While speaking up for policy reform, individuals can help provide market demand for climate-friendly foods by following the principles of a climate-friendly diet, writes Anna Lappé.

New Forest Farm is nestled in the Kickapoo Valley 130 kilometers west of Madison, Wisconsin. In the summer of 2008, the state—and much of the US Midwest—was deluged with unseasonal downpours, and large tracts of farmland were flooded. The heavy rains and flooding caused $15 billion in damages and left 24 people dead across the Midwest. Wisconsin declared a state of emergency. Yet on a visit just weeks after the rainstorms had swept the region, Mark Shepard of New Forest Farm does not seem beaten down at all.

Shepard is lounging on the porch of his newly constructed cider mill, powered by solar panels and a soon-to-be built windmill. His farm is bursting with life: undulating fields of bush cherries, Siberian peas, apricots, cherries, kiwis, autumn olives, mulberries, blueberries, rosehips and asparagus, hickory nuts and oak, apples and chestnuts, and more. He escaped devastation from the deluge, he says, not by luck but by savvy farming.

It is a kind of farming that created these resilient fields and that puts Shepard at the heart of a movement scattered from the verdant valleys of the US Midwest to South Korea, from the foothills of the Himalaya to the plains of southern Brazil. It goes by many names, but it is fundamentally about following agro-ecological principles. Shepard and like-minded farmers around the world are proving that a sustainable and abundant food system need not rely on fossil fuels. They are also showing how these climate-friendlier farms can help the world adapt to the climate crisis at the same time. Extreme weather events like the floods that swamped Wisconsin are only going to be more common as the climate destabilises because of ever-greater greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, including those from the food and agriculture sector.

The climate crisis and its main drivers generally conjure up images of dirty coal-fired power plants or fuel-guzzling sports utility vehicles. Yet the food industry and agribusiness are among the biggest contributors to climate change. In many developing countries without significant heavy industry, agriculture is in fact the most important source of greenhouse-gas emissions, largely because of its role in deforestation.

Farming, especially industrial-scale production of livestock on factory farms, is among the biggest drivers of deforestation. As forests are cleared, the trees release enormous amounts of carbon into the atmosphere along with other greenhouse gases, including methane and nitrous oxide. The loss of forests contributes more than 17% of human-made emissions of carbon dioxide. Globally, livestock production accounts for 18% of global emissions, according to the United Nations. New Zealand’s ruminant livestock animals produce 85% of that country’s emissions of methane—a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide.

Greenhouse-gas emissions from food occur at every step in the food chain: farming, processing, packaging, transportation, wholesale/retail, food service, household consumption and waste. Account for all the direct and indirect emissions—including land-use changes, the production of farm chemicals and synthetic fertiliser, and fossil fuel energy use throughout the supply chain—and the food system is responsible for as much as one-third of global GHG emissions. These emissions can largely be traced back to a radical remaking of agriculture and food systems in the twentieth century, first in the industrial world and then in developing countries.

But it does not have to be this way. Innovative farmers like Mark Shepard are showing the potential of sustainable farms to feed the world while not depleting its finite resources like fossil fuels and not exacerbating the climate crisis. Sustainable farmers use a variety of techniques and innovations to protect against weeds and pests and to boost soil fertility without relying on fossil fuels or synthetic pesticides. Some of these techniques include using cover crops, crop rotations and beneficial insects. Farmers like Shepard are also beginning to generate their own energy—in his case, through wind turbines and solar panels. Small-scale methane digesters can also convert animal waste into usable energy.

Sustainable farming techniques build healthy soil, which benefits plant health and climate stability. In side-by-side field trials over 30 years, the US-based Rodale Institute found that corn and soybeans raised with organic techniques stored more carbon in the soil year after year. In a review of these field trials, Cornell University professor David Pimentel found that the organic farming methods produced the same yields of corn and soybeans as did industrial farming, but they used 30% less energy, less water and no synthetic pesticides. Based on these lessons, former Rodale Institute chief executive officer Timothy LaSalle estimates that if 434 million acres [nearly 176 million hectares] of cropland in the United States shifted to organic production, nearly 1.6 billion tons [1.45 billion tonnes] of carbon dioxide could be sequestered annually, “mitigating close to one quarter of the country’s total fossil-fuel emissions.”

These findings, and similar results from research around the world, are remarkable, for they point to the potential of agriculture to help mitigate climate change. Furthermore, research shows that sustainable farms are also better able to withstand the climate instability triggered by the greenhouse effect. At Rodale, researchers found that the organic test fields did better during dry years, “thanks to improved water-holding capacity of the extra soil organic matter,” says LaSalle.

On a global scale, the shift away from petrochemicals in the food supply need not threaten food productivity. In one meta-study of yields from organic and industrial farms around the world, researchers from the University of Michigan found that introducing agro-ecological approaches in developing countries led to two to four times greater yields. Estimating the impact on global food supply if all production shifted to organic farming, the authors found an average yield increase for every single food category they investigated.

In one of the largest studies of how agro-ecological practices affect productivity in the developing world, researchers at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom reviewed 286 projects in 57 countries, mostly in Africa. Of the 12.6 million farmers who were transitioning to sustainable agriculture, the researchers found an average yield increase of 79% on farms. A 2008 UN Conference on Trade and Development and UN Environment Programme report concluded that “organic agriculture can be more conducive to food security in Africa than most conventional production systems, and … is more likely to be sustainable in the long term.”

In the most comprehensive analysis of world agriculture to date, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) found that “reliance on resource-extractive industrial agriculture is risky and unsustainable, particularly in the face of worsening climate, energy and water crises,” according to Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, a lead author of the report.

The IAASTD study, the University of Essex findings, the Rodale Institute’s conclusions and Mark Shepard’s abundant fields all point in one direction: If we are to continue to feed the planet — and feed it well — in the face of global climate chaos, we should be radically rethinking the industrial food system. We can start with what is on our plates.

We can make food choices in line with a climate-friendly diet. We can choose to eat foods from sustainable farms, reduce consumption of highly processed foods, and cut back — or cut out — meat and dairy that comes from factory farms. We can also reach for local and regionally grown foods. (Even though transportation-related emissions are a relatively small segment of the overall impact of most food items, choosing to support regional farmers is an important part of building a resilient, biodiverse food system.)

But it is important not to stop there. At least for now, climate-friendly choices are unavailable in most communities, largely because agricultural policies in the United States and elsewhere have been providing incentives for industrial production for decades — at the cost of sustainable producers. US industrial livestock producers receive billions of dollars in direct payments etched into the Farm Bill, the multi-billion-dollar policy that governs food and farming. From 1995 to 2006, the Farm Bill legislation paid nearly $3 billion in direct subsidies to large-scale livestock producers.

Livestock producers benefit from the US Farm Bill in indirect ways, too. Between 2003 and 2005, corn producers received $17.6 billion in subsidies, and soybean producers another $2 billion. Because feed costs usually account for 60% or more of the total cost of production for most factory farm operators, policies that enable grain and soy prices to fall below the cost of production are a boon to processors and retailers. And since 67% of US corn and nearly all of the soybean meal are used for domestic or overseas livestock or fish feed, these commodity subsidies could also be seen as livestock industry subsidies.

In total, these federal subsidies saved the factory livestock sector an estimated $35 billion between 1997 and 2005, according to researchers at Tufts University. Livestock industry lobbyists also succeeded in getting payments from the Farm Bill’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) for concentrated animal feeding operations, even though the programme was designed to help small-scale farmers reduce pollution. By 2007, factory farms were receiving as much as $125 million a year from this programme alone.

