Prevention - Mitigation - Adaptation

SUBHEAD: "Resilience" is the 2012 Word of the Year, but the pursuit of resilience can be seen as the equivalent of throwing in the towel.

By David Bergman on 31 December 2012 for EcoOptimist -
(http://ecooptimism.com/?p=552)


Image above: “Oyster-tecture” reefs  as "mitigation" proposed by Scape/Landscape Architecture for storm surge protection in NY harbor. From original article.

Even before Hurricane Sandy, the word ‘resilience’ was on its way to becoming a meme. Then, when a “natural disaster” struck the political and financial powers of New York City – along with countless others – the idea started to take on some urgency.

Ironically, urgency is not a typical approach to resilience. The idea of resilience, in short, is to have the ability to survive and bounce back from “bad things,” whether they be natural or man-made. The reason urgency often doesn’t apply is that, as many have observed, we humans are not well equipped to plan for future possibilities. Especially ones that seem less than imminent or less likely to affect you personally.

Sandy both proved the immediacy of a formerly more or less theoretical threat and showed that it can bring a major American city to its knees. (Katrina’s hit on New Orleans should have accomplished that, but it didn’t, perhaps because NOLA has long lived with the possibility of flooding or because Wall Street is not in New Orleans.) Enough so that resilience is now even a US Senate topic in the form of the STRONG (Strengthening the Resiliency of Our Nation on the Ground) Act introduced post-Sandy by senators from NY, NJ and Massachusetts.

Increasing resilience has long been a reaction to natural disasters such as earthquakes. Building codes are updated; procedures for the aftermath are put in place (though never adequate for a worse-than-the-previous event). They tend, though, to lose out to complacency. In some of the areas devastated by the tsunami that hit Japan, there were century-old stone markers placed after a previous tsunami warning people not to build closer to the shore. But when no tsunamis occurred for a while, the stones were ignored and forgotten. Resilience itself may not be resilient, at least not to the effects of time.

Hurricane Sandy-type disasters are not likely to fade with time. Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanos and the like generally don’t have patterns to their frequency or scale. And it used to be that climate disasters like drought or flooding didn’t either. But where the former are truly natural – “acts of God” – we can no longer say the same is true of the latter.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not claiming that Sandy or the Midwest drought wouldn’t have occurred were it not for our environmental “sins.” (Hmm, there must be a religion somewhere that believes these events were indeed acts of God in response to those sins.) But without several anthropocenic multipliers, their effects would certainly have been less. And as there is no foreseeable diminishment of those influences (CO2 levels are not falling, marshes and mangroves are not being re-established, shore development is not abating), it’s apparent that, unlike truly natural disasters, the frequency and scale of climate-related disasters will only escalate.

Which brings us back to resilience and the question of how we deal with the prospect of future disasters. The EcoOptimist in me has somewhat mixed feelings about emphasizing resilience. My reservations derive from two related issues. The first is that the pursuit of resilience can be seen as the equivalent of throwing in the towel and conceding defeat to the inevitability of climate disruption. The second is that, in our binary either-or thought process, an emphasis on resilience is all too likely to occur at the expense of actions and investments that might diminish the causes of climate disruption (thus in fact leading to that same defeat). The costs of adapting cities will surely divert funds from programs to curtail CO2 emissions.

In a recent talk, I divided climate actions into three categories: prevention, mitigation and adaptation. Prevention is the primary path we’ve been pursuing. Though there’ve been some successes (for example, acid rain), there have been far more failures, mostly in the form of opportunities not taken. This is highly unfortunate because, aside from the obvious reasons, virtually every study has shown that prevention is the least costly approach. It’s going to cost a fortune to build seawalls to protect NYC. If we (or had we) spent that kind of money on cutting greenhouse gases, we’d be far ahead of the game – especially since that investment would provide future returns that seawalls don’t.
Unfortunately, there’s a fundamental question now of whether it’s too late for prevention. If we somehow found the political resolve, could we actually obviate the need for remedial steps? In other words, could the train of global warming be stopped in time? There is a built in lag factor, a delay between the time greenhouse gases are released and its impacts are felt. So the warming of the next bunch of years or decades is preordained.

Hence the need to turn to the next steps: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation is finding ways to diminish the impact (versus preventing it). In the case of flooding events like Sandy and Katrina, mitigation would involve efforts such as preservation or recreation of wetlands that can absorb the water. Even oysters, it turns out, can have a role. In addition to their ability to cleanse polluted waters, oyster beds can also slow tidal surges.
Mitigation can also involve less natural methods ranging from porous pavement to the further extreme of storm-surge barriers or seawalls. Here in NY, the stage is being set for a classic environmental battle, with a group led by Governor Cuomo promoting construction of a many-billion dollar barrier and opposition led by Mayor Bloomberg questioning the feasibility of a seawall. (The third camp, deniers, holds little sway here.) The Bloomberg camp points out that, even if the barrier worked when needed, it would have very large environmental impacts of its own and would also merely deflect the water elsewhere, perhaps increasing the damage in neighboring areas. Stalemate.

Hierarchically, mitigation is the path necessitated by the failure of prevention. Adaptation, then, is required when both prevention and mitigation fail. Focusing again on Sandy and NYC, adaptation responses range from elevating buildings (or at least their necessary services) to abandonment of low-lying areas. It would include making our electricity supply better able to endure partial interruptions and our transit systems able to stop flooding or at least recover faster (and cheaper) from it. In larger terms, we’d make our food supply less dependent on transport over long distances. It’s making our human support system more resilient, in short.

It also is pretty much writing off the idea of returning our planet – and us – to some semblance of sustainability. Andrew Zolli, often called a futurist, wrote recently “Where sustainability aims to put the world back into balance, resilience looks for ways to manage in an imbalanced world.” The problem with resorting to resilience is that, if the world is still imbalanced, you have to keep moving the goal posts. If we don’t stop global warming, how high will sea levels rise and will the barriers we construct in this part of the century be adequate for the future? Similar questions arise concerning food supplies (or food security, as it’s coming to be known) or, say, infectious diseases spread by climate-driven insect migrations. And those are only some of the impacts that we can try to foresee; how many other side effects might we not have the smarts to anticipate?

EcoOptimism, with its implicit assumption that solutions are available, would have us focus on prevention. It’s much smarter to spend money on ‘front of tailpipe’ solutions — actions that nip the problem before it occurs — than on much more expensive and likely less predictable end of tailpipe reactions. But at this stage in our non-committal response to climate disruption, we’ve almost certainly committed ourselves, by default, to a mix of both positive actions, ideally taken by choice, and necessary involuntary reactions: an all of the above combination of prevention, mitigation and adaptation.

