Over two million deaths occur each year as a direct result of human-caused outdoor air pollution, a new study has found.
In addition, while it has been suggested that a changing climate can exacerbate the effects of air pollution and increase death rates, the study shows that this has a minimal effect and only accounts for a small proportion of current deaths related to air pollution.
The study, which has been published today, 12 July, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, estimates that around 470,000 people die each year because of human-caused increases in ozone.
It also estimates that around 2.1 million deaths are caused each year by human-caused increases in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) – tiny particles suspended in the air that can penetrate deep into the lungs, causing cancer and other respiratory disease.
Co-author of the study, Jason West, from the University of North Carolina, said: “Our estimates make outdoor air pollution among the most important environmental risk factors for health. Many of these deaths are estimated to occur in East Asia and South Asia, where population is high and air pollution is severe.”
According to the study, the number of these deaths that can be attributed to changes in the climate since the industrial era is, however, relatively small. It estimates that a changing climate results in 1500 deaths due to ozone and 2200 deaths related to PM2.5 each year.
Climate change affects air pollution in many ways, possibly leading to local increases or decreases in air pollution. For instance, temperature and humidity can change the reaction rates which determine the formation or lifetime of a pollutant, and rainfall can determine the time that pollutants can accumulate.
Higher temperatures can also increase the emissions of organic compounds from trees, which can then react in the atmosphere to form ozone and particulate matter.
“Very few studies have attempted to estimate the effects of past climate change on air quality and health. We found that the effects of past climate change are likely to be a very small component of the overall effect of air pollution,” continued West.
In their study, the researchers used an ensemble of climate models to simulate the concentrations of ozone and PM2.5 in the years 2000 and 1850. A total of 14 models simulated levels of ozone and six models simulated levels of PM2.5.
Previous epidemiological studies were then used to assess how the specific concentrations of air pollution from the climate models related to current global mortality rates.
The researchers’ results were comparable to previous studies that have analysed air pollution and mortality; however, there was some variation depending on which climate model was used.
West added, “We have also found that there is significant uncertainty based on the spread among different atmospheric models. This would caution against using a single model in the future, as some studies have done”.
If you’ve been a sentient being for the last few months, you’ve probably been watching some of the most curious weather events happening throughout the world.
Of particular concern for many scientists has been the Arctic sea ices melt, which dropped to its lowest level on record last summer. In the first few months of this year, large cracks were witnessed in the sea ice, indicating a great possibility that it has entered a death spiral and will disappear completely in the summer months within the next two years.
The rapid melt (and eventual disappearance) of the ice is having drastic affects on the jet stream in the northern hemisphere, creating powerful storms and extreme weather events, largely outside the comprehension of many scientists.
Jeff Masters, meteorology director at the private service Weather Underground states: “I’ve been doing meteorology for 30 years and the jet stream the last three yeas has done stuff I’ve never seen. […] The fact that the jet stream is unusual could be an indicator of something. I’m not saying we know what it is.”
For example, in May there were wildfires caused by excessive heat in California while at the same time there was more than a foot of snow in Minnesota. Spring in Colorado started with early wildfires and was subsequently followed by massive flooding. Massive floods have been devastating much of the northern hemisphere this spring, including Canada, the United States, Europe, India, and Russia.
Last week, Alaska saw its hottest days on record where the town of McGrath, Alaska hit 94 F degrees while just a few weeks earlier the local temperature was 15 F degrees. There have also been extreme heat waves throughout the southwest United States, some temperatures above 130 F degrees, also resulting in wildfires that spread to more than 6,000 acres in two days and killed 19 firefighters in Arizona.
This is catastrophic – most scientists have recognized any significant rise above 1 C will usher in irreversible changes that will threaten nearly all biological life on this planet.
Carbon dioxide has an approximate thirty-year time lag between its release into the atmosphere and its corresponding affect on average global temperature. Even if we stop all emissions today – keeping it at 400 ppm – we still have nearly thirty years of warming and climatic changes to undergo.
And right now, nothing that we are currently observing matches up with any of the models that we have – a stark acknowledgment that this historical moment we find ourselves in exists largely beyond our ability to comprehend it let alone predict its movement.
We are in uncharted territory – we are facing challenges never before experienced in the history of the human species. This presents a grave problem: if the best science we have today cannot accurately offer any model predictions for the path that we are currently on, how can we effectively plan for the future?
The honest truth: we can’t. We cannot effectively plan for a future that is beyond all known human experience.
The best that we can do now is stop exacerbating the problem – stop contributing to the rapidly accelerating decline and destruction of the Earth’s biosphere and ecosystems.
Quite literally: we have to completely dismantle the industrial economy, we have to do it soon, and really, we should have done it yesterday.
But even still, grinding industrial civilization to a complete halt today is only guaranteed to mitigate the pace at which we’re running – it is not yet clear that it will ultimately alter our direction. We have, at minimum, thirty more years of incomprehensible climate disruptions and changes to undergo no matter what happens today or tomorrow. Our only chance to still have a thriving and living planet following the coming decades is by making a complete, radical and rapid shift from the industrial economy.
The logic of industrial civilization and capitalism is immediacy – grow as quickly as possible, generate maximum profits in the shortest time, and deal with consequences and crises later (if at all). Long-term planning and strategizing is antithetical to, and bears no consequence on, the drive for capital accumulation, expansion, and domination.
This process, within the last 30-40 years alone, has resulted in such an expansive project of urbanization around the world that capitalism has triumphed over (read: conquered, murdered, and erased) all other ways of existing on this planet, human and non-human. We now live in a truly global industrial civilization – a monoculture of unprecedented scope; a totality of being and of tyranny.
To oppose this project of endless growth and centralization of control, we need to enter into the logic of a truly oppositional culture – a fundamental and radical break from of our entire material reality. This entails a complete negation of our current standard of living and entire way of being in the world. Anything short of this negation will only exacerbate the problem.
Acknowledging this does not mean that the task at hand is easy or that a majority of people will accept it as truth. In fact, even amidst collapse, most people will not resist the status quo and are likely to fight to the death to protect it.