These are just some of the “perverse” farm policies that are providing incentives to further a food system that is contributing to the climate crisis. But the Farm Bill could instead encourage a shift away from fossil-fuel-dependent agriculture and toward an agricultural system that is part of mitigating the climate crisis. It could, for instance, provide:

• farmer education to facilitate the transition from chemical agriculture to organic farming;

• broader incentives for farmers who make the transition and financial support to subsidize the costs of organic certification (in 2009, the EQIP Organic Initiative set aside more than $35 million in assistance for certified and transitioning organic farmers);

• incentives and support for all farmers to build healthier, carbon-rich soil matter and to reduce the use of synthetic fertiliser;

• greater enforcement of environmental regulations for emissions-intensive factory farming and commodity crop production; and

• research dollars to explore how to reduce on-farm greenhouse-gas emissions (currently only 2.6% of the US Department of Agriculture’s research budget goes toward organic approaches).

The Farm Bill could also expand its programs that encourage consumption of fruits and vegetables and local foods instead of highly processed products. The WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program, for example, operates in 45 states and provides up to $30 a year in vouchers to low-income children and to pregnant and post-partum women for redemption at farmers’ markets. Reaching 2.2 million people, this programme could be significantly expanded, fueling greater consumption of climate-friendly foods and fueling regional food systems.

These are just a few of the policy changes that could help shift the food system. While speaking up for policy reform, individuals can help provide market demand for climate-friendly foods by following the principles of a climate-friendly diet.

Yes, we cannot change the world just by buying organically grown apples from the neighborhood farmers’ market, but it’s a start.

Anna Lappé is a co-founder of the Small Planet Fund and author of Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It.

This extract is from the Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World 2011: Innovations That Nourish the Planet. The full report is available from Earthscan (non-US readers) and Worldwatch (US readers). State of the World 2011: Innovations That Nourish the Planet © Copyright 2011, Worldwatch Institute

According to Stone’s paper, as the international community meets in Copenhagen in December to develop a new framework for responding to climate change, policymakers need to give serious consideration to broadening the range of management strategies beyond greenhouse gas reductions alone.

“Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes (usually in the form of clearing forest for crops or cities) rather than to the emission of greenhouse gases,” said Stone. “Most large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, are warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole — a rate that is mostly attributable to land use change. As a result, emissions reduction programs — like the cap and trade program under consideration by the U.S. Congress — may not sufficiently slow climate change in large cities where most people live and where land use change is the dominant driver of warming.”

According to Stone’s research, slowing the rate of forest loss around the world, and regenerating forests where lost, could significantly slow the pace of global warming.

“Treaty negotiators should formally recognize land use change as a key driver of warming,” said Stone. “The role of land use in global warming is the most important climate-related story that has not been widely covered in the media.”

Stone recommends slowing what he terms the “green loss effect” through the planting of millions of trees in urbanized areas and through the protection and regeneration of global forests outside of urbanized regions. Forested areas provide the combined benefits of directly cooling the atmosphere and of absorbing greenhouse gases, leading to additional cooling. Green architecture in cities, including green roofs and more highly reflective construction materials, would further contribute to a slowing of warming rates. Stone envisions local and state governments taking the lead in addressing the land use drivers of climate change, while the federal government takes the lead in implementing carbon reduction initiatives, like cap and trade programs.

“As we look to address the climate change issue from a land use perspective, there is a huge opportunity for local and state governments,” said Stone. “Presently, local government capacity is largely unharnessed in climate management structures under consideration by the U.S. Congress. Yet local governments possess extensive powers to manage the land use activities in both the urban and rural areas.”

Republished from ScienceDaily.

Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain has never made a secret of his disdain for vegetarians and vegans. In his best-selling book Kitchen Confidential the former New York cook remarked somewhat amusingly, “Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.” After his book became a hit, Bourdain moved into television and currently hosts No Reservations, a rather unusual and unorthodox travel show which examines far-flung cultures and exotic cuisines of the world.

Over the course of his career, Bourdain has cultivated a cool, bad-ass image and during his program he sports a black leather jacket. On one of his shows shot in San Francisco, he made a point of taking on political correctness by heading to an old steak house and feasting on prime rib. “To me,” he has written, “life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.”

A few days ago Bourdain took his relentless campaign against vegetarians and vegans to new heights on CNN. Speaking on Larry King Live, the TV personality remarked that we were designed by evolution to eat meat. “We have eyes in the front of our head. We have fingernails. We have … teeth and long legs. We were designed from the get-go … so that we could chase down smaller, stupider creatures, kill them and eat them,” he said. 

The conversation focused on contaminated burgers that had sickened, paralyzed and even killed some people who had eaten them. Bourdain conceded that factory farms and large meat processors had developed “unconscionable” practices which “bordered on the criminal.” Expressing concern about chopped meat, Bourdain said “The stuff they’re putting in these burgers would not be recognized by any American as meat.”

Still, the popular Travel Channel personality could not bring himself to turn against a carnivorous lifestyle. “I think certainly we could eat better in this country,” he remarked. “It would probably not be a bad thing if we ate less meat, if the ratio of animal protein to vegetables changed along the lines of the Chinese model. But to talk about eradicating meat is silly.”

At this point another panelist on King’s show, Jonathan Foer, rightly took Bourdain to task. Foer, a best-selling writer and author of the upcoming book Eating Animals, declared “What Anthony didn’t say, and I wish he had, is that 99 percent — upwards of 99 percent of the animals that are raised for meat in this country come from factory farms.” Foer added, “When we’re talking about meat, when we’re talking about the meat they sell in grocery stores, when we’re talking about the meat we order in restaurants, we are effectively talking about factory farms. I think it’s a wonderful thing for someone with a reputation and as much intelligence as Anthony has to come out against factory farms. The crucial part of the picture is to say to America, this is almost everything.”

Foer is right about how enmeshed Americans have become in the factory farm system. Yet, the discussion on Larry King about meat and its downsides did not go far enough. Today, meat production is putting our planet in peril and hastening global climate change. It’s an issue which has been ignored by the likes of CNN but one which I deal with at considerable length in my upcoming book, No Rain in the Amazon: How South America’s Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet (Palgrave-Macmillan, April 2010).

Here’s the problem which Bourdain and other blissful carnivores choose to ignore: the world-wide cattle industry is linked to destructive deforestation and our climate destiny. Worryingly, deforestation is currently the second largest driver of carbon dioxide emissions after the burning of fossil fuels. To put it in concrete terms, tropical deforestation accounts for a whopping 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The Amazon rainforest is of particular concern and accounts for nearly half of the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from tropical deforestation.

In the Amazon the cattle sector is the largest driver of rainforest destruction, accounting for 60 to 70 percent of deforestation. To put it in concrete terms: every eighteen seconds on average one hectare of Amazon rainforest is being lost to cattle ranchers. As if the carbon emissions resulting from cattle deforestation were not enough, consider bovine methane emissions (or cow farts, if you want to be less delicate). While much of the debate surrounding global warming has centered upon carbon dioxide–the world’s most abundant greenhouse gas–methane, which has twenty-one times the warming potential of carbon dioxide, is seldom mentioned.

In Brazil, rainforest cattle has accounted for much of the country’s domestic demand in recent years. But now, the cattle and climate dilemma is becoming internationalized as the South American giant moves into the global marketplace. So far Brazil has exported most of its beef to Europe, though the country’s meat may have qualities that some markets view as favorable. Indeed Amazonian cattle are certainly free range, grass fed, and possibly organic, depending on your definition of the term. Ever wonder where that hamburger you just ate came from? There’s a chance it might contain meat from the Amazon rainforest.

In light of our climate difficulties, we’re going to have to reconsider our dietary choices. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization finds that meat production gives rise to more greenhouse gases than either transportation or industry. Furthermore, beef is the most carbon-intensive form of meat production. Consider: a one-pound patty results in about 36 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, or thirteen times the emissions from chicken.