That’s a key point; resilience is undertaken when we realize we have no options left. The seas are going to rise. Crops are going to be disrupted. Storms are going to get stronger. We will have to take responsive measures. (We may call them precautionary, but there’s no “pre” involved. We’re past that.)

Not that resilience is bad. It’s just unfortunate that we’ve come to the point in terms of climate disruption where there’s a strong case to be made for it: for adaptation rather than prevention. We’re talking about building the bomb shelters instead of defusing the bombs. And those bunkers were never going to help much in a post-nuclear war world.

EcoOptimistic solutions are ones that deliver benefits both ecologically and economically, and leave us in a better place than we started. Carbon fees are a perfect example. Assuming the fees are revenue-neutral, we end up with a productive reallocation in which we tax and disincentivize the “bads” while promoting the goods.

Multi-billion dollar seawalls that play catch up with ever-rising oceans are not optimistic endeavors in any sense. Nor is diverting Missouri River waters to the west. These are last ditch efforts that only provide temporary fixes. Zolli writes “Combating those kinds of disruptions isn’t just about building higher walls — it’s about accommodating the waves.” Resilience, by this description, incorporates both mitigation and adaptation. But it assumes the waves and ignores prevention. I despise metaphors (it always seems there’s a metaphor to prove any point), but it’s the equivalent of adding life preservers rather than making the boat more seaworthy. Or, better yet, altering course to avoid the storm. More life preservers might make sense if you’re already in the storm. We’re probably encountering the outer rings of the storm, and it may or may not be too late to change course. The smart thing to do is choose a new heading, while there are still some choices available, and while holding drills and battening down the hatches just in case..

Learning one farm at a time

SUBHEAD: Intensification growing - how millions of farmers are advancing agriculture for themselves.

By Jonathan Latham on 24 December 2013 for OurWorld 2.0 -
(http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/how-millions-of-farmers-are-advancing-agriculture-for-themselves/)


Image above: SRI methods frequently result in dramatically improved plant and root growth (SRI rice, left — conventional rice, right). Photo courtesy of Amrik Singh. From original article.

The world record yield for paddy rice production is not held by an agricultural research station or by a large-scale farmer from the United States, but by a farmer in the state of Bihar in northern India. Sumant Kumar, who has a farm of just two hectares in Darveshpura village, holds a record yield of 22.4 tons per hectare, from a one-acre plot. This feat was achieved with what is known as the System of Rice Intensification (SRI).

To put his achievement in perspective, the average paddy yield worldwide is about 4 tons per hectare. Even with the use of fertilizer, average yields are usually not more than 8 tons.

Sumant Kumar’s success was not a fluke. Four of his neighbors, using SRI methods for the first time, matched or exceeded the previous world record from China — 19 tons per hectare. Moreover, they used only modest amounts of inorganic fertilizer and did not need chemical crop protection.

Origins and principles of SRI
Deriving from empirical work started in the 1960s in Madagascar by a French priest — Fr. Henri de Laulanié, S.J. — the System of Rice Intensification has shown remarkable capacity to raise smallholders’ rice productivity under a wide variety of conditions around the world. From tropical rainforest regions of Indonesia, to mountainous regions in northeastern Afghanistan, to fertile river basins in India and Pakistan and to arid conditions of Timbuktu on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Mali, SRI methods have proved adaptable to a wide range of agroecological settings.

With SRI management, paddy yields are usually increased by 50–100 percent, but sometimes by more, even up to the super-yields of Sumant Kumar. Requirements for seed are greatly reduced (by 80–90 percent), as are those for irrigation water (by 25–50 percent). Little or no inorganic fertilizer is required if sufficient organic matter can be provided to the soil, and there is little (if any) need for agrochemical protection. SRI plants are also generally healthier and better able to resist such stresses as well as drought, extremes of temperature, flooding, and storm damage.

SRI methodology is based on four main principles that interact in synergistic ways:

• Establish healthy plants early and carefully, nurturing their root potential;
• Reduce plant populations, giving each plant more room to grow above and below ground;
• Enrich the soil with organic matter, keeping it well-aerated to support better growth of roots and more aerobic soil biota; and
• Apply water purposefully in ways that favor plant-root and soil-microbial growth, avoiding the commonly flooded (anaerobic) soil conditions

These principles are translated into a number of irrigated rice cultivation practices that are typically the following:

• Plant young seedlings carefully and singly, giving them wider spacing, usually in a square pattern, so that both roots and canopy have ample room to spread;
• Provide sufficient water for plant roots and beneficial soil organisms to grow, but not so much as to suffocate or suppress either. This is done through alternate wetting and drying, or through small but regular water applications;
• Add as much compost, mulch or other organic matter to the soil as possible, ‘feeding the soil’ to ‘feed the plant’; and
• Control weeds with mechanical methods that can incorporate weeds into the soil while breaking up the soil’s surface. This actively aerates the root zone

The cumulative result of these practices is to induce the growth of more productive and healthier plants (phenotypes) from any genetic variety (genotype).

Using SRI methods, smallholding farmers in many countries are starting to get higher yields and greater productivity from their land, labour, seeds, water and capital, with their crops showing more resilience to the hazards of climate change. These productivity gains have been achieved simply by changing the ways that farmers manage their plants, soil, water and nutrients.

These altered management practices have induced more productive, resilient phenotypes from existing rice plant genotypes in over 50 countries. The reasons for this improvement are not all known, but there is growing literature that helps account for the improvements observed in yield and health for rice crops using SRI.

The ideas and practices that constitute SRI are now being adapted to improve the productivity of a wide variety of other crops. Producing more output with fewer external inputs may sound improbable, but it derives from a shift in emphasis from improving plant genetic potential via plant breeding, to providing optimal environments for crop growth.

The adaptation of SRI experience and principles to other crops is being referred to generically as the System of Crop Intensification (SCI), encompassing variants for wheat (SWI), maize (SMI), finger millet (SFMI), sugarcane (SSI), mustard (another SMI), tef (STI), legumes such as pigeon peas, lentils and soya beans, and vegetables such as tomatoes, chillies and eggplant.

The evidence reported below has drawn heavily, with permission, from a report prepared by Dr. Norman Uphoff on the extension of SRI to other crops (Uphoff 2012), which accompanied his presentation on ‘The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and Beyond: Coping with Climate Change,’ at the World Bank, Washington, DC, on 10 October 2012.

Much more research and evaluation needs to be done on this progression to satisfy both scientists and practitioners. But this report gives an idea of what kinds of advances in agricultural knowledge and practice are emerging. It is not a research report. The comparisons reported are not experiment station data but rather results that have come from farmers’ fields in Asia and Africa. The measurements of yields reported here probably have some margin of error. But the differences seen are so large and are so often repeated that they are certainly significant agronomically.


