Mongabay Blog

A guest blog by Danny Bloom



In the fight against global warming, no matter what side of the aisle one is coming from, leftwing or rightwing or right down the center — or even, in some cases, outright denial that man-made global warming exists at all — the words and slogans used by activists and campaigners can have a powerful impact on the debate, not only swaying minds but also changing the ways that people live their lives, carbon footprint at all.



Recently, there was a news item on the Internet with a headline that went like this:



“Five keys to a safe-climate future”



http://www.carbonequity.info/climatecodered/5keys.html



When a blogger in Taiwan read that headline and saw for the first time the phrase “safe-climate future”, his eyes did not glaze over, quite the contrary. He woke up from the normal quiet buzz in the email cafe where he was surfing the Internet that day and realized that the using the two words together, with a hyphen connecting them — “safe-climate” — had a very good ring to it, and was immediately recognizable and understandable due to earlier coinage of “safe-sex” practices among activists fighting other battles.



If “safe-sex”, which had a particular ring to it after being popularized in English around the world, could have an impact, then perhaps “safe-climate” could also play a role in the debate over climate change and global warming, the blogger in Taiwan thought to himself as fellow denizens of the email cafe continued playing a variety of noisy “computer games” on the Internet all over the cavernous room. Yes, he thought, this term, whoever coined it, has come up with a very good concept, and it could be applied to other topics in the global warming debate — for example, one could speak of “safe-climate lifestyles” and “safe-climate education” and “safe-climate ideas,” in addition to talking about a “safe-climate future”.



According to sources, a green activist in the USA first coined the “safe-climate future” wording when he wrote the headline for the article about the Code Red report linked to above. From there, the phrase spread around the Internet, via blogs and comments and news websites, and a new phrase was born. So whether we are talking about a safe-climate future or practicing a safe-climate lifestyle, the new coinage has great possibilities of rallyng people around the vital issues of the day and inspiring them to lead more safe-climate lifestyles themselves.



The phrase seems like a good wake-up call, using language as a tool. When asked about this idea, comments on the blogosphere ranged from “inspired” to “important”. Of course, there were also some naysayers, there are always people who don’t cotton to a new word or phrase when they first encounter it and shy way from wanting to use it when it seems so strange to them at first. Later, they might come around. Or later, they may still not like the new coinage. That’s okay. If the words or phrases are useful, they will be used. If they are not useful or inspiring, they will fall by the wayside.



But talking about a safe-climate future and leading safe-climate lifestyles seems to make sense in this day and age. Here are what some people said in comments:



“I think it’s a good PR phrase. The article says that now ‘radical’ responses from activists are required. I don’t know what to do ‘radically’, but anything that helps, such as promoting a ’safe-climate’ consciousness, lifestyle, future, surely has to help. It’s a good phrase.”



“Go, go, go! ”Safe-climate future or safe-climate lifestyles” sounds like a great idea. Good framing.”



“I Like the term a lot! — Catchy.”



“It’s simple, succinct and catchy. It’s an idea that most people can easily grasp. So it seems good.”



“Tha is an awesome term, safe-climate, and yes, we should get it used! In the media and in the blogosphere. Who coined it?”



“I too have been looking for a phrase to embody this idea. I’ve seen a couple — such as “climate preservation” — but nothing that sounds as good to me as “safe-climate lifestyle”.

“That sounds good. We need catchy phrases like that to get people thinking. And it doesn’t sound ego-threatening or scare-mongering.”



“The ways of language are mysterious, and impossible to predict. But there’s no doubt that the new reality of the 21st century calls for such a phrase as “safe-climate lifestyle or safe-climate future, and that phrase is definitely a good contender — perhaps in time it will come to be known as the phrase that saved the climate!”



So a new phrase has been born, thanks to one activist’s creativity and inspiration. If the word term catches on with media people at newspapers and on TV and radio, in addition to people blogging day and night about climate issues, it might have a long shelf life and be an important addition not only to our vocabulary, which is always evolving, but also the fight against global warming itself, as a means to help raise public awareness and concious.

I’m not a regular blogger, even on my own blogs, as I use them mostly as files to store articles and file ideas away for future reference, so I thank this website for giving me a chance to be one of the guest bloggers here.

