Blogs / Better Planet

I received a query today from a reporter asking me about litter and the problems associated with cigarette butts. Are they, he wanted to know, the biggest environmental problem on the planet?

The question is loaded and points to a really interesting diagnosis: What IS the biggest environmental problem on the planet? The answer is subjective, of course. If you are talking about global warming then coal plants are the biggest problem on the planet. If you are talking about natural resource preservation then deforestation is the biggest problem. Insert water for life sustainability and disease, or plastics for waste. To be sure, cigarettes are no one’s friend: Neither health nor the environment. In fact, in terms of litter, they are the biggest source of it: More than two billion pounds of cigarette butts are discarded worldwide – more than two pounds for every person in China. I use that country as an example because as I traveled from Beijing southward along the Silk Route, people still smoked a lot – everywhere. In Southeast Asia too people light up.

Smokers’ waste is rather easy to calculate. Figure out how many cigarettes are smoked and you’ll find out how many butts are tossed. You can’t recycle ‘em. One thing I’d like to know is the emission factor, or pollution due to smoking.

If any one has ideas or data, I’d be interested in hearing from you.

The Government Accountability Office says our weather satellites are in desperate need of upgrades, but the process to rearm the US to ready for environmental alerts is being mismanaged.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is readying a new satellite system at the cost of approximately $7 billion to replace old, and outdated technology. But, “Independent studies show that the estimated program could cost about $2 billion more, and the first satellite launch could be delayed by 2 years. As NOAA works to reconcile the independent estimate with its own program office estimate, costs are likely to grow and schedules are likely to be delayed,” GAO says. “The program has multiple risk watchlists that are not always consistent and key risks are missing from the watchlists.”

I shouldn’t have to point out the importance of having accurate weather tracking and predictability systems. Indeed, even the aviation industry is being hampered by inadequate satellite tracking systems.

Last year, the Naples Daily News reported that QuikSCAT, a satellite used to track and forecast hurricanes is also aging and deteriorating. That satellite — launched by NASA in 1999 — had a life expectancy of three years but has been operating for eight years. There are currently no plans to launch a replacement in the future.

With climate change and weather-related catastrophe in the headlines nearly everyday you’d think the first step would be better defense systems.

Then again, this Administration doesn’t seem to think.

AP

When will an international task force be set up to identify potentially lethal formulas for environmental disaster? The US government knew about the faulty levies off the coast of New Orleans. Tsunami watchers knew the potential dangers in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India and Thailand. Last year the Bangladesh tragedy was also foreseen. Now comes Myanmar. More than 22,000 people dead and 41,000 missing.

Nature’s coastal protectors are mangroves. They are dwindling and weakened worldwide due to environmental destruction. Fell trees, soil erodes and weakens, shorelines recede, mangroves disappear and storms have clearer paths to crash – harder and faster.

Hauntingly the following was reported by AP and featured on the web site for the Mangrove Action Project, which has offices in the US, Indonesia, Asia, and Latin America. Many of the staff come from the Peace Corps and other international human rights organizations (Notice the headline and dateline):

Environmental problems loom in Myanmar

14 October 2007By MICHAEL CASEYBANGKOK, Thailand - Truckloads of illegal timber cross the Myanmar border to sawmills in China, while markets along the Thai border openly sell bear paws, tiger skins and elephant tusks.Further inland, the repressive military regime plans to dam one of Asia’s purest rivers, and allows gold and gem mines to tear up hillsides and pollute groundwater for quick cash.Myanmar has become notorious in the region for ignoring international and its own environmental laws in a single-minded effort to make the money that environmentalists say helps keep the regime in power.”They may have laws on the books but they mean extremely little,” said Sean Turnell, an expert on the Myanmar economy with Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “I would say environmental considerations mean zero to them. It wouldn’t even enter their heads.”After decades of self-imposed isolation, the junta in the late 1980s began courting foreign investors with offers of stakes in gem mines, forest tracts and hydroelectric projects. Foreign investment allowed the regime to double its military to 400,000 soldiers while offering neighbors like China and Thailand access to cheap raw materials and energy to feed their growing economies.A Myanmar government spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on its environmental record. Chinese government officials could not be reached for comment and Thailand denied its investment in Myanmar contributes to the country’s environmental destruction.Hardest hit in the rush to develop the country formerly named Burma have been its rivers and forests, environmentalists say.

