A Short Vacation

I've been taking some time off to write an environmental and sustainability blog for the Kansas City Star. Please visit. Your comments, ideas and suggestions are appreciated. While some of the material will center on the Kansas City region, much of it will go way beyond the local.



It's call KC Earth Notes. You can find it at kcearthnotes.kansascity.com

Just Stop Breathing

Summer in America is almost over. The reason we know this is that Labor Day is only a week away. Of course it has nothing to do with labor, only celebrating the end of summer, as well as children reluctantly returning to not so rare mediocre schools.

Speaking of mediocre, a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll claims that we adults don't read much. One in four adults, according to the poll, didn't read any books over the past year. One of those polled said reading just made him sleepy. He preferred relaxing by his swimming pool.

And speaking of education, did you know that the Grand Canyon is big enough to hold the entire population of the world? What about the fact that the fertilizer-choked dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi is larger than New Jersey? These facts and others can be found in Alan Weisman's book The World Without Us.

What would our planet be like if we humans just suddenly vanished? This is the theme of Weisman's intriguing book. The good news is Earth would likely recover from human depredation. Of course the bad news is that this is only a "what if" question. If we do manage to do ourselves in, it will likely not be with a whimper. A good nuclear holocaust, for example, might just turn our entire world into a floating asteroid.

But in fairness to Mr. Weisman, he suggests that some positive changes might result even if humanity didn't completely disappear. The catch, however, is that we'd have to make some drastic changes in both our behavior and, yes, in our population. Weisman believes we would have to reduce our population by 2100 to where it was in the 19th century, less than 2 billion people. How do we begin?

The Poor Rich

The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently wrote an article about his government payment of $588 a year for not farming some land he owns in Oregon. The article is not about his small payment but about the American farm subsidy program, which is more often than not corporate welfare for agribusiness.

Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group, said a few months ago that, "America's farm subsidy system is broken." This has been stated before but up until recently the average person would have had difficulty gathering information on these programs. They were shrouded in mystery and unclear as to what the rationale might be for passing out taxpayer money.

Something like two-thirds of U.S. farmers do not receive any subsidy payments. Farm program benefits have been highly concentrated and have often not rewarded land stewardship and improving the environment. But now there is a web site called MULCH.

You can find out what your congressional representatives are doing in terms of approving farm subsidies and who is receiving them. It's a step in asking some basic questions like why or why not are we subsidizing certain commodities, why or why not are certain farmers (or pseudo-farmers) receive payments, and what is the "nonpolitical" reason(s) for making the decision.

At its worst the billions spent on the farm subsidy program are the kind of welfare capitalism that America increasingly can no longer afford. It's in our self-interest in knowing who is doing what and for whom, especially in terms of food and the land it is grown on.

A Proposal Modest

Would they actually buy and sell it if it were on the market? How would you react if you were told that global warming will cause the death of untold numbers of people, but there was a way to utilize all the corpses by making a new Exxon oil product? What better idea than transforming dead people into oil and calling the new product Vinoleum. Is this not another brilliant example of the market-economy at its best?

Two individuals posing as representatives of Exxon-Mobil and the National Petroleum Council were the keynote speakers at a conference in Calgary, Alberta, where they introduced their "new" product. The attendees listened politely until the two imposters passed out "commemorative candles" to the audience. The candles were supposedly made from the flesh of an Exxon janitor, who had died as a result of cleaning up a toxic spill.

If you like guerrilla theater, you'll love The Yes Men But what might it say about us? How easy is it to get us to suspend disbelief under the right circumstances? Of course Exxon over the years has spent millions of dollars supporting various front groups that called global warming a hoax.

If our capacity to imagine doesn't go much beyond the exploitation of Alberta's oil sands and the development of liquid coal, a worldwide environmental disaster will likely increase significantly. Perhaps we could chat with Lee Raymond, the former CEO of Exxon and now the head of the National Petroleum Council.

Hm-m. But just possibly Mr. Raymond would be willing to volunteer himself for the betterment of humanity ... and he is a large man. Would he be a good test case for VINOLEUM?

Making Smarter Love

We don't choose to talk about it in the industrialized world when listing all the individual to-do things for the environment, like changing to CFL lighting or turning up the A/C a couple of degrees. Governments don't talk about it when debating cap-and-trade schemes, carbon taxes, and renewable energy, all directed toward reducing greenhouse gases, global warming and lessening the negative impact of climate change.

