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James Hansen talks about what to do now that we’ve passed the ‘tipping point’

For the last few years, James Hansen, the man who first warned Congress of global warming in testimony last century, and the man considered NASA's "top scientist" on climate questions, has been giving talks around the country asking can we avoid dangerous climate change (PDF)?

But Hansen has changed his tune: no longer does he ask if we have passed the tipping points of climate change. In a press conference Thursday morning at the American Geophysical Union, he stated that we have passed several tipping points. He said scientists now know that soon the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer, that huge ice sheets will melt, and the climactic zones will shift towards the poles of the earth, among other consequences.

Pollution’s effects linger, long after compounds are banned

A new study by researchers at a British Columbia cancer agency stands as a stark reminder that, when it comes to pollution, an ounce of pollution prevention is worth a pound of cure:

Researchers found people with the highest levels of a certain type of insecticide in their blood had 2.7 times the risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma as those with the lowest amounts ...

People with PCBs in their blood, meanwhile, had twice the risk of developing the disease as those with the lowest exposures. That's about the same level of increased risk as having a family history of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The thing to remember is that these compounds were banned 30 years ago. But they're still hanging around, tainting the soil and the food chain, and causing all sorts of problems.

For some kinds of pollution, you just can't put the genie back in the bottle -- meaning that it's much better not to open the bottle in the first place.

Agriculture is drunk on corn-based ethanol

Thomas Dobbs is Professor Emeritus of Economics at South Dakota State University, and a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food & Society Policy Fellow.

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American agriculture is becoming addicted to corn-based ethanol, and the economic and environmental effects of this addiction call for some intervention!

The explosive growth in U.S. ethanol production from corn is having worldwide ramifications. December 6 articles in The Economist ("Cheap no more" and "The end of cheap food") trace the impacts of ethanol production on prices of other crops and on food. Rising crop prices can benefit farmers not only in the U.S., but also farmers who have marketable surpluses in other countries.

Many consumers, however, are hurt by the rising food prices. This is especially true of urban and landless rural poor in developing countries. According to The Economist's food-price index, food prices have risen in real (inflation-adjusted) terms by 75 percent since 2005. International Food Policy Research Institute data cited by The Economist indicates "the expansion of ethanol and other biofuels could reduce caloric intake by another 4-8 percent in Africa and 2-5 percent in Asia by 2020."

The growth in ethanol production is hardly a market phenomenon. According to The Economist, Federal subsidies for ethanol production already come to over $7 billion a year. Moreover, many previous years of cheap corn that resulted from Federal farm program subsidies helped lay the economic foundation for ethanol plants already built or under construction.

Implications for energy and farm policies?

What are the policy implications of this "food versus fuel" conflict that past and present energy and farm policies have created? As far as the ethanol industry is concerned, its interests trump all other interests, including those of taxpayers and the poor who can least afford higher food prices.

War ain’t good for the planet, says new report

It’s the time of year for thinking about shopping peace on earth, and an aptly timed new report carries a reminder of the impact of war not just on people, but on the planet. Modern warfare tactics cause unprecedented damage to natural landscapes, says a new article from the Worldwatch Institute. Think spraying of Agent […]

What must the ‘Rural Americans for Hillary’ think of this?

Days after naming a high-profile champion of factory-style animal farms as co-chair of "Rural Americans for Hillary," Hillary Clinton backtracked a little yesterday. She expressed wan and tepid concern about the environmental and social effects of concentrated-animal feedlot operations (CAFOs). She told the Des Moines Register she would support "local control" over how CAFOs are […]

Climate skeptic steps up

We've finally found someone willing to debate me: Tim Ball, a retired professor from the University of Winnipeg. The debate will be online Monday, Dec. 17, at 2 p.m. CST.

You will be able to listen online through BlogTalkRadio's service. In fact, you can even call in during the show (see the BlogTalkRadio web site for details). You can also post questions on SciGuy Eric Berger's website.

I realize that these types of events don't do much to move the climate debate forward. I'm mainly doing this to test my own ability to answer the skeptic's questions and see how I fare in this type of activity.

For those who miss it live, it will be archived in mp3 format.

