While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken draws attention to climate change in the Arctic at meetings with other national officials this week in Iceland, an even greater threat looms on the other side of the planet.
New research shows it is Antarctica that may force a reckoning between the choices countries make today about greenhouse gas emissions and the future survival of their coastlines and coastal cities, from New York to Shanghai.
That reckoning may come much sooner than people realize.
Scientists have long known that the Antarctic ice sheet has physical tipping points, beyond which ice loss can accelerate out of control. The new study, published in the journal Nature, finds that the Antarctica ice sheet could reach a critical tipping point in a few decades, when today’s elementary school kids are raising their families.
The results mean a common argument for not reducing greenhouse gas emissions now – that future technological advancement can save us later – is likely to fail.
A satellite image shows the long flow lines as a glacier moves ice into Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf, on the right. The red patches mark bedrock. USGS
The new study shows that if emissions continue at their current pace, by about 2060 the Antarctic ice sheet will have crossed a critical threshold and committed the world to sea level rise that is not reversible on human timescales. Pulling carbon dioxide out of the air at that point won’t stop the ice loss, it shows, and by 2100, sea level could be rising more than 10 times faster than today.
The tipping point
Antarctica has several protective ice shelves that fan out into the ocean ahead of the continent’s constantly flowing glaciers, slowing the land-based glaciers’ flow to the sea. But those shelves can thin and break up as warmer water moves in under them.
As ice shelves break up, that can expose towering ice cliffs that may not be able to stand on their own.
There are two potential instabilities at this point. Parts of the Antarctic ice sheet are grounded below sea level on bedrock that slopes inward toward the center of the continent, so warming ocean water can eat around their lower edges, destabilizing them and causing them to retreat downslope rapidly. Above the water, surface melting and rain can open fractures in the ice.
The study used computer modeling based on the physics of ice sheets and found that above 2 C (3.6 F) of warming, Antarctica will see a sharp jump in ice loss, triggered by the rapid loss of ice through the massive Thwaites Glacier. This glacier drains an area the size of Florida or Britain and is the focus of intense study by U.S. and U.K. scientists.
Other projections don’t account for ice cliff instability and generally arrive at lower estimates for the rate of sea level rise. While much of the press coverage that followed the new paper’s release focused on differences between these two approaches, both reach the same fundamental conclusions: The magnitude of sea level rise can be drastically reduced by meeting the Paris Agreement targets, and physical instabilities in the Antarctic ice sheet can lead to rapid acceleration in sea level rise.
The disaster doesn’t stop in 2100
The new study, led by Robert DeConto, David Pollard and Richard Alley, is one of the few that looks beyond this century. One of us is a co-author.
It shows that if today’s high emissions continued unabated through 2100, sea level rise would explode, exceeding 2.3 inches (6 cm) per year by 2150. By 2300, sea level would be 10 times higher than it is expected to be if countries meet the Paris Agreement goals. A warmer and softer ice sheet and a warming ocean holding its heat for centuries all prevent refreezing of Antarctica’s protective ice shelves, leading to a very different world.
The vast majority of the pathways for meeting the Paris Agreement expect emissions will overshoot its goals of keeping warming under 1.5 C (2.7 F) or 2 C (3.6 F), and then count on future advances in technology to remove enough carbon dioxide from the air later to lower the temperature again. The rest require a 50% cut in emissions globally by 2030.
Although a majority of countries – including the U.S., U.K. and European Union – have set that as a goal, current policies globally would result in just a 1% reduction by 2030.
It’s all about reducing emissions quickly
Some other researchers suggest that ice cliffs in Antarctica might not collapse as quickly as those in Greenland. But given their size and current rates of warming – far faster than in the historic record – what if they instead collapse more quickly?
Second, allowing global warming to overshoot 2 C is not a realistic option for coastal communities or the global economy. The comforting prospect of technological fixes allowing a later return to normal is an illusion that will leave coastlines under many feet of water, with devastating economic impacts.
Third, policies today must take the long view, because they can have irreversible impacts for Antarctica’s ice and the world. Over the past decades, much of the focus on rapid climate change has been on the Arctic and its rich tapestry of Indigenous cultures and ecosystems that are under threat.
As scientists learn more about Antarctica, it is becoming clear that it is this continent – with no permanent human presence at all – that will determine the state of the planet where today’s children and their children will live.
Featured image: An elephant bull strides through Kimana Sanctuary, with the iconic Mount Kilimanjaro in the background. Image by Kang-Chun Cheng for Mongabay.
KiliAvo Fresh Ltd seeks to establish water-intensive commercial farm that would obstruct wildlife corridor adjacent to Amboseli National Park.
Majority of landowners of the former Kimana Tikondo Group Ranch area working together to preserve free movement of wildlife and livestock in this dryland ecosystem.