In the poorest nations on the planet it's frequently considered a meaningless abstraction--and distraction--from the "real" problems. Occasionally it rears its unwanted head and then disappears just as quickly. The lurking monster in the room is of course human population increase.

According to Population Connection, some 13 million additional humans will appear on planet Earth from July 1 of this year to early September. Depending on United Nations' population projections in 2006, we could go from the current 6.5 billion people to a low of 7.8 billion or as high as 10.8 billion by 2050. Only the most naive, blind or willfully ignorant (a vast number) will continue to harbor the delusion that the pressures on our finite natural resources will not be enormous, with a greater number of people chasing after those shrinking resources, from water to fertile land to a secure place to live.

A number of scientists and economists believe that even if we were actually committed enough worldwide to cut carbon emissions 40% by 2050, a 40% increase in human population (to 9.1 billion) would likely cancel out the corresponding CO2 reductions.

There have been projections that suggest our planet could sustain a population as high as 12 billion people. Of course these forecasts point out that some drastic changes are required in how we humans think and live, as well as some striking technological breakthroughs not yet discovered. We ought not to hold our breath for the 'reptilian" brain to wither away anytime soon.

Population pressure is not going away just because we don't want to bring it into climate change discussions. We are the one species that needs to talk about it openly and consistently and demonstrate some intestinal fortitude by doing so.

Disposable Disposition

"Somewhere west of Laramie there's a broncho-busting, steer-roping girl who knows what I'm talking about." This is the first sentence of the now famous 173-word advertisement for the Jordan Motor Car Company that appeared in the 1920's The age of modern advertising began in this decade.

By 1925 seventy percent of the total income for magazines and newspapers came from ad revenue. Ad agencies with their well-paid specialists opened up offices on Madison Avenue in New York. Mass marketing had arrived. Anything could be sold to the public these modern day alchemists told their clients, and they were mostly right.

Some 78 years after the American stock market crashed in 1929 ending the Roaring Twenties, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, we Americans are number one in the world in terms of the amount of garbage and rubbish we produce. The average American manages to create about 4.5 pounds per day. Our closest competitor, Canada, generates around 3.75 pounds of trash daily.

The typical American today is exposed to about 3,000 advertising messages a day. Worldwide, global corporations spend more than $600 billion a year to advertise.

The United States has become the quintessential land of hyper-consumption, planned obsolescence, disposable "stuff" and, yes, credit card debt. E-waste (computers, televisions, copy machines, etc.) is now the fastest growing portion of our disposable world. Much of this discarded equipment, containing lead and numerous toxic chemicals, is shipped to developing nations, where it is stripped down, usually by people that have no idea of the kinds of risks they and their children may be exposed to.

We are, however, according to The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, no longer the leading producer in the world of carbon dioxide, the most pervasive greenhouse gas and contributor to global warming. China surpassed us in 2006 in the amount of annual CO2 emissions released into the atmosphere.

China's economy is growing rapidly and, of the more than 1 billion inhabitants, it's estimated that approximately 300 million are aspiring members of China's newly expanding "middle class." At least another one billion people in the developing world are right behind China; they as well are determined to acquire the disposable life. "I want to be like Mike," as the Nike commercial once proclaimed proudly throughout the world.

Bada Bada Bing

The Sopranos, America's fictional, dysfunctional family, finally faded into the sunset Sunday night. But I woke up this morning to learn once again that real dysfunction is alive and well in the U.S.A. and healthier than ever.

The latest Gallup Poll pointed out that the majority of people surveyed, some 1,007 adults, believed that "both" are likely explanations when the question was asked whether we humans are a result of God's creation or evolution over millions of years. Yes, those that subscribe to the creationism theory believe we arrived in our present form within the last 10,000 years--the beginning of the Neolithic period as scientists often refer to the time period.

Not surprisingly, 68% of people that call themselves Republicans don't believe in evolution. Unfortunately, however, 37% of Independents and 40% of Democrats do not believe in evolution, not insignificant minorities.

I liked the ending of The Sopranos because, while offering some possibilities, we weren't absolutely certain what would happen to Tony and his family, sort of like how the world really works. We can speculate. Are you inclined to be optimistic or pessimistic?