Download Tiger Newsletter Vol. 1 November 21, 2011

Tiger Newsletter
Vol. 1
November 21, 2011
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Overfishing Could Take Seafood Off the Menu by 2048
By David Biello
Half the Amazon Rainforest to be Lost by 2030
(NaturalNews) Due to the effects of global warming and deforestation, more
than half of the Amazon rainforest may be destroyed or severely damaged by
the year 2030, according to a report released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
The report, "Amazon's Vicious Cycles: Drought and Fire," concludes that 55
percent of the world's largest rainforest stands to be severely damaged from
agriculture, drought, fire, logging and livestock ranching in the next 22 years.
Another 4 percent may be damaged by reduced rainfall caused by global
warming. This is anticipated to destroy up to 80 percent of wildlife habitat in the
region.
By 2100, the report adds, global warming may cause rainfall in the Amazon to
drop by 20 percent and temperatures to increase by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6
degrees Fahrenheit). This combination will increase the occurrence of forest
fires, further accelerating the pace of deforestation.
The Amazon contains more than half of the planet's surviving rainforest and is a
key stabilizer of global climate. The report notes that losing 60 percent of it
would accelerate the pace of global warming, affecting rainfall as far away as
India.
WWF warned that the "point of no return" for the Amazon rainforest, from
which ecological recovery will be impossible, is only 15-25 years in the future,
much sooner than has previously been supposed.
"The Amazon is on a knife-edge," said WWF-UK forests head Beatrix Richards,
"due to the dual threats of deforestation and climate change."
She called for the countries discussing global climate change at an international
conference in Bali to take the importance of forests into account.
"At the international negotiations currently underway in Bali, governments must
agree a process which results in ambitious global emission reduction targets
beyond the current phase of Kyoto," she said. "Crucially, this must include a
strategy to reduce emissions from forests and help break the cycle of
deforestation."
Learn more:
http://www.naturalnews.com/023673_Amazon_rainforest.html#ixzz1eMbCyyuU
Image: © STEPHEN MCGOWAN/MARINE PHOTOBANK
In 1994, seafood may have peaked. According to an analysis of 64 large marine
ecosystems, which provide 83 percent of the world's seafood catch, global
fishing yields have declined by 10.6 million metric tons since that year. And if
that trend is not reversed, total collapse of all world fisheries should hit around
2048. "Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the oceans
species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of
wild seafood," notes marine biologist Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University.
Marine biologist Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia,
gathered a team of 14 ecologists and economists, including Palumbi, to analyze
global trends in fisheries. In addition to data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization stretching back to 1950, the researchers examined 32 controlled
experiments in various marine ecosystems, observations from 48 marine
protected areas, and historical data on 12 coastal fisheries for the last 1,000
years. The latter study shows that among commercially important species alone,
91 percent have seen their abundance halved, 38 percent have nearly
disappeared and 7 percent have gone extinct with most of this reduction
happening since 1800. "We see an accelerating decline in coastal species over
the last 1,000 years, resulting in the loss of biological filter capacity, nursery
habitats and healthy fisheries," notes team member Heike Latze, also of
Dalhousie.
And across all scales, from very small controlled studies of marine plots to those
of entire ocean basins, maintaining biodiversity--the number of extant species
across all forms of marine life--appeared key to preserving fisheries, water
filtering and other so-called ecosystem services, though the correlation is not
entirely clear. "Species are important not only for providing direct benefits in
terms of fisheries but also providing natural infrastructure that supports
fisheries," explains team member Emmett Duffy of the Virginia Institute of
Marine Sciences. "Even the bugs and weeds make clear, measurable
contributions to productive ecosystems."
Although the trend is grim, the study of protected areas offers some hope that
marine ecosystems can rebound, according to the paper presenting the analysis
in the November 3 issue of Science. The 48 studied showed an overall increase of
23 percent in species diversity and a fourfold increase in available catch. "It's not
a miracle. It's something that is do-able, it's just something that requires a big
chunk of political will to do it," Worm observes. "We have a 1,000-, probably
10,000-year habit of taking the oceans for granted and moving from one species
to the next, or replacing it with a technological fix like aquaculture. To me, the
major roadblock is we have to change our perception of what the ocean is."
Should we fail, we may lose the ocean's bounty entirely.
Going Green but Getting Nowhere
By GERNOT WAGNER
Published: September 7, 2011
Bad news/good news: Land-use change in the era of globalization
February 18, 2011
A central challenge facing the planet is how to preserve forests
while providing enough food to feed the world's population. It's
really a "bad news/good news" story, says Eric Lambin, professor of
environmental Earth system science and senior fellow at the Woods
Institute for the Environment at Stanford; and professor of
geography at the University of Louvain.
