manner of troubles:


n The Arctic icecap is melting, and quickly. By summer’s end in 2007, a record-setting year, the northernmost continent, which moderates air and wa- ter temperatures for the whole planet, contained 25 percent less ice than the year before. As of this writing, the 2010 melt was outpacing that of 2007. Scientists now routinely predict it


won’t be long before we’ve seen the end of Arctic summer sea ice alto- gether—that is, the world as viewed from outer space would be without its familiar white top. Worse, it’s not only the Arctic; pretty much every other geographic area that’s frozen is melting as well, perhaps most dangerously in the high-altitude glaciers of the Andes and Himalaya mountains, historically relied upon to send water, respectively, to the South American and Asian continents below.


n The Earth’s hydrological cycles are undergoing a dramatic shift. Because warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the general atmosphere is about 5 percent moister than it was 40 years ago. This means more evaporation, hence more drought, in arid areas. But on the rest of a planet, where what goes up must come down—we’re witnessing extraordinary increases in flooding. This year, for example, we’ve seen record (and lethal) rain- storms in Tennessee, Oklahoma and Arkansas, just within the 1.5 percent of the planet’s surface comprised by the continental United States.


n Overall, temperatures are rising to near unbearable levels as that single degree average increase on the ther- mometer reverberates in savage heat waves. This past spring, India experi- enced weeks of record temperatures that beat anything recorded since the British started measuring them in the early 1800s. Early this summer, seven nations smashed all-time temperature records. In Burma, the mercury set a new all- time record for Southeast Asia, at 118 degrees. In June, Pakistan went on to es- tablish a new benchmark for the highest temperature ever recorded at any time, anywhere in Asia, of 129 degrees.


This year, China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest energy user, a status held for more than a century. Because China gets most of its electricity from coal, it’s also the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases as of 2007, yet the United States remains the world’s biggest oil consumer by a wide margin. We’re also by far the bigger energy consumer per capita, despite an overall 2.5 percent annual improvement in energy efficiency since 2000; the average American burns five times as much energy annually as the average Chinese citizen.


~ International Energy Agency


All of this is due to a single degree of global temperature increase. The climatologists have warned us that if the United States, China and other countries don’t make a super-swift transition from the use of coal and oil, the world’s collective temperature will climb something like five degrees before the century is out. If one degree melts the Arctic icecap, we don’t want to see what five degrees looks like. So, that’s the bad news. Here’s the


good news. Alternate Scenario


Let’s imagine we took the most signifi- cant step we could to speed the world- wide transition off of fossil fuel. Let’s imagine that the U.S. Congress and the United Nations managed to agree on a national and international scheme to set stiff pricing on coal and oil that ac- curately reflects the damage these fossil fuels are wreaking in the atmosphere. If that happened, then many other things would follow.


The most obvious is that we’d see lots more solar panels and wind tur- bines. Suddenly, anyone with a spread- sheet would be able to see that it no


longer makes sense to invest in a coal- fired power plant. Anyone building a new apartment complex would imme- diately understand that it’s in his or her best interest to install solar hot water tubes on the roof. In China, the world leader in total energy use, yet also in renewable energies, 250 million people now get their hot water this way. But, such a simple and effective solution still has to fight against the force of eco- nomic gravity there, as elsewhere. As long as coal-fired electricity is absurdly cheap, renewable energy sources will stay marginal. The effects of a widespread switch


to clean and renewable energies wouldn’t be confined to the energy sector. Think about farming. We’ve spent half a century building a giant agro-industrial complex that runs en- tirely on fossil fuel.


Yet author Michael Pollan recently calculated that it takes 10 calories of fossil energy to produce one calorie of food. Because that growing complex is a machine, not really a farm, the food it produces is terrible in terms of taste and nutrition, and includes toxic residues from pesticides, herbicides and chemi- cally synthesized fertilizers. The ultimate irony is that we now


devote the best farmland on the planet, the American Midwest, to growing high- fructose corn syrup. It’s a prime culprit in our country’s diabetes epidemic. The ripple effect goes on and on.


On the other hand, consider what would happen if the price of oil went up high enough that this nation could no longer afford to farm in the manner preferred by agribusiness behemoths? What would happen is that we’d need more Americans engaged in healthier farming, with human labor and ingenu- ity replacing some of the fossil fuel. That would increase yields per acre and also increase the quality of the foods we eat. Research studies reported by Jules Pretty, pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Essex, UK, in his book, Agri-Culture, have proved that small farms around the world are routinely as productive as agro-industrial lands, and that low-input farming, too, can feed the world with a wholesale switchover. Again, this is already starting to happen: Farmers’ markets continue


natural awakenings October 2010 37


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72