Aloha,
This blog was created with the belief that real change in the world will only occur if individuals such as you get involved. While it is convenient to point at government agencies or the university administration to bring about change in environmental practices, the reality is that each one of us can bring about an IMMEDIATE change by how we live each day.
The articles that have been posted during the past weeks highlight some of the more immediate issues we face, such as global climate change and environmental degradation due to consumer apathy.
I would like to thank those who took the time to comment on the articles that have been posted in the blog. While living in paradise we often forget or fail to realize how our individual actions impact the environment or the lives of others, both today and in the future.
To quote Ghandi, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world". Please do us all a favor by inspiring us with your comments on how YOU plan to be a change in the world.
Cheers, Dr. Tom DeWitt
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
11% of Vietnam Population Susceptible to Displacement Due to Climate Change
CAI RANG, Vietnam — For centuries, as monsoon rains, typhoons and wars have swept over them and disappeared into the sunshine, the farmers and fishermen of the Mekong Delta have drawn life from the water and fertile fields where the great river ends its 2,700-mile journey to the sea.
The rhythms of life continue from season to season though, like much of the country, the delta is moving quickly into the future, and industry has begun to pollute the air and water.
But everything here, both the timeless and the new, is at risk now from a threat that could bring deeper and longer-lasting disruptions than the generations of warfare that ended more than 30 years ago.
In a worse-case projection, a Vietnamese government report released last month says that more than one-third of the delta, where 17 million people live and nearly half the country’s rice is grown, could be submerged if sea levels rise by three feet in the decades to come.
In a more modest projection, it calculates that one-fifth of the delta would be flooded, said Tran Thuc, who leads Vietnam’s National Institute for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Sciences and is the chief author of the report.
Storm surges could periodically raise that level, he said, and experts say an intrusion of salt water and industrial pollution could contaminate much of the remaining delta area.
The risks of climate change for Vietnam go far beyond the Mekong Delta, up into the Central Highlands, where rising temperatures could put the coffee crop at risk, and to the Red River Delta in the north, where large areas could be inundated near the capital, Hanoi.
Climate experts consider this nation of an estimated 87 million people to be among the half-dozen most threatened by the weather disruptions and rising sea levels linked to climate change that are predicted in the course of this century.
If the sea level rises by three feet, 11 percent of Vietnam’s population could be displaced, according to a 2007 World Bank working paper.
If it rises by 15 feet, 35 percent of the population and 16 percent of the country’s land area could be affected, the document said.
The government report emphasizes that the predictions represent the threat, based on current models, if no measures are taken in the coming decades, like building dikes.
But the potential disruptions and the tremendous cost of trying to reduce their impact could slow Vietnam’s drive to emerge from its postwar poverty and impede its ambitions to become one of the region’s economic leaders.
Once again, this nation, which has spent much of its history struggling to free itself from foreign domination, finds itself threatened by an overpowering outside force.
“Climate change isn’t caused by a developing country like Vietnam, but it is suffering the consequences,” said Koos Neefjes, a policy adviser on climate change with the United Nations Development Program in Hanoi.
In addition to rising seas in the Mekong Delta, climatologists predict more frequent, severe and southerly typhoons, heavier floods and stronger storm surges that could ultimately drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
By SETH MYDANS
For more information see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/world/asia/24delta.html?_r=1&ref=global-home&pagewanted=print
The rhythms of life continue from season to season though, like much of the country, the delta is moving quickly into the future, and industry has begun to pollute the air and water.
But everything here, both the timeless and the new, is at risk now from a threat that could bring deeper and longer-lasting disruptions than the generations of warfare that ended more than 30 years ago.
In a worse-case projection, a Vietnamese government report released last month says that more than one-third of the delta, where 17 million people live and nearly half the country’s rice is grown, could be submerged if sea levels rise by three feet in the decades to come.
In a more modest projection, it calculates that one-fifth of the delta would be flooded, said Tran Thuc, who leads Vietnam’s National Institute for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Sciences and is the chief author of the report.
Storm surges could periodically raise that level, he said, and experts say an intrusion of salt water and industrial pollution could contaminate much of the remaining delta area.