If your experience is that your water comes from the tap and that your food comes from the grocery store then you are going to defend to the death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on that; if your experience is that your water comes from a river and that your food comes from a land base then you will defend those to the death because your life depends on them. So part of the problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it and it’s very difficult physically for us to live outside of it.
But this also does not mean that the task at hand is any less true. It does mean, however, that if we wish to build our struggle for a truly just and sustainable future we must first do away with our delusions, re-focus our strategies to the most effective, and be radically uncompromising in our vision.
On June 25th, Barack Obama – a president whom, despite his rhetoric of care, spent all of the last five years of his presidency completely ignoring climate change – finally addressed the nation in a speech that was supposed to signal a “serious plan forward.”
Many “environmental” groups along with the mainstream media heralded the speech as being progressive and a great commitment to the crisis at hand. In reality, much of the speech was full of nothing more than the doublespeak typical of his presidential legacy.
In a move that many considered to be a “big victory,” the president merely stated that he will ask the State Department not to approve the final construction of the Keystone XL pipeline unless it can first determine that it “will not lead to a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions.”
This is certainly a sly trick designed to pacify a building resistance, an attempt to re-frame the debate and make it appear as if our best interests are dutifully being considered. However, to even pretend that it is at all possible that this pipeline would not lead to a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions is delusional.
While the fight against the KXL has been a fight against a pipeline, it is predominantly being waged as a fight against tar sands oil production entirely. It is incredibly easy to argue that one specific pipeline will not result in significant GHG emissions if we isolate it from the very process that demands its existence in the first place.
It is the extraction process itself that is the net greenhouse gas emitter destroying the planet – not merely the nodes at which its product is transported and consumed. Although this infrastructure should be equally opposed and dismantled, stopping one pipeline being built will only mean that others will replace it or other means will be developed to export its goods.
We should settle for nothing less than a complete end to all extraction processes. It is not even close to a victory until that happens.
Despite his attempt to appease environmentalists with this speech, there were some activist groups that were rightfully confused and enraged with his hypocritical stance. In a speech meant to signal commitment to slow climate change, President Obama continued to praise and support the fossil fuel industry and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.
Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism, examines the rhetoric and reality of this latest speech, providing a great reminder of whose interests this president actually serves – those of the ruling class. He also outlines some new ideas for Obama’s consideration:
If you’re serious about stopping global warming, you need to veto KXL.
If you’re serious about moving away from dirty energy, then there needs to be a strict timeline established for the complete phasing-out of all coal and nuclear plants by 2030 and their replacement, not with natural gas or nuclear, but with wind and solar power.
If you’re really serious about carbon pollution, you can’t with any honesty discuss solutions without making massive cuts in military spending. The Department of Defense is responsible for 80 percent of the U.S. government’s energy consumption, and the U.S. military is by far the biggest polluter on the planet. Radical reductions in spending on the Pentagon are essential for human survival.
You made no mention of the need for enormous investment in and expansion of public transit. If you’re serious about addressing climate change and making our cities more livable and the air more breathable, you will take the money you just saved by cutting military expenditures and apply it to the construction of new rail, light rail, tram and bus service, between and within cities, obviating the need for cars.
These ideas are some of the more prevalent solutions that are often tossed around in environmental and social justice circles. While the intention may be sincere, simply advocating for a shift from “dirty energy” (coal, oil, nuclear) to “clean energy” (solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, etc.) does a great disservice for generating informed decision-making at such a critical historical moment.
While these energieshavemanyflaws, one of the greatest problems with their proponents is that they do not fundamentally put into question our standard of living or way of being in the world.
An often-cited study by these proponents is the work of Mark Z. Jacobson who, mere weeks after Hurricane Sandy devastated the Northeast U.S., presented the economic argument for investing in renewable energies. His plan calls for a complete shift off fossil fuels and towards a rapid investment in wind and solar power for the entire state of New York by the year 2030.
Not only was this study completed on the premise that our culture does not dramatically change its standard of living, the study fails to even acknowledge the resources required to build these new energy infrastructures.
These energy sources are not free from fossil fuels and are dependent on rare earth metals and minerals; this sort of rapid technological and social shift will require massive extractive processes – a price we simply cannot afford if we wish to stop the destruction of this planet.
If we wish to create a “sustainable” future that is also just, a question that should be immediately asked is: Where are these resources coming from? From whose land will we steal from in order to build this renewable-energy utopia? Despite the fact that New York State ranks in or near the top third of U.S. mineral production, none of the crucial metals and minerals currently used for the development of solar panels and wind turbines can be found here – we will have to steal these resources from some other land base.
Even more problematic, Jacobson’s study does not entirely take into consideration (to the extent that it is possible) the severe climatic disruptions we are unavoidably set to experience in the coming decades. The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice in the next few years will result in rising sea levels that could displace more than 400 million people globally. Is it worth the investment for an entirely new energy infrastructure that may ultimately be irrelevant by the time it can be actualized?
To continue to advocate for these “solutions,” is to continue living in the delusion that we can have our current standard of living and have a planet too. As Robert Jensen articulates in his article, “Get Apocalyptic: Why Radical is the New Normal“:
…Toughest to dislodge may be the central illusion of the industrial world’s extractive economy: that we can maintain indefinitely a large-scale human presence on the earth at something like current First-World levels of consumption. The task for those with critical sensibilities is not just to resist oppressive social norms and illegitimate authority, but to speak a simple truth that almost no one wants to acknowledge: The high-energy/high-technology life of affluent societies is a dead end. We can’t predict with precision how resource competition and ecological degradation will play out in the coming decades, but it is ecocidal to treat the planet as nothing more than a mine from which we extract and a landfill into which we dump.
We cannot know for sure what time the party will end, but the party’s over.
Our primary goal and vision for the world is a living planet. Nothing else matters. The biggest challenge to that goal is the industrial economy and it’s a moving target. If we have any chance at stopping it we cannot have a strategy that is focused solely on the injustices of today. Our actions and strategies should be based on where we’re heading – and where we’re heading is nothing short of near-term extinction.