But wait, there’s more: in order to feed the world’s rapacious demand for meat, Brazil has turned large tracts of land over to soy production. Soy has long been popular among vegetarians but it is now prized as a quick, cheap, and safe animal feed for poultry, pigs, and cattle. The Chinese and Europeans have become voracious consumers of Brazilian soy, catapulting the South American nation to agribusiness giant status. In China soy imports have increased exponentially, in large part because of growing affluence and a shift in the local diet. For many Chinese, consuming meat and dairy products symbolizes wealth, status, modernity, and escape from rough rural life.

Though the average American eats more than 250 pounds of meat ever year, the Chinese are now catching up and currently consume 115 pounds. Per capita consumption of pork in China has meanwhile almost doubled. Though China produces a lot of soy on its own, it is now the world’s largest importer of soy to feed its growing livestock sector. In Europe meanwhile, demand for soy has skyrocketed.

Though the soy planters cut down some forest, their influence is often more indirect. Once ranchers have cleared land in the Amazon the soy planters buy up property and move in. But as they take up cleared land, savanna, and transitional forests, the soy magnates push others such as slash-and-burn farmers even further into the forest. Soy then acts as a significant push factor and catalyst of climate change. The farmers who get pushed into the rainforest by agribusiness quickly find that Amazonian soils are notoriously low in fertility. After several harvests crop yields start to disappoint and eventually farmers abandon the land altogether or convert it to cattle pasture. In addition to pushing ranchers and slash-and-burn farmers into the forest, soy magnates exert pressure on the Amazon in other ways. For example, they lobby for highways and infrastructure projects which pave the way for yet more deforestation.

In Brazil, it is large international companies which are fueling the soy bonanza — companies like Minnesota – based Cargill. It’s a fact which apparently eludes Bourdain: speaking on CNN he remarked that it would be “ridiculous” and “silly” to replace Cargill, a huge corporation, with a food system based on fruits and vegetables. Bourdain has apparently failed to consider the nefarious social and environmental costs associated with corporate agribusiness. Perhaps he should talk to poor farmers in Brazil who have been displaced by soy production and must head to the rainforest to practice subsistence agriculture — all in the name of fueling agribusiness exports and expanding the global meat-eating lifestyle.

It’s perplexing how Bourdain, whose show is easily one of the most lively and intelligent on TV, has become such an impassioned foe of “silly” vegetarians and their “Hezbollah-like” vegan cousins. Considering all the disadvantages, perhaps one of the best things anyone can do to tackle climate change is to have one meat-free day a week and gradually decrease meat intake thereafter. It’s not enough, however, to simply transition toward a vegetarian diet which includes lots of milk, butter, and cheese–this probably won’t reduce emissions significantly as dairy cows would still release methane through flatulence. While it may sound a bit naive to think that people will change their eating habits any time soon, such a move is certainly much less complicated than getting people to switch their mode of transport.

Tony Bourdain has a cool show though his overall coolness is rapidly wearing thin. Maybe he should channel his constructive energy into lambasting corporate cattle ranching and agribusiness as opposed to vegetarians and vegans. The host of No Reservations has a great appreciation for traditional cultures and local folk. Why not air a program about how soy and our unsustainable consumerist lifestyle are displacing poor people while simultaneously fueling deforestation and climate change? Now THAT would be a show worth tuning in for.

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of the forthcoming No Rain in the Amazon: How South America’s Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet (Palgrave-Macmillan, April 2010). Visit his blog at http://senorchichero.blogspot.com/

We can join Bill McKibben on Oct. 24 in nationwide protests over rising carbon emissions. We can cut our consumption of fossil fuels. We can use less water. We can banish plastic bags. We can install compact fluorescent light bulbs. We can compost in our backyard. But unless we dismantle the corporate state, all those actions will be just as ineffective as the Ghost Dance shirts donned by native American warriors to protect themselves from the bullets of white soldiers at Wounded Knee.

“If we all wait for the great, glorious revolution there won’t be anything left,” author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen told me when I interviewed him in a phone call to his home in California. “If all we do is reform work, this culture will grind away. This work is necessary, but not sufficient. We need to use whatever means are necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet. We need to target and take down the industrial infrastructure that is systematically dismembering the planet. Industrial civilization is functionally incompatible with life on the planet, and is murdering the planet. We need to do whatever is necessary to stop this.”

The oil and natural gas industry, the coal industry, arms and weapons manufacturers, industrial farms, deforestation industries, the automotive industry and chemical plants will not willingly accept their own extinction. They are indifferent to the looming human catastrophe. We will not significantly reduce carbon emissions by drying our laundry in the backyard and naively trusting the power elite. The corporations will continue to cannibalize the planet for the sake of money. They must be halted by organized and militant forms of resistance. The crisis of global heating is a social problem. It requires a social response.

The United States, after rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, went on to increase its carbon emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels. The European Union countries during the same period reduced their emissions by 2 percent. But the recent climate negotiations in Bangkok, designed to lead to a deal in Copenhagen in December, have scuttled even the tepid response of Kyoto. Kyoto is dead. The EU, like the United States, will no longer abide by binding targets for emission reductions. Countries will unilaterally decide how much to cut. They will submit their plans to international monitoring. And while Kyoto put the burden of responsibility on the industrialized nations that created the climate crisis, the new plan treats all countries the same. It is a huge step backward.

“All of the so-called solutions to global warming take industrial capitalism as a given,” said Jensen, who wrote “Endgame” and “The Culture of Make Believe.” “The natural world is supposed to conform to industrial capitalism. This is insane. It is out of touch with physical reality. What’s real is real. Any social system–it does not matter if we are talking about industrial capitalism or an indigenous Tolowa people–their way of life, is dependent upon a real, physical world. Without a real, physical world you don’t have anything. When you separate yourself from the real world you start to hallucinate. You believe the machines are more real than real life. How many machines are within 10 feet of you and how many wild animals are within a hundred yards? How many machines do you have a daily relationship with? We have forgotten what is real.” 

The latest studies show polar ice caps are melting at a record rate and that within a decade the Arctic will be an open sea during summers. This does not give us much time. White ice and snow reflect 80 percent of sunlight back to space, while dark water reflects only 20 percent, absorbing a much larger heat load. Scientists warn that the loss of the ice will dramatically change winds and sea currents around the world. And the rapidly melting permafrost is unleashing methane chimneys from the ocean floor along the Russian coastline. Methane is a greenhouse gas 25 times more toxic than carbon dioxide, and some scientists have speculated that the release of huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere could asphyxiate the human species. The rising sea levels, which will swallow countries such as Bangladesh and the Marshall Islands and turn cities like New Orleans into a new Atlantis, will combine with severe droughts, horrific storms and flooding to eventually dislocate over a billion people. The effects will be suffering, disease and death on a scale unseen in human history.

We can save groves of trees, protect endangered species and clean up rivers, all of which is good, but to leave the corporations unchallenged would mean our efforts would be wasted. These personal adjustments and environmental crusades can too easily become a badge of moral purity, an excuse for inaction. They can absolve us from the harder task of confronting the power of corporations. 

The damage to the environment by human households is minuscule next to the damage done by corporations. Municipalities and individuals use 10 percent of the nation’s water while the other 90 percent is consumed by agriculture and industry. Individual consumption of energy accounts for about a quarter of all energy consumption; the other 75 percent is consumed by corporations. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States. We can, and should, live more simply, but it will not be enough if we do not radically transform the economic structure of the industrial world.

“If your food comes from the grocery store and your water from a tap you will defend to the death the system that brings these to you because your life depends on it,” said Jensen, who is holding workshops around the country called Deep Green Resistance [click here and here] to build a militant resistance movement. “If your food comes from a land base and if your water comes from a river you will defend to the death these systems. In any abusive system, whether we are talking about an abusive man against his partner or the larger abusive system, you force your victims to become dependent upon you. We believe that industrial capitalism is more important than life.”