The risks of climate change for Vietnam go far beyond the Mekong Delta, up into the Central Highlands, where rising temperatures could put the coffee crop at risk, and to the Red River Delta in the north, where large areas could be inundated near the capital, Hanoi.
Climate experts consider this nation of an estimated 87 million people to be among the half-dozen most threatened by the weather disruptions and rising sea levels linked to climate change that are predicted in the course of this century.
If the sea level rises by three feet, 11 percent of Vietnam’s population could be displaced, according to a 2007 World Bank working paper.
If it rises by 15 feet, 35 percent of the population and 16 percent of the country’s land area could be affected, the document said.
The government report emphasizes that the predictions represent the threat, based on current models, if no measures are taken in the coming decades, like building dikes.
But the potential disruptions and the tremendous cost of trying to reduce their impact could slow Vietnam’s drive to emerge from its postwar poverty and impede its ambitions to become one of the region’s economic leaders.
Once again, this nation, which has spent much of its history struggling to free itself from foreign domination, finds itself threatened by an overpowering outside force.
“Climate change isn’t caused by a developing country like Vietnam, but it is suffering the consequences,” said Koos Neefjes, a policy adviser on climate change with the United Nations Development Program in Hanoi.
In addition to rising seas in the Mekong Delta, climatologists predict more frequent, severe and southerly typhoons, heavier floods and stronger storm surges that could ultimately drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
By SETH MYDANS
For more information see: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/world/asia/24delta.html?_r=1&ref=global-home&pagewanted=print
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Have a Nice Day
Applied Materials is one of the most important U.S. companies you’ve probably never heard of. It makes the machines that make the microchips that go inside your computer. The chip business, though, is volatile, so in 2004 Mike Splinter, Applied Materials’s C.E.O., decided to add a new business line to take advantage of the company’s nanotechnology capabilities — making the machines that make solar panels. The other day, Splinter gave me a tour of the company’s Silicon Valley facility, culminating with a visit to its “war room,” where Applied maintains a real-time global interaction with all 14 solar panel factories it’s built around the world in the last two years. I could only laugh because crying would have been too embarrassing.
Not a single one is in America.
Let’s see: five are in Germany, four are in China, one is in Spain, one is in India, one is in Italy, one is in Taiwan and one is even in Abu Dhabi. I suggested a new company motto for Applied Materials’s solar business: “Invented here, sold there.”
The reason that all these other countries are building solar-panel industries today is because most of their governments have put in place the three prerequisites for growing a renewable energy industry: 1) any business or homeowner can generate solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power utility has to connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has to buy the power for a predictable period at a price that is a no-brainer good deal for the family or business putting the solar panels on their rooftop.
Regulatory, price and connectivity certainty, that is what Germany put in place, and that explains why Germany now generates almost half the solar power in the world today and, as a byproduct, is making itself the world-center for solar research, engineering, manufacturing and installation. With more than 50,000 new jobs, the renewable energy industry in Germany is now second only to its auto industry. One thing that has never existed in America — with our fragmented, stop-start solar subsidies — is certainty of price, connectivity and regulation on a national basis.
That is why, although consumer demand for solar power has incrementally increased here, it has not been enough for anyone to have Applied Materials — the world’s biggest solar equipment manufacturer — build them a new factory in America yet. So, right now, our federal and state subsidies for installing solar systems are largely paying for the cost of importing solar panels made in China, by Chinese workers, using hi-tech manufacturing equipment invented in America.
Have a nice day.
“About 95 percent of our solar business is outside the U.S.,” said Splinter. “Our biggest U.S. customer is a German-owned company in Oregon. We sell them pieces of equipment.”
If you read some of the anti-green commentary today, you’ll often see sneering references to “green jobs.” The phrase is usually in quotation marks as if it is some kind of liberal fantasy or closet welfare program (and as if coal, oil and nuclear don’t get all kinds of subsidies). Nonsense. In 2008, more silicon was consumed globally making solar panels than microchips, said Splinter.
“We are seeing the industrialization of the solar business,” he added. “In the last 12 months, it has brought us $1.3 billion in revenues. It is hard to build a billion-dollar business.”
Applied sells its solar-panel factories for $200 million each. Solar panels can be made from many different semiconductors, including thin film coated onto glass with nanotechnology and from crystalline silicon. At Applied, making these complex machines requires America’s best, high-paid talent — people who can work at the intersection of chemistry, physics and nanotechnology.
