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We must strive to meet the U.N.'s low population projection of 8 billion by 2041

Some 43 countries around the world now have populations that are either essentially stable or declining slowly. In countries with the lowest fertility rates, including Japan, Russia, Germany, and Italy, populations will likely decline somewhat over the next half-century. A larger group of countries has reduced fertility to the replacement level or just below. They are headed for population stability after large numbers of young people move through their reproductive years. Included in this group are China and the United States. A third group of countries is projected to more than double their populations by 2050, including Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda.

United Nations projections show world population growth under three different assumptions about fertility levels. The medium projection, the one most commonly used, has world population reaching 9.2 billion by 2050. The high one reaches 10.8 billion. The low projection, which assumes that the world will quickly move below replacement-level fertility to 1.6 children per couple, has population peaking at just under 8 billion in 2041 and then declining. If the goal is to eradicate poverty, hunger, and illiteracy, and lessen pressures on already strained natural resources, we have little choice but to strive for the lower projection.

Slowing world population growth means that all women who want to plan their families should have access to the family planning services they need. Unfortunately, at present 201 million couples cannot obtain the services they need. Former U.S. Agency for International Development official J. Joseph Speidel notes that "if you ask anthropologists who live and work with poor people at the village level ... they often say that women live in fear of their next pregnancy. They just do not want to get pregnant." Filling the family planning gap may be the most urgent item on the global agenda. The benefits are enormous and the costs are minimal.

Sierra Club delivers 'Coal is not the answer' slogans to ACCCE

Is clean coal as oxymoronic (and just plain moronic) as healthy cigarettes? Natalie of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network thinks so. She and others irked by the ubiquitous misinformation of the clean-coal lobby joined the Sierra Club to deliver more than 5,000 anti-coal slogans to the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. The Sierra Club's contest for catchy coal smack-downs resulted in the top 10 slogans, including "Coal: Party like it's 1899!" and "Coal: It will take your breath away." The slogans are being featured on a digital billboard-on-wheels, alongside pictures from the Tennessee coal ash spill.

Watch the Sierra Club delivering all the slogans to the ACCCE:

Colbert on cost-benefit analysis

How does he do it? Volume!

One other headline from Inauguration Day

This just in: Scientists say human-induced global warming is real.

Efficiency in the Obama economic revitalization plan

The long green? That's money -- and you all know what "going green" is about ...

Everyone keeps asking the members of President Barack Obama's energy and environment team if the U.S. can "afford" their agenda in light of the economic condition of the nation. (Witness the Washington Post interview with Carol Browner as one example.)

Silly question ... and they get simplistic answers, such as "we will." It's a silly question because it assumes a conflict that isn't there, as do the typical mainstream surveys of public opinion. The New York Times reports on Jan. 18:

Given a choice between stimulating the economy and protecting the environment, 58 percent of Americans said it was more important to stimulate the economy, compared with 33 percent who chose protecting the environment. In April 2007, 36 percent said it was more important to stimulate the economy, compared with 52 percent who chose the environment.

That's a false, unnecessary choice; and simply posing the proposition may generate opposition to the most rational course of action, which is not making the choice.

The way out lies through applying a little concept in economics that many in the environmental community have tended to abhor, at least until attention became focused on energy consumption: efficiency.

Pursuit of efficiency came to be associated with exploitation of workers, despoliation of landscapes and environments, abandonment of community roots and commitments, and many abusive actions of companies large and small in the 20th century.

But most climate change agendas today start with the pursuit of what everyone seems to agree is the low-hanging fruit of efforts to lower emissions: energy efficiency. Many who challenged the necessity of efficiency in the past are now trying to increase it today and into the future.

What gives?

Will Congress get a whiff and vote to clean up dirty diesel engines?

The Washington Post has an interesting note about the armada of diesel buses that have rolled into the nation's capital for the Obama inauguration -- and the need to clean them up.

The opportunity for the "policy change" described in the piece could be at hand as soon as the day after the inauguration, Wednesday, Jan. 21, when the House Appropriations Committee takes up the economic recovery bill. The committee already recognized the desire to include the cleanup of existing diesel engines as part of the stimulus bill. See the bottom of page 4 of the House plan [PDF], which includes $300 million for a diesel green jobs program.

Photos from Plug In America's inaugural parade

Saturday morning, EV RIDRs and Obamamaniacs converged on the Santa Monica Civic Center to advocate for electric vehicles and celebrate President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. The Inaugural (EV) Parade West, led by Plug in America, attracted over 70 electric and hybrid vehicles to zoom the city streets in PEBO's honor. Four Tesla Roadsters, 40 Toyota RAV-4 EVs, one converted Porsche Speedster, and even one converted EV Hummer H2 (!?) joined the festivities.