Those who run our corporate state have fought environmental regulation as tenaciously as they have fought financial regulation. They are responsible for our personal impoverishment as well as the impoverishment of our ecosystem. We remain addicted, courtesy of the oil, gas and automobile industries and a corporate-controlled government, to fossil fuels. Species are vanishing. Fish stocks are depleted. The great human migration from coastlines and deserts has begun. And as temperatures continue to rise, huge parts of the globe will become uninhabitable. NASA climate scientist James Hansen has demonstrated that any concentration of carbon dioxide greater than 350 parts per million in the atmosphere is not compatible with maintenance of the biosphere on the “planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” He has determined that the world must stop burning coal by 2030–and the industrialized world well before that–if we are to have any hope of ever getting the planet back down below that 350 number. Coal supplies half of our electricity in the United States.

“We need to separate ourselves from the corporate government that is killing the planet,” Jensen said. “We need to get really serious. We are talking about life on the planet. We need to shut down the oil infrastructure. I don’t care, and the trees don’t care, if we do this through lawsuits, mass boycotts or sabotage. I asked Dahr Jamail how long a bridge would last in Iraq that was not defended. He said probably six to 12 hours. We need to make the economic system, which is the engine for so much destruction, unmanageable. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has been able to reduce Nigerian oil output by 20 percent. We need to stop the oil economy.” 

The reason the ecosystem is dying is not because we still have a dryer in our basement. It is because corporations look at everything, from human beings to the natural environment, as exploitable commodities. It is because consumption is the engine of corporate profits. We have allowed the corporate state to sell the environmental crisis as a matter of personal choice when actually there is a need for profound social and economic reform. We are left powerless.

Alexander Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of Russian anarchists working to topple the czar, reminded his followers that they were not there to rescue the system. 

“We think we are the doctors,” Herzen said. “We are the disease.”

Reposted from Turthdig.

What could be more American than a glass of milk? Cow’s milk, that is. In light of this common perception, the time is long overdue to add the milk mustache to that ever-growing list of American myths. Human beings are not designed to drink any milk except human milk (only during infancy, of course). As you’ll see below, consuming dairy products — milk, cheese, yogurt, sour cream, ice cream, etc. — is not green and it’s not healthy.

It’s also a nightmare for the cows themselves. Here’s a little of how the folks at GoVeg describe it: “The 9 million cows living on dairy farms in the United States spend most of their lives in large sheds or on feces-caked mud lots, where disease is rampant. Cows raised for their milk are repeatedly impregnated. Their babies are taken away so that humans can drink the milk intended for the calves. When their exhausted bodies can no longer provide enough milk, they are sent to slaughter and ground up for hamburgers.”

*Living dairy-free has never been easier…so here’s a little motivation to get you on the greener, cruelty-free, not-milk track.

Environmental Reasons to Avoid Milk

1. Dairy cows produce waste.

Lots of waste. In fact, your average dairy cow produces 120 pounds of waste every day — equal to that of more than two dozen people, but without toilets, sewers, or treatment plants.

2. Let me repeat: Dairy cows produce lots and lots of waste (and greenhouse gases).

California produces one-fifth of the country’s total milk supply. According to MilkSucks.com, “in the Central Valley of California, the cows produce as much excrement as a city of 21 million people, and even a smallish farm of 200 cows will produce as much nitrogen as in the sewage from a community of 5,000 to 10,000 people, according to a U.S. Senate report on animal waste.”

3. Milk production ultimately leads to climate change.

The dairy industry is an extension of the beef industry (used-up dairy cows are sent to the slaughterhouse after an average of four years, one-fifth their normal life expectancy) which means it plays a major role in creating climate change. Here’s the equation: The dairy industry uses cows before passing them on to be slaughtered by the beef industry which is now recognized as an environmental nightmare. “According to a UN report,” writes Brian Merchant, “cows are leading contributors to climate change … Accounting for putting out 18% of the world’s carbon dioxide, cows emit more greenhouse gases than cars, planes, and all other forms of transportation combined.” That means the industry of exploiting all cows — including dairy cows — involves destructive practices like deforestation and polluting offshoots like runoff.

4. Milk often contains unwanted ingredients.

Under current industrial methods, cow’s milk is often a toxic bovine brew of man-made ingredients like bio-engineered hormones, antibiotics (55% of U.S. antibiotics are fed to livestock), and pesticides — all of which are bad for us and the environment. For example, unintentional pesticide poisonings kill an estimated 355,000 people globally each year. In addition the drugs pumped into livestock often re-visit us in our water supply.

Which brings us to…

Health Reasons to Avoid Milk

5. Cow’s milk is for cows.

The biochemical make-up of cow’s milk is perfectly suited to turn a 65-pound newborn calf into a 400-pound cow in one year. It contains, for example, three times more protein and seven times more mineral content while human milk has 10 times as much essential fatty acids, three times as much selenium, and half the calcium. Some may like cow’s milk but drinking it is both unnecessary and potentially harmful.

6. Milk is actually a poor source for dietary calcium.

Humans, like cows, get all the calcium they need from a plant-based diet.

7. Contrary to popular belief, milk may increase the likelihood of osteoporosis.

It is still widely accepted that the calcium in dairy products will strengthen our bones and help prevent osteoporosis, but studies show that foods originating from animal sources (like milk) make the blood acidic. When this occurs, the blood leeches calcium from the bones to increase alkalinity. While this works wonders for the pH balance of your blood, it sets your calcium-depleted bones up for osteoporosis. As explained by John Robbins, “The only research that even begins to suggest that the consumption of dairy products might be helpful [in preventing osteoporosis] has been paid for by the National Dairy Council itself.”

8. Milk makes you fat.

In 2005, the Harvard School of Public Health had this to say on the consumption of dairy products: “Three glasses of low-fat milk add more than 300 calories a day. This is a real issue for the millions of Americans who are trying to control their weight. What’s more, millions of Americans are lactose intolerant, and even small amounts of milk or dairy products give them stomach aches, gas, or other problems.”

It’s easy to go dairy-free. Here are 7 easy vegan recipes to set you off on the right path.

Reposted from AlterNet.

Since 2000, 155 thousand square kilometres of rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon have been cut down for timber, burnt, or cleared for agricultural use. Forest clearance rates have averaged more than 1.8 million hectares per year (roughly the area of Kuwait), and the deforestation frontier is advancing into the forest at a rate of more than four football fields every minute.

The team behind today’s study analysed changes in the average life expectancy, literacy and per capita income of people living in 286 Brazilian Amazon municipalities with varying levels of deforestation. The Amazon is one of the least developed regions in Brazil, but is also one of the most important places on the planet for biodiversity, climate and geochemical cycles.

The researchers’ analysis revealed that the quality of local people’s lives -measured through levels of income, literacy and longevity, as mentioned above – increases quickly during the early stages of deforestation. This is probably because people capitalise on newly available natural resources, including timber, minerals and land for pasture, and higher incomes and new roads lead to improved access to education and medical care, and all round better living conditions.

However, the new results suggest that these improvements are transitory, and the level of development returns to below the national average once the area’s natural resources have been exploited and the deforestation frontier expands to virgin land. Quality of life pre- and post-deforestation was both substantially lower than the Brazilian national average, and was indistinguishable from one another.

Ana Rodrigues, lead author of the study, previously at the University of Cambridge and currently at the Centre of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology, France, said:

“The Amazon is globally recognised for its unparalleled natural value, but it is also a very poor region. It is generally assumed that replacing the forest with crops and pastureland is the best approach for fulfilling the region’s legitimate aspirations to development. This study tested that assumption. We found although the deforestation frontier does bring initial improvements in income, life expectancy, and literacy, such gains are not sustained.”

Fellow author Dr Rob Ewers from Imperial College London’s Department of Life Sciences adds:

“The ‘boom’ in development that deforestation brings to these areas is clear, but our data show that in the long run these benefits are not sustained. Along with environmental concerns, this is another good reason to restrict further deforestation in the Amazon,” he says. “However, in areas that are currently being deforested, the process needs to be better managed to ensure that for local people boom isn’t necessarily followed by ‘bust’.”