If we want to launch a solar industry here, big-time, we need to offer the kind of long-term certainty that Germany does or impose the national requirement on our utilities to generate solar power as China does or have the government build giant solar farms, the way it built the Hoover Dam, and sell the electricity.
O.K., so you don’t believe global warming is real. I do, but let’s assume it’s not. Here is what is indisputable: The world is on track to add another 2.5 billion people by 2050, and many will be aspiring to live American-like, high-energy lifestyles. In such a world, renewable energy — where the variable cost of your fuel, sun or wind, is zero — will be in huge demand.
China now understands that. It no longer believes it can pollute its way to prosperity because it would choke to death. That is the most important shift in the world in the last 18 months. China has decided that clean-tech is going to be the next great global industry and is now creating a massive domestic market for solar and wind, which will give it a great export platform.
In October, Applied will be opening the world’s largest solar research center — in Xian, China. Gotta go where the customers are. So, if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love importing solar panels from China.
By Thomas Friedman
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/opinion/16friedman.html?pagewanted=print
Not a single one is in America.
Let’s see: five are in Germany, four are in China, one is in Spain, one is in India, one is in Italy, one is in Taiwan and one is even in Abu Dhabi. I suggested a new company motto for Applied Materials’s solar business: “Invented here, sold there.”
The reason that all these other countries are building solar-panel industries today is because most of their governments have put in place the three prerequisites for growing a renewable energy industry: 1) any business or homeowner can generate solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power utility has to connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has to buy the power for a predictable period at a price that is a no-brainer good deal for the family or business putting the solar panels on their rooftop.
Regulatory, price and connectivity certainty, that is what Germany put in place, and that explains why Germany now generates almost half the solar power in the world today and, as a byproduct, is making itself the world-center for solar research, engineering, manufacturing and installation. With more than 50,000 new jobs, the renewable energy industry in Germany is now second only to its auto industry. One thing that has never existed in America — with our fragmented, stop-start solar subsidies — is certainty of price, connectivity and regulation on a national basis.
That is why, although consumer demand for solar power has incrementally increased here, it has not been enough for anyone to have Applied Materials — the world’s biggest solar equipment manufacturer — build them a new factory in America yet. So, right now, our federal and state subsidies for installing solar systems are largely paying for the cost of importing solar panels made in China, by Chinese workers, using hi-tech manufacturing equipment invented in America.
Have a nice day.
“About 95 percent of our solar business is outside the U.S.,” said Splinter. “Our biggest U.S. customer is a German-owned company in Oregon. We sell them pieces of equipment.”
If you read some of the anti-green commentary today, you’ll often see sneering references to “green jobs.” The phrase is usually in quotation marks as if it is some kind of liberal fantasy or closet welfare program (and as if coal, oil and nuclear don’t get all kinds of subsidies). Nonsense. In 2008, more silicon was consumed globally making solar panels than microchips, said Splinter.
“We are seeing the industrialization of the solar business,” he added. “In the last 12 months, it has brought us $1.3 billion in revenues. It is hard to build a billion-dollar business.”
Applied sells its solar-panel factories for $200 million each. Solar panels can be made from many different semiconductors, including thin film coated onto glass with nanotechnology and from crystalline silicon. At Applied, making these complex machines requires America’s best, high-paid talent — people who can work at the intersection of chemistry, physics and nanotechnology.
If we want to launch a solar industry here, big-time, we need to offer the kind of long-term certainty that Germany does or impose the national requirement on our utilities to generate solar power as China does or have the government build giant solar farms, the way it built the Hoover Dam, and sell the electricity.
O.K., so you don’t believe global warming is real. I do, but let’s assume it’s not. Here is what is indisputable: The world is on track to add another 2.5 billion people by 2050, and many will be aspiring to live American-like, high-energy lifestyles. In such a world, renewable energy — where the variable cost of your fuel, sun or wind, is zero — will be in huge demand.
China now understands that. It no longer believes it can pollute its way to prosperity because it would choke to death. That is the most important shift in the world in the last 18 months. China has decided that clean-tech is going to be the next great global industry and is now creating a massive domestic market for solar and wind, which will give it a great export platform.