I want to say a few things about a year-long campaing I’ve been conducting on the Internet to help raise awareness of global warming issues using some visual images of so-called “polar cities” (where survivors of future global warming events are imagined to find refuge in). The entire project is basically a public relations campaign aimed at making those people who are still not aware of global warming a bit more aware of it, if only for a day or two, until the polar cities images fade and they go on with their daily lives, once again oblivious to the dangers that might lie ahead for all of humankind. The dangers? You know what I am talking about. I would think that most people are aware of global warming and the danger it poses for the future of civilization on planet Earth. But apparently, there are quite a few people, here and there, who still don’t get it, or aren’t paying attention, or are in deep denial. Whatever.

So, to make a long story short: I created the polar cities project as a PR campaign to help do my small part in helping to raise public awareness worldwide. Not a huge effort, not a big stamp; just a one-man blogging band using the Internet to spread the message that global warming is for real and we need to try to tackle it. I don’t have an agenda, political or scientific, but like many other people, I think we need to face the issue climate change head on. I read green blogs every day to check on the issues (and also am a regular reader of Dot Earth over at the New York Times).

I want to emphasize that in my project, I am not saying we will ever need polar cities for survivors of global warming in the far distant future. I hope we never need them, and it’s hard to conceive of a world where they would be needed. Right? Right.

But I asked an artist who lives in my neighborhood in Taiwan to make some computer-generated images of what a polar city might look like, and the operative word here is “might”. Deng Cheng-hong, who runs a small sign shop near by home, came up with a series of amazing images. They are from his own imagination. I asked him to make the images for me, I paid him for his work, and I suggested a rough sketch of what a polar city might look like. But the artwork is all his own, from an artist’s point of view.

The images are a visual wake-up call, I like to think. In what way? If we don’t sit down and tackle global warming, then the future might be very very problematical. That’s all my PR campaign is trying to say — using a scary visual image to help wake people up. Not those reading this blog today: you already know the score. But for those people in the world who still think the Earth is flat (and by that I mean “that global warming is hoax”), my PR campaign is for them.

Read my new press here and see more of the images here. Comments and feedback are very welcome, because I learn so much each time readers give me feedback, pro or con. This is an ongoing project, unfunded, my time, my dime.

Take a look.

= = = = = = = = =

Green blogger uses “polar cities” as educational tool to raise public awareness about global warming issues

NEW YORK — A lone blogger in Taiwan is using the Internet in a novel way to help raise awareness about global warming.

Green media activist Danny Bloom doesn’t believe humans will ever have to live in so-called “polar cities” (a term he coined in 2006), but he is using a series of computer-generated blueprints of a polar city as an educational tool to help raise help public awareness about the climate crisis.

Created by Taiwanese artist Cheng-hong Deng, the polar city images have appeared on hundreds of websites and blogs around the world — in English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French and Chinese, Bloom, a 1971 gradute of Tufts University in Boston, says.

The 58-year-old green activist says he is using the Internet in a novel way to get his message across.

The message? “If we don’t actively tackle the very serious problems that confront the world now, in terms of global warming, then there is a possibility that future generations might have to take refuge in such polar cities. I never want to see these polar cities become reality. So the images Deng has created for my project are meant to be a warning about global warming.”

Bloom says he has shown the images to internationally-acclaimed climate scientist James Lovelock in Britain, who is known for his pessimism and doomsaying about global warming. Lovelock told Bloom by email: “It may very well happen and soon.”

“I hope polar cities are never needed for survivors of global warming in the far distant future,” Bloom says. “These images are meant to be a wake-up call for those who are still sleepwalking through the climate crisis.”

Bloom emphasizes that he has no agenda, political or scientific, in terms of solutions to global warming, and says that he just wants to participate in the global discussion about climate change in his own personal way. “I am just using Deng’s images to sound the alarm, a visual alarm.”

He says that his Internet campaign, which began a year ago with a letter to the editor of several newspapers in North America and Europe, has had the result he is looking for.

A young blogger in Tahiti saw the images, blogged about them in French, and said that while he found the polar city blueprints to be fascinating, they made him just want to work harder in his daily life “to help fight the climate crisis so that the worst case scenarios never happen.”

POLAR CITIES BLUEPRINTS CAN BE SEEN HERE, at the newly opned “James E Lovelock Virtual Museum of Polar Cities”: http://pcillu101.blogspot.com

EMAIL: danbloom (GMAIL)

Mark Bittman, of the popular How to Cook Everything books, has written an excellent article on the environmental costs of eating meat, especially in the amounts that the average American consumes.  Oh, and he’s not a vegetarian. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

Some excerpts:

“Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total.

“Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

“To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.”

It seems everyday there are more studies and reports coming out on the impacts of climate change–now and in the future (at mongabay we see A LOT of them).  Yet, rarely do these studies make it to mainstream new sources.  Either, the media is still run by science-skeptics or the newspapers, news shows, and online media sources actually believe that Brittany Spears’ latest cry for help, Clinton’s (take your pick: Hilary’s or Bill’s) latest remark on race, or the newest electronic gadget is somehow more important than massive shifting of earth’s temperature, causing desertification, species extinction, ocean warming, new migration patterns, flooding, increased intensity of storms, increased unpredictability of weather, changes in agriculture, and the beginning of struggles over dwindling resources, namely water. 

The newest proof of American media’s unwillingness to accept the seriousness of climate change is the presidential primaries, which have received such a glut of coverage that I actually know how much the candidates have spent on haircuts (unwillingly).  Yesterday, both Moveon.org and the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) reported that in the primary debates  only three questions out of  2,500 have been related to climate change.  A letter from NRDC states: “they have spent more time talking about baseball, UFOs, and Chuck Norris than they have about global warming”. 

While this is patently ridiculous and gross negligence on the part of the news organizations and their top-brass anchors, it’s not all that surprising.  Global warming is a serious issue, arguably the most serious issue in our world today, and arguably one of the most serious issues human beings–as a species and a civilization–have ever faced, but sometimes America has difficulty with serious issues: we’re after all the culture of video games, reality TV, and our stupidest videos.  In general, we prefer distraction and entertainment to serious debate and thought.  For presidental debates baseball, UFOs, and Chuck Norris are much lighter (distracting and entertaining) fare than a global ecosystem undergoing massive change (although I wonder how the candidate’s policies differ regarding baseball, UFOs, and Chuck Norris).

I do not mean this to imply hopelessness.  I have hope that the next president will be serious about global warming.  I have hope our consumeristic, distracted culture can change in time.  I have hope the next generation may possess the skills to take real time on serious issues (and not just climate change).  I have a lot of hope.  I just wish–sometimes–the America of today could buoy that hope just a little, rather than tying stone after stone to it.    

Yesterday the New York Times printed an enlightening article on the massive illegal seafood trade in Europe.   It may be time for a moratorium on eating seafood altogether…

The article can be accessed here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/world/europe/15fish.html?scp=2&sq=fish+europe

 An excerpt (by Elizabeth Rosenthal):

“Fish is now the most traded animal commodity on the planet, with about 100 million tons of wild and farmed fish sold each year. Europe has suddenly become the world’s largest market for fish, worth more than 14 billion euros, or about $22 billion a year. Europe’s appetite has grown as its native fish stocks have shrunk so that Europe now needs to import 60 percent of fish sold in the region, according to the European Union.

“In Europe, the imbalance between supply and demand has led to a thriving illegal trade. Some 50 percent of the fish sold in the European Union originates in developing nations, and much of it is laundered like contraband, caught and shipped illegally beyond the limits of government quotas or treaties. The smuggling operation is well financed and sophisticated, carried out by large-scale mechanized fishing fleets able to sweep up more fish than ever, chasing threatened stocks from ocean to ocean.

“The European Commission estimates that more than 1.1 billion euros in illegal seafood, or $1.6 billion worth, enters Europe each year. The World Wide Fund for Nature contends that up to half the fish sold in Europe are illegally caught or imported. While some of the so-called “pirate fishing” is carried out by non-Western vessels far afield, European ships are also guilty, some of them operating close to home. An estimated 40 percent of cod caught in the Baltic Sea are illegal, said Mireille Thom, a spokeswoman for Joe Borg, the European Union’s commissioner of fisheries and maritime affairs. “

Currently, in the Antarctic seas, Greenpeace’s ship Esperanza is chasing Japan’s whaling fleet.  Japan plans to take 900 minke whales and 50 fin whales for what they claim is scientific study, yet the whale’s final destination is Japanese restaurants and markets. 