Image above: SRI farmers regularly use, modify and devise a variety of simple equipment — such as the weeder pictured here — often made locally using inexpensive, widely-available materials. Photo courtesy of SRI-Rice/Pascal Gbenou.

From the System of Rice Intensification to the System of Crop Intensification
Once the principles of SRI became understood by farmers and they had mastered its practices for rice, farmers began extending SRI ideas and methods to other crops. NGOs and some scientists have also become interested in and supportive of this extrapolation, so a novel process of innovation has ensued. Some results of this process are summarized here.

Wheat (Triticum)
The extension of SRI practices to wheat, the next most important cereal crop after rice, was fairly quickly seized upon by farmers and researchers in India, Ethiopia, Mali and Nepal. SWI was first tested in 2008 by the People’s Science Institute (PSI) which works with farmers in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand states. Yield estimates showed a 91 percent increase for non-irrigated SWI plots over usual methods in rainfed areas, and an 82 percent increase for irrigated SWI. This has encouraged an expansion of SWI in these two states.

The most rapid growth and most dramatic results have been in Bihar state of India, where 415 farmers in Gaya district, mostly women, tried SWI methods in 2008–09, with yields averaging 3.6 tons/hectare (ha), compared with 1.6 tons/ha using usual practices. The next year, 15,808 farmers used SWI with average yields of 4.6 tons/ha. In the past year — 2011–12 — the SWI area in Bihar was reported to be 183,063 hectares, with average yields of 5.1 tons/ha. With SWI management, net income per acre was calculated by the NGO PRADAN to rise from Rs. 6,984 to Rs. 17,581, with costs reduced while yields increased.

About the same time, farmers in northern Ethiopia started on-farm trials of SWI, assisted by the Institute for Sustainable Development (ISD), supported by a grant from Oxfam America. Seven farmers in 2009 averaged 5.45 tons/ha with SWI methods, the highest reaching 10 tons/ha. There was a larger set of on-farm trials in South Wollo in 2010 where SWI yields averaged 4.7 tons/ha with compost. The control plots averaged wheat yields of 1.8 tons/ha.

Mustard (Brassica)
Farmers in Bihar state of India have recently begun adapting SRI methods for growing mustard (also know as rapeseed or canola). In 2010–11, 283 women farmers who used SMI methods averaged 3.25 tons/ha. In 2011–12, 1,636 farmers averaged yields of 3.5 tons/ha. Those who used all of the practices as recommended averaged 4 tons/ha, and one reached a yield of 4.92 tons/ha as measured by government technicians. With SMI, farmers’ costs of production were reduced by about half, so it gave more income as well as higher yield.

Sugarcane (Saccarum officinarum)
Shortly after they began using SRI methods in 2004, farmers in Andhra Pradesh, India also began adapting these ideas and practices to their sugarcane production. Some farmers got as much as three times more yield while cutting their planting materials by 80-90 percent.

By 2009, there had been enough testing, demonstration and modification of these initial practices that the joint Dialogue Project on Food, Water and Environment of the World Wide Fund for Nature and the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Hyderabad launched a ‘sustainable sugarcane initiative’ (SSI).

The director of the Dialogue Project, Dr. Biksham Gujja, together with other SRI and SSI colleagues, established a pro bono company AgSRI in 2010 to disseminate knowledge and practice of these ecologically-friendly innovations among farmers in India and beyond. SSI trials are currently underway in Cuba with initially good results.

Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana)
The NGO Green Foundation in Bangalore in the early ’00s learned that farmers in Haveri district of Karnataka state had devised a system for growing that they call Guli Vidhana (square planting). In contrast with conventional methods, which yield around 1.25 to 2 tons/ha, with up to 3.25 tons using fertilizer inputs, Guli Vidhana methods yield 4.5 to 5 tons/ha, with a maximum yield so far of 6.25 tons.

In Jharkhand state of India in 2005, farmers working with the NGO PRADAN began experimenting with SRI methods for their rainfed finger millet. Usual yields there were 750 kg to 1 ton/ha with traditional broadcasting practices. Yields with transplanted SFMI have averaged 3-4 tons/ha. Costs of production per kg of grain are reduced by 60 percent with SFMI management, from Rs. 34.00 to Rs. 13.50.

Tef (Eragrostis tef)
Adaptations of SRI in Ethiopia started in 2008–09 under the direction of Dr. Tareke Berhe. Typical yields for tef grown with traditional practices based on broadcasting are about 1 ton/ha. But Berhe found that transplanting young seedlings at 20×20 cm spacing gave yields of 3 to 5 tons/ha. With small amendments of micronutrients these yields could be almost doubled again.

In 2010, with a grant from Oxfam America, Dr. Berhe conducted trials and demonstrations at major centres for agricultural research in Ethiopia. Their good results gained acceptance for the new practices. This year, 7,000 farmers are using STI methods in an expanded trial, while another 120,000 farmers are using less ‘intensified’ methods based on direct-seeding with the same SRI principles.


Image above: Tef grown with the System of Tef Intensification (STI) in Tigray, Ethiopia. Photo courtesy of SRI-Rice/Tareke Berhe.

Legumes: Pigeonpeas (Red Gram – Cajanus cajan), Lentils (Black Gram – Vigna mungo), Mung Beans (Green Gram – Vigna radiata), Soya Beans ( Glycine max), Kidney Beans ( Phaseolus vulgaris), Peas ( Pisum sativum)
That SRI principles and methods could be extended from rice to other monocotyledonous plants was not so surprising. That mustard would respond very well to SRI management practices was unexpected, because it is a dicotyledon. It is now being found that a number of leguminous crops can benefit from practices inspired by SRI experience. A summary of these successes is found in Uphoff (2012). Also in the same brochure are farmer-led successes in adapting SRI methods to vegetables.

A paradigm shift?
Philosophically, SRI can be understood as an integrated system of plant-centered agriculture. Each of the component activities of SRI has the goal of maximally providing whatever a plant is likely to need in terms of space, light, air, water, and nutrients. SRI thus presents us with the question: if one can provide, in every way, the best possible environment for plants to grow, what benefits and synergisms will we see?

Already, approximately 4–5 million farmers around the world are using SRI methods with rice. The success of SRI methods can be attributed to many factors. Although they may appear risky, they actually reduce risk of crop losses; they don’t require farmers to have access to any unfamiliar technologies; they save money on multiple inputs, while giving higher yields that earn them more. Most important is that farmers can quickly see the benefits for themselves.

Where this process will end, nobody knows. Almost invariably the use of SRI concepts and practices has resulted in greater yields, but some farmers’ results go beyond others’ to achieve super-yields for reasons that are not fully clear. Observations increasingly point to the contributions that plants’ microbiomes may be making, and they also suggest that this strategy for optimisation of growing environments is still at the beginning.