April 26 ruling dismisses the farm’s appeal against revocation of its licence by National Environment Management Authority.
An April 26 ruling against a licence for a commercial farm near Kenya’s Amboseli National Park will help to preserve free movement of both Maasai livestock herders and wildlife. The National Environment Tribunal’s dismissal of an appeal by KiliAvo Fresh Ltd confirms the importance of ecological concerns in determining appropriate land use in the semi-arid region.
The farm’s owners initially applied for a licence in August 2019, but this was denied by the National Environmental Management Authority because it fell in an area zoned for livestock under the Amboseli Ecosystem Management Plan. The plan aims to preserve free movement of both domestic animals and wildlife across the Kimana plain, which has largely avoided the gradual fragmentation of ownership, growing permanent settlement, and agriculture in other areas surrounding Amboseli National Park.
Tracking data from three collared elephants showing their movements through the Kimana area, a vital wildlife corridor and rangeland for herders. The KiliAvo farm is shown in red. Data from the Amboseli Trust for Elephants and Save the Elephants.
Movement the lifeblood of pastoralism
For 60 years and more, a series of changing legal boundaries has fallen across this dryland ecosystem. While the ecological demands of this arid, beautiful territory have remained the same – seasonal availability of grazing and water prompting both wildlife and herders to move freely across it – until recently, the legal framework had increasingly divided the land up, assigning legal title to steadily-smaller plots which individual owners were tempted to sell off to private developers.
In 2013, two thirds of landowners of the former Kimana Tikondo Group Ranch pooled their plots, establishing the Amboseli Landowners Conservancies Association (ALOCA). In concert with the Kenya Wildlife Service and the ministries of environment and tourism and wildlife, ALOCA designed a management plan intended to ensure revenue streams for members, covering lease fees, bursary, livestock breed improvement, and livestock compensation lost to predators.
Kenya has come a long way in mitigating human-wildlife conflicts. Carefully developed strategies have allowed threatened lion populations to make a comeback despite growing human populations and pastoral needs for livestock grazing. Big Life Foundation, a nonprofit organisation focused on preserving wildlife and habitat, works to support local communities through the collaborative protection of wildlife. Advocating for coexistence can be a challenging process, one that will persist into perpetuity, but a meaningful one. Jeremy Goss, a conservation manager at Big Life, emphasized their mission statement: “We see wildlife and domestic livestock as inherently compatible.”
Land use in Amboseli has long accommodated the needs of both livestock and wildlife, whose fates are inextricably linked. For both, mobility is essential – survival depends on constant movement to viable resources. Rangers and herders alike understand how these animals constitute the local economy and Maasai culture. The vast bush of Amboseli may seem undeveloped in the conventional sense–underutilized to the inexperienced eye–but it is this very land that has supported some of the world’s most renown wildlife and the livestock that supports local economies.
ALOCA’s management scheme formally recognised that movement is the lifeblood of pastoralism, helping to avoid overgrazing and allowing the landscape to support livestock herds and wildlife more sustainably while building in the flexibility needed to survive and recover from periodic droughts.
KiliAvo Fresh Ltd seeks to establish water-intensive commercial farm that would obstruct wildlife corridor adjacent to Amboseli National Park. Image by Kang-Chun Cheng for Mongabay.
‘Soon, this area will be covered with farms’
KiliAvo Fresh Ltd’s project moves in the opposite direction. The 72-hectare (180 acres) farm is situated in the middle of the Kimana wildlife dispersal area; its electrified fencing partially obstructs a wildlife corridor linking Amboseli National Park with Kimana Sanctuary and opening into the Chyulus and Tsavo to the north and east.
The project’s Environmental Impact Assessment raises concerns over the impact of setting up water-intensive commercial agriculture here, as well as the risk of chemicals from fertilizers and pesticides leaching into surrounding areas.
Kenneth Nashuu is a retired warden whose 40 year career with Kenyan Wildlife Service brought him all across Kenya. He predicts serious repercussions for both wildlife and the economic situation of local communities should KiliAvo’s vision succeed. “An insertion like KiliAvo in a critical route point should have never been allowed to happen. There needs to be a stronger management plan in place that trains people so they understand the consequences.”
Once open rangeland is transformed into cultivated farms, reductions in grazing land would impact livestock herding, likely causing people to lose money and affecting cultural norms tied closely with herding.
Kimana is one of several sites across the country where strategies to reduce conflict between growing human populations and their livestock and farms have enjoyed recent success.
Daniel Ole Sambu, head of the Predator Protection Programme at Big Life, helped develop a compensation scheme to attenuate retaliatory predator killings in 2003. Funds from both Big Life-facilitated donations and a local community kitty offer partial compensation for attacks on livestock by lions, hyenas, leopards, and other predators. By offering compensation credit on a sliding scale, the program encourages herders to adopt good husbandry practices, such as fencing and keeping constant watch over livestock. For instance, should the attack occur in a fenced area, the compensation will be greater than if the attack took place in an open pasture.
Since the introduction of the program, fewer predators have been killed in retaliation for livestock casualties. Big Life’s Rangers’ phones used to ring off the hook with people reporting intruding wildlife. Now, there is an average of four or five calls a day across the 647,497 hectare (1.6 million acres) that they oversee.
Speaking to KiliAvo shareholder and manager Jeremiah Saalash on the path leading to the farm’s newly-drilled borehole, an opposing vision quickly becomes clear: “Soon, this area will be covered with farms just like this one. My ancestors farmed in the foothills of Kilimanjaro, and I have made it here.”
The establishment of an enterprise such as KiliAvo may undo years of hard work and catalyze conflicts beyond Amboseli, reintroducing conflicts where people are living and grazing due to the disruption of a critical migration corridor.
Further constraints on grazing from encroachments like KiliAvo could even force locals to return to subsistence poaching.
It is worth noting that there are smallholder farmers growing maize, beans, onions, and other vegetables near natural water sources in ALOCA’s seven conservancies. It’s the location and scale of KiliAvo that raises concerns.
Changes to ecosystems in tandem with conventional human development are inevitable, but this is not to say stewardship should be abandoned. The KiliAvo ruling by the National Environmental Tribunal clarifies which forms of development make ecological sense here in sight of Amboseli.
By obstructing wildlife migration corridors, eliminating critical pastures for local herders, and monopolizing scant resources, a farm such as KiliAvo is fundamentally incompatible with the drylands of Kimana.
“Everything is connected here,” Parmuya Ole Timoye, a manager at nearby Amboseli Bush Camp commented.“One person’s actions can affect everyone else.”
Featured image: Arctic polar bear with cubs. (Credit: USFWS)
Contact: Kristen Monsell, (510) 844-7137, kmonsell@biologicaldiversity.org
ANCHORAGE, Alaska— The Biden administration issued a proposed rule today allowing oil companies operating in the Beaufort Sea and Western Arctic to harass polar bears and Pacific walruses when drilling or searching for oil for the next five years.
“It’s maddening to see the Biden administration allowing oil companies to continue their noisy, harmful onslaught on polar bears. Oil in this sensitive habitat should stay in the ground,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “President Biden promised bold action to address the climate crisis, yet his administration is proposing to allow business-as-usual oil drilling in the Arctic. Polar bears and walruses could pay a terrible price.”
The Southern Beaufort Sea population is the most imperiled polar bear population in the world. With only about 900 bears remaining, scientists have determined that the survival of every individual bear is vital to the survival and recovery of the population.
The heavy equipment used in seismic exploration and drilling activities can crush polar bears in their dens or scare polar bears out of their dens too early, leaving cubs to die of exposure or abandonment by their mothers. The noise generated by routine operations can disturb essential polar bear behavior and increase their energy output.
Walruses are also incredibly sensitive to human disturbance. Without summer sea ice for resting, walrus mothers and calves have been forced to come ashore, where they are vulnerable to being trampled to death in stampedes when startled by noise.
In addition to seismic exploration, the rule covers construction and operation of roads, pipelines, runways, and other support facilities. It also covers well drilling, drill rig transport, truck and helicopter traffic, and other activities.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act generally prohibits killing, harming or harassing a marine mammal. The statute allows the federal government to authorize certain industrial activities to harm and harass marine mammals, provided such activities will take only a “small number” of animals and have no more than a “negligible impact” on the population.
The proposed rule covers existing and planned activities across a wide swath of Alaska’s Arctic, including 7.9 million acres in the Beaufort Sea, and onshore activities from Point Barrow to the western boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It includes the Willow development project that the Center and allies have challenged in court, and which the Biden administration this week submitted a brief defending.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be accepting public comment on the proposed rule for 30 days.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Heavily armed goldminers have launched a series of attacks on the Yanomami community of Palimiú in the northern Amazon.
Hutukara Yanomami Association reports that on May 16, 15 boats full of miners opened fire on the community and hurled tear gas canisters at them. The Yanomami report suffering from burning eyes and choking on the gas.
The attack follows an earlier assault on the same community on May 10, when one Yanomami was wounded, and several miners were injured. Footage filmed by a Yanomami captures the miners opening fire from their boat at a group of Yanomami on the riverbank. Several boats full of miners continued to fire at the Yanomami for the next 30 minutes.
In the chaos of the attack many Yanomami children fled into the forest to hide. Two days later the bodies of two children, aged one and five, were discovered floating in the river where they had drowned.
Eight Yanomami representatives from Palimiú travelled to Boa Vista, the state capital, to denounce the attack and to demand the authorities investigate it. In a press conference held on May 15, they expressed their anger at being abandoned by the state.
Timóteo Palimithëri said: “We are exhausted and barely able to hold out. Please, it’s urgent, don’t you see? The police and FUNAI have to be strong… If the army and police don’t act now many indigenous people will certainly die.”
In a letter to the police, community leaders denounced the terrible impacts of the mining activities: “The goldminers have been here since 2012 and to date, 578 Yanomami have died from poisoning, yet not a single measure has been taken to stop this. They are destroying our rivers, polluting the water, fish and all the animals. We have serious health problems. We can no longer bathe in the river and both adults and children are losing their hair because of the toxic chemicals they pour into the river.”
Since February the community of Palimiú has repeatedly asked the authorities to remove the miners. The miners’ attacks this week were reportedly in response to the refusal by the Yanomami to let them collect fuel, quadbikes and equipment they had left there to supply their illegal mine upstream.
Intercepted audio messages by the miners refer to an armed gang operating in the region
Unless the authorities take decisive action now, criminal gangs and drug traffickers are likely to carry out more violent attacks. Last year miners murdered two Yanomami.
There are an estimated 20,000 goldminers working illegally in the Yanomami territory.
Concerns are growing for the safety of uncontacted Yanomami communities, one of which is in a region where miners are operating: the miners reportedly attacked their community in 2018.
A humanitarian crisis is engulfing the Yanomami, who are already reeling from high rates of malaria (in 2020 the indigenous health department registered 20,000 cases of malaria) and Covid-19, a lethal combination which is devastating their health and ability to feed themselves.
This is graphically illustrated in a photo, taken on April 17, of a severely malnourished Yanomami child suffering from malaria, pneumonia and dehydration.
The government’s genocidal policies and criminal neglect are killing the Yanomami and other indigenous peoples in Brazil. Please support the Yanomami in their protest.
The American West is having a drought. So, what else is new? And, that’s just the point. The American West has been in an extended drought since 2000, so far the second worst in the last 1200 years. Here is the key quote from the National Geographic article cited above:
In the face of continued climate change, some scientists and others have suggested that using the word “drought” for what’s happening now might no longer be appropriate, because it implies that the water shortages may end. Instead, we might be seeing a fundamental, long-term shift in water availability all over the West.
That is what climate scientists have been warning about all along. The problems we are now experiencing are not just cycles or fluctuations—although those continue to be important—but rather, permanent changes in the climate (that is, on any timeline that matters to humans).
I wrote about this drought when it was only 10 years old. (For a sense of how bad it is now, see the U.S. Drought Monitor.) Back then it did not seem that residents and businesses were taking it seriously, even if some water officials were. There have been ups and downs in the intervening years, but mostly downs.
There is a reason that most major cities are located near water and not in arid regions. Water is heavy, fluid and not easily transported—though vast and expensive water projects do just that. Water cannot be easily created from its constituents elements, oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen is abundant everywhere on Earth. But hydrogen in its elemental state is not readily available and must be extracted from other sources such as natural gas. The cost of manufacturing water is prohibative or we’d likely be doing it already.
That leaves society with two paths: Bring ever greater amounts of water to arid regions which continue to grow in population and water-intensive activities such as farming OR conserve dramatically in order to live within the available water supply.
The second choice appears imminent as water authorities across several states are preparing to activate a drought response plan this summer when Lake Mead (the lake behind Hoover Dam) is expected to reach a level that triggers the plan. All those receiving water from the Colorado River and its tributaries are likely to be affected. Again, a look at the U.S. Drought Monitor demonstrates that the drought extends far beyond the Colorado River basin, west to much of California, east into New Mexico and West Texas and north into parts of Oregon.
There is a third path which I haven’t mentioned because in polite company and official circles it is unmentionable: People could leave. And, they may do so as the costs and consequences of living with less water mount—especially for those in water-intensive pursuits such as agriculture. Those in the cities may leave, too, as the cost of provisioning water for urban areas rises and supplies are curtailed. That would, of course, hit water-intensive businesses and their employees the hardest.
All of this was prophesied long ago by Marc Reisner, author of Cadillac Desert, the acknowledged classic treatment of water in the American West. The subtitle of the book is “The American West and Its Disappearing Water.”
Of course, the boosters of growth in the West will tell us that these things are cyclical and that soon the rains will return. But, the West has been waiting for over 20 years. Unfortunately, a positive mental attitude does not trump the physics of climate change—which, in this case, has been combined with a return to what the historical and geological record show is far closer to the norm in the West.
That does not bode well for a people and a culture used to getting its way with nature—something, it turns out, that was really just luck, the luck of having populated and reconfigured the West in a period that was particularly wet in relation to the millennium that preceded it.
Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Common Dreams, Naked Capitalism, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights.