This is not hyperbole or metaphor. 200 species went extinct today and another 200 species will go extinct tomorrow. 400,000 people die every year from climate-related deaths. A war has been declared against the living the world and we ought to start articulating which side we’re on, and we ought to seriously start fighting back.
I’m reminded of a recent quote from MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta), a militant group successful at halting more than 28% of Nigeria’s oil output between 2006 and 2009, which articulates the situation succinctly:
From today, every tanker vehicle we find distributing petroleum products including propane gas has become a legitimate target in our war against injustice, corruption, despotism and oppression.
This is the kind of vigor we need to be generating in our own movement. Never before have the lines between those who seek to destroy this planet and those who seek a radically different future, been so clearly drawn and defined. Yet, there is a degree of hesitancy within the majority of activist circles in the West that is painstakingly paralyzing our movements from reaching its goals.
If we stand in solidarity with all the human and non-human lives that have been lost, or are routinely brutalized to this way of life, we must fundamentally reject our own standards of living and ideals about how to enter into relationship with each other and with the land. Knowing that we have now entered a historical moment of incomprehensible climatic disruptions and changes for the foreseeable future, we’d be better to do away with our delusions sooner rather than later.
BREAKDOWN is a biweekly column by Joshua Headley, a writer and activist in New York City, exploring the intricacies of collapse and the inadequacy of prevalent ideologies, strategies, and solutions to the problems of industrial civilization.
Heavily-armed, masked paramilitary forces descended upon the Gogebic Taconite mining site in Wisconsin over the weekend, much to the chagrin of local residents and elected officials.
“I’m appalled,” state Sen. Bob Jauch (D) told The Wisconsin State Journal on Monday. “There is no evidence to justify their presence.”
Jaunch sent a letter to Gogebic President Bill Williams on Monday demanding the company remove the guards, which he called “common in third world countries,” but stressed that “they don’t belong in Northern Wisconsin.”
The company brought in the paramilitary forces after being confronted by a group of about 15 protesters in June. At least one of the demonstrators, a young woman, was hit with misdemeanor charges for trying to take a camera away from one of the company’s geologists. Gogebic claims they’ve since caught several people illegally camping on their property and did not want to take any chances.
The company hired by Gogebic is Arizona-based Bulletproof Securities, which boasts that many of their employees are ex-military and many of their clients are celebrities and government officials. They certainly look the part, too: photos of Bulletproof guards at the Gegebic site published by the Wisconsin progressive blog Blue Cheddar show men who look very much like special forces soldiers, complete with assault rifles and black masks.
“Do they have the authority to use those weapons? If so, on who?” Jauch asked the Journal. “I don’t know if there’s a hunting season right now except maybe for rabbit, but you shoot a rabbit with that, all you’ll end up with is fur. What would you use those weapons for except to hurt somebody?”
The mining site they’re protecting in the Penokee Mountains is highly controversial and critics say in violation of a treaty with Native Americans.
Video shot by Wisconsin-based website Indian Country TV over the weekend featured at least one of the paramilitaries wearing full camoflage and a military-style net over his face — an image that would have been completed by an assault rifle, if he hadn’t left it sitting on the passenger’s seat of his vehicle, right next to a cameraman.
“What happened to your fancy guns?” the cameraman asked. “Look at that. Very close by. Who are you going to shoot?”
“It’s a security protocol,” the guard replied, refusing to provide his name or his employer’s name.
“You’re being caught up in a national phenomenon,” the cameraman informed the guard. “We’ve got reporters calling from all over the country wondering about the occupation of Penokee Mountains Heritage Park by people who’ve got automatic weapons. And the question is, ‘Why?’”
A spokesperson for Gogebic told The Cap Times on Tuesday that they’re considering restricting their drilling sites from public access, which wouldn’t be an option until December when the state begins accepting applications.
This video is from Indian Country TV, published July 7, 2013.
Over the past few decades, our food system has become increasingly globalized [10]. With the rise of agribusiness, the ability to transport food cheaply over long distances and the development of food preservation techniques have enabled the distance between farm and market to increase dramatically.
Recently, such practices have been questioned for the damage they cause to the natural environment, their high energy consumption, and their contribution to climate change. In addition, the quality of the food available to residents is subject to increasing concern.
In fact, the trend toward increasing distances between producers and consumers has prompted many to question the environmental and social sustainability of our food choices [10]. The question of how to feed the urban population, particularly during crisis, is becoming urgent every day. Concerns about health and the loss of tradition and culture that began to take hold in post-modern society, the spread of the ‘food desert’, especially in poor urban areas [4], where there is no easy access to affordable food, food banks and soup kitchens, demonstrated that the urgency of access to food and food security for everyone must be confronted.
To note here, the modern movement for LFS (local food systems) as an alternative to the conventional agricultural system is not new. It started in Japan in the 1970s with the teikei, which means ‘putting the producer’s face on the product’ [10]. The teikei were organized around consumer cooperatives, whose members would link up with producers and even helped with the work on the farm [13]. A similar model was also adopted in Québec by Équiterre in 1995 where consumers, organized into groups, pay up front at the beginning of the season and receive deliveries of food baskets each week, thereby sharing the risk inherent in agricultural production [1].
Agriculture is a major driver of human-caused climate change, contributing an estimated 25 to 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. However, when done sustainably it can be an important key to mitigating climate change [12]. The sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity is likely to be particularly beneficial for small-scale farmers, who need to optimize the limited resources that are available to them and for whom the access to external inputs is lacking due to financial or infrastructural constraints [19].
Benefits on a large-scale can also be achieved by focusing on improvements relevant to large commercial farmers and conservation agriculture has already been effective in this respect. Inevitably, there is considerable skepticism over the practicality of the widespread adoption of agricultural production practices that embody a greater use of biodiversity for food and agriculture and a greater emphasis on ecosystem functions [19].
Two major geopolitical realities have a constraining effect on peoples’ thinking. Firstly, modern, intensive farming in developed countries receives very large levels of financial support and all sectors of the agricultural and food industries are linked to this highly subsidized system. Secondly, there is a continuing commitment to ensuring that food prices remain low and that basic foodstuffs are affordable by all sectors of society including the poorest. These both tend to lead to a disinterest in the nature of agricultural production systems and present a very real barrier to the development of new approaches to production [19]. However, it is increasingly recognized that an appropriate policy framework can largely overcome these constraints and, indeed, must be developed .
In the last few years, more localized food supply chains have been proposed as a vehicle for sustainable development [5]; [6]; [9]; [15] and [21]. We can note here that the term ‘local’ is still contested and its definition varies from one local market development organization to the next. Literally, the term ‘local’ indicates a relation to a particular place, a geographic entity.
However, as our literature review has uncovered, most organizations have a more elaborate definition of what is local, often incorporating specific goals and objectives that an LFS ought to deliver into the definition itself.
There are three aspects of LFS, which are proximity (geographic distance, temporal distance, political and administrative boundaries, bio-regions, and social distance), objectives of local food systems (economic, environmental and social objectives), and distribution mechanisms in local food systems (farm shops, farmer’s markets, box schemes, community-supported agriculture, institutional procurement policy, and urban agriculture).
Besides the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), there is a growing interest by the public sector for local food, which is mainly linked to the idea of food sovereignty – a global movement that aims to transform food systems into engines of sustainable development and social justice. To note here is La Via Campesina [21], which was the first organization to develop the concept of food sovereignty in 1993 in Belgium [13].
Thus, the pursuit of food sovereignty implies that work should be done in international treaty negotiations and human rights conventions in order to allow state sovereignty over food policy—that is, to prevent interference from foreign powers in the policy-making process, lift restrictions placed by international trade agreements, and eliminate dumping practices [1].
In 2007 in Montreal, a definition of food sovereignty was developed by a Québec-based coalition for food sovereignty that included producer organizations, civil society groups, food distributors, and development organizations. The definition states that “food sovereignty means the right of people to develop their own food and agricultural policy; to protect and regulate national food production and trade in order to attain sustainable development goals, to determine their degree of food autonomy, and to eliminate dumping on their markets. Food sovereignty does not contradict trade in the sense that it is subordinated to the right of people to local food production, healthy and ecological, realized in equitable conditions that respect the right of every partner to decent working conditions and incomes” [1].
Over the last 60 years, Canada‘s overall food system has become more geared to large-scale systems of production, distribution and retail. In Quebec, the agricultural, food processing, and retail sectors account for 6.8% of GDP and 12.5% of all jobs. The province produces fresh and processed food worth $19.2 billion, while only consuming $15.4 billion (a 25% surplus), and retailers imported $6.9 billion worth of fresh and processed foods last year. About 44% of Quebec’s raw and processed food production finds its way into Quebeckers’ plates, the rest being exported to other Canadian provinces (30%) and overseas (245) [20].
We can note here that since 1941, the evolution of Quebec’s agricultural landscape is characterized by the decrease in the number of farms and a market concentration dominated by few producers. And this is very similar to what we see in other Canadian provinces and other industrialized countries [8].
As it was already mentioned in this report, local food systems are proliferating in Quebec [8]. There is now a growing interest in the production, processing, and buying of local food. New “local food systems” are being set up to organize the various components that will meet the needs of all the stakeholders in the community or region [7].
The initiatives that are helping in this process in Quebec are: organic and other specialized agriculture ((316 certified organic livestock production units, 341 organic maple syrup producers, and 585 certified farms [18]), farmer’s markets (network of 82 open markets, seasonal or permanent, daily or occasional), community- supported agriculture (CSA) and solidarity markets (a new phenomenon, solidarity markets allow consumers to order through a web portal) [8].
Despite the growth of these initiatives, there remain several obstacles inhibiting their expansion. The three main obstacles are: lack of financing (for example, banks are not willing to issue micro-loans at competitive rates), economic power (in fact, the food retail sector is marked by high rates of market concentration; supermarkets have been able to achieve economies of scale because they do not have to pay for the social and environmental costs of their business practices), and knowledge (the lack of demand for local food attributed to a lack of information about where to procure it, and a lack of information about prices).
Now, identifying every obstacle, policy and existing initiative related to the nodes in the value chain in the literature of [1], we notice there is a dilemma between land protection and land access. This is mostly attributed to the case of zoning policy.
In 1978, and in the context of rapid economic development, speculation on land, fragmentation of the land, and non-agricultural use, the government of Quebec passed agricultural land protection legislation, the second in Canada. This law reflected a desire to plan and regulate in this area and an overseeing agency was also created – the Commission de protection du territiore agricole du Quebec (CPTAQ). This law effectively organized the use of agricultural land over the years. However, today with greater concentration of ownership and fewer people in the business of food production, the zoning law is causing problems since it acts as barrier for entry for smaller and more value-added producers who need smaller plots [8].
In fact, the zoning law is one of the laws that facilitates industrial long-distance agriculture at the expense of small-scale sustainable agriculture and short supply chains (e.g. zoning laws that favor big farms, subsidy systems that favor big retailers, funding schemes targeted at large producers, and so on) [1]. At the same time, we can see this on an international level – the pressure for city expansion, speculation and non-agricultural use is still strong.
Moreover, beyond the provincial level, municipalities have authority over certain zoning laws and by-laws that can facilitate or inhibit the development of LFS, particularly regulations concerning the use of agricultural zones for commercial purposes [1]. Though aimed at protecting agricultural zones from industrial development and other forms of encroachment, such by-laws effectively prevent on-farm direct sales or the use of farmland for farmers’ markets or farm shops [17] and organizers of such initiatives typically have to negotiate with municipal authorities for special permits or designated spaces [3].
However, agricultural zoning per se (designations for tax purposes) falls within provincial government jurisdiction or a land management agency, such as the Agricultural Land Reserve in British Columbia or the Commission pour la protection des terres agricoles du Québec [1].
To conclude, to achieve this vision of food sovereignty, LFS have to go beyond the distance traveled by food products before they reach the final consumers (food miles) and integrate social, economic and environmental benefits. Also, Farmers’ markets, CSAs and other initiatives are becoming increasingly present in industrial countries in recent years, but they still only represent a very small part of the food market [1].
For example, in Quebec, Équiterre’s CSA went from 1 to 102 farms between 1995 and 2006. It contributes to 73% of the average turnover of the farms, and yields an average annual profit of $3,582 annually when conventional agricultural produces an average annual loss of $6,255 [2] . In addition, regarding the zoning law, there are some good possibilities.
In fact, within the existing law, new initiatives are emerging elsewhere and new possibilities can be developed in other provinces. These include cooperative land trusts and the collective buying of land and green belts [8]. However, other aspects require reform. CPTAQ should be more flexible to LFS needs.
For example, in one case, the CPTAQ has agreed to allow municipal authorities in Ste-Camille to take management over a large farm that was for sale in order to help new young families establish small farms. In order to do this, the CPTAQ de-zoned the land, thus technically empowering municipal authorities to develop it however they chose; however, there was an understanding that the municipality would keep the land for agricultural use.
If this case is inspiring, there should be a formal way to make such arrangements without necessarily de-zoning the land and placing it at risk. The main and remaining question is how to allow the creation of small farms without endangering land protection for the future of agriculture in Quebec, especially in the context of rising non-agricultural activities in farming areas (e.g. shale gas exploitation) [8]. Even though there is no national policy to promote LFS, provincial governments have been active with various programs in this area.
There is much variations from one provinces to another, but the existing programs tend to cluster on the demand side, focusing on consumer education and marketing projects, even running some themselves (the origin labeling and promotion programs). To a lesser extent, there are some programs to support organic farming (transition programs) but very few focusing on processing and distribution. Moreover, it is important to provide knowledge for policy action on food sovereignty given the gap which exists in understanding the impact of existing public policy initiatives [1].
Agriculture is a globally occurring activity which relates directly and powerfully to the present and future condition of environments, economies, and societies. While agriculture has provided for basic social and economic needs of people, it has also caused environmental degradation which has prompted a burgeoning interest in its sustainability [17].
Moreover, like the concept of ‘sustainable development’, the term ‘sustainable agriculture’ has been interpreted and applied in numerous ways. At the broadest level there is some consistency in definition [17]. Most analysts and practitioners would probably accept that sustainable agriculture has something to do with the use of resources to produce food and fiber in such a way that the natural resource base is not damaged, and that the basic needs of producers and consumers can be met over the long term [17].
Despite this, it seems that there is little agreement on the meaning of ‘sustainable agriculture’. There is a little agreement on the meaning of ‘agriculture’, let alone the stickiness of a word like ‘sustainable’ [17].
References:
[1] Blouin et al. (September, 2009). LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS AND PUBLIC POLICY: A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE. Équiterre &The Centre for Trade Policy and Law, Carleton University.
[2] Chinnakonda, D., and Telford, L. (2007). Les économies alimentaires locales et régionales au Canada: rapport sur la situation. Ottawa: Agriculture et Agroalimentaire Canada.
[3] Connell, D.J., Borsato, R., & Gareau, L.( 2007). Farmers, Farmers Markets, and Land Use Planning: Case Studies in Prince George and Quesnel. University of Northern British Columbia.
[4] Cummins, S. and Macintyre, S. (2002). Food Deserts – Evidence and Assumption in Health Policy Making.” British Medical Journal Vol. 325, No. 7361: 436-438.
[5] Desmarais, A. (2007). La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants. Halifax, London, and Ann Arbor, Michigan: Fernwood Pub. Pluto Press.
[6] Halweil, B. & Worldwatch Institute. (2002). Home Grown: The Case for Local Food in a Global Market. Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute.
[8] Lemay J-F. (2009). Local Food Systems and Public Policy: The Case of Zoning Laws in Quebec. Retrieved from
[9] Lyson, T.A. 2004. Civic Agriculture. UPNE. Available at:
[10] MacLeod, M., and Scott, J. (May, 2007). Local Food Procurement Policies:A Literature Review. Ecology Action Centre For the Nova Scotia Department of Energy. Retrieved from
[11 ] Mundler, P. (2007). Les Associations pour le maintien de l’agriculture paysanne (AMAP) en Rhône-Alpes, entre marché et solidarité. Ruralia 2007-20. Available at: http://ruralia.revues.org/document1702.html [Accessed July 15, 2009].
[13] Pimbert, M. (2008). Towards Food Sovereignty: Reclaiming Autonomous Food Systems. London: International Institute for Environment and Development.
[14] Pretty, J. (1998). The Living Land: Agriculture, Food, and Community Regeneration in Rural Europe. London: Earthscan.
[15] Rosset, P. & Land Research Action Network. (2006). Promised Land: Competing Visions of Agrarian Reform. Oakland, California & New York: Food First Books.
[16] Smit, B., and Smithers, J. (Autumn, 1993). Sustainable Agriculture: Interpretations, Analyses and Prospects. Department of Geography, and Land Evaluation Group,
University of Guelph. Canadian Journal of Regional Science/Revue canadienne des sciences régionales, XVI:3), 499-524. ISSN: 0705-4580
[17] Wormsbecker, C.L. (2007). Moving Towards the Local: The Barriers and Opportunities for Localizing Food Systems in Canada. Master of Environmental Studies in Environment and Resource Studies. University of Waterloo.
[18] CARTV, (2009). Statistiques pour l’appelation biologique. Retrieved from
[21] Vía Campesina. La Vía Campesina: International Peasant Movement—Small Scale Sustainable Farmers are Cooling Down the Earth. Available at: [Accessed June 13, 2009].
Ocean waters melting the undersides of Antarctic ice shelves are responsible for most of the continent’s ice shelf mass loss, a new study by NASA and university researchers has found.
Scientists have studied the rates of basal melt, or the melting of the ice shelves from underneath, of individual ice shelves, the floating extensions of glaciers that empty into the sea. But this is the first comprehensive survey of all Antarctic ice shelves. The study found basal melt accounted for 55 percent of all Antarctic ice shelf mass loss from 2003 to 2008, an amount much higher than previously thought.