• The original (longer) version of this article was published in Independent Science News. For more information on the System of Rice Intensification please visit the SRI International Network and Resources Center (SRI-Rice).

.

The Second Amendment Attack

SUBHEAD: A free people should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence.

By Mac Slavo on 24 January 2013 for SHTF Plan -
(http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/intent-a-free-people-should-have-sufficient-arms-and-ammunition-to-maintain-a-status-of-independence-from-any-who-might-attempt-to-abuse-them_01242013)


Image above: "Nation Makers" by Howard Pyle, the legendary local artist, part of the collection at the Brandywine River Museum. This is Pyle's imagined vision of Gen. George Washington leading armed militia into battle. From (http://www.unionvilletimes.com/?p=3403).

“A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”
– George Washington

We’ve all heard the argument from those who would disarm America that the Second Amendment is an archaic law that should be repealed, or at the very least re-written. They say that you should turn in your ‘militarized assault’ firearms because they are not necessary for sporting, hunting or personal defense. They tell us that the protections afforded by our right to bear arms are ambiguous and unnecessary in our modern-day society.

But those who support dismantling our rights under the U.S. Constitution rarely cite our Founders’ reasoning for this fundamental law of the land – whether due to ignorance or because it doesn’t play into their ideologies of an all-knowing, benevolent centralized government.

The following compendium of quotes from our Founders are so clear and succinct that even the most outspoken of gun grabbers would find it impossible to argue the original intent of this essential Constitutional Amendment.
Via Infowars:

“The Constitution preserves “the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
– James Madison, The Federalist, No. 46

“The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.” 
– Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

“Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense?” 
– Patrick Henry

“The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”
– George Washington

Those who would supplant our right to bear arms – the one Amendment that makes it possible to ensure the authority of all the others – are no different than dictators like Stalin, Mao, and Hitler who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people – all of whom had no means of defending themselves when the henchmen of tyranny kicked in their doors.

Video above ":Founding Fathers Battle Gun Grabbers From the Grave". From (http://youtu.be/Yx4xjxmPwQo)

Net Fishing Restrictions

SUBHEAD: Hawaii State Senate Bill proposes ban on use of man-made monofilament fishing nets.

By Lyn McNutt on 24 January 2013 in Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2013/01/net-fishing-restrictions.html)


Image above: Uncle Morgan shows how to net fish in Waipio Valley on the Big Island. From (http://cee.mit.edu/node/15513).

I can understand the need to be MUCH more pono about nets and filament and hooks (etc) left on reefs, but this proposal, by lumping gill nets and throw nets into the same category, could affect the fundamental idea of Ohana Fishing (fishing for your family and not commercial fishing) and small-scale commercial fishing for local markets.

What seems to be at issue here is the use of gill nets and commercial fishing on the reef. The State's definition of a gill net is inadequate and defines it as only catching fish by the gills.  Gill nets actually catch fish by gills, by fish getting stuck (body) in the net and by entanglement (not limited to fish).  Gill nets left unattended are not good for the health of the reef.   

Throw nets are used to selectively catch fish and have less of an impact on the removal of species from the reef (not including aquarium fishing).  The problem I have seen mentioned about the use of "natural" materials for throw nets is that they do not sink as quickly as monofilament netting, so they are not as effective.

We need to get a handle on the protection of the fish on the reef, and the use of more pono techniques for fishing.  We need to think about what species of reef fish could be used for local-scale commercial fishing, and we should question the current regulations for takes of aquarium fish.  We also need to protect the rights of those non-Hawaiians who have been engaged in local-scale commercial fishing. 

It is really time for the State to consider the idea of Locally-Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs), as used successfully in many other small-scale fisheries around the world.  The concept is very close to traditional Hawaiian fisheries management, and would work well here--likely even better than Marine Protected Areas and Sanctuaries

Strictly from my personal point of view, I think that a discussion of gill netting and the classification and monitoring of reef species needs to take place soon.  Aquarium takes need to be included in this discussion.  On the throw net side, I think that Native Hawaiians AND other non-Hawaiian resident fishers need to have their rights protected within this discussion, both for ohana fishing and for local scale commercial fishing.

Below is the information on a senate joint hearing for the Energy & Environment Committee and the Water & Land Committee that set for Tuesday, January 29th at 2:45pm.

Hearing Date	1/29/2013 2:45 PM
HDUrl	http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2013/hearingnotices/HEARING_ENE-WTL_01-29-13_.HTM
Bill_Code	SB27
Title	RELATING TO FISHING.
Description	Prohibits the sale and use of synthetic nets for gill net fishing. Restricts the use of throw nets for fishing.
Committee	ENE/WTL
Room	Conference Room 225 at the State Capitol Building 415 South Beretania Street, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii

.

Obama Climate Failure

SUBHEAD: Climate change set to make America hotter, drier and more disaster-prone by Obama policy.

By Suzanne Goldenburg on 11 January 2013 for The Guardian -
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/11/climate-change-america-hotter-drier-disaster)


Image above: The report says steps taken by Obama to reduce emissions are 'not close to sufficient' to prevent the most severe consequences of climate change. This and other photos from original article.

Future generations of Americans can expect to spend 25 days a year sweltering in temperatures above 100F (38C), with climate change on course to turn the country into a hotter, drier, and more disaster-prone place.

The National Climate Assessment, released in draft form on Friday , provided the fullest picture to date of the real-time effects of climate change on US life, and the most likely consequences for the future.

The 1,000-page report, the work of the more than 300 government scientists and outside experts, was unequivocal on the human causes of climate change, and on the links between climate change and extreme weather.

"Climate change is already affecting the American people," the draft report said. "Certain types of weather events have become more frequent and/or intense including heat waves, heavy downpours and in some regions floods and drought. Sea level is rising, oceans are becoming more acidic, and glaciers and Arctic sea ice are melting."

The report, which is not due for adoption until 2014, was produced to guide federal, state and city governments in America in making long-term plans.

By the end of the 21st century, climate change is expected to result in increased risk of asthma and other public health emergencies, widespread power blackouts, and mass transit shutdowns, and possibly shortages of food.

"Proactively preparing for climate change can reduce impacts, while also facilitating a more rapid and efficient response to changes as they happen," said Katharine Jacobs, the director of the National Climate Assessment.

The report will be open for public comment on Monday.

Environmental groups said they hoped the report would provide Barack Obama with the scientific evidence to push for measures that would slow or halt the rate of climate change – sparing the country some of the worst effects.

The report states clearly that the steps taken by Obama so far to reduce emissions are "not close to sufficient" to prevent the most severe consequences of climate change.