(To the New York Times editorial board: I believe these are the folks who will drive Detroit's fuel-efficient and electric vehicles. That is, once they are actually available.)

Check out some parade photos below the fold.

Advertising Standards Authority in U.K. banned a Renewable Fuels Association ad

Last year, when oil prices were peaking, OPEC President Chakib Khelil told an Algerian newspaper that "the intrusion of bioethanol on the market" was responsible for 40 percent of the rise in oil prices -- an asinine, unsubstantiated remark that nobody believed.

The Renewable Fuels Association saw this as an opportunity to promote their own environmentally destructive product with equally asinine, unsubstantiated remarks in an open letter to OPEC. However, George Monbiot complained to the Advertising Standards Authority in the U.K., who subsequently banned the ad. He didn't like their use of the word "sustainable."

I'm not aware of an American equivalent of the ASA, but we sure could use one.

The green films on show this year at Sundance

It's a reel good time in Park City, Utah: The 10-day Sundance Film Festival kicked off there on Jan. 14, and five of the 32 documentaries have environmental themes. An additional 50 eco-related films were submitted but didn't make the cut -- more greenish submissions than in the past two years combined, said a Sundance programmer. It's no wonder that budding eco-filmmakers clamor to get in, as An Inconvenient Truth and Who Killed the Electric Car? got their starts at Sundance.

Here's a rundown of this year's greenish offerings:

 

The Cove: This eco-thriller exposes the slimy underbelly of the cultural infatuation with dolphins. Activists -- led by Flipper's trainer -- sneak cameras into the cove of a major Japanese dolphin supplier and document the sketchy treatment of the animals. Which probably includes making them pose for neon Lisa Frank merch.

 

 

 

No Impact Man: You may've heard of Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, the New Yorker who attempted to go carless, eat organic and local, and not create any waste (including toilet paper) for a year -- and who made his wife and kidlet go along with him. If his wife is really as "espresso-guzzling [and] Prada-worshipping" as she's made out to be, this could be a tasty greenish slice of Simple Life-esque schadenfreude.

 

 

The ocean is absorbing less carbon dioxide

Premier among their many unscientific beliefs, deniers cling to the notion that some magical negative feedback will avert serious climate impacts. Sadly, we will need magic to save humanity if we foolishly decide to listen to the deniers and to keep ignoring the one negative feedback that science says can certainly save humanity -- simply reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The scientific reality based on actual observations (not to mention the paleoclimate record) is that the climate models are not underestimating negative feedbacks -- the models are wildly underestimating the positive or amplifying feedbacks. Among the greatest concerns is the growing evidence that the major carbon sinks are saturating, that a greater and greater fraction of human emissions will end up in the atmosphere.

A new study in Geophysical Research Letters ($ub. req'd), "Sudden, considerable reduction in recent uptake of anthropogenic CO₂ by the East/Japan Sea," finds,

The results presented in this paper indicate that the rate of CO₂ accumulation in the deepest basin of the East/Japan Sea has considerably decreased over the transition period between 1992-1999 and 1999-2007.

The authors explain to the U.K.'s Guardian why this is an amplifying feedback, why warming is diminishing the ability of the ocean sink to absorb CO2:

The world's oceans soak up about 11bn tonnes of human carbon dioxide pollution each year, about a quarter of all produced, and even a slight weakening of this natural process would leave significantly more CO2 in the atmosphere. That would require countries to adopt much stricter emissions targets to prevent dangerous rises in temperature.

Kitack Lee, an associate professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology, who led the research, says the discovery is the "very first observation that directly relates ocean CO2 uptake change to ocean warming".

He says the warmer conditions disrupt a process known as "ventilation" -- the way seawater flows and mixes and drags absorbed CO2 from surface waters to the depths. He warns that the effect is probably not confined to the Sea of Japan. It could also affect CO2 uptake in the Atlantic and Southern oceans.

"Our result ... unequivocally demonstrated that oceanic uptake of CO2 has been directly affected by warming-induced weakening of vertical ventilation," he says ...

Lee adds: "In other words, the increase in atmospheric temperature due to global warming can profoundly influence the ocean ventilation, thereby decreasing the uptake rate of CO2."

This study matches other recent research on ocean sink saturation. In 2007, the BBC reported, "The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans has reduced" based on more than 90,000 ship-based measurements of CO2 absorption over ten years. The Global Carbon Project analysis of the "natural land and ocean CO₂ sinks" finds: