--> Many species are declining to critical population levels; important habitats are being destroyed, fragmented, and degraded; and ecosystems are being destabilized through climate change, pollution, invasive species, and direct human impact. The IUCN Red List is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plants and animals.
The updated 2002 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is available as a searchable database at www.redlist.org. |  In the thaw after the Cold War, countries turned their attention to several long-neglected environmental issues, such as climate change, the depletion of the ozone layer, soil erosion, water supply depletion, and the transport of hazardous substances. The aim was to restrict activities that threatened the earth—oil drilling, mining projects, deforestation, and new dams. |  Though each individual computer makes a modest contribution, when many thousands of them are combined, they can outclass the fastest supercomputers.
A further example of distributed collaboration is Project Gutenberg, which provides for free the text of tens of thousands of out-of-copyright books. Typically, books are scanned in by dedicated contributors, and a rough version ' is created through character recognition. Next, each page is assigned to at least two volunteers for proofreading, which is done online in a matter of minutes. |  We now have additional reasons for doing that, not the least of which are preventing floods, erosion, desertification, forest fires, droughts, escalating carbon production, and climate change while preserving water, food, lumber, paper, oil and mineral resources. But there is also the quality of life of directly experiencing these habitats in harmony with nature. We shall need to place a value on our forests that would make it prohibitively expensive to cut more down.
We must find ways to stop logging and burning pristine forests and to keep them intact as if our lives depended upon it. | | Still another group of Earth and atmospheric scientists comprising the American Geophysical Union (AGU) issued a January 1999 policy statement that there was a "compelling basis for legitimate public concern" about human-induced climate change. Scientific uncertainty, they said, "does not justify inaction." They also warned that there is no geological precedent for the sudden increases of carbon and other greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels. | | Peter Bunyard, "How climate change Could Spiral out of Control, " The Ecologist, vol. 29, no. 2, 1999.
8. Peter Bunyard, "How Ozone Depletion Increases Global Warming, ibid.
9. "Study Sheds Light on Global Warming", Reuters, London, November 17, 2000.
10. "Experts: Global Warming Now Critical, Action Needed", Reuters, London, December 23,1999.
11. S. Fred Singer, Hot Talk, Cold Science, The Independent Institute, San Francisco, 1998; Simon Retallak, "How US Politics is Letting the World Down", The Ecologist, vol. 29, no. 2,1999.
12. |  Thirty thousand and more years ago when climate change opened corridors from the Asian continent to North America, people began to come from Siberia to the New World. Using linguistic, dental, and genetic evidence, researchers have estimated that these early immigrants came in three distinct waves. | | NW Washington, DC 20402 (202)275-3648
The Potential Effects of Global climate change on the United States (1988) Report to Congress
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Washington, DC 20460 (202)382-4700 $32
Reducing Greenhouse Gases
The Union of Concerned Scientists advocates for a global policy to guard against the greenhouse effect. Like a good insurance policy, it should cost relatively little and carry other benefits as well, such as protecting the ozone layer and reducing air pollution.
Energy production based on carbon-rich fossil fuels is the principal cause of global warming. |  Duncan was a geographer, at the University of Windsor and the University of Toronto in Canada, who studied climate change and how it affects human health. She was a striking figure, tiny with waist-long brown hair, a runner, and a devotee of Scottish dancing. Her life changed in 1992 with a casual conversation with her former husband.
"I was married to a pediatrician and we had been talking about the 1918 flu and I said, 'Well, I'm going to read Alfred Crosby's book,'" Duncan recalls, referring to America's Forgotten Pandemic. "Initially, I wanted to explore the link between climate and flu. | | But why wait for that proof, if waiting might take us over the threshold to erratic and drastic climate change?
Even without increasing drought, global warming will still exacerbate droughtlike conditions. Warmer temperatures will increase rates of soil moisture evaporation and plant transpiration. Surface water levels will drop from increased evaporation. | | Perhaps you could land on the White House lawn and share some of these concerns with the President. Assuming you could get beyond the cultural paranoia that you might stage an Independence Day type of attack, you soon discover that the President's agenda is already filled: he's too busy fighting partisan squabbles, meeting with industrial lobbyists, attending fundraisers, strategizing wars in remote oil fiefdoms and propping up the wish for a robust consumer economy. The leaders on Earth posture to be economically powerful and politically correct. |  Faced with the problem of establishing the human influence on climate, though, the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change tried a new tack in 1996. Instead of looking at total warming, they looked at patterns of change, in particular the temperatures of the atmosphere at different altitudes and the pattern of warming and cooling in different parts of the world. They claim that they can just begin to see the imprint of human influence on climate. The big question, of course, is what will happen next. |  The use of large amounts of nitrogen fertilizers in the United States is a driving force behind climate change, because ammonium nitrate, the most common form of nitrogen fertilizer (and also an ingredient in explosives), is essentially congealed natural gas, a fossil fuel.'
The impact on the atmosphere is extreme. Alan Durning and John Ryan of the Northwest Environment Watch say the U.S. economy consumes nearly a pound of ammonia per person per day, mostly as nitrogen fertilizer. | | It is killing forests, lakes, and fish, exacerbating lung illnesses, and now causing climate change. We must change these ways, not only to conserve finite reserves, but to reverse global warming and diminish air pollution. There is no time to wait.
Table 15.1 shows estimates developed by the Natural Resource Defense Council to reduce net 1987 U.S. C02 emissions by at least 20 percent by the year 2000 and 30 percent by the year 2005. The actions necessary are those discussed in this chapter and are referenced in the Resources section. |  It now seems feasible to induce catastrophic climate change over a target country, and even without such weather warfare, continued expansion of the electrical power system threatens the viability of all life on earth.
Critical Connections
It may be hard to convince ourselves that something we can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell can still hurt us so dreadfully. Yet the fact must be faced, just as we've learned a healthy fear of nuclear radiation. |  Some of these concerns are high rates of learning deficiencies, asthma, cancer, birth defects and species extinctions, along with global climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion and global worldwide contamination with toxic substances and nuclear material.
We believe existing environmental regulations and other decisions, particularly those based on risk assessment, have failed to protect adequately human health and the environment—the larger system of which humans are but a part. | | In 2000, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies said that climate change was manifesting "in a catalogue of disasters such as storms, droughts, and flooding unparalleled in modern times."2
What we know_
Economic losses from weather-related disasters, worldwide, 1980: $2.8 billion28
Average annual economic losses from weather-related disasters, worldwide, 1980-1984: $6.5 billion29
Economic losses from weather-related disasters, worldwide, 1985: $7.2 billion30
Average annual economic losses from weather-related disasters, worldwide, 1985-1989: $9. | | He is currently a professor at Stanford University and an advisor to the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change. He recently described what even a four-degree warming over the next century—now a very conservative estimate of what we may encounter—would mean.
"By and large, most of us can adapt to one degree. But four degrees is virtually the difference between an ice age and a warm epoch like we're in now. It takes nature ten thousand years to make those kinds of changes, and we're talking about changes like that on the order of a century. | | Worldwide climate change on this scale cannot be explained as part of a natural cycle. . . . The crisis is manmade, but the responsibility is not spread evenly over the Earth. Some 73 percent of carbon dioxide emissions come from industrialized nations, according to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The largest single source is the United States, which alone accounts for 22 percent of total world emissions, or five tons of carbon dioxide per U.S. citizen, per year."24
November 1996 brought a once-in-200-years flood to the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. | | If a four-degree increase would cause that much disruption, imagine the impact of a much larger increase, which the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on climate change report indicates is likely. According to this report, the next century is expected to bring an increase of anywhere from 2.7 to 11 degrees. If they are correct, global food security will be dealt brutal blows by the loss of biodiversity and by massive flooding of coastal areas. Such flooding would devastate coastal croplands.
This can sound like bad science fiction and seem unbelievable at first. But it is unfortunatelv all too real. |  Loss of topsoil, global climate change, reduction of the ozone layer, destruction of tropical rainforests, decline of biological diversity, dwindling of water resources and of petrochemicals used in fertilizer, accumulation of pesticides and herbicides in soil and in animal tissues—all these factors suggest that the time has arrived to renounce civilization's age-old project of wresting ever more benefits from Earth's finite means.
This and other issues of public policy surface throughout the book, and several are treated in more depth in Gary Nab-han's epilogue. |  The extra calories allowed the dietary flexibility essential to survival during times of severe climate change. The special fats provided the structural components for a more complex brain and better vision. The antioxidant-rich plants helped these humanlike critters maintain a vigorous immune system and provided optimal protection of tissues against the toxic oxygen fragments that we now call free radicals. While the big jump in brain size wouldn't happen for another million or so years, this was the beginning. | | The use of fossil fuels as energy sources is the largest cause of climate change and air-quality problems. About 50 percent of the greenhouse effect and most acid rain and smog are the result of the burning of fossil fuels in industry, homes, and motor vehicles. The mining and transportation of fossil fuels causes tremendous environmental devastation as well, with oil spills such as the 1989 incident in Alaska being only one in a long list of examples. | | Whichever way it may go, WorldWatch Institute, in one of its publications, State of the World 1989, warns that the threat of severe climate change "can be compared with nuclear war for its potential to disrupt a wide range of human and natural systems . . ." This can include major shifts in weather patterns and agricultural zones, severe droughts, and rising sea levels that could drastically flood coastal areas.
Like smog and acid rain, our climate-change problems are mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) and the destruction of our forests and plant life. | | Cutting our energy use will also reduce the energy pollution that causes smog, acid rain, climate change, and other environmental problems. Many simple tips for energy conservation and efficiency all around your home will be given throughout this chapter; they can help you achieve the goal of reducing fossil-fuel energy consumption in your home by 50 percent. |  Apparently, the medical consequences of climate change are already entering the American experience. In 1993, there was a serious outbreak of an unknown but swiftly fatal disease in the American southwest. The first victim was Merrill Bahe, a long-distance runner who, while driving to his girlfriend's house, was suddenly overcome with fever, headache, and difficulty breathing. His grief-stricken relatives watched helplessly as the athlete gulped desperately for air. Minutes later, he was dead.
In the next few weeks, dozens of people in the area experienced similar tragedies. | | How will we be able to continue to feed a growing population, when every year more arable land is lost to soil erosion, desertification, acid rain, and urban growth —not to mention the decline in world food production that could occur with climate change? According to WorldWatch Institute, world grain carryover stocks for 1996 were already at the lowest level on record.48
In 1994, representatives from 189 nations convened in Cairo to launch what may have been the boldest initiative ever undertaken by the United Nations—the attempt to deal directly with the issue of population. |  Ironically, Hill & Knowlton has also worked for corporate clients who hired them to belittle the environmental risks of global climate change.24
Going the Extra Mile
Some companies, such as Ben & Jerry's ice cream and the Body Shop cosmetics, use progressive political rhetoric and claims of "social responsibility" as the centerpiece of their marketing campaigns. | | In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change published a new report, revising its estimates. Global warming, they said, was nearly twice as serious and dangerous as their own previous calculations, done five years earlier, had indicated.
Of course, human beings have always altered the world. We've always been busy as beavers, building houses, damming rivers, plowing fields, cutting trees, and changing things in countless other ways to suit ourselves. | |
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