The decline in development which occurs once an area has been deforested is likely due to the depletion of the natural resources that supported the initial boom. Timber is exhausted and land used for cattle ranching and farming is often rapidly degraded, leading to large scale abandonment – for example, by the early 1990s, one third of the area used for pastures had already been abandoned. This is compounded by an increasing human population as migrants including ranchers, farmers, colonists, landless peasants, gold miners, loggers, and land grabbers arrive, lured to the area by the prospect of rapid financial gain.

Andrew Balmford, co-author of the study and University of Cambridge Professor of Conservation Science, concluded:

“The current boom-and-bust trajectory of Amazonian development is therefore undesirable in human terms as well as potentially disastrous for other species, and for the world’s climate. Reversing this pattern will hinge on capturing the values of intact forests to people outside the Amazon so that local people’s livelihoods are better when the forest is left standing than when it is cleared.

“This will be extremely difficult, both financially and practically. But discussions being held in the run-up to this December’s crucial climate change meeting in Copenhagen about richer countries paying ones such as Brazil to retain the carbon stored in their forests offer some promise that this lose-lose-lose situation could be tackled, to the benefit of everyone – local Brazilians included.”

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The research was led by the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with Imperial College London, the University of East Anglia, CNRS, France, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Portugal, and IMAZON – the Amazon Institute of People and the Environment, Brazil.

Reposted from the University of Cambridge.

The critical role of forests as massive “sinks” for absorbing greenhouse gases is “at risk of being lost entirely” to climate change-induced environmental stresses that threaten to damage and even decimate forests worldwide, according to a new report released today. The report will be formally presented at the next session of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) taking place 20 April-1 May 2009 at the UN Headquarters in New York City.

“Adaptation of Forests and People to Climate Change – A Global Assessment” was coordinated by the Vienna-based International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) through the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF), an alliance of 14 international organizations that each has substantial forestry programs.

Authored by 35 of the world’s top forestry scientists, it provides the first global assessment to date of the ability of forests to adapt to climate change and is expected to play a key role in next week’s UNFF discussions. The report presents the state of scientific knowledge regarding the current and projected future impacts of climate change on forests and people along with options for adaptation.

“We normally think of forests as putting the brakes on global warming, but in fact over the next few decades, damage induced by climate change could cause forests to release huge quantities of carbon and create a situation in which they do more to accelerate warming than to slow it down,” said Risto Seppälä, a professor at the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla) and Immediate Past President of IUFRO, who chaired the expert panel that produced the report.

Scientists hope the new assessment will inform international climate change negotiations, set to resume in December in Copenhagen, where forest-related deliberations thus far have focused mainly on carbon emissions from deforestation. The analysis shows that officials also must consider how the world’s forests are likely to suffer-and perhaps severely-as the earth gets warmer.

While deforestation is responsible for about 20 percent of greenhouse gases, overall, forests currently absorb more carbon than they emit. The trees and soils of the world’s forests are capturing and storing more than a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions. The problem, scientists say, is that this critical carbon-regulating service could be lost entirely if the earth heats up 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) or more relative to pre-industrial levels, which is expected to occur if emissions are not substantially reduced.

The study notes that the higher temperatures-along with the prolonged droughts, more intense pest invasions, and other environmental stresses that could accompany climate change-would lead to considerable forest destruction and degradation. This could create a dangerous feedback loop in which damage to forests from climate change significantly increases global carbon emissions which then exacerbate the greenhouse effect.

The warning from scientists that forests are in danger of flipping from a net sink to a net source of carbon emerged from an exhaustive analysis of how different forest ecosystems worldwide would be affected under specific climate change scenarios developed by the Nobel-prize winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The authors of the report, some of whom also serve on the IPCC panel, noted that the impacts in different ecosystems would vary over time.

In fact, the authors found that the risk of losing forests as a net carbon sink is significant even in relatively conservative scenarios in which countries achieve modest emissions reductions and stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations. The loss becomes much more likely in scenarios where curbs fail to take effect and emissions continue on their current, upward trend.

“Policymakers should focus greater attention on helping forests and the people who live around them adapt to anticipated problems,” said Professor Seppälä. “For example, wider application of well-understood sustainable forestry practices, which offer a range of benefits, could help forests avoid some of the damage induced by climate change.”

Threats, But also Benefits, of Climate Change

The study observes that as climate change progresses over the next decades:

• Droughts are projected to become more intense and frequent in subtropical and southern temperate forests, especially in the western United States, northern China, southern Europe and the Mediterranean, subtropical Africa, Central America and Australia. “These droughts will also increase the prevalence of fire and predispose large areas of forest to pests and pathogens,” the study says.
• In some arid and semi-arid environments, such as the interior of the American west, forestry experts worry that climate change could be so dramatic that timber productivity could “decline to the extent that forests are no longer viable.”
• Decreased rainfall and more severe droughts are expected to be particularly stressful for forest-dependent people in Africa who look to forests for food, clean water and other basic needs. For them, the scientists predict climate change could mean “deepening poverty, deteriorating public health, and social conflict.”
• In certain areas, climate change could lead to substantial gains in the supply of timber. The combination of warming temperatures and the fertilizing effect of increased carbon in the atmosphere could fuel a northward expansion of what is known as the boreal forest, the coniferous timber lands that run across the earth’s northern latitudes and include forests in Canada, Finland, Russia and Sweden. Research from the report indicates that climate change could cause more than a 40 percent increase in timber growth in Finland. In fact, the study concludes that the increased growth in boreal forests could be large enough to spur a drop in timber prices worldwide. However, over the long-term, if climate change continues at the current pace the boreal expansion eventually will be offset by an increase in insect invasions, fires, and storms.

The scientists warn that efforts to adapt to climate change may end up providing forests with only a temporary respite.

“Even if adaptation measures are fully implemented, unmitigated climate change would, during the course of the current century, exceed the adaptive capacity of many forests,” said Professor Andreas Fischlin of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who is one of the lead authors of the study and a coordinating lead author with the IPCC. “The fact remains that the only way to ensure that forests do not suffer unprecedented harm is to achieve large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”

Forestry experts acknowledge that more research is needed to better understand precisely how climate change will impact forests and how effective different adaptation responses will be. But they say the challenge to policy makers is that they must act even in the face of imperfect data because “climate change is progressing too quickly to postpone action.”

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About IUFRO and the CPF

The International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) is the only world-wide organization devoted to forest research and related sciences. Its members are research institutions, universities, and individual scientists as well as decision-making authorities and other stakeholders with a focus on forests and trees.

For further information, please visit: http://www.iufro.org/.

The Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) is a voluntary arrangement among 14 international organizations and secretariats with substantial programmes on forests. Its mission is to promote the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forest and strengthen long-term political commitment to this end. For further information, please visit: http://www.fao.org/forestry/cpf/en/.

OSLO (15 October 2008)-Unless based on respect for the rights of indigenous peoples and forest communities, efforts by rich countries to combat climate change by funding reductions in deforestation in developing countries will fail, and could even unleash a devastating wave of forest loss, cultural destruction and civil conflict, warned a leading group of forestry and development experts meeting in Oslo this week.

The experts are gathering in Oslo with policymakers and community leaders for a conference on rights, forests and climate change. The conference was organized by two non-profits, Rainforest Foundation Norway and the US-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).

Speaking at the meeting, Norway’s Minister of Environment and International Development, Erik Solheim, says efforts towards reduced emissions from deforestation in developing countries should be based on the rights of indigenous peoples to the forests they depend on for their livelihoods, and provide tangible benefits consistent with their essential role in sustainable forest management.

“In addition to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, early action, pilot projects and demonstrations should safeguard biodiversity, contribute to poverty reduction and secure the rights of forest dependent communities in order to achieve any degree of permanence, legitimacy and effectiveness,” said Solheim.

