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Administration (NOAA), is readying a new satellite system at the cost of approximately $7 billion to replace old, and outdated technology.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.

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.

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 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

It’s scorching here in Los Angeles. And that means I get the inevitable statement tossed to me by people: You’re right, global warming is here!

Wrong. There’s a big difference between weather, such as hot temperature, and climate change. Indeed, my researcher and I have recently been talking about the misnomer of global warming and the misconception that weather is climate change.

So let’s then turn to the definitions: Weather is the current state of the atmosphere with respect to heat or cold, wetness or dryness, calm or storm, clearness or cloudiness. Climate is the average course or condition of the weather over a period of years.

To be sure, the Earth tries to balance temperatures. So more warm days and fewer cool days adjusts degrees higher on average. That’s where global warming—more accurately climate change–comes in. It means extreme weather on both ends of the spectrum.

For now, however, it’s just another hot, spring day in LA.

Today, Grist, the environmental blog, picked up on that and said, “In fact, the few giant companies that dominate the global food system are fattening themselves on higher prices, consolidating their grip over the world’s palate.”

I’m chiming in to say that GMOs shouldn’t be the Band-Aid to the world’s food crisis. Here’s why: We are jumping the gun. The jury is still out on GMOs and their affect on the natural environment.

Remember, GMOs only came around about a decade ago. Sure some have been taken to task for taking to task GMO manufacturers. (Nature had to retract an article on GM maize.)

Meanwhile, organic farmers say, done correctly, their way is just as effective if not more in natural resource savings. (See Michael Pollan’s take on this in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.)

I look at GMOs like I do nuclear energy: A resort — but of the last kind.

I’m appearing on one of their new, green shows (‘Supper Club’) soon and the producer was walking through the format with me. She paused during our conversation: “What does ‘green’ mean now anyway?”

To be sure this producer knows full well what “green” means. But she was asking an astute question about the way in which the green label is being used. Is it to define global warming? Is it about natural resources? Recycling? Actions? Things? What?

For example today, Earth Day, of course, there is a lot of discussion about all things green. Many green web sites are choosing to ignore the day to make the case that it should be like any other. (We should be green every day is their point.) Last year many green sites even pooh-poohed Earth Day as a marketing ploy.

Sure, lots of products are being launched today. You’ll read about new books, films, web sites, even cleaning essentials. (Clorox announced a new line today.) Still, environmentalists should look to Earth Day itself before questioning the dilution of the word “green” to mean all things and be part of what’s known as commercial greenwashing.

Earth Day, founded in 1970, says it is “committed to expanding the definition of ‘environment’ to include all issues that affect our health, our communities and our environment, such as air and water pollution, deteriorating schools, public transportation and access to jobs, rising rates of asthma and cancer, and lack of funding for parks and recreation.”

That’s a pretty broad definition of the word “environment.” It even makes “green” look too narrow.        

“But the modus operandi of hormone-mimicking chemicals is different from that of typical toxins. In fact, they are not toxins in the strict sense of the word because they behave like ordinary hormonal signals … Whatever the impact of plastics exposure, the effects are not easy to isolate. There are no babies rendered obviously deformed, as with thalidomide … As Swan admits: ‘The baby boys in our study were not freaks. They did not look abnormal. We’re talking about small changes you won’t find unless you look carefully.’”

(more…)

The world’s food crisis has reached new levels of alarm.

The World Food Program in an “extraordinary emergency appeal” says it needs $500 million by May 1 to avoid cutting rations to some of the world’s most impoverished regions.  

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says, “The rapidly escalating crisis of food availability around the world has reached emergency proportions,” adding that as many as 100 million people could be pushed further into poverty because of it. 

Food prices have doubled as commodities prices have soared around the world. This puts people on the brink over the edge and may cause widespread starvation and rioting (some of which we’ve already see in Cairo, Mexico City, and the Philippines). The crisis is so bad that this week President Bush released $200 million in emergency food funding to help nations in need. 

Walk through the slums of Mumbai, wonder out into the rural areas of Third World countries, as I have, and you’ll see how little margin for food error there is. This is serious. These are lives.  

The World Food Bank reports that its reserves are the lowest they have been in about 30 years. Rice and wheat have become so expensive that nations have stopped exporting them. This causes panic and problems the likes of which the world has never seen. Meanwhile, recent health reports show the obesity rate for US adults stands at 64%. The Environmental Protection Agency says one of the most common items at landfills is tossed food. 

There is a strange imbalance in the world that needs correcting. And we needs policies to create sustainable results…now, before the crisis worsens.