In October, Applied will be opening the world’s largest solar research center — in Xian, China. Gotta go where the customers are. So, if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love importing solar panels from China.
By Thomas Friedman
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/opinion/16friedman.html?pagewanted=print
Monday, September 21, 2009
Car Free Days in Europe - Could Hawaii be Next?
Walkers, joggers, skaters and cyclists experienced unusual freedom – and quiet – in Brussels on Sunday, where, for the most part, the city’s residents left their cars at home.
Brussels is one of 1,667 cities across the continent to designate at least one day this week as car-free — part of European Mobility Week.
Participating cities design their own events, which are sponsored by the European Commission and coordinated by campaign groups focused on urban environmental issues, including Eurocities and Energie-Cités.
Some places, like Almada in Portugal, were reported to be handing out free public transport tickets to citizens who handed in recyclable materials as part of an initiative dubbed “Trips for trash.”
The focus in most areas, however, has been cutting down on the amount of time people spend driving private cars. Authorities in Budapest, for example, pledged to hold three car-free days, including Tuesday, Sept. 22, which is the day that European authorities recommend cities use to restrict vehicle-use.
Still, keeping large swaths of a city like Budapest car-free on a weekday may be a tall order.
According to Greg Spencer, a blogger in Budapest writing in support of urban cycling events, only parts of the route that a group of organized bicyclists intend to take on Tuesday are slated to be cordoned off from other road users, meaning that participants still will be riding in weekday rush hour traffic.
Source: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/car-free-days-in-europe-mostly/
Brussels is one of 1,667 cities across the continent to designate at least one day this week as car-free — part of European Mobility Week.
Participating cities design their own events, which are sponsored by the European Commission and coordinated by campaign groups focused on urban environmental issues, including Eurocities and Energie-Cités.
Some places, like Almada in Portugal, were reported to be handing out free public transport tickets to citizens who handed in recyclable materials as part of an initiative dubbed “Trips for trash.”
The focus in most areas, however, has been cutting down on the amount of time people spend driving private cars. Authorities in Budapest, for example, pledged to hold three car-free days, including Tuesday, Sept. 22, which is the day that European authorities recommend cities use to restrict vehicle-use.
Still, keeping large swaths of a city like Budapest car-free on a weekday may be a tall order.
According to Greg Spencer, a blogger in Budapest writing in support of urban cycling events, only parts of the route that a group of organized bicyclists intend to take on Tuesday are slated to be cordoned off from other road users, meaning that participants still will be riding in weekday rush hour traffic.
Source: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/car-free-days-in-europe-mostly/
Saturday, September 19, 2009
The Global Fisheries Crisis
1. The world's marine catch has increased more than four times in the past 40 years -- from 18.5 million tons in 1950 to 82.5 million tons by 1992. This staggering growth has resulted in overfishing and wasteful, destructive fishing practices worldwide which now threaten the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are vitally dependent on fishing for food and livelihoods. They face resource depletion, competition from industrial and distant water fleets, and loss of access to traditional marine food supplies.
2. Seven out of ten (69%) of the oceans' commercially targeted marine fish stocks are fished beyond ecologically safe limits, being either fully or heavily exploited, overexploited, depleted, or very slowly recovering from collapse after previous overfishing.
3. One-quarter of the planet's biological diversity is in danger of extinction within the next 30 years. In the ocean environment, commercial fishing stands as one of the greatest biodiversity threats.
4.Overfishing damages much more than fish populations. Extracting too many fish from an ecosysten can reduce the survival chances of other predators in the marine food web, including populations of marine mammals, seabirds, turtles, sharks and a host of other species. Large-scale commercial fishing is robbing them of their food source -- fish.
5. The depletion of food supplies is not the only threat to marine wildlife posed by fishing operations. Many millions of animals other than fish are severly injured or killed each year through deadly interactions with fishing gear. For instance, millions of dolphins have died in Tuna purse seine nets in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean. An estimated 44,000 albatrosses are killed each year by Japanese tuna longliners.