"As climate change and its impacts are becoming more prevalent, Americans face choices," the report said. "Beyond the next few decades, the amount of climate change will still largely be determined by the choices society makes about emissions. Lower emissions mean less future warming and less severe impacts. Higher emissions would mean more warming and more severe impacts."

As the report made clear: no place in America had gone untouched by climate change. Nowherewould be entirely immune from the effects of future climate change.

 

Image above: A heatwave swept across the US in 2011, with temperatures reaching over 110F (43C). Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP

Some of those changes are already evident: 2012 was by far the hottest year on record, fully a degree hotter than the last such record – an off-the-charts rate of increase.

Those high temperatures were on course to continue for the rest of the century, the draft report said. It noted that average US temperatures had increased by about 1.5F since 1895, with more than 80% of this increase since 1980.

The rise will be even steeper in future, with the next few decades projected for temperatures 2 to 4 degrees warmer in most areas. By 2100, if climate change continues on its present course, the country can expect to see 25 days a year with temperatures above 100F.

Night-time temperatures will also stay high, providing little respite from the heat.

Certain regions are projected to heat up even sooner. West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware can expect a doubling of days hotter than 95 degrees by the 2050s. In Texas and Oklahoma, the draft report doubled the probability of extreme heat events.

Those extreme temperatures would also exact a toll on public health, with worsening air pollution, and on infrastructure increasing the load for ageing power plants.


Image above: This 8 November 2011 image shows a storm bearing down on Alaska. Photograph: Ho/AFP/Getty Images

But nowhere will see changes as extreme as Alaska, the report said.

"The most dramatic evidence is in Alaska, where average temperatures have increased more than twice as fast as the rest of the country," the draft report said. "Of all the climate-related changes in the US, the rapid decline of Arctic sea ice cover in the last decade may be the most striking of all."

Other regions will face different extreme weather scenarios. The north-east, in particular, is at risk of coastal flooding because of sea-level rise and storm surges, as well as river flooding, because of an increase in heavy downpours.

Image above: A flooded farm along the Mississippi River is seen in Cairo, Illinois. Photograph: Stephen Lance Dennee/AP

"The north-east has experienced a greater increase in extreme precipitation over the past few decades than any other region in the US," the report said. Between 1958 and 2010, the north-east saw a 74% increase in heavy downpours.

The midwest was projected to enjoy a longer growing season – but also an increased risk of extreme events like last year's drought. By mid-century, the combination of temperature increases and heavy rainfall or drought were expected to pull down yields of major US food crops, the report warned, threatening both American and global food security.

The report is the most ambitious scientific exercise ever undertaken to catalogue the real-time effects of climate change, and predict possible outcomes in the future.

It involved more than 300 government scientists and outside experts, compared to around 30 during the last such effort when George W Bush was president. Its findings were also much broader in scope, Jacobs said.

There were still unknowns though, the report conceded, especially about how the loss of sea ice in Greenland and Antarctica will affect future sea-level rise.

Campaign groups said they hoped the report would spur Obama to act on climate change in his second term. "The draft assessment offers a perfect opportunity for President Obama at the outset of his second term," said Lou Leonard, director of the climate change programme for the World Wildlife Fund. "When a similar report was released in 2009, the Administration largely swept it under the rug. This time, the President should use it to kick-start a national conversation on climate change."

However, the White House was exceedingly cautious on the draft release, noting in a blogpost: "The draft NCA is a scientific document—not a policy document—and does not make recommendations regarding actions that might be taken in response to climate change."

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama versus Physics 1/6/13

.

Restoring the Commons

SUBHEAD: We need a political system that holds an open space in which citizens can pursue their own dreams.

By John Michael Greer on 23 January 2013 for Archdruid Report -
(http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2013/01/restoring-commons.html)


Image above: Entrance to the Springridge Commons located in transition town Victoria, British Columbia. From (http://sc.conscious-choices.ca/?page_id=990).

The hard work of rebuilding a post-imperial America, as I suggested in last week’s post, is going to require the recovery or reinvention of many of the things this nation chucked into the dumpster with whoops of glee as it took off running in pursuit of its imperial ambitions. The basic skills of democratic process are among the things on that list; so, as I suggested last month, are the even more basic skills of learning and thinking that undergird the practice of democracy.

All that remains crucial. Still, it so happens that a remarkably large number of the other things that will need to be put back in place are all variations of a common theme. What’s more, it’s a straightforward theme—or, more precisely, would be straightforward if so many people these days weren’t busy trying to pretend that the concept at its center either doesn’t exist or doesn’t present the specific challenges that have made it so problematic in recent years.

The concept in question? The mode of collective participation in the use of resources, extending from the most material to the most abstract, that goes most often these days by the name of “the commons.”

The redoubtable green philosopher Garrett Hardin played a central role decades ago in drawing attention to the phenomenon in question with his essay The Tragedy of the Commons. It’s a remarkable work, and it’s been rendered even more remarkable by the range of contortions engaged in by thinkers across the economic and political spectrum in their efforts to evade its conclusions.

Those maneuvers have been tolerably successful; I suspect, for example, that many of my readers will recall the flurry of claims a few years back that the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom had “disproved” Hardin with her work on the sustainable management of resources.

In point of fact, she did no such thing. Hardin demonstrated in his essay that an unmanaged commons faces the risk of a vicious spiral of mismanagement that ends in the common’s destruction; Ostrom got her Nobel, and deservedly so, by detailed and incisive analysis of the kinds of management that prevent Hardin’s tragedy of the commons from taking place.

A little later in this essay, we’ll get to why those kinds of management are exactly what nobody in the mainstream of American public life wants to talk about just now; the first task at hand is to walk through the logic of Hardin’s essay and understand exactly what he was saying and why it matters.

Hardin asks us to imagine a common pasture, of the sort that was common in medieval villages across Europe. The pasture is owned by the village as a whole; each of the villagers has the right to put his cattle out to graze on the pasture. The village as a whole, however, has no claim on the milk the cows produce; that belongs to the villager who owns any given cow. The pasture is a collective resource, from which individuals are allowed to extract private profit; that’s the basic definition of a commons.

In the Middle Ages, such arrangements were common across Europe, and they worked well because they were managed by tradition, custom, and the immense pressure wielded by informal consensus in small and tightly knit communities, backed up where necessary by local manorial courts and a body of customary law that gave short shrift to the pursuit of personal advantage at the expense of others.

The commons that Hardin asks us to envision, though, has no such protections in place. Imagine, he says, that one villager buys additional cows and puts them out to graze on the common pasture. Any given pasture can only support so many cows before it suffers damage; to use the jargon of the ecologist, it has a fixed carrying capacity for milk cows, and exceeding the carrying capacity will degrade the resource and lower its future carrying capacity. Assume that the new cows raise the total number of cows past what the pasture can support indefinitely, so once the new cows go onto the pasture, the pasture starts to degrade.