Antarctica holds about 60 percent of the planet’s fresh water locked into its massive ice sheet. Ice shelves buttress the glaciers behind them, modulating the speed at which these rivers of ice flow into the ocean. Determining how ice shelves melt will help scientists improve projections of how the Antarctic ice sheet will respond to a warming ocean and contribute to sea level rise. It also will improve global models of ocean circulation by providing a better estimate of the amount of fresh water ice shelf melting adds to Antarctic coastal waters.
The study uses reconstructions of ice accumulation, satellite and aircraft readings of ice thickness, and changes in elevation and ice velocity to determine how fast ice shelves melt and compare the mass lost with the amount released by the calving, or splitting, of icebergs.
“The traditional view on Antarctic mass loss is it is almost entirely controlled by iceberg calving,” said Eric Rignot of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine. Rignot is lead author of the study to be published in the June 14 issue of the journal Science. “Our study shows melting from below by the ocean waters is larger, and this should change our perspective on the evolution of the ice sheet in a warming climate.”
Ice shelves grow through a combination of land ice flowing to the sea and snow accumulating on their surface. To determine how much ice and snowfall enters a specific ice shelf and how much makes it to an iceberg, where it may split off, the research team used a regional climate model for snow accumulation and combined the results with ice velocity data from satellites, ice shelf thickness measurements from NASA’s Operation IceBridge — a continuing aerial survey of Earth’s poles — and a new map of Antarctica’s bedrock. Using this information, Rignot and colleagues were able to deduce whether the ice shelf was losing mass through basal melting or gaining it through the basal freezing of seawater.
In some places, basal melt exceeds iceberg calving. In other places, the opposite is true. But in total, Antarctic ice shelves lost 2,921 trillion pounds (1,325 trillion kilograms) of ice per year in 2003 to 2008 through basal melt, while iceberg formation accounted for 2,400 trillion pounds (1,089 trillion kilograms) of mass loss each year.
Basal melt can have a greater impact on ocean circulation than glacier calving. Icebergs slowly release melt water as they drift away from the continent. But strong melting near deep grounding lines, where glaciers lose their grip on the seafloor and start floating as ice shelves, discharges large quantities of fresher, lighter water near the Antarctic coastline. This lower-density water does not mix and sink as readily as colder, saltier water, and may be changing the rate of bottom water renewal.
“Changes in basal melting are helping to change the properties of Antarctic bottom water, which is one component of the ocean’s overturning circulation,” said author Stan Jacobs, an oceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. “In some areas it also impacts ecosystems by driving coastal upwelling, which brings up micronutrients like iron that fuel persistent plankton blooms in the summer.”
The study found basal melting is distributed unevenly around the continent. The three giant ice shelves of Ross, Filchner and Ronne, which make up two-thirds of the total Antarctic ice shelf area, accounted for only 15 percent of basal melting. Meanwhile, fewer than a dozen small ice shelves floating on “warm” waters (seawater only a few degrees above the freezing point) produced half of the total melt water during the same period. The scientists detected a similar high rate of basal melting under six small ice shelves along East Antarctica, a region not as well known because of a scarcity of measurements.
The researchers also compared the rates at which the ice shelves are shedding ice to the speed at which the continent itself is losing mass and found that, on average, ice shelves lost mass twice as fast as the Antarctic ice sheet did during the study period.
“Ice shelf melt doesn’t necessarily mean an ice shelf is decaying; it can be compensated by the ice flow from the continent,” Rignot said. “But in a number of places around Antarctica, ice shelves are melting too fast, and a consequence of that is glaciers and the entire continent are changing as well.”
The Great Basin stretches from Utah’s Great Salt Lake to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and from southern Idaho to southern California. About seven inches of rain falls in Nevada a year, and some areas receive less than five. The Great Basin is a cold desert, and in eastern Nevada and western Utah, it has been getting drier for a decade. [1]
The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), the water agency for Las Vegas, Henderson, and North Las Vegas, proposes pumping up to 200,000 acre-feet annually from eastern to southern Nevada through 300 miles of pipeline. An acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre of land a foot deep, or about 325,850 US gallons. Cost estimates vary from $3.5 billion (what SNWA tells the public) to $15 billion dollars (what SNWA was required by law to tell the State Engineer). This project is seen as a threat by several Indian tribes and rural communities, and is expected to do immense damage to many rare endemic species, desert vegetation, and the land itself, much of which is open range. [2]
Basin and Range
Life in the Great Basin’s valleys, human and otherwise, depends on shallow groundwater, springs, and creeks, which in turn depend on groundwater flows from rain and snow in mountain ranges. 200,000 acre-feet is about 65 billion gallons of water, equivalent to the average flow of Nevada’s Humboldt River. SNWA claims that it can pump this water from the Spring, Delamar, Dry Lake, and Cave Valleys without harm; though it’s clear to those who live in the Great Basin that if most of the water flowing in from the mountains is drawn away, eventually most everything in the valleys will die.
The Bureau of Land Management’s final decision on the right-of-way for the project [3] allows for the pumping of 150,000 annual acre-feet. [4] A drawdown projection commissioned by the Goshute Tribe [5] (and other analyses) reflect a far more destructive outcome than the SNWA claims. Access to Snake Valley (much of which is in Utah) groundwater is still in dispute, but the US Geological Survey has concluded the multiple valleys’ aquifers are connected, so it’s likely that Utah’s groundwater would be impacted anyway. [6]
According to the Great Basin Water Network, “Independent hydrologists dispute it is possible to pump and export so much water without causing major environmental degradation and destroying the livelihoods of rural residents in eastern Nevada and western Utah. The area targeted for the massive pumping proposal is home to National Wildlife Refuges… Great Basin National Park is surrounded by the proposed groundwater pump and export project. The proposed pumping scheme would bring two hundred or more wells with power lines, roads, and linked buried pipelines to cover the valleys on both sides of the National Park—some right on the border of the park.