Payment limits topple, but the livestock title looks good — for now

Update [2007-12-14 13:5:54 by Tom Philpott]:The Senate just passed the farm bill, 79-14. Presumably the livestock title is intact. Now it’s time to mount an epochal battle to defend that important title as Congress reconciles the House and Senate versions, which will take place in early 2008. The Senate is set to vote on the […]

Progressive urban food bills could help reshape America’s food future

The following is a guest essay by Christopher D. Cook, author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. His work has appeared in The Nation, Harper's, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor and Mother Jones.

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After many legislative hiccups along the way, Congress is rapidly deciding the fate of America's food supply: what's grown, how it's produced and by whom, and how that food will affect our health and the planet. The roughly $288 billion Farm Bill, covering everything from urban nutrition and food stamp programs to soil conservation and farm subsidies, will dictate much about what we eat and at what price, both at the checkout line and in long-term societal costs.

And if agribusiness lobbies keep getting their way, as they've largely done in this year's Farm Bill battles, the "food bill" we all pay will be astronomical -- not just the cost of the Farm Bill itself, but the hidden costs of a taxpayer-subsidized industrial food system that causes profound harm to public health and the environment, as well as to farmers and workers.

Despite valiant progressive efforts that may bring some change at the margins, the big picture is not pretty: increasingly centralized power over food, abetted by lax antitrust policies and farm subsidies that provide the meat industry and food-processing corporations with cheap raw ingredients; huge subsidies for corn and soy, most of which ends up as auto fuel, livestock feed, and additives for junk food, fattening America's waistlines while soiling the environment; and, despite organic food's rising popularity, a farming system that's still heavily reliant on toxic pesticides (500,000 tons per year), which pollute our waterways and bloodstreams while gobbling up millions of gallons of fossil fuel. As a nation we consume (quite literally) some 100 billion gallons of oil annually in the making and long-distance transport of our food supply.

Closer to home, despite annual crop surpluses and the dumping of cheap excess supplies onto foreign markets, residents in poor urban areas are deprived of fresh, nutritious food. These so-called "food deserts" -- whose only gastronomic oases are fast-food joints and liquor marts -- feature entire zip codes devoid of fresh produce.

Government studies show this de facto food segregation leads to serious nutritional deficits -- such as soaring obesity and diabetes rates -- among poor people. And in the countryside, taxpayer subsidies directed mostly to large-scale growers and agribusiness are plowing smaller farmers out of business at a rate of one every half an hour, creating individual misery and community-wide economic havoc.

What's to be done? Congress (particularly the Senate, where debate currently resides) needs to hear Americans -- urban and rural alike -- demand serious change, to shift our tax dollars ($20 billion to $25 billion a year in farm subsidies alone) toward organic, locally oriented, nutritious food that sustains farming communities and consumer health.

Investing our tax dollars in food isn't the problem; instead of commodity subsidies that ultimately benefit the production of meat and fattening processed foods by a handful of corporations, we need a New Deal for food that reinvests funds in sustainably grown, healthful produce grown by a diversity of farmers.

Even as the congressional Farm Bill battles grind toward a mostly disconcerting conclusion, it's not too soon to look beyond this omnivore's omnibus, and begin considering a national movement of progressive urban food bills.

Al Gore’s home meets LEED Gold standard

Al Gore has finished efficiency renovations on his much-maligned Tennessee home. Solar panels, rainwater collection, geothermal heating, and non-incandescent light bulbs have helped the abode earn a LEED Gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council.

No country in the world is more like the U.S., so where’s our national climate-change leader?

Culturally, politically, and spiritually, what country in the world is most like the United States? It's not Canada and it's sure not Great Britain. The answer is Australia. Ask anyone who's been there. It just feels like America there, from the sprawling suburbs to the cars people drive, from the obsession with sports to their unit of currency: the Australian dollar. Add these factors too: both countries were British colonies, both wiped out indigenous peoples, both have big cities in the east and vast frontiers to the west, both have huge coal deposits and per capita greenhouse-gas emissions that lead most of the world, and, in the last several years, both have had conservative national governments that basically deny the reality of global warming. The Aussies R Us!

So how, then, did Australia just complete a national election where the issue of climate change played a central role and may have determined the outcome? How did a country so steeped in America's brand of fierce self-reliance, consumerism, and fossil-fuel addiction throw out a "climate skeptic" prime minister and hand a landslide victory to a Labor candidate who talked persistently about ratifying Kyoto? And most important, if they can do it Down Under, is there still hope for America?