Deforestation is responsible for about 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing it is seen as one of the quickest and cheapest ways of cutting emissions.

“Moves to finance reductions in tropical deforestation and forest degradation are necessary and welcome,” said Andy White, Coordinator of RRI. “But on their own they won’t solve the problem. Poorly devised, they could even make it worse. If such initiatives are well designed they can not only secure carbon but present a global opportunity to address the underlying causes of poverty and conflict in many developing countries.”

Globally, climate change negotiators are considering the introduction of a new financial mechanism, known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), that could generate billions of dollars for reducing forest loss in the tropics. Meanwhile, the Government of Norway has already pledged up to 3 billion Norwegian kroner annually (US$ 500 million) to cut emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in tropical countries.

“To achieve long-term reductions in deforestation and forest degradation, it is absolutely necessary to respect and strengthen the rights of indigenous and other forest dependent communities,” says Lars Løvold, director of Rainforest Foundation Norway. “Many of these schemes are still being developed, and major decisions on how to spend the money will be made in the next few years. For us, the question is whether this money will result in a great deal of good or a great deal of harm to the environment and forest communities.”

Previous attempts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation have largely failed, often due to a lack of attention to human rights, property rights and transparency.

“There are growing conflicts between indigenous peoples and both forestry companies and conservation organizations. Imposed forest management initiatives are only viable if they respect the customary rights of forest peoples and ensure they have control about what happens on their lands. Indigenous peoples must be accepted as full and fair participants in all climate negotiations,” said Joji Carino, Director of TEBTEBBA, the Indigenous Peoples’ International Center for Policy Research and Education.

Conference organizers worry that REDD could fuel corruption and provoke tensions and land grab situations unless good governance, policies and the rule of law are first put in place.

“Indigenous peoples are rightly concerned about how these new investments could affect their access to the forests that they depend on for their livelihoods,” Solheim noted. “This is precisely why we are fully supportive of a role for indigenous peoples and other forest dependent communities in the development and monitoring of climate plans and investments at the national and global level. These rights need to be respected, not just for moral reasons, although that is vital. It is also a matter of pragmatism and effectiveness.”

Experience from Brazil, the country in the world with the most advanced monitoring of its forests, gives valuable insight to the discussion on how forests can be protected. According to research from the Brazilian NGO Instituto Socioambiental, 19 percent of unprotected forest areas in Brazil have been deforested, while deforestation inside federal national parks is 2 percent. In indigenous territories, however, only 1.1 percent have been deforested.

The Oslo conference will discuss the Four Foundations for Effective Investments in Climate Change:

1. Recognize rights – establish an equitable legal and regulatory framework for land and resources.
2. Prioritize payment to communities – ensure that benefits and payments prioritize indigenous and local communities, according to their potential role as forest stewards.
3. Establish independent advisory and auditing processes to guide, monitor and audit investments and actions at national and global levels.
4. Monitor more than carbon to keep track of the status of forests, forest carbon, biodiversity and impacts on rights and livelihoods. Secure a role for indigenous peoples in monitoring of emissions, making full use of their knowledge of the state of forest ecosystems, something which could be particularly relevant to keep track of forest degradation.

New research to be presented at the conference demonstrates that the costs of recognizing local rights and tenure systems are low relative to the projected costs of REDD, and that indigenous and other forest communities own or manage a major portion of the global forest carbon stock. The research also shows that communities have proven to be good stewards of the forest.

A new study by RRI and Intercooperation, a Swiss development organization, finds that the average direct cost to legally recognize traditional community tenure rights is around $3 per hectare – an insignificant investment to make when the minimum estimates needed to pay for elements of a global REDD scheme are somewhere between $800 and $3500 per hectare each year for the next 22 years.

Another study that will be released at the conference, by Professor Arun Agrawal of the University of Michigan, uses data from 325 sites in 12 countries to show that community ownership of forests provides the best possibility for increasing carbon stocks and improving livelihood outcomes. This is the most robust research to date at a global scale on the relationship between forest tenure and carbon sequestration, livelihood benefits and biodiversity.

Agrawal’s study also finds that the larger the property owned by communities, the better the chances for maintaining and sequestering carbon. This research shows the tremendous scope for cost-effective investments that strengthen local land rights, reduce poverty and conflict, and protect remaining natural forest areas.

To help ensure effective investments to combat in climate change, Rainforest Foundation Norway and RRI have called for the formation of independent bodies to advise and monitor the UN Convention on Climate Change.

“We believe that such advisory functions should be given serious consideration,” said Solheim. The conference will take up this recommendation and consider how to best move forward in its deliberations.

Major decisions on REDD, as well as other measures to combat climate change, are likely to be made at the 15th Conference of the UN Convention on Climate Change, which will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009.

“In the next fifteen months, the world will have to make a choice,” said Løvold. “We can continue to ignore the legitimate rights of forest dwellers, which will exacerbate conflict in forests and make REDD ineffective. Or we can learn from the lessons of the past, recognize the property and human rights of forest dwellers, and almost immediately start reaping the benefits.”

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Interested readers can find background information and follow the conference discussions at http://www.rightsandclimate.org/.

The mission of the Rainforest Foundation is to support indigenous peoples and traditional populations of the world’s rainforests in their efforts to protect their environment and fulfill their rights by assisting them in: securing and controlling the natural resources necessary for their long-term well-being and managing these resources in ways which do not harm their environment, violate their culture or compromise their future; and developing the means to protect their individual and collective rights and to obtain, shape, and control basic services from the state. http://www.rainforest.no/, www.rainforest.no/html/180.htm

The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) in a new coalition of organisations dedicated to raising global awareness of the critical need for forest tenure, policy and market reforms, in order to achieve global goals of poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation and forest-based economic growth. Partners currently include ACICAFOC (Coordinating Association of Indigenous and Agroforestry Communities of Central America), the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Civic Response, the Foundation for People and Community Development (FPCD), Forest Peoples Programme, Forest Trends, the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), Intercooperation, the World Conservation Union (IUCN), the Federation of Community Forest Organisations of Nepal (FECOFUN), and the Regional Community Forestry Training Center for Asia and the Pacific (RECOFTC). For further information, visit the Web site at: http://www.rightsandresources.org/

According to a 2006 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the animal agriculture sector emits more greenhouse gases than cars and SUVs.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGs)

The animal agriculture sector is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, measured in carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent, higher than the share contributed by cars, trucks, and sport utility vehicles.[1] This figure accounts for the animal agriculture sector’s direct impacts as well as the impacts of feeding the world’s approximately 63 billion farm animals.[2] Specifically, animal agriculture accounts for:

• 9% of annual human-induced CO2 emissions,[3]
• 37% of methane (CH4) emissions, which has more than 20 times the global warming potential of CO2,[4] and
• 65% of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, which has almost 300 times CO2′s global warming potential.[5]

Mapping has shown a strong relationship between excessive nitrogen in the atmosphere and the location of intensive farm animal production areas.[6] In the United States, the primary greenhouse gases emitted by agricultural activities are methane and nitrous oxide.[7] Globally, the United States is responsible for the greatest emissions of methane from farm animal manure, nearly 1.9 million tonnes.[*][8] The majority of these emissions emanate from pig and dairy cow manure, from which methane emissions increased by 37% and 50%, respectively, between 1990 and 2005. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency attributes this increase to the shift toward housing pigs and cows in larger facilities where liquid manure management systems are increasingly used.[9] During the same 15-year period, nitrous oxide emissions rose by 10%, an increase attributed to the poultry industry’s shift toward litter-based manure management systems, confinement in high-rise houses, and an overall increase in the number of birds raised and killed for food.[10]