6. One-quarter (25%) of all the fish pulled from the sea never make it to market. 27 million tons of unwanted fish catch are thrown back each year on average. Most don't survive. Twenty seven million tons of wasted fish represent more than half of all fish produced annually from marine capture fisheries for direct human consumption. It is also about equivalent to the predicted shortfall in fish for human consumption expected by the year 2000 (an anticipated shortfall of some 20 to 30 million tons means fish is fast becoming a luxury food only the relatively few can afford!).
7. Since 1970, the world's fishing fleet has expanded twice as fast as world catches. As a result, excess fishing capacity has reached alarming proportions (for instance, the fishing fleet in China is now around six times the size it was in 1979). Today, there are over three-and-a-half million fishing vessels operating in the world's oceans, all engaged in a desperate competition over dwindling supplies of fish. Little wonder then that the aggregate global fleet of over a million industrial and semi-industrial vessels has been operating at an annual loss of some $50-billion each year -- a collosal loss that is being compensated by government subsidies to vessel owners, and all at taxpayers' expense.
8.With so many fishing vessels in the world, massive fleets are migrating away from overfished areas and are stalking the planet on a desperate search for less exploited fishing grounds. They are like an invasion armada, disrupting the lives of millions of tradtional fishing peoples, especially in less developed countries, destroying fish stocks and eco systems wherever they go.
But coastal peoples are fighting back: Millions of fisherfolk from coastal villages in India have been staging national srtikes to overturn the national government's policy of licensing thousands of these foreign fishing vessels to fish in Indian waters.
9. Fish is an important part of the daily diets in many nations, providing roughly 40 per cent of the protein consumed by nearly two-thirds of the world's population. For example, over a billion people throughout Asia depend on fish and seafood as their major source of animal protein. Yet, of the approximately 78 million tons produced from marine capture fisheries each year, only 50 million tons is available as food for direct human consumption; the remainder, approximately 28 million tons, is reduced to fishmeal which is fed to livestock such as pigs and poultry, and to other creatures like farmed trout, shrimp and mink for luxury markets. Odd, when we live in a world where a billion people suffer from malnutrition.
10. Worldwide, about 13 million people make all or a major part of their living from fishing. More than 10 million of them work in coastal waters on little boats powered by paddles, sails or sometimes outboard motors, with only a few crew members. Together with their immediate families they comprise some 50 million people directly dependent on fishing for their livelihoods. Another 150 million people are employed on land processing fish and servicing fleets. When the fish go, the jobs do too. In one such calamity, more than 20,000 Canadian fishworkers living in Newfoundland lost their jobs literally overnight when the government banned all fishing for cod in order to protect what remained of badly depleted stocks.
Source: http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/fish/amaze.html
2. Seven out of ten (69%) of the oceans' commercially targeted marine fish stocks are fished beyond ecologically safe limits, being either fully or heavily exploited, overexploited, depleted, or very slowly recovering from collapse after previous overfishing.
3. One-quarter of the planet's biological diversity is in danger of extinction within the next 30 years. In the ocean environment, commercial fishing stands as one of the greatest biodiversity threats.
4.Overfishing damages much more than fish populations. Extracting too many fish from an ecosysten can reduce the survival chances of other predators in the marine food web, including populations of marine mammals, seabirds, turtles, sharks and a host of other species. Large-scale commercial fishing is robbing them of their food source -- fish.
5. The depletion of food supplies is not the only threat to marine wildlife posed by fishing operations. Many millions of animals other than fish are severly injured or killed each year through deadly interactions with fishing gear. For instance, millions of dolphins have died in Tuna purse seine nets in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean. An estimated 44,000 albatrosses are killed each year by Japanese tuna longliners.
6. One-quarter (25%) of all the fish pulled from the sea never make it to market. 27 million tons of unwanted fish catch are thrown back each year on average. Most don't survive. Twenty seven million tons of wasted fish represent more than half of all fish produced annually from marine capture fisheries for direct human consumption. It is also about equivalent to the predicted shortfall in fish for human consumption expected by the year 2000 (an anticipated shortfall of some 20 to 30 million tons means fish is fast becoming a luxury food only the relatively few can afford!).
7. Since 1970, the world's fishing fleet has expanded twice as fast as world catches. As a result, excess fishing capacity has reached alarming proportions (for instance, the fishing fleet in China is now around six times the size it was in 1979). Today, there are over three-and-a-half million fishing vessels operating in the world's oceans, all engaged in a desperate competition over dwindling supplies of fish. Little wonder then that the aggregate global fleet of over a million industrial and semi-industrial vessels has been operating at an annual loss of some $50-billion each year -- a collosal loss that is being compensated by government subsidies to vessel owners, and all at taxpayers' expense.