YOU reduce, reuse and recycle. You turn down plastic and paper. You avoid out-of-season
grapes. You do all the right things.
Good.
Just know that it won’t save the tuna, protect the rain forest or stop global warming. The
changes necessary are so large and profound that they are beyond the reach of individual
action. You refuse the plastic bag at the register, believing this one gesture somehow
makes a difference, and then carry your takeout meal back to your car for a carbonemitting trip home.
Say you’re willing to make real sacrifices. Sell your car. Forsake your air-conditioner in the
summer, turn down the heat in the winter. Try to become no-impact man. You would, in
fact, have no impact on the planet. Americans would continue to emit an average of 20
tons of carbon dioxide a year; Europeans, about 10 tons.
What about going bigger? You are the pope with a billion followers, and let’s say all of
them take your advice to heart. If all Catholics decreased their emissions to zero overnight,
the planet would surely notice, but pollution would still be rising. Of course, a billion
people, whether they’re Catholic or adherents of any other religion or creed, will do no
such thing. Two weeks of silence in a Buddhist yoga retreat in the Himalayas with your
BlackBerry checked at the door? Sure. An entire life voluntarily lived off the grid? No
thanks.
And that focuses only on those who can decrease their emissions. When your average is 20
tons per year, going down to 18 tons is as easy as taking a staycation. But if you are among
the four billion on the planet who each emit one ton a year, you have nowhere to go but
up.
Leading scientific groups and most climate scientists say we need to decrease global
annual greenhouse gas emissions by at least half of current levels by 2050 and much
further by the end of the century. And that will still mean rising temperatures and sea
levels for generations.
So why bother recycling or riding your bike to the store? Because we all want to do
something, anything. Call it “action bias.” But, sadly, individual action does not work. It
distracts us from the need for collective action, and it doesn’t add up to enough. Selfinterest, not self-sacrifice, is what induces noticeable change. Only the right economic
policies will enable us as individuals to be guided by self-interest and still do the right thing
for the planet.
Every ton of carbon dioxide pollution causes around $20 of damage to economies,
ecosystems and human health. That sum times 20 implies $400 worth of damage per
American per year. That’s not damage you’re going to do in the distant future; that’s
damage each of cost. That knowledge leads some of us to voluntarily chip us is doing right
now. Who pays for it?
We pay as a society. My cross-country flight adds fractions of a penny to everyone else’s in
a few bucks to “offset” our emissions. But none of these payments motivate anyone to fly
less. It doesn’t lead airlines to switch to more fuel-efficient planes or routes. If anything,
airlines by now use voluntary offsets as a marketing ploy to make green-conscious
passengers feel better. The result is planetary socialism at its worst: we all pay the price
because individuals don’t.
It won’t change until a regulatory system compels us to pay our fair share to limit
pollution accordingly. Limit, of course, is code for “cap and trade,” the system that helped
phase out lead in gasoline in the 1980s, slashed acid rain pollution in the 1990s and is now
bringing entire fisheries back from the brink. “Cap and trade” for carbon is beginning to
decrease carbon pollution in Europe, and similar models are slated to do the same from
California to China.
Alas, this approach has been declared dead in Washington, ironically by self-styled freemarketers. Another solution, a carbon tax, is also off the table because, well, it’s a tax.
Never mind that markets are truly free only when everyone pays the full price for his or
her actions. Anything else is socialism. The reality is that we cannot overcome the global
threats posed by greenhouse gases without speaking the ultimate inconvenient truth:
getting people excited about making individual environmental sacrifices is doomed to fail.
High school science tells us that global warming is real. And economics teaches us that
humanity must have the right incentives if it is to stop this terrible trend.
Don’t stop recycling. Don’t stop buying local. But add mastering some basic economics to
your to-do list. Our future will be largely determined by our ability to admit the need to
end planetary socialism. That’s the most fundamental of economics lessons and one any
serious environmentalist ought to heed.
Gernot Wagner is an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund and the author of
the forthcoming “But Will the Planet Notice?”
The bad news: The world might run out of productive agricultural
land by 2050, thanks to rising global demand for food, biofuels, and
forest products, along with land degradation and urbanization. The
good news: A handful of developing countries – including Vietnam,
India and Costa Rica – have actually increased their forest cover in
recent decades while enhancing food production. The success of
these countries suggests that innovation, sound land-use policy and
good governance can actually prevent hunger and restore forestland,
even in an era of economic globalization.
Lambin's findings will be presented on Friday, Feb. 18, at the
symposium, "Telecoupling of Human and Natural Systems," at the
annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS) at the Washington Convention Center, Room 140B.
His AAAS talk, "Land-use changes in a globalization era," comes on
the heels of his study, "Global land-use change, economic
globalization and the looming land scarcity," published the week of
Feb. 14 in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
Provided by Stanford University