Notice how the benefits and costs sort themselves out. The villager with the additional cows receives all the benefit of the additional milk his new cows provide, and he receives it right away. The costs of his action, by contrast, are shared with everyone else in the village, and their impact is delayed, since it takes time for pasture to degrade. Thus, according to today’s conventional economic theories, the villager is doing the right thing. Since the milk he gets is worth more right now than the fraction of the discounted future cost of the degradation of the pasture he will eventually have to carry, he is pursuing his own economic interest in a rational manner.

The other villagers, faced with this situation, have a choice of their own to make. (We’ll assume, again, that they don’t have the option of forcing the villager with the new cows to get rid of them and return the total herd on the pasture to a level it can support indefinitely.) They can do nothing, in which case they bear the costs of the degradation of the pasture but gain nothing in return, or they can buy more cows of their own, in which case they also get more milk, but the pasture degrades even faster. According to most of today’s economic theories, the latter choice is the right one, since it allows them to maximize their own economic interest in exactly the same way as the first villager.

The result of the process, though, is that a pasture that would have kept a certain number of cattle fed indefinitely is turned into a barren area of compacted subsoil that won’t support any cattle at all. The rational pursuit of individual advantage thus results in permanent impoverishment for everybody.

This may seem like common sense. It is common sense, but when Hardin first published “The Tragedy of the Commons” in 1968, it went off like a bomb in the halls of academic economics. Since Adam Smith’s time, one of the most passionately held beliefs of capitalist economics has been the insistence that individuals pursuing their own economic interest without interference from government or anyone else will reliably produce the best outcome for everybody.

You’ll still hear defenders of free market economics making that claim, as if nobody but the Communists ever brought it into question. That’s why very few people like to talk about Hardin’s tragedy of the commons these days; it makes it all but impossible to uphold a certain bit of popular, appealing, but dangerous nonsense.

Does this mean that the rational pursuit of individual advantage always produces negative results for everyone? Not at all. The theorists of capitalism can point to equally cogent examples in which Adam Smith’s invisible hand passes out benefits to everyone, and a case could probably be made that this happens more often than the opposite. The fact remains that the opposite does happen, not merely in theory but also in the real world, and that the consequences of the tragedy of the commons can reach far beyond the limits of a single village.

Hardin himself pointed to the destruction of the world’s oceanic fisheries by overharvesting as an example, and it’s a good one. If current trends continue, many of my readers can look forward, over the next couple of decades, to tasting the last seafood they will ever eat.

A food resource that could have been managed sustainably for millennia to come is being annihilated in our lifetimes, and the logic behind it is that of the tragedy of the commons: participants in the world’s fishing industries, from giant corporations to individual boat owners and their crews, are pursuing their own economic interests, and exterminating one fishery after another in the process.

Another example? The worldwide habit of treating the atmosphere as an aerial sewer into which wastes can be dumped with impunity. Every one of my readers who burns any fossil fuel, for any purpose, benefits directly from being able to vent the waste CO2 directly into the atmosphere, rather than having to cover the costs of disposing of it in some other way. As a result of this rational pursuit of personal economic interest, there’s a very real chance that most of the world’s coastal cities will have to be abandoned to the rising oceans over the next century or so, imposing trillions of dollars of costs on the global economy.

Plenty of other examples of the same kind could be cited. At this point, though, I’d like to shift focus a bit to a different class of phenomena, and point to the Glass-Steagall Act, a piece of federal legislation that was passed by the US Congress in 1933 and repealed in 1999. The Glass-Steagall Act made it illegal for banks to engage in both consumer banking activities such as taking deposits and making loans, and investment banking activities such as issuing securities; banks had to choose one or the other.

The firewall between consumer banking and investment banking was put in place because in its absence, in the years leading up to the 1929 crash, most of the banks in the country had gotten over their heads in dubious financial deals linked to stocks and securities, and the collapse of those schemes played a massive role in bringing the national economy to the brink of total collapse.

By the 1990s, such safeguards seemed unbearably dowdy to a new generation of bankers, and after a great deal of lobbying the provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act were eliminated. Those of my readers who didn’t spend the last decade hiding under a rock know exactly what happened thereafter: banks went right back to the bad habits that got their predecessors into trouble in 1929, profited mightily in the short term, and proceeded to inflict major damage on the global economy when the inevitable crash came in 2008.

That is to say, actions performed by individuals (and those dubious “legal persons” called corporations) in the pursuit of their own private economic advantage garnered profits over the short term for those who engaged in them, but imposed long-term costs on everybody. If this sounds familiar, dear reader, it should. When individuals or corporations profit from their involvement in an activity that imposes costs on society as a whole, that activity functions as a commons, and if that commons is unmanaged the tragedy of the commons is a likely result.

The American banking industry before 1933 and after 1999 functioned, and currently functions, as an unmanaged commons; between those years, it was a managed commons. While it was an unmanaged commons, it suffered from exactly the outcome Hardin’s theory predicts; when it was a managed commons, by contrast, a major cause of banking failure was kept at bay, and the banking sector was more often a source of strength than a source of weakness to the national economy.

It’s not hard to name other examples of what I suppose we could call “commons-like phenomena”—that is, activities in which the pursuit of private profit can impose serious costs on society as a whole—in contemporary America.

One that bears watching these days is food safety. It is to the immediate financial advantage of businesses in the various industries that produce food for human consumption to cut costs as far as possible, even if this occasionally results in unsafe products that cause sickness and death to people who consume them; the benefits in increased profits are immediate and belong entirely to the business, while the costs of increased morbidity and mortality are borne by society as a whole, provided that your legal team is good enough to keep the inevitable lawsuits at bay. Once again, the asymmetry between benefits and costs produces a calculus that brings unwelcome outcomes.

The American political system, in its pre-imperial and early imperial stages, evolved a distinctive response to these challenges. The Declaration of Independence, the wellspring of American political thought, defines the purpose of government as securing the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There’s more to that often-quoted phrase than meets the eye. In particular, it doesn’t mean that governments are supposed to provide anybody with life, liberty, or happiness; their job is simply to secure for their citizens certain basic rights, which may be inalienable—that is, they can’t be legally transferred to somebody else, as they could under feudal law—but are far from absolute.

What citizens do with those rights is their own business, at least in theory, so long as their exercise of their rights does not interfere too drastically with the ability of others to do the same thing. The assumption, then and later, was that citizens would use their rights to seek their own advantage, by means as rational or irrational as they chose, while the national community as a whole would cover the costs of securing those rights against anyone and anything that attempted to erase them.