8.With so many fishing vessels in the world, massive fleets are migrating away from overfished areas and are stalking the planet on a desperate search for less exploited fishing grounds. They are like an invasion armada, disrupting the lives of millions of tradtional fishing peoples, especially in less developed countries, destroying fish stocks and eco systems wherever they go.
But coastal peoples are fighting back: Millions of fisherfolk from coastal villages in India have been staging national srtikes to overturn the national government's policy of licensing thousands of these foreign fishing vessels to fish in Indian waters.
9. Fish is an important part of the daily diets in many nations, providing roughly 40 per cent of the protein consumed by nearly two-thirds of the world's population. For example, over a billion people throughout Asia depend on fish and seafood as their major source of animal protein. Yet, of the approximately 78 million tons produced from marine capture fisheries each year, only 50 million tons is available as food for direct human consumption; the remainder, approximately 28 million tons, is reduced to fishmeal which is fed to livestock such as pigs and poultry, and to other creatures like farmed trout, shrimp and mink for luxury markets. Odd, when we live in a world where a billion people suffer from malnutrition.
10. Worldwide, about 13 million people make all or a major part of their living from fishing. More than 10 million of them work in coastal waters on little boats powered by paddles, sails or sometimes outboard motors, with only a few crew members. Together with their immediate families they comprise some 50 million people directly dependent on fishing for their livelihoods. Another 150 million people are employed on land processing fish and servicing fleets. When the fish go, the jobs do too. In one such calamity, more than 20,000 Canadian fishworkers living in Newfoundland lost their jobs literally overnight when the government banned all fishing for cod in order to protect what remained of badly depleted stocks.
Source: http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/fish/amaze.html
Friday, September 18, 2009
Global Warming Sealing the Fate of Coral Reefs
Destroyed by rising carbon levels, acidity, pollution, algae, bleaching and El Niño, coral reefs require a dramatic change in our carbon policy to have any chance of survival.
An aerial view of the coastline along Hawaii Kai on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu where organic sediment is one of the major threats to the reef. Photograph: Ed Darack/Corbis
Animal, vegetable and mineral, a pristine tropical coral reef is one of the natural wonders of the world. Bathed in clear, warm water and thick with a psychedelic display of fish, sharks, crustaceans and other sea life, the colourful coral ramparts that rise from the sand are known as the rainforests of the oceans.
And with good reason. Reefs and rainforests have more in common than their beauty and bewildering biodiversity. Both have stood for millions of years, and yet both are poised to disappear.
If you thought you had heard enough bad news on the environment and that the situation could not get any worse, then steel yourself. Coral reefs are doomed. The situation is virtually hopeless. Forget ice caps and rising sea levels: the tropical coral reef looks like it will enter the history books as the first major ecosystem wiped out by our love of cheap energy.
Today, a report from the Australian government agency that looks after the nation's emblematic Great Barrier Reef reported that "the overall outlook for the reef is poor and catastrophic damage to the ecosystem may not be averted". The Great Barrier Reef is in trouble, and it is not the only one.
Within just a few decades, experts are warning, the tropical reefs strung around the middle of our planet like a jewelled corset will reduce to rubble. Giant piles of slime-covered rubbish will litter the sea bed and spell in large distressing letters for the rest of foreseeable time: Humans Were Here.
"The future is horrific," says Charlie Veron, an Australian marine biologist who is widely regarded as the world's foremost expert on coral reefs. "There is no hope of reefs surviving to even mid-century in any form that we now recognise. If, and when, they go, they will take with them about one-third of the world's marine biodiversity. Then there is a domino effect, as reefs fail so will other ecosystems. This is the path of a mass extinction event, when most life, especially tropical marine life, goes extinct."
Alex Rogers, a coral expert with the Zoological Society of London, talks of an "absolute guarantee of their annihilation". And David Obura, another coral heavyweight and head of CORDIO East Africa, a research group in Kenya, is equally pessimistic: "I don't think reefs have much of a chance. And what's happening to reefs is a parable of what is going to happen to everything else."
