by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 11, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, NEWS
By US Geological Survey
From 1900-2010, freshwater fish species in North America went extinct at a rate 877 times faster than the rate found in the fossil record, while estimates indicate the rate may double between now and 2050. This new information comes from a U.S. Geological Survey study to be published in the September issue of the journal BioScience.
In the fossil record, one freshwater fish species goes extinct every 3 million years, but North America lost 39 species and 18 subspecies between 1898 and 2006. Based on current trends in threatened and endangered fish species, researchers estimate that an additional 53-86 species of freshwater fish may be extinct by the year 2050. Since the first assessment of extinct North American freshwater fishes in 1989, the number of extinct fishes increased by 25 percent.
“This study illustrates the value of placing current events into the context of deep geologic time, as rocks preserve an unbiased record of natural rates of processes before human activities began to alter the landscape, the atmosphere, the rivers, and oceans,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “Freshwater fish are a good choice for analysis as their bones make clear fossil impressions, and their lake and river environments produce excellent stratigraphic sequences.”
The study’s author, Noel Burkhead, used an established method to compare the rate of extinction found in the fossil record with modern rates.
“Estimates of freshwater fish extinctions during the twentieth century are conservative, because it can take 20-50 years to confirm extinction,” said Burkhead, a research fish biologist for the USGS.
Extinction is a natural process, Burkhead explained, so examining its rate over a long geological timescale provides biologists with a benchmark for comparing current extinctions to background rate. The accelerated pace of extinction observed since the beginning of the twentieth century suggests human causes.
In North America, assessments of extinctions are conducted by the American Fisheries Society’s Endangered Species Committee, using categories to factor in a lag time since the last observation of the species. The study used the categories “extinct” (species not seen for 50 years or more), “possibly extinct” (not been seen for 20 years or more), and “extinct in nature.” All these categories require that searches for the missing fishes must have been made by knowledgeable biologists.
“It is extremely rare that the death of the last individual is documented by biologists,” said Burkhead, “although it can happen when a fish only is found in a specific spring or caldera, and it dries up. That’s what happened with five species of desert pupfishes and the Alberca silverside—the last known fish to go extinct in North America.”
The Alberca silverside was found only in the Alberca Caldera, Guanajuato, Mexico; it went extinct when the caldera temporarily dried up in August 2006.
Surprisingly, Burkhead reported that 90-96 percent of fish extinctions in the fossil record were not linked to the five well-known mass extinctions. Natural causes of fish extinction are linked to transitions in landforms and continental watercourses over time, but many twentieth century extinctions were caused by dams, channelization of rivers, water pollution, and other human-induced factors.
The background rate of extinction is based on the fossil record, which includes information on when ancient fishes lived and how long species survived in the geological past. Burkhead used data on fish extinctions from well-known paleontologist Steven M. Stanley at the University of Hawaii.
“Another cause of extinction can be a change in a fish’s food chain, which is what may have happened to the harelip sucker, a really cool fish that used to live in seven states throughout the Ohio River basin,” said Burkhead. “It was a snail-eating specialist with cleft lips that used to pluck snails off river bottoms and manipulate the snail in its mouth in order to suck out the snail’s soft parts, perhaps making little popping sounds. Sadly, snails are highly sensitive to excessive sedimentation and in the late nineteenth century, large amounts of topsoil were washing into rivers along with sewage and industrial effluents from cities. This likely caused snails to decline, which may have been what drove the fish to extinction.”
Declines in freshwater fishes are only the “tip of the iceberg” for freshwater ecosystems, with mussels and snails experiencing declines greater than that of freshwater fishes.
From US Geological Survey
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jun 29, 2012 | Climate Change, Strategy & Analysis
By Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance
Climate scientists are clear that modern human societies are changing the atmosphere of the planet, mainly by clearing forests, grasslands, wetlands, and other natural ecosystems for the purposes of development and logging and by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas. These activities are releasing greenhouse gases and destroying natural greenhouse gas reservoirs. The result of all this activity is that the Earth is growing steadily warmer, year after year, and this is causing problems all over the world.
That additional heat is powering up weather systems and altering global flows of energy. Storms are more powerful and frequent than in the past. Drought, wildfires, tornadoes, floods, and other weather patterns are becoming increasingly unpredictable and dangerous. “Freak” events like the disastrous heat wave in Russia in 2011 are becoming more common. Annual deaths ascribed to climate change were estimated in a 2002 study to be 150,000 per year at that time, using what the authors called an “extremely conservative” methodology.
Every year representatives from governments around the world gather to discuss the problem of global warming as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a 1994 treaty which has been signed by 194 nations. In 2012, the 17th annual meeting was held in Durban, South Africa. The stated goal of these meetings has been to limit global warming to 2° Celsius – about 3.5° Fahrenheit over average pre-industrial temperature. This is the maximum level of warming that has been labeled as safe by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the United Nations scientific advising body on the matter.
Warming beyond this level is not safe because it threatens to accelerate due to “tipping points” in the global climate. These tipping points refer to a specific time at which a natural system, after being stressed by global warming, “flips” into a different state and begins to release greenhouse gases in a self-sustaining reaction instead of being a carbon dioxide ‘sink’. James Hansen and other climate scientists have issued dire warnings about this possibility. In fact, Hansen and other scientists have recently revised their assertions that limiting warming to 2°C will prevent climate tipping points. They, and many other climate scientists, believe now that warming must be limited to 1°C to avoid these catastrophic feedbacks, which are already beginning to take effect.
“With the current global warming of ~0.8°C evidence of slow feedbacks is beginning to appear,” Hansen wrote in 2011.
These “slow feedbacks” include processes like ice sheet melt and the release of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost and warming shallow oceans, and threaten to rapidly increase the effects of global warming if climate tipping points are exceeded. Their effects are rarely included in climate models and policy, and are a major reason why some scientists are concerned that estimates and forecasts have been underestimating the speed and severity of climate change.
“There’s evidence that climate sensitivity [to greenhouse gases] may be quite a bit higher than what the models are suggesting,” said Ken Caldeira, senior scientist at the Carnegie Institute for Science at Stanford University.
That is why many scientists and policy analysts are calling for greater emissions cuts than what has been proposed in international negotiations. So what is necessary to avoid runaway global warming?
According to the climate-modeling group of the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria, we need 100% cuts by 2050 to avert 2°C warming. Their calculations show that even this rate of reduction would leave a 1 in 3 chance of rise over 2°C. James Hansen, in the same 2011 paper referenced above, notes that if emissions cuts don’t begin until 2020, the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, currently around 395ppm, will not decline to 350ppm (considered the highest safe level for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) for almost 300 years.
George Monbiot, the noted climate journalist and researcher, has called for a 90% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute calls for at least 80% cuts by 2020. Hansen notes that 6% cuts per year beginning in 2012 would prevent substantial warming beyond 1°C – this is equivalent to a 100% emissions cut by 2030. To be successful, Hansen also notes that these cuts would have to be combined with a massive campaign to restore forests and other natural carbon sinks.
As we can see, the consensus among the most informed individuals is that emissions need to be near zero by 2030 and more likely by 2020. To achieve this by systemic means, emissions need to peak between 2012 and 2015 and begin to decline rapidly, but the trend has been moving in the opposite direction. Between 2000 and 2010, emissions rose about 3% per year, and projections from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development assert that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere will be 50% higher than current levels by 2050.
Business As Usual Is A Dead End…
Obviously, the rate of emissions cuts being promoted by governments around the world are not sufficient to avoid 1°C of warming (or even 2°C warming), regardless of new technologies brought into play. And what is the foundation of the cuts that are proposed? What are the technologies being relied on to reduce emissions?
Most of the proposed solutions to global warming focus on a revolution in transportation that leaves fossil fuels behind and transitions to electric transportation, and a conversion from fossil fuel electricity generation to “renewable” energy generation. Among policymakers, governments, and environmentalists, “green energy” is often considered the Holy Grail of the new green economy. Excitement and investment has focused on solar energy, wind power, and biofuels as the technologies that will herald the new ecotopian future.
But do these new technologies actually represent real solutions? Serious concerns have been raised about the true sustainability of these and other “green” technologies. Author and activist Lierre Keith writes:
“Windmills, PV panels, the grid itself are all manufactured using that cheap energy [from fossil fuels]. When fossil fuel costs begin to rise such highly manufactured items will simply cease to be feasible: sic transit gloria renewables… The basic ingredients for renewables are the same materials that are ubiquitous in industrial products, like cement and aluminum. No one is going to make cement in any quantity without using the energy of fossil fuels… And aluminum? The mining itself is a destructive and toxic nightmare from which riparian communities will not awaken in anything but geologic time.”
Biofuels are similarly plagued by criticism. Many biofuels simply take more energy to produce than can be extracted from them. Those that do produce energy produce an exceedingly small amount. These fuels are often created by clearing natural ecosystems such as tropical rain forests or prairies for agricultural production, a process which releases even more greenhouse gases, reduces biodiversity, and reduces local food availability. Biofuel production is considered a major factor in rising food prices around the world in recent years. These rising food prices have led to widespread starvation, unrest, and violence.
Digging Out of a Very Deep Hole
Some governments, corporations, and advocacy groups are calling for emergency efforts to stop global warming using techniques collectively referred to as geo-engineering. Proposals include injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to reflect incoming solar radiation, dumping huge loads of iron into the ocean to stimulate phytoplankton growth, or even putting massive reflectors in space to redirect solar rays before they hit the earth. But many worry that these solutions could cause more problems than they solve.
“Einstein warned us and told us that you can’t solve problems with the same mindset that created them,” says physicist and sustainable agriculture activist Vandana Shiva. “The sun is not the problem. The problem is the mass of pollution we are creating.”
Injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere would certainly reduce global warming, but only as long as these injections are continued. This would mean that if, in the future, society was unable to maintain atmospheric levels of sulfur dioxide, these levels would rapidly fall and warming would commence once again. It is a false solution based on offloading the effects of global warming onto future generations.
Ocean fertilization would also be effective at reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas levels by stimulating the growth of phytoplankton who absorb greenhouse gases. However, the side effects of modifying oceanic food chains and energy flows on the scale that would be required for this to be effective are unknown, and could be catastrophic for oceans already reeling from decades of overfishing and industrial pollution.
Reflectors in space are a logistical nightmare. The massive amount of energy that would be required to manufacture and deploy such technology would greatly exacerbate warming. These reflectors would also have unknown effects on plant growth, vitamin D synthesis in humans, weather patterns written by solar energy, and other global systems. It is possible that this “solution” could devastate the planet.
Beyond these issues, none of the geo-engineering proposals address some of the fundamental issues of climate change that go beyond global warming. For example, rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are dissolving into the oceans where they become carboxylic acid. This acid is lowering the pH of the entire ocean and interfering with fish and shellfish reproduction, coral reef growth, and numerous other living systems that, aside from their intrinsic value, provide a good deal of human nutrition around the world.
Geo-engineering also fails to deal with the issue of rising seas – we are already committed to several feet of sea level rise, which is likely to displace tens of millions of people around the world and inundate ecosystems. While reducing warming through these techniques would slow the melt of mountain glaciers and ice sheets, it would do nothing to address the natural systems already in dire straits because of warming up to this point.
What about simple living?
Faced with these problems, many people are addressing some of the fundamental issues at hand, such as the culture of consumerism that is fueling the industrial machine. Millions of people are embracing the need for voluntary simplicity and taking steps to reduce their waste, use less energy, support local economies over corporate globalization, and become self-sufficient wherever possible.
This is an excellent first step. However, it is important to recognize that the vast majority of energy consumption and waste production comes from the commercial and industrial sectors – that is to say, business. So even if all of the 350 million people in the United States reduce their energy consumption and personal waste production drastically, it would have marginal effects on the global situation. It bears repeating often and loudly that the US military is the largest consumer of fossil fuel on the planet. So while simple living is certainly a moral necessity, it does not fundamentally challenge the globalized industrial economy that is based on colonization and extraction of resources.
So what could work?
But plants can be grown for food in ways that are in accord with the needs and desires of a particular landscape, as has been demonstrated by thousands of cultures throughout history. These cultures practiced gardening, tending wild plants, and horticulture – practices which revolve around closed loop systems of perennial polycultures, communities of plants that supplement and support each other. The modern idea of permaculture evolved from these roots. Permaculture uses thousands of techniques, precisely adapted to the region, climate, soils, and microclimate to create edible ecosystems which provide food as well as quality wildlife habitat.
Annual grain monocrop agriculture is certainly no solution: it is based on drawdown of finite soil reserves and enables the population growth that is currently stretching the carrying capacity of the planet to its limits. In fact, the history of agricultural civilizations is precisely the history of environmental devastation, from the deforestation of Babylon-era Mesopotamia, to the felling of great forests of North Africa to construct the Roman fleets, to the great dust bowl of the 1930s and onwards.
Permaculture, as well as other traditional subsistence methods such as hunting, animal husbandry, fishing, and gathering, must be the foundations of any future sustainable culture; otherwise any claims to being “green” will be falsehoods. Perennial polycultures, both cultivated and wild, can also supply the other basics necessities of life: clean water, clean air, material for clothing and shelter, and inspiration spiritual nourishment.
Addressing the population bubble…
The skyrocketing world population will need to be addressed if climate change is to be averted. This is technically possible, but socially and politically very difficult. About half of all children born are unplanned, which means that by simply reducing or limiting unwanted pregnancies, we would solve the population problem. The most effective means of reducing unwanted pregnancies is by empowering women, making birth control easily available and culturally appropriate, and by combating the effects of patriarchal, male-focused culture.
It is also critical that we note that population is a secondary issue; consumption has a more direct effect on climate change and population. What I mean by this is that a single person in the United States is likely to have a massive climate impact compared to a dozen or more people living in poor nations. So while population must be addressed, we must also address the issue of overconsumption and industrialization.
A human-rights issue
Global warming is a human rights issue, so perhaps it will be useful for us to look at past struggles for human rights. It is important for us to recognize that global warming is also a value-laden issue. It is inherently political and partisan. There is a clear dividing line between those who are making fortunes off industries and lifestyles of flagrant consumption, and those who are bearing the brunt of the effects of global warming.
What does this mean for our strategy? For one, it may mean that legislative change will be too slow to stop catastrophic global warming: powerful interests are so entrenched within our political system that booting them out is a long-term process. For another, it means that in addition to allies, we must concern ourselves with enemies. There are specific corporations, governments, and individuals who will consistently side with profit and with business rather than with human health, dignity, and good relationship with this land underneath our feet and this air flowing in and out of our lungs.
We should learn from past struggles, like the civil rights movement, where people used a variety of strategies and techniques to make social change. We should learn from independence movements like the Indian resistance to British colonization, and from the successes and failures of the environmental movement in the past.
Above all, we should be prepared to escalate. Powerful entrenched forces seldom concede their position willingly, and the history of social movements is a short history in escalation of tactics. We must never forget that there are lives on the line, both human and non-human, lives numbered in the billions. There is a continuum of tactics that we must consider, beginning with raising awareness, lobbying for legislative change, and mainstream political engagement, moving through legal challenges and court battles to mass protest and civil disobedience, and, at the last, ending with direct action against polluting industries.