Several months ago, in a tall office tower in the center of Mumbai, Debi Goenka, one of India’s most well-known environmentalists, showed me and a small international audience of environmental activists, a film about mangrove destruction in India. Debi, who used to live on the seashore, has moved to miles away to the top of a hill.

He did it, he said, because he knows what’s coming…

It’s time we alert the rest of the world to the places most environmentally tenuous.

 AFP

The Financial Times above-the-fold headline today screams India considers ban on trading in food futures.

It reports, “India’s finance minister said on Monday he was considering a blanket ban on trading in food futures, underlying growing concerns in Asia over the role of hedge funds and financial market traders in the recent surge in commodities prices. If India imposes a ban, it would come only five years after the country introduced such futures trading as part of a broader push to develop India as a leading financial centre.”

Last week National Public Radio ran a special report on the food crisis and many of the experts interviewed agreed on Wall Street’s role in the increased prices of food worldwide. Bidding up the prices of futures is one thing, but farmers don’t sell futures–they sell real products in the here and now. They don’t get the benefit of those price increases. Rather, they are mired in a market full of price controls. It would make sense, of course, for them to hedge their prices in case of supply issues: Sell at market prices but at the same time buy futures, and get the benefit of price upswings to re-invest in their farms. But they can’t. It’s too expensive for farmers to hedge these days. Besides, the market is so volatile that a downswing in prices on the futures markets means a wipe out of capital in the bank accounts today and no crops for tomorrow.

Elevators are the businesses getting most squeezed. They buy raw products from farmers and distribute them.

As The New York Times explains, “Since 1959, grain producers have been able to hedge the price of their wheat, corn and soybean crops on the Chicago Board of Trade through the use of futures contracts, which are agreements to buy or sell a specific amount of a commodity for a fixed price on some future date.

More recently, the exchange has offered another tool: options on those futures contracts, which allow option holders to carry out the futures trade, but do not require that they do so. Trading in options is not as effective a hedge, farmers say, but it does not require them to put up as much cash as required to trade futures. These tools have long provided a way to lock in the price of a crop as it is planted, eliminating the risk that prices will drop before it is harvested. With these hedging tools, grain elevators could afford to buy crops from farmers in advance, sometimes a year or more before the harvest. But that was yesterday. It simply is not working that way today. Futures, for example, are less reliable. They work as a hedge only if they fall due at a price that roughly matches prices in the cash market, where the grain is actually sold. Increasingly — for disputed reasons — grain futures are expiring at prices well above the cash-market price.”

The disputed reasons The New York Times is alluding to are professional investors. The rise in index funds and commodities traders and vehicles is putting the price of food—survival for many people around the world—into the hands of investors and speculators.

India is on to something, and the rest of the world should follow suit and consider tighter controls for commodities trading.

The Pope’s recent visit to New York got me thinking about the role of religion in helping to preserve the planet, or as evangelical adherents put it: Creation Care.

The world’s major religious leaders are rallying around the green movement, and for the first time in history unifying the world’s major religions around one cause: environmental protection. The National Religious Partnership for the Environment is the entity they are most using to spread the word of the green God. The NRPE is comprised of representatives from the Catholic Church, various Protestant and Evangelical denominations, as well as the Jewish faith. It says, “When people from across the religious spectrum cry out with one voice against environmental injustice and the abuse of creation, the world takes notice. When hands reach across religious divides to mend and tend a frayed and fragile portion of the earth, they may accomplish together what none could do alone.” Indeed, when you consider the mass of followers these religions represent, a unified call to action is powerful stuff.

Reverend Richard Cizik who represents a big chunk of the Evangelical Christian constituents—30 million—tells me in a brief conversation via his cell phone as he races around Washington, DC lobbying politicians for better global warming policies why he and other adherents are so concerned about the environment: “It’s about caring for Creation, what God gave us. We need to take that responsibility seriously.” He then goes on to quote historians, philosophers and, of course, The Bible, about the importance of environmental consciousness and caring. “In Genesis, we are told to care for the Earth. The Earth is not ours to abuse. It is God’s Creation. He gave us the responsibility to care for it for Him,” Cizik says.

To be sure, many Muslims are also environmentally mindful. They cite the Quran and the Islamic belief that the Earth is a sanctuary that should be cared for. Think what you will about any religion or even Creation itself, but you have to admit that there is a certain morality in caring for the planet. It’s something we can all feel good about and actually do something about. We can all do little things that help preservation.

The religious green movement is a good thing for the future of the planet – and maybe even beyond.

Image: BBC