Human impact has tipped that balance. Loaded with the agricultural nutrients nitrates and phosphates, rivers now spill their polluted waters into the sea. Sediment and sewage cloud the clear waters, while over-fishing plays havoc with the finely tuned community of fish and sharks that kept the reef nibbling down to sustainable levels. All of this is enough to wreck coral without any help from climate change.
Global warming, predictably, has made the situation worse. Secure in their tropical currents, coral reefs have evolved to operate within a fairly narrow temperature range, yet, in the late 1970s and 1980s, coral scientists got an unpleasant demonstration of what happens when the hot tap is left on too long. "The algae go berserk," said Rogers. Scientists think the algae react to the warmer water and increased sunlight by producing toxic oxygen compounds called superoxides, which can damage the coral. The coral respond by ejecting their algal lodgers, leaving the reefs starved of nutrients and deathly white. Such bleaching was first observed on a large scale in the 1980s, and reached massive levels worldwide during the 1997-98 El Niño weather event.
For more information see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/02/coral-catastrophic-future
An aerial view of the coastline along Hawaii Kai on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu where organic sediment is one of the major threats to the reef. Photograph: Ed Darack/Corbis
Animal, vegetable and mineral, a pristine tropical coral reef is one of the natural wonders of the world. Bathed in clear, warm water and thick with a psychedelic display of fish, sharks, crustaceans and other sea life, the colourful coral ramparts that rise from the sand are known as the rainforests of the oceans.
And with good reason. Reefs and rainforests have more in common than their beauty and bewildering biodiversity. Both have stood for millions of years, and yet both are poised to disappear.
If you thought you had heard enough bad news on the environment and that the situation could not get any worse, then steel yourself. Coral reefs are doomed. The situation is virtually hopeless. Forget ice caps and rising sea levels: the tropical coral reef looks like it will enter the history books as the first major ecosystem wiped out by our love of cheap energy.
Today, a report from the Australian government agency that looks after the nation's emblematic Great Barrier Reef reported that "the overall outlook for the reef is poor and catastrophic damage to the ecosystem may not be averted". The Great Barrier Reef is in trouble, and it is not the only one.
Within just a few decades, experts are warning, the tropical reefs strung around the middle of our planet like a jewelled corset will reduce to rubble. Giant piles of slime-covered rubbish will litter the sea bed and spell in large distressing letters for the rest of foreseeable time: Humans Were Here.
"The future is horrific," says Charlie Veron, an Australian marine biologist who is widely regarded as the world's foremost expert on coral reefs. "There is no hope of reefs surviving to even mid-century in any form that we now recognise. If, and when, they go, they will take with them about one-third of the world's marine biodiversity. Then there is a domino effect, as reefs fail so will other ecosystems. This is the path of a mass extinction event, when most life, especially tropical marine life, goes extinct."
Alex Rogers, a coral expert with the Zoological Society of London, talks of an "absolute guarantee of their annihilation". And David Obura, another coral heavyweight and head of CORDIO East Africa, a research group in Kenya, is equally pessimistic: "I don't think reefs have much of a chance. And what's happening to reefs is a parable of what is going to happen to everything else."
Human impact has tipped that balance. Loaded with the agricultural nutrients nitrates and phosphates, rivers now spill their polluted waters into the sea. Sediment and sewage cloud the clear waters, while over-fishing plays havoc with the finely tuned community of fish and sharks that kept the reef nibbling down to sustainable levels. All of this is enough to wreck coral without any help from climate change.
Global warming, predictably, has made the situation worse. Secure in their tropical currents, coral reefs have evolved to operate within a fairly narrow temperature range, yet, in the late 1970s and 1980s, coral scientists got an unpleasant demonstration of what happens when the hot tap is left on too long. "The algae go berserk," said Rogers. Scientists think the algae react to the warmer water and increased sunlight by producing toxic oxygen compounds called superoxides, which can damage the coral. The coral respond by ejecting their algal lodgers, leaving the reefs starved of nutrients and deathly white. Such bleaching was first observed on a large scale in the 1980s, and reached massive levels worldwide during the 1997-98 El Niño weather event.
For more information see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/02/coral-catastrophic-future
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