That is to say, the core purpose of government in the American tradition is the maintenance of the national commons. It exists to manage the various commons and commons-like phenomena that are inseparable from life in a civilized society, and thus has the power to impose such limits on people (and corporate pseudopeople) as will prevent their pursuit of personal advantage from leading to a tragedy of the commons in one way or another.

Restricting the capacity of banks to gamble with depositors’ money is one such limit; restricting the freedom of manufacturers to sell unsafe food is another, and so on down the list of reasonable regulations. Beyond those necessary limits, government has no call to intervene; how people choose to live their lives, exercise their liberties, and pursue happiness is up to them, so long as it doesn’t put the survival of any part of the national commons at risk.

As far as I know, you won’t find that definition taught in any of the tiny handful of high schools that still offer civics classes to young Americans about to reach voting age. Still, it’s a neat summary of generations of political thought in pre-imperial and early imperial America. These days, by contrast, it’s rare to find this function of government even hinted at. Rather, the function of government in late imperial America is generally seen as a matter of handing out largesse of various kinds to any group organized or influential enough to elbow its way to a place at the feeding trough.

Even those people who insist they are against all government entitlement programs can be counted on to scream like banshees if anything threatens those programs from which they themselves benefit; the famous placard reading “Government Hands Off My Medicare” is an embarrassingly good reflection of the attitude that most American pseudoconservatives adopt in practice, however loudly they decry government spending in theory.

A strong case can be made, though, for jettisoning the notion of government as national sugar daddy and returning to the older notion of government as guarantor of the national commons. The central argument in that case is simply that in the wake of empire, the torrents of imperial tribute that made the government largesse of the recent past possible in the first place will go away.

As the United States loses the ability to command a quarter of the world’s energy supplies and a third of its natural resources and industrial product, and has to make do with the much smaller share it can expect to produce within its own borders, the feeding trough in Washington DC—not to mention its junior equivalents in the fifty state capitals, and so on down the pyramid of American government—is going to run short.

In point of fact, it’s already running short. That’s the usually unmentioned factor behind the intractable gridlock in our national politics: there isn’t enough largesse left to give every one of the pressure groups and veto blocs its accustomed share, and the pressure groups and veto blocs are responding to this unavoidable problem by jamming up the machinery of government with ever more frantic efforts to get whatever they can. That situation can only end in crisis, and probably in a crisis big enough to shatter the existing order of things in Washington DC; after the rubble stops bouncing, the next order of business will be piecing together some less gaudily corrupt way of managing the nation’s affairs.

That process of reconstruction might be furthered substantially if the pre-imperial concept of the role of government were to get a little more air time these days. I’ve spoken at quite some length here and elsewhere about the very limited contribution that grand plans and long discussions can make to an energy future that’s less grim than the one toward which we’re hurtling at the moment, and there’s a fair bit of irony in the fact that I’m about to suggest exactly the opposite conclusion with regard to the political sphere. Still, the circumstances aren’t the same.

The time for talking about our energy future was decades ago, when we still had the time and the resources to get new and more sustainable energy and transportation systems in place before conventional petroleum production peaked and sent us skidding down the far side of Hubbert’s peak. That time is long past, the options remaining to us are very narrow, and another round of conversation won’t do anything worthwhile to change the course of events at this point.

That’s much less true of the political situation, because politics are subject to rules very different from the implacable mathematics of petroleum depletion and net energy. At some point in the not too distant future, the political system of the United States of America is going to tip over into explosive crisis, and at that time ideas that are simply talking points today have at least a shot at being enacted into public policy. That’s exactly what happened at the beginning of the three previous cycles of anacyclosis I traced out in a previous post in this series.

In 1776, 1860, and 1933, ideas that had been on the political fringes not that many years beforehand redefined the entire political dialogue, and in all three cases this was possible because those once-fringe ideas had been widely circulated and widely discussed, even though most of the people who circulated and discussed them never imagined that they would live to see those ideas put into practice.

There are plenty of ideas about politics and society in circulation on the fringes of today’s American dialogue, to be sure. I’d like to suggest, though, that there’s a point to reviving an older, pre-imperial vision of what government can do, and ought to do, in the America of the future.

A political system that envisions its role as holding an open space in which citizens can pursue their own dreams and experiment with their own lives is inherently likely to be better at dissensus than more regimented alternatives, whether those come from the left or the right—and dissensus, to return to a central theme of this blog, is the best strategy we’ve got as we move into a future where nobody can be sure of having the right answers.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Triumph of the Commons 8/25/09

.

Farm / Ranch Land for Hawaiians

SUBHEAD: Kekaha Hawaiian Homestead Association hosts informational meeting Monday, January 28.

By Kawai Warren & Phoebe Eng on 24 January for Island Breath - 
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2013/01/farm-ranch-land-available-for-hawaiians.html)

[IB Publisher's note: Please pass this information on to those you know of Hawaiian heritage. This may be a unique opportunity. There are also many roles to play for non-Hawaiians in starting sustainable community models within this project.]


Image above: Fields divided by trail running along the ridge between Opelu and Waiawa ahupuaa. Photo by Juan Wilson.

West Kauai Hawaiian Beneficiaries and Wait List Applicants!

Do you want land for Farming and Ranching?

Do you want farming or ranching land on Hawaiian Home Lands at Puu Opae (mauka of Kekaha)?

Do you want a job or income in sustainable agriculture without putting poison in the ground?

Do you want your children and families to be healthier and eat better food?

Do you want to learn how to grow food in ways that malama aina and respect our water? 

If your answer is YES to any of these, come to:

Kekaha Hawaiian Homestead Association's Dinner and Information Session:

Date: Monday, January 28

Time: 6 pm

Place: A Special Party Tent at Kekaha Neighborhood Center Pavilions.

Kekaha Hawaiian Homestead Association (it's President is Kawai Warren) has been working hard for many years to bring you this opportunity.  After much hard work by KHHA Board, west Kauai homesteaders and friends, Kekaha Hawaiiian Homestead Association has received support from our Hawaii state land trustee to develop this project for you and your families.  We all worked hard to do this project with love in our hearts, and with pono, honest, respectful behavior.  Everyone worked as volunteers, with no self interest or self gain, to bring you this opportunity to malama aina.

The Puu Opae project will give you a chance to be on Puu Opae home lands and malama aina through growing healthy foods for our families.  It will also be an education and training project to ensure we have the skills to malama Puu Opae and help our future generations.

For more information, call (808) 639-2731 to contact KHHA with your questions.   

.

Koch confims man-made climate

SUBHEAD: Koch brothers' funded study finds 2.5°F global warming of land since 1750 is anthropogenic.

By Joe Romm on 20 January 2013 for Think Progress -
(http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/20/1474571/koch-funded-study-finds-25f-warming-of-land-since-1750-is-manmade-solar-forcing-does-not-appear-to-contribute/)


Image above: David H. Koch in 1996. He and hid brother Charles are right-wing coal barons. From (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer).