Greenpeace believes in non-violent protest.  By chasing the whaling fleet the organization is attempting to interrupt the hunt–the Japanese cannot hunt when on the move–but not to damage the fleet.  Another environmental organization, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, is also pursuing the fleet, but has selected a more ‘action-oriented’ role, including in the past sinking and ramming ships, though no lives have been recorded as lost due to their actions. 

In the past century non-violent protests have proven, at times, remarkably successful.  The practice was first put in use by Gandhi (but what inspired by everything from Hinduism and Buddhism to Leo Tolstoy), then later by Martin Luther King and the People Power revolution in the Philipines.  Non-violence has been a way for people without traditional means of power–wealth, status, and/or weaponry–to create powerful change.  It is also a largely held moral and spiritual belief; those who practice non-violence believe that violent action is never acceptable and in the end solves nothing, but only begets more violence.  Non-violence may mean non-cooperation with the powers-that-be, it may mean peaceful protests and marches, or direct intervention without violence–this is what Greenpeace is doing by interfering with the Japanese whale hunt without attacking the ships or crew involved.  Non-violence also means that if one should meet violence they should do so without re-acting: turn the other cheek.  Non-violent philosophy is vast and its practitioners diverse: this is only meant as a quick sketch of the philosophy.  

Greenpeace has used non-violence from the beginning of its inception: attempting to save whales (and bringing their plight to the media) and other species, as well as preventing toxins from being dumped into the ocean etc.  Their actions have made them heroes to some, and extremists to others.  Japan has labeled them as ‘environmental terrorists’: a hyperbole if ever there was one.   

I applaud Greenpeace’s actions and its commitment to non-violence.  While the organization is not perfect, and has made mistakes in the past, it serves as a reminder of the power of non-violence to wake people up to injustice.  The difficulty that Greenpeace faces, of course, is that the injustice in not human-to-human, but human to another species and a larger ecosystem.  This requires a leap in ethical views.  Do whales have rights? And if so what are they?  Should ecosystems have rights to protect them from ourselves?  These are questions that require addressing throughout our societies.  Can we really expect to preserve any natural part of our global, to conquer such issues as global warming and mass extinction, if rights stop at homo sapiens and do not extend to the water we drink, the forests that take in the carbon and keep our riverways clean, the innumerable species that share our planet.   

As for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, while I understand their frustrations and agree with their mission, I do not believe in their means.  Although they have yet to murder any person, their declaration of ‘any means necessary’ (including gloating about sinking ships), not to mention their grotesque use of a Pirate skull on their flag, only harms the cause of environmentalism and protecting species.  By taking the low road, they are proving themselves not dissimilar in means from the corporate and governmental forces they oppose.  

Personally, I believe that non-violence should play a larger role in the environmental movement.  Imagine: sit-ins for endangered species, marches on Washington for sustainable energy, boycotts against unsustainable fishing practices, protests against the coal and gas industries.  By doing so organizations and individuals risk being labeled as extremists (or even terrorists).  They risk being told that they care more about other species than their own, but more and more it appears that our species is just as dependent on the health of the global environment as any other species.    Secondly, can we really reasonably argue anymore that the one species is master of the earth, while all others proves slaves to our whims?  Does human-power make human’s right? 

It appears to me that for the average citizen–who believes passionately in these issues–non-violence may be one of the best ways to affect change, whether it is changing the situation or changing minds.  At the same time, one must attempt actions that are not easily disregarded as extremist and wacko (remember being called ‘green’ used to be a dirty word).  One guy chaining himself to a tree is fodder for mockery and cynicism, a thousand people surrounding a grove marked off for another box store may not appear so nutso.  A million people marching for action on global warming in Washington may just make history. 

Things are changing.  The green movement is no longer only on the fringes.  Perhaps, now is the time for other NGOs (or individual leaders) to look to Gandhi for inspiration.  If the practice of non-violence enmasse can overthrow an empire, perhaps it can also change the way we view our world.    

Previously, we wrote “the land dictates the rules, and rural communities are the gatekeepers” [The Jakarta Post, December 2007] regarding how should the nascent forestry ecological service market develop. Essentially, this equates “avoided deforestation” best practices with best practices in natural resources management.

To explain further, a successful avoided deforestation project is a subset of land use, land use change, and forestry. What this means on the ground is that land use, land use change, and forestry can primarily fund avoided deforestation projects along with possible secondary carbon financing. This removes the responsibility of the carbon markets for being the primary source of funds for these large scale transactions. Furthermore, this integrative management technique relays less on new possible developments in on the sub-national, national, and international level as current avoided deforestation management policy driven tools originating from Bali.