Communities like Baker, Nevada on the Utah border would have large production wells in their backyard sending local water to a city 300 miles away.” [7] As pipeline foe Rick Spilsbury puts it, “This would mean the end of any economic development anywhere near the drained areas. The likely result would be a mass emigration and the eventual transformation of the area into a national toxic dump site.” Impacts to land, water, and air could extend as far as Salt Lake City and its surrounding urban areas (which already have some of the worst air pollution in the US). Physicians for Social Responsibility predicts a dewatered basin-and-range country could increase downwind particulate pollution from dust storms, including the toxic mineral erionite. [8] In textbook fashion, the city of Las Vegas is exporting suffering and violence to import resources that it cannot acquire in its immediate landbase.
Overdrawn River
Author Marc Reisner wrote, “To some conservationists the Colorado River is the preeminent symbol of everything mankind has done wrong—a harbinger of a squalid and deserved fate. To its preeminent impounder, the US Bureau of Reclamation, it is the perfection of an ideal.” [9] In 2013, American Rivers announced the Colorado as the US’s most endangered river, and that “over-allocation and drought have placed significant stress on water supplies, river health, and fish and wildlife. To underscore the immediacy of the problem, the basin is facing another drought this summer. The Bureau of Reclamation’s report released in December stresses that there is not enough water to meet current demands across the basin, let alone support future demand increases.” [10]
Under the interstate Colorado River Compact of 1922, the entire state of Nevada was allowed 300,000 acre feet per year (AFY) of Colorado River water. One AFY is approximately 3380 liters per day, “the planned water usage of a suburban family household, annually. In some areas of the desert Southwest, where water conservation is followed and often enforced, a typical family uses only about 0.25 [AFY].” [11] The Imperial Irrigation District, whose water rights predate the 1922 Compact, owns approximately three million acre feet (MAF) per year, and the entire city of Los Angeles uses about one MAF per year. Though laws controlling the use of water are typically state, not federal, and vary widely from state to state (in Arizona, for instance, there is little legally recognized relationship between ground and surface water), the 1922 Compact is a binding agreement between states. The Upper Basin must deliver a total of 7.5 MAF per year to the Lower Basin (the dividing line is at Lee’s Ferry in Glen Canyon, in Utah), and the US must deliver one MAF a year to Mexico. [12] Across the entire Colorado River basin, nearly all climate models predict an increase in both aridity and flooding. [13]
As increasing temperatures force the jet stream further north and more water evaporate from soil and reservoirs like Lake Powell (where an average 860,000 acre-feet of water—about 8 percent of the Colorado River’s annual flow—is lost every year) [14], overall water availability will decrease even if summer storms and spring runoff paradoxically become more intense. 2012 was the first recorded year the Colorado River flow peaked in April. [15] Though the water level in Lake Mead (where Las Vegas siphons its water from) has priority over Lake Powell’s (upstream), Las Vegas has little water from the river’s apportionment overall because in 1922, when the Compact was made, there were very few people in Nevada and no guess at what Las Vegas might become.
Southern Nevada at one point had the highest growth rate in the US, but following the economic recession Nevada had the highest national rate of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and unemployment. In 2010, there were 167,564 empty houses in Nevada—one in seven. In Las Vegas, residential property prices have fallen by 50 percent on average from 2008 to 2011, when Nevada homes changed hands for an average of $115,000. [16] As one SNWA pipeline opponent remarked, “My house in Las Vegas dropped from $307,500 to be foreclosed, and then resold at $190,000.”
When the SNWA groundwater pipeline was first conceived, the water agency was planning for growth on a much higher trajectory, and this momentum has carried through the recession to the present day. So while southern Nevada’s water future in general is threatened by drought and Nevada’s small original apportionment, the groundwater pipeline is driven by hopes for future growth, not immediate need. [16]
Indigenous Human Rights
The Confederated Tribes of the Goshute, or CTGR (the name “Goshute” derives from the native word Ku’tsip or Gu’tsip, people of ashes, desert, or dry earth), [17] “reside in an isolated oasis in the foothills of the majestic Deep Creek Mountains on what is now the Utah/ Nevada state line,” according to their web page Protect Goshute Water. There are 539 enrolled tribal members, and about 200 of them live in Deep Creek Valley. “Our reservation lies in one of the most sparsely populated regions of the United States, and it has always been our home. Resulting from this isolation, we have benefited by retaining strong cultural ties to Goshute land, our traditions, and a resolute determination to protect our ways.
Ironically, water, the most elemental resource in our basin, is the very thing developers now seek to extract and send 300 miles away for Las Vegas suburbs. The Southern Nevada Water Authority’s pipeline proposal would draw 150,000 acre feet per year from the Great Salt Lake Watershed Basin lowering the water table, drying up our springs, and fundamentally changing access to water over this vast region for plants, wildlife, and people.” They go on to say that “SNWA’s groundwater development application is the biggest threat to the Goshute way of life since European settlers first arrived on Goshute lands more than 150 years ago.” [18]
In Spring Valley in eastern Nevada, a narrow band of swamp cedar trees mark the site of 1863 and 1897 US military massacres of Goshute and Shoshone peoples, and here is where the Goshute and Duckwater and Ely Shoshone tribes grieve and hold spiritual ceremonies. Goshute tribal chairman Ed Naranjo says that “Swamp Cedars is important to many tribes, certainly to CTGR, Ely, and Duckwater, but also to many Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute Tribes.” The Swamp Cedars Massacre is relatively obscure, compared to well-known massacres at Bear River [19] and Wounded Knee.
