Andrew Leonard on a Salmon farming disaster in Chile:
Who could have predicted that the mass forced farming of an exotic fish to please the Wal-Mart low-price palate would result in a horrific virus-borne plague of anemia?
I don’t eat farmed salmon if I can help it.
Ed Gerck has a really provocative post on Dave Farber’s Interesting People mailing list on the failure of the Copenhagen conference on global warming to produce an agreement that would eventually become legally binding. (The best rundown of the Copenhagen summit comes from BBC environment reporter Roger Harrabin.) In it he argues that had countries tried to come together and hammer out a legally binding agreement on the creation of the Internet, there wouldn’t be an Internet. Perhaps an understanding among countries that they will work together will lead to more substantive progress than a treaty that most countries will refuse to ratify anyway.
Of course, the problem is that there was a lot of interest in developing the Internet for economic reasons, and we haven’t seen technical breakthroughs that offer similar returns for fighting climate change. Right now countries see what they have to give up (coal-fired power plants, for one) and the short term costs of taking strong action to fight climate change expose any leader to political risk that they probably won’t find acceptable. But given that reality, a binding legal requirement was never in the cards anyway.
Information is Beautiful: Climate Change Deniers vs The Consensus.
I researched this subject in a very particular way. I deliberately chose not speak directly to any climate experts or leading scientists in the field. I used only publicly available web sources.
Why? Because I wanted to simulate what it’s like for people trying to learn about climate change online.
Matthew Yglesias makes a pretty convincing argument that the most effective path to slowing down climate change is putting a price on carbon. Right now, carbon emissions are untaxed, so there’s no market mechanism to reward a reduction in carbon emissions other than the price of using energy. Unfortunately, energy prices are largely decoupled from their environmental impact.
I just wanted to say that the Obama administration nationalizing California’s proposed fuel economy standards is very good news. It’s unfortunate that a bunch of people will probably be buying new cars now under the cash for clunkers bill instead of in a couple of years when most cars are significantly more fuel efficient.
Does buying “green” products rather than the more conventional alternatives really make a difference in terms of improving the environment? Environmental activist Joel Makower says not so much.
He argues that the drive for efficiency and cost savings in business makes a bigger difference:
But there’s a deeper problem with green consumerism: It’s often hard to know which companies are improving their environmental performance—and how. The key element of making consumer choices—knowledge—is missing. Companies’ environmental improvements (or lack thereof) aren’t usually obvious, even to the experts. In fact, some of the most environmentally improved products make no green claims at all.
Here’s why: To save money, reduce risks, improve quality, and remain competitive, companies in nearly every sector are continually engineering waste, inefficiency, energy intensity, and toxicity out of their manufacturing and distribution. A few have upended their business models in the name of efficiency and enhanced productivity. They sometimes do this because of the reduced environmental impact, but mostly they do it because it makes good business sense—not something companies usually bother to tell their customers.
The fundamental problem is not post-consumer waste, but rather the waste that’s generated in creating things and delivering them to consumers. The numbers are staggering:
What’s the point? It’s only a matter of time before the story of GNT gets told and the public recognizes that for every pound of trash that ends up in municipal landfills, at least 40 more pounds are created upstream by industrial processes—and that a lot of this waste is far more dangerous to environmental and human health than our newspapers and grass clippings. At that point, the locus of concern could shift away from beverage containers, grocery bags, and the other mundane leftovers of daily life to what happens behind the scenes—the production, crating, storing, and shipping of the goods we buy and use.
This is not altogether bad news. An inefficient power supply in a computer may raise your electricity bill by $5 or $10 a year, and isn’t something you’re likely to worry about. If Google used that power supply, it would cost them millions of dollars in power bills. So they build their own servers and fund research into improving power supply technology.
Higher commodity prices create incentives to limit waste, but also make increasingly invasive extraction methods economically feasible. There was a recent article in National Geographic about mining for gold in the face of rising gold prices that exemplifies this problem. Rising commodity prices lead directly to habitat loss, which is the primary cause of species extinction.
It’s tough being an environmentalist.
Anil Dash and Mike Monteiro have launched a web site evangelizing the idea of appreciating what you have. The idea is simple and may be particularly compelling during a recession, but should probably be in the backs of our minds all the time.
I’ll share a little story along those lines. I drive an old car. It gets bad gas mileage and has uncomfortable seats. I would love to drive a new car. But the truth is I don’t drive an awful lot and the car runs really well. A couple of years ago I mentioned to my mechanic that I was considering getting rid of it, and he told me that if I did, to let him know, because he would be interested in buying it. At that point, I looked at the car with fresh eyes. If your mechanic wants to buy your car, it’s not time to sell it.
Just recently I’ve gotten a problem with the driver’s seat fixed, replaced the tires with nicer ones than I probably would have ordinarily, and resolved myself to sticking with it for another couple of years. I bought this car because I loved it, and as it turns out, I still love it.
This mentality is why car manufacturers around the world are in so much trouble, and why the government is pursuing fiscal stimulus, but for an individual, I think it’s the most rational approach.
Earth Hour was totally worth it just so this post at The Big Picture could be compiled.
Small things count when they come in large numbers — lead wheel weights used to balance tires are an example. According to the Ecology Center, 70,000 tons of lead per year is used to manufacture these weights, and they are the largest source of unregulated new lead in the environment. These are the issues of activism that interest me. Replacing them with weights made of other materials would be fairly easy and cheap, but most people don’t even know what lead wheel weights are. What’s the path to producing change on this front? My guess is that you try to get them outlawed somewhere, and then try to get that law to spread. Eventually they’ll be banned in enough places that it’s just easier not to use them at all.
James Fallows links to a report produced by the Asia Society on the retreat of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau. I’m glad we have a President who’s going to take climate change more seriously, but I still don’t feel like this issue gets the attention it should.
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