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) has finally published its findings on the cause of recent global warming. This Koch-funded reanalysis of millions of temperature observations from around the world, “A New Estimate of the Average Earth Surface Land Temperature Spanning 1753 to 2011,” concludes:

… solar forcing does not appear to contribute to the observed global warming of the past 250 years; the entire change can be modeled by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic [human-made] proxy.

You may recall that back in July, Richard Muller, BEST’s Founder and Scientific Director, published a NY Times op-ed, “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” which concluded

Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

The finding itself is “dog bites man” (see It’s “Extremely Likely That at Least 74% of Observed Warming Since 1950″ Was Manmade; It’s Highly Likely All of It Was).
What makes this “man bites dog” is that Muller has been a skeptic of climate science, and the single biggest funder of this study is the “Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000).” The Kochs are the leading funder of climate disinformation in the world!
Muller further explained:

Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.

In short, a Koch-funded study has found that the IPCC “consensus” underestimated both the rate of surface warming and how much could be attributed to human emissions!

The Koch-finded study also finds, “the rate of warming we observe is broadly consistent with the IPCC estimates of 2-4.5°C warming (for land plus oceans) at doubled CO2.” A summary of BEST’s findings are on their website.
.

Powder Keg in the Pacific

SUBHEAD: While war clouds gather in the Pacific sky, the question remains: Why, pray tell, is this happening now?

By Michael Klare on 22 January 2013 for Tom Dispatch -
(http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175640/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_the_next_war)


Image above: A Chinese surveillance ship (front) gets close to a Japanese coast guard vessel in East China Sea. From (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444358804578015873329670886.html).

Don’t look now, but conditions are deteriorating in the western Pacific. Things are turning ugly, with consequences that could prove deadly and spell catastrophe for the global economy.

In Washington, it is widely assumed that a showdown with Iran over its nuclear ambitions will be the first major crisis to engulf the next secretary of defense -- whether it be former Senator Chuck Hagel, as President Obama desires, or someone else if he fails to win Senate confirmation. With few signs of an imminent breakthrough in talks aimed at peacefully resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, many analysts believe that military action -- if not by Israel, then by the United States -- could be on this year’s agenda.

Lurking just behind the Iranian imbroglio, however, is a potential crisis of far greater magnitude, and potentially far more imminent than most of us imagine. China’s determination to assert control over disputed islands in the potentially energy-rich waters of the East and South China Seas, in the face of stiffening resistance from Japan and the Philippines along with greater regional assertiveness by the United States, spells trouble not just regionally, but potentially globally.

Islands, Islands, Everywhere

The possibility of an Iranian crisis remains in the spotlight because of the obvious risk of disorder in the Greater Middle East and its threat to global oil production and shipping. A crisis in the East or South China Seas (essentially, western extensions of the Pacific Ocean) would, however, pose a greater peril because of the possibility of a U.S.-China military confrontation and the threat to Asian economic stability.

The United States is bound by treaty to come to the assistance of Japan or the Philippines if either country is attacked by a third party, so any armed clash between Chinese and Japanese or Filipino forces could trigger American military intervention. With so much of the world’s trade focused on Asia, and the American, Chinese, and Japanese economies tied so closely together in ways too essential to ignore, a clash of almost any sort in these vital waterways might paralyze international commerce and trigger a global recession (or worse).

All of this should be painfully obvious and so rule out such a possibility -- and yet the likelihood of such a clash occurring has been on the rise in recent months, as China and its neighbors continue to ratchet up the bellicosity of their statements and bolster their military forces in the contested areas. Washington’s continuing statements about its ongoing plans for a “pivot” to, or “rebalancing” of, its forces in the Pacific have only fueled Chinese intransigence and intensified a rising sense of crisis in the region. Leaders on all sides continue to affirm their country’s inviolable rights to the contested islands and vow to use any means necessary to resist encroachment by rival claimants. In the meantime, China has increased the frequency and scale of its naval maneuvers in waters claimed by Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, further enflaming tensions in the region.

Ostensibly, these disputes revolve around the question of who owns a constellation of largely uninhabited atolls and islets claimed by a variety of nations. In the East China Sea, the islands in contention are called the Diaoyus by China and the Senkakus by Japan. At present, they are administered by Japan, but both countries claim sovereignty over them. In the South China Sea, several island groups are in contention, including the Spratly chain and the Paracel Islands (known in China as the Nansha and Xisha Islands, respectively). China claims all of these islets, while Vietnam claims some of the Spratlys and Paracels. Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines also claim some of the Spratlys.

Far more is, of course, at stake than just the ownership of a few uninhabited islets. The seabeds surrounding them are believed to sit atop vast reserves of oil and natural gas. Ownership of the islands would naturally confer ownership of the reserves -- something all of these countries desperately desire. Powerful forces of nationalism are also at work: with rising popular fervor, the Chinese believe that the islands are part of their national territory and any other claims represent a direct assault on China’s sovereign rights; the fact that Japan -- China’s brutal invader and occupier during World War II -- is a rival claimant to some of them only adds a powerful tinge of victimhood to Chinese nationalism and intransigence on the issue. By the same token, the Japanese, Vietnamese, and Filipinos, already feeling threatened by China’s growing wealth and power, believe no less firmly that not bending on the island disputes is an essential expression of their nationhood.

Long ongoing, these disputes have escalated recently. In May 2011, for instance, the Vietnamese reported that Chinese warships were harassing oil-exploration vessels operated by the state-owned energy company PetroVietnam in the South China Sea. In two instances, Vietnamese authorities claimed, cables attached to underwater survey equipment were purposely slashed. In April 2012, armed Chinese marine surveillance ships blocked efforts by Filipino vessels to inspect Chinese boats suspected of illegally fishing off Scarborough Shoal, an islet in the South China Sea claimed by both countries.

The East China Sea has similarly witnessed tense encounters of late. Last September, for example, Japanese authorities arrested 14 Chinese citizens who had attempted to land on one of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands to press their country’s claims, provoking widespread anti-Japanese protests across China and a series of naval show-of-force operations by both sides in the disputed waters.

Regional diplomacy, that classic way of settling disputes in a peaceful manner, has been under growing strain recently thanks to these maritime disputes and the accompanying military encounters. In July 2012, at the annual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Asian leaders were unable to agree on a final communiqué, no matter how anodyne -- the first time that had happened in the organization’s 46-year history. Reportedly, consensus on a final document was thwarted when Cambodia, a close ally of China’s, refused to endorse compromise language on a proposed “code of conduct” for resolving disputes in the South China Sea. Two months later, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Beijing in an attempt to promote