Yet, what I have observed in my survey of project developers internationally are the following:

A.      Linear thinking and arrogance by participants will cause project failure.

B.      Inability of ex-pats to understand / participate in local culture.

C.      Inability of locals to bridge societal levels.

D.      Inability of all participants to communicate effectively.

Let me explain. Linear thinking dominates the logic expressed by project developers in the market place today. We have few market participants who are willing to understand how there may be causality and correlation between local nutrition levels and clean water and deforestation. In fact, local communities if they have access to improved nutrition and cleaner water will in plain English “have more to live for” and may “express greater interest in engaging with the sustainable management of their local resources”. I have been told of two projects, both anonymous, where a policy decision coupled with protection of a threatened forest have caused either starvation or malnutrition. These projects are geographically dispersed on two continents.

Next, ex-pats are often times not willing to engage local communities culturally. An anonymous source described unintentionally how little she knew about the local community she was working in when she mentioned that she hadn’t spent an evening communicating with locals on the ground in their village in an informal fashion. The key for project success is trust and confidence garnered by you the project developer through interaction with your local community. This in many cases will not occur in formal meetings since many communities simply want us as project developers to leave as soon as possible without minimal disturbance.

Yet, I have also experienced local individuals’ lack of ability to bridge societal levels. Many local individuals I have spoken to always assume poverty as a rationale for not wanting to engage with their fellow citizens. If your local connection is uncomfortable talking to all members of her community, you may be in for a surprise once the project begins. It the ability of your local project developer counterpart to successfully and effectively communicate with individuals within their society that may decrease qualitatively and quantitatively decrease your risk.

Finally, I have generally noticed a lack of project participants globally to effectively communicate with the individuals that they most need to communicate with. An anonymous project developer I know lost their contract because they couldn’t relate emotionally to their funder’s passion for forest protection and sustainability. These two counterparties clearly communicated regarding technical concerns about GHG and carbon accounting and project scope. Yet, the contract was lost because they didn’t communicate emotionally with their client. This specifically means that by relying too much upon a contract to define a relationship the firm missed the point. We are developing a new market and we have a tremendous amount to learn from each other ­– and this requires sincerity, credibility, and trust.

Gabriel Thoumi is a Masters Fellow at the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan in conjunction with the Ross School of Business and the School of Natural Resources and Environment. He can be reached at thoumi@umich.edu.

The Woodlark islanders struggle to stop Vitroplant Ltd from logging seventy percent of their island for palm oil plantations has received new attention from organizations and media. 

The online organization forests.org has set up an action letter which anyone concerned by the issue may attach their name to have their opinion sent to 12 administrators involved.   Over two thousand people from all over the world have sent protests for Vitroplant Ltd.’s plans.  The link to the letter:

http://www.rainforestportal.org/alerts/send.asp?id=png_woodlark

 These protests have been covered by media in the pacific:

 http://www.mvariety.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=4740&format=html

http://www.rnzi.com/pages/news.php?op=read&id=37298

As well a recent (and excellent) article has appeared in Pacific Magazine updating the situation:

 http://www.pacificmagazine.net/news/2007/12/30/scientists-to-study-island-thats-site-of-proposed-palm-estate

A study suggests that France was once covered with tropical vegetation, reports LiveScience.

Writing in the Jan. 4 issue of The Journal of Organic Chemistry, researchers report “the discovery of a new organic compound in amber called “quesnoin,” whose precursor exists only in sap produced by a tree currently growing only in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.”

The researchers say the amber likely dripped from a similar tree that once covered France millions of years before the continents drifted into their current positions.

LiveScience

In a New York Times editorial published January 2, Jared Diamond examines the large discrepancy between consumption in first world countries versus developing countries: citizens of the rich world consume an average of 32 times the resources as those in poor countries.

The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.

The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that’s a big problem. Yes, it is a problem for Kenya’s more than 30 million people, but it’s not a burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does.

Diamond observes that as poor countries try to catch up with the rich world, resource consumption and resulting pollution will soar.

Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below ours, but let’s suppose they rise to our level… China’s catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent.

If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates would triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned
to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates).

What’s Your Consumption Factor?