Farm Animal Waste

As animal agriculture industrialized over the last 50 years, more animals have been intensively confined in fewer, but larger, operations. Today, nearly 10 billion land animals are raised for meat, eggs, and milk annually in the United States,[11,12] typically warehoused by the tens if not hundreds of thousands in industrialized production facilities known as factory farms.[13] The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that confined farm animals generate more than 450 million tonnes of manure annually, three times more raw waste than generated by Americans.[14]

Feed

The production of animal feed-mainly high protein and concentrated feeds made from corn and soybeans-requires large amounts of chemical fertilizer. Animal production accounts for a very significant portion of total fertilizer use; more than half of the global corn crop is used for animal feed.[15] Corn uses more nitrogen fertilizer than any other crop, while other feed crops, including barley and sorghum, also use significant amounts. In total, experts estimate that fertilizer used in feed production contributes “an estimated annual emission of CO2 of more than 40 million tonnes.”[16]

Energy Use Varies by Type of Production System

Massive, enclosed factory farms (also known as confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs) use a great deal of energy for lighting, heating, cooling, automated machinery for feeding and watering, and ventilation. In addition, to produce feed for farm animals, the combined fossil fuel for machinery and energy use for herbicide and pesticide production and seed usually exceeds that of fertilizer production. On-farm fossil fuel use may emit as much as 90 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year alone.[17] Production systems that rely on grasslands or crop residues for feed, on the other hand, usually have very low or even negligible fossil fuel use.

Deforestation

According to the FAO, deforestation for farm animal production is responsible for 2.4 billion tonnes of CO2 per year.[18] A 2004 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) report stated that the total area of forest lost increased from 41.5 million hectares in 1990 to 58.7 million hectares in 2000. In just ten years, an area twice the size of Portugal was lost, most of it to pasture for farm animal production.[19] In June 2005, the FAO predicted that by 2010, more than 1.2 million hectares of forest in Central America and 18 million hectares in South America will disappear due in large part to clearing land for grazing cattle.[20]

Food for Thought

An article published in The Lancet in 2007 advocates a reduction in meat consumption to 90 g per person per day in order to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions from this sector. (A single beef hamburger patty is 80-100 g.) “For the world’s higher-income populations,” the authors write, “greenhouse-gas emissions from meat-eating warrant the same scrutiny as do those from driving and flying.”[21] Yet, while consumers have started switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs and reducing the time spent driving and flying to combat global warming, there has been less awareness of animal agriculture’s impacts on climate change. The FAO calls for action on many fronts, recommending a range of measures to mitigate the environmental assault by animal agriculture, including:

• Land degradation: Restore damaged land through soil conservation, better management of grazing systems, and protection of sensitive areas.
• Greenhouse gas emissions: Improve animal nutrition and manure management to cut methane and nitrogen emissions.
• Water pollution: Better manage animal waste in industrial production units, modify diets to improve nutrient absorption, and make better use of processed manure on croplands.
• Biodiversity loss: As well as implementing the measures above, improve protection of wild areas, maintain connectivity among protected areas, and integrate farm animal production and producers into landscape management.[22]

The Humane Society of the United States, the nation’s largest animal advocacy organization representing 1 in 30 Americans, calls for additional, critical actions each one of us can and must take:

Reduce: Every hour in the United States, more than 1 million land animals are killed for human consumption. If each one of us cuts back on our animal consumption by only 10%, approximately 1 billion animals would be spared a lifetime of suffering each year and the impacts of industrialized animal agriculture would be diminished.

Refine: Not all foods are equal when it comes to animal welfare or their environmental footprint. Each industry has its own abusive practices, and some are much crueler than others. For example, the chicken, egg, and pig industries tend to be far more abusive to animals than the beef industry, and extensive systems, such as free-range, are typically much more environmentally friendly than industrialized factory farms. Refining our diets by avoiding conventional factory-farm products helps diminish animal suffering and protect the environment.

Replace: The consequences of choosing vegetarian options are enormous-not only for farm animals, but for public health and environmental integrity.

2. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. FAOSTAT Statistical Database. http://faostat.fao.org/. Accessed March 27, 2007.

3. Steinfeld H, Gerber P, Wassenaar T, Castel V, Rosales M, and De Haan C, op. cit., p. xxi).

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., p. 114.

7. Environmental Protection Agency. 2007. Inventory of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and sinks: 1990-2005, p. 6-1. www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads07/07CR.pdf. Accessed March 7, 2008.

8. Steinfeld H, Gerber P, Wassenaar T, Castel V, Rosales M, and De Haan C, op. cit., pp. 97-8.

9. Environmental Protection Agency, op. cit., p. 6-7.

10. Ibid.

11. U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2008. Poultry slaughter: 2007 annual summary. usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/PoulSlauSu/PoulSlauSu-02-28-2008.pdf. Accessed March 27, 2008.

12. U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2008. Livestock slaughter: 2007 annual summary. usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/LiveSlauSu/LiveSlauSu-03-07-2008_revision.pdf. Accessed March 27, 2008.

13. Environmental Protection Agency Emission Standards Division. 2001. Emissions from animal feeding operations, draft, p. xi. August 15. www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/ap42/ch09/draft/draftanimalfeed.pdf. Accessed March 27, 2008.

14. Environmental Protection Agency. National pollutant discharge elimination system permit regulation and effluent limitation guidelines and standards for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs); Final Rule, 68 Fed. Reg. 7176, 7180 (Feb. 12, 2003).

15. Steinfeld H, Gerber P, Wassenaar T, Castel V, Rosales M, and De Haan C, op. cit., p. 87.

16. Ibid., p. 88.

17. Ibid., pp. 88-9.

18. Ibid., p. 90.

19. Kaimowitz D, Mertens B, Wunder V, and Pachebo P. 2004. Hamburger connection fuels Amazon destruction: cattle ranching and deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon. (Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research), citing: Monitoring of the Brazilian Amazon Forest by Satellite 2000-2001, Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (INPE) and the Foundation for Science, Applications and Spatial Technology (Fundação de Ciência, Aplicações e Tecnologia-FUNCATE).

20. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2005. Cattle ranching is encroaching on forests in Latin America. Press release issued June 8.

21. McMichael AJ, Powles JW, Butler CD, and Uauy R. 2007. Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health. Lancet 370:1253-63.

22. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department. 2006. Spotlight: livestock impacts on the environment. Agriculture 21, November. www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm. Accessed March 27, 2008.

Reprinted from the Humane Society of The United States

Download the PDF copy of this report here.

Turning native ecosystems into “farms” for biofuel crops causes major carbon emissions that worsen the global warming that biofuels are meant to mitigate, according to a new study by the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy.

The work will be published in Science later this month and will be posted online Thursday, Feb. 7.

The carbon lost by converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands outweighs the carbon savings from biofuels. Such conversions for corn or sugarcane (ethanol), or palms or soybeans (biodiesel) release 17 to 420 times more carbon than the annual savings from replacing fossil fuels, the researchers said. The carbon, which is stored in the original plants and soil, is released as carbon dioxide, a process that may take decades. This “carbon debt” must be paid before the biofuels produced on the land can begin to lower greenhouse gas levels and ameliorate global warming.

The conversion of peatlands for palm oil plantations in Indonesia ran up the greatest carbon debt, one that would require 423 years to pay off. The next worst case was the production of soybeans in the Amazon, which would not “pay for itself” in renewable soy biodiesel for 319 years.

“We don’t have proper incentives in place because landowners are rewarded for producing palm oil and other products but not rewarded for carbon management,” said University of Minnesota Applied Economics professor Stephen Polasky, an author of the study. “This creates incentives for excessive land clearing and can result in large increases in carbon emissions.

“This research examines the conversion of land for biofuels and asks the question ‘Is it worth it”‘,” said lead author Joe Fargione, a scientist for The Nature Conservancy. “And surprisingly, the answer is no.”

Fargione began the work as a University of Minnesota postdoctoral researcher with Polasky, Regents Professor of Ecology David Tilman; he completed it after joining the Nature Conservancy. They, along with university researchers Jason Hill and Peter Hawthorne, also contributed to the work.

