "developed" nations in the northern hemisphere going to struggle as the Arctic summer sea ice melts away (doing away with our summer "air conditioning"), but now we're also facing this carbon feedback: the heat of global warming dries the forests, which start to burn, releasing more carbon and creating more heating — which will devastate our agriculture: more heat = more summertime fires and more droughts. That extra heat also means that green plants are withering instead of absorbing carbon, another carbon feedback.

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And why should we be concerned about a bunch of microscopic plants floating around in the ocean? Because a 40 percent decline in the world's phytoplankton is a planetary catastrophe! Planet Earth is, after all, an ocean planet — all life on land came from the oceans and is entirely dependent on the oceans. For example, phytoplankton produces half of the oxygen we breathe. (And we're burning up the trees and withering away the green plants that produce the rest of our oxygen ... hmmm, deoxygenation of the planet. Sounds to me like we're heading for suffocation.)

Again, the BBC is on it. According to researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, "the amount of phytoplankton — tiny marine plants — in the top layers of the oceans has declined markedly over the last century."

An Icelandic website explains that in the summer, phytoplankton live in the upper photic zone (the layer of the ocean reached by sufficient sunlight to allow plant growth) where they are carried by currents. Phytoplankton, like plants on land, have the ability to use sunlight to make organic matter out of non-organic, using the process of photosynthesis. Phytoplankton then become the main source of organic material for other organisms, especially as food for zooplankton (tiny animals), which in turn are prey for young fish and pelagic fish (those that inhabit the upper layers of the open sea). "So the phytoplankton is the basis for all organic life in the sea...."

Phytoplankton need sunlight from above and nutrients from below, but as the oceans warm they are becoming more stratified, limiting the availability of nutrients, conjecture the researchers at Dalhousie. Since phytoplankton removes carbon dioxide from the air during photosynthesis, this trend could act to accelerate global heating — another carbon feedback.

Carl-Gustaf Lundin, head of the marine programme at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), says that the implications could be significant. "If in fact productivity is going down so much, the implication would be that less carbon capture and storage is happening in the open ocean. So that's a service that humanity is getting for free that it will lose."

Alas, we are burning our candle at both ends — land and sea — and threatening Nature's gifts (ecosystem services) at the same time. And we're the intelligent species?