Goshute elders believe that murder victims physically and spiritually fed the swamp-cedar trees; according to former Goshute council chairman Rupert Steele, “Otherwise you’d never see swamp cedar grow this tall and strong.” In a 2011 Nevada State Engineer hearing, an SNWA attorney likened the Goshute beliefs to children fearing the bogeyman. The Spring Valley swamp cedar grove is one of many sites that could be drained by the SNWA pipeline. [20] A “Cultural Property and Cultural Landscape” report on Spring Valley, Nevada, prepared by an independent ethnographer for Goshute and Ely and Duckwater Shoshone tribes was ignored by the BLM in their environmental analysis. [21]
Rick Spilsbury, a Shoshone Indian, says that “As far as the Native Americans of Nevada and Utah are concerned, this is just a continuation of the land and resource grab that has existed since the authoring of the Bill of Rights. Those who take have been writing the rules. The Colorado River Compact was organized specifically to exclude Native Americans and Mexicans from having any water rights. And the omission of Federal water protections for Native Americans from State water affairs was obviously not an oversight, or it would have been fixed by now. Native Americans don’t have the legal ability to stop their exploitation. [22]
“The Western Shoshone still hunt and gather here—right where the worst of the environmental damage will be. The mass killing of life in this area will not only be the final blow to Western Shoshone culture, it will be a serious threat to their long-term sustainability—and even viability. Water is life. And SNWA intends to take it.”
Opposition
Not surprisingly, a water appropriation on this scale has been hard fought by those whose livelihoods will be affected, as well as indigenous communities and environmental groups. Even within southern Nevada there’s some rate-payer opposition [23]—the project’s costs will be added to water bills—and Utah’s governor Gary Herbert recently rejected a proposed agreement with the SNWA for Snake Valley groundwater. [24] Litigation on various aspects of this project may well proceed to the US Supreme Court.
(Though Herbert’s decision was widely praised by both West Desert ranchers and environmentalists, not everyone in Utah concurred. Ron Thompson, of the Washington County, Utah, Water Conservancy District, criticized the move as “hypocritical for us to tell Nevada not to develop a water project. Ultimately they will figure out how to do it.” [25] Washington County wants to build its own expensive water pipeline from Lake Powell to the St. George area, and Thompson thinks Governor Herbert is sacrificing a “positive tradition of bi-state cooperation” in turning the SNWA down. A Lake Powell pipeline opponent observed that “It’s imperative that opposition to both projects stays active and coordinated.” [26])
Deep Green Resistance’s Southwest Coalition proposes this strategy:
Though we’re too recently involved to have any legal standing, our emphasis on indigenous solidarity has drawn us to ally ourselves with the affected indigenous groups. Though their governments haven’t agreed to any formal affiliation, we offer them support through:
1. Organizing opposition in communities outside the reservations.
2. Fundraising for efforts to fight the pipeline, whatever that might be. Donations are tax-deductible and can be made by PayPal to deepgreenfertileground@gmail.com. Please put “SNWA” in the comments section. The Great Basin Water Network also accepts donations, at or Great Basin Water Network, P O Box 75, Baker, NV 89311 (Nevada non-profit #35-2278153).
3. Influencing public opinion and promoting taxpayer opposition to the pipeline.
4. Sponsoring educational events and outreach. This might include inviting indigenous people (and supporting travel costs) to events we can organize in Salt Lake City and Las Vegas to speak against the pipeline.
5. Organizing protests and rallies. We can help redefine this issue as one of human rights violation, not only environmental destruction.
6. Encouraging negative press coverage of the SNWA and pipeline proposal. Encouraging positive press coverage of the Great Basin’s unique beauty, and the long indigenous people’s relationship with it.
7. Discouraging project investors/lenders.
8. We can also organize and train for nonviolent civil disobedience to fight the pipeline construction, should legal or administrative efforts fail. This is a tactical tool that’s aimed at physically stopping construction. It’s not symbolic, it’s strategic; there are ways of minimizing the expense and suffering to activists and maximizing expense and delay of the enemy, and we feel it’s best to plan for the unfortunate possibility that this struggle may well arrive at this point. We believe it’s our responsibility as privileged members of the dominant culture to put our bodies between the bulldozers and indigenous peoples and lands.
[1] “Great Basin Water Issues,” Great Basin Water Network, accessed December 26, 2012, http://www.greatbasinwater.net/issues/index.php This page offers a good overview of Great Basin water issues, including the SNWA proposed pipeline.
See the U.S. Drought Monitor for current data: The U.S. Drought Monitor. National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, United States Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
[2] The U.S. Drought Monitor. National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, United States Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
[4] “SNWA appears as if it’s planning on Snake Valley water, said Rob Mrowka of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.
Despite the fact that the Nevada engineer approved water rights of 84,000 acre feet, he said, the BLM is set to approve a pipeline capable of carrying 117,000 acre feet.” Christopher Smart, “BLM poised to OK Las Vegas plan to pump and pipe desert groundwater,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 6, 2012, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/54624691-90/blm–eis–final–las.html.csp
[6] “While the BLM’s final EIS spares Snake Valley along the Utah-Nevada border from groundwater pumping, critics say drilling in nearby valleys will draw down the aquifer beneath Snake Valley,” “Goshutes blast BLM study on Las Vegas water pipeline,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, August 5, 2012, http://www.lvrj.com/news/goshutes–blast–blm–study–on–las–vegas–water–pipeline-165082706.html
[8]“Dr. Jeff Patterson, president of PSR [Physicians for Social Responsibility], said Westerners should be worried because there is no evidence of any serious attempt to determine if erionite exists in the same areas that would be ‘de-watered by the proposed Las Vegas pipeline and would be kicked up in the particulate pollution. Erionite can cause serious lung disease and a highly lethal cancer called mesothelioma,’” Brian Moench, “No end to Nevada’s quest for water,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 6, 2013, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/56107724-82/utah–nevada–erionite–las.html.csp
[10] Amy Souers Kober, “Announcing America’s Most Endangered Rivers of 2013,” American Rivers, April 17, 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20130531040706/http://www.americanrivers.org/newsroom/blog/akober-20130417-announcing-americas-most-endangered-rivers-2013.html
[12] The Colorado River is managed and operated under numerous compacts, federal laws, court decisions and decrees, contracts, and regulatory guidelines collectively known as ‘The Law of the River,’” “Colorado River Compact,” Wikipedia, accessed May 14, 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact
[21] Sylvester L. Lahren, Jr. Ph.D., “A Shoshone/Goshute Traditional Cultural Property and Cultural Landscape, Spring Valley, Nevada. Confidential and Proprietary Report for the Goshute Tribal Council,” Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, August 9, 2010.