“If you’re trying to mitigate global warming, it simply does not make sense to convert land for biofuels production,” said Fargione. “All the biofuels we use now cause habitat destruction, either directly or indirectly. Global agriculture is already producing food for six billion people. Producing food-based biofuel, too, will require that still more land be converted to agriculture.”

These findings coincide with observations that increased demand for ethanol corn crops in the United States is likely contributing to conversion of the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado (tropical savanna). American farmers traditionally rotated corn crops with soybeans, but now they are planting corn every year to meet the ethanol demand and Brazilian farmers are planting more of the world’s soybeans. And they’re deforesting the Amazon to do it.

The researchers also found significant carbon debt in the conversion of grasslands in the United States and rainforests in Indonesia.

Researchers did note that some biofuels do not contribute to global warming because they do not require the conversion of native habitat. These include waste from agriculture and forest lands and native grasses and woody biomass grown on marginal lands unsuitable for crop production. The researchers urge that all fuels be fully evaluated for their impacts on global warming, including impacts on habitat conversion.

“Biofuels made on perennial crops grown on degraded land that is no longer useful for growing food crops may actually help us fight global warming,” said Hill. “One example is ethanol made from diverse mixtures of native prairie plants. Minnesota is well poised in this respect.”

“Creating some sort of incentive for carbon sequestration, or penalty for carbon emissions, from land use is vital if we are serious about addressing this problem,” Polasky said.

“We will need to implement many approaches simultaneously to solve climate change. There is no silver bullet, but there are many silver BBs,” said Fargione. “Some biofuels may be one silver BB, but only if produced without requiring additional land to be converted from native habitats to agriculture.”

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The work was supported by the University of Minesota’s Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment and the National Science Foundation.

Contact: Patty Mattern
matte016@umn.edu
612-624-2801
University of Minnesota

More than 55 million years ago, the Earth experienced a rapid jump in global carbon dioxide levels that raised temperatures across the planet. Now, researchers studying plants from that time have found that the rising temperatures may have boosted the foraging of insects. As modern temperatures continue to rise, the researchers believe the planet could see increasing crop damage and forest devastation.

The researchers, from Penn State, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Maryland, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Wesleyan University published their findings in the Feb. 11, 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Our study convincingly shows that there is a link between temperature and insect feeding on leaves,” said lead author Ellen Currano of Pennsylvania State University and the Smithsonian Institution. “When temperature increases, the diversity of insect feeding damage on plant species also increases.”

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Currano collected the study fossils from the badlands of Wyoming, gathering more than 5,000 fossil leaves from five sites representing time zones before, during and after the roughly 100,000 year temperature spike called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM).

The researchers found that the PETM plants were noticeably more damaged than fossil plants before and after that period. The PETM plants, many of which are legumes — the family that now includes beans and peas — show damage with greater frequency, greater variety (such as mining, galling, surface feeding and other assaults) and a more destructive character than plants from the surrounding geologic time periods.

“This study shows that insects responded rapidly to a major change in climate during the PETM,” said Enriqueta Barrera, program director in NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences, which helped fund the project. “This is in agreement with previous findings by [co-author] Scott Wing of the Smithsonian Institution who found that plants that previously were common much farther south migrated northward at this time”

In order to test alternative reasons for the increased damage, the researchers looked at whether the plants in the analysis had key traits that made them more palatable to insects. However, after using established analytical techniques to measure various leaf structures in all of the specimens, the researchers concluded that the PETM plants do not appear to vary structurally from the plants in the rock layers above and below the temperature spike.

The researchers also looked to see if the insect species feeding on the leaves changed over the time period. The analysis showed that what changed was the abundance of insect species that are highly specialized in the type of plant they consume and the way they consume it, such as leaf miners and gallers – they are far more abundant in the PETM.

“We wanted to see whether the increase in insect damage during the PETM was because the leaves were less tough or more nutritious,” said Currano. “There is no evidence to support this. Instead, we think that the warming allowed insect species from the tropics, particularly those that feed in a highly specific manner, to migrate north.”

Biologists are already aware that insects in the tropics consume more plants and that warming temperatures are causing organisms to widen their ranges. In addition, research has shown that plants grown under higher concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) are less nutritious, so insects must eat more plant tissue to get the same sustenance. These earlier studies support the recent findings about the PETM.

Because food webs that involve plant-eating insects affect as much as three quarters of organisms on Earth, the researchers believe that the current increase in temperature could have a profound impact on present ecosystems, and potentially to crops, if the pattern holds true in modern times.

“This study represents a highly integrative approach, using well-studied systems, to model ecological dynamics during upcoming climate shifts,” said William Hahn, a program director in NSF’s Division of Graduate Education who supported Currano’s work with a research fellowship. “The truly relevant description of past climate-change effects on plant-insect interactions, specifically the probability of increased insect damage to plants with rising temperatures, is a forward-looking approach that will help us prepare for the effects of future global warming,” he added.

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In addition to Currano’s Graduate Research Fellowship, the research team was supported by grants from NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences, as well as funding from the Roland Brown Fund of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the Evolving Earth Foundation, the Paleontological Society, Penn State, the Petroleum Research Fund, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania.

Contact: Josh Chamot
jchamot@nsf.gov
703-292-7730       
National Science Foundation

Bali, Indonesia – A vicious feedback loop of climate change and deforestation could wipe out or severely damage nearly 60 percent of the Amazon forest by 2030, says a new report from WWF.

The report from the global conservation organization, The Amazon’s Vicious Cycles: Drought and Fire in the Greenhouse, reveals the dramatic consequences for the local and global climate as well as the impacts on people’s livelihoods in South America.

From now to 2030, deforestation in the Amazon could release 55.5 to 96.9 billion tons of CO2. At the upper end this is more than two years of global greenhouse gas emission. In addition, the destruction of the Amazon would also do away with one of the key stabilizers of the global climate system.

“The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe’s climate cannot be underplayed,” says Dan Nepstad, Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Research Centre in Massachusetts, and author of the report. “It’s not only essential for cooling the world’s temperature but also such a large source of freshwater that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that it’s a massive store of carbon.”

Current trends in agriculture and livestock expansion, fire, drought, and logging could clear or severely damage 55 per cent of the Amazon rainforest by 2030. If, as anticipated by scientists, rainfall declines 10 percent in the future, then an additional four percent of the forests will be damaged by drought.

Global warming is in fact likely to reduce rainfall in the Amazon by more than 20 percent, especially in the eastern Amazon, and local temperatures will increase by more than 2°C, and perhaps by as much as 8oC, during the second half of the century.

With further destruction of the Amazon forests, less rainfall in India and Central America is anticipated, as would rainfall during the growing season in the grain belts of the US and Brazil.

Strategies to halt deforestation in the Amazon include minimizing the negative impacts from cattle ranching and infrastructure projects, and rapidly expanding the existing network of protected areas.

“We can still stop the destruction of the Amazon, but we need the support of the rich countries,” says Karen Suassuna, Climate Change Analyst, WWF-Brazil. “Our success in protecting the Amazon depends on how fast rich countries reduce their climate damaging emissions to slow down global warming.”

Climate change is initiating and speeding up the vicious circle: already today carbon from forest conversion to cattle pastures and agriculture in the Brazilian Amazon is seeping into the atmosphere at a rate of 0.2 to 0.3 billion tons per year. This number can double when severe drought increases forest fires. Emissions from all Amazon countries are double the figures for Brazil.

“The Kyoto Plus climate agreement must include measures to reduce emissions from forests,” says Hans Verolme, Director of WWF’s Global Climate Change Programme. “A failure to protect the Amazon forest will not only be a disaster for millions of people who live in the Amazon region, but also for the stability of the world’s climate.”

For media inquiries, contact:

Monica Echeverria

monica.echeverria@wwfus.org

202 778 9626