Regardless of the strategies and tactics that are used (which are likely to be a broad combination of these and many more), averting catastrophic global warming is a daunting task. It will require courage, commitment, creativity, and groups of people working together in concert to achieve their goals. This work is already being done, and the only question is this: will you join us?
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jun 16, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Listening to the Land, Toxification
By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin
The Milwaukee River runs through the place where I live. Really, it is the place where I live, or at least part of it. This place would not be what it is without the river.
On a warm, sunny day the river will call to me in a bodily way to come into the water, or at least to feel it with my hands or feet. I’m sure this relationship between river and human, river and bird, river and insect, is older and more sacred than I can imagine.
When the river calls to me in this way, I want so badly to get in. I want to spend all of the warm and sunny days heeding this call, and the other days watching from the river’s side, listening and learning.
What breaks my heart is that I will not enter this river and let its waters caress my body, at least not today or any time soon, because its waters are full of poison.
Less than ten years ago, my friends and I would swim in the river on every warm and sunny day. Then, a number of them started experiencing rashes on their skin or felt sick from accidentally letting some of the river water into their mouth. We stopped swimming in the river. The poison dumped or seeped into the river continues to build, and the river continues to be killed, while we essentially stand aside and mourn.
I’m tired of mourning and I’m tired of hearing that this destruction is natural, inevitable, “just the way things are.”
What made clear in my own life that this river was changing for the worse, that it was being killed, was when I no longer wanted to let its waters touch my body. While obviously bad in itself, there’s a larger picture here that must be looked at.
There are living beings—including the river itself—whose lives depend on this river. When the river dies, so to do the fish, bugs, birds, and other animals who drink and eat from the river, who call the river home. Thus, each year that there are more and more pollutants from agricultural run-off in the river, there are less and less songbirds and frogs.
Prior to the arrival of Europeans on this continent, human beings lived here who loved the Milwaukee River. They were indigenous peoples called the Menominee, Potawatomi, and Fox, among other tribes. The lives of these human beings were firmly intertwined with the life of the river. These human beings ate and drank from the river, prayed to the river, and listened to the river’s wisdom.
Those sustainable human cultures were victims—and continue to be victims—of large-scale murder—genocide—at the hands of white settlers. The same people who committed these atrocities against the indigenous humans are now killing the river. Both the river and the human beings who love it—and know how to live sustainability with it—are targets of the dominant culture, industrial civilization. In order to control, exploit, and pollute the river, the humans who depend on it for sustenance must also be displaced or eradicated. We can see how this happened here at home in the case of the Milwaukee River, but we must see further that this has happened everywhere and is the story of civilization.
Currently, every stream in the United States is contaminated with carcinogens. 99% of native prairies have been destroyed. 99% of old growth forests are gone. 90% of the large fish in the oceans are gone. It’s estimated that unless there is a dramatic shift in course, global warming will become irreversible in around 5 years, eventually rendering all life on this planet doomed.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The destruction can be stopped and we must stop it. Clearly, the river, the land, indigenous humans, and so much more life, are the victims of an abusive system. Like all perpetrators, the way to stop them is to aim at the root of the problem and remove or block their ability to abuse. Basically, the goal is to return the circumstances to the way they were before the abuse started, with the victims free and safe. The abuse of civilization has been a campaign of 10,000 years, so obviously there is much to be done to stop it. But, what choice do we have other than to start now and try?
Who or what do you love? Surely you love something or you wouldn’t be here. What would you do to defend your beloved?
I love the Milwaukee River. I want to see this river come back to life, year after year regaining health. I want to see no more poison seeping into the river, no more dams suffocating it, no more destruction of any kind. I want to see all of that destruction reversed and those who would commit abuse stopped and held accountable for their crimes against life.
I love the Milwaukee River and I love life. I will do whatever is necessary to defend the living, before the planet is killed entirely. Will you join me?
From Kid Cutbank: http://kidcutbank.blogspot.com/2012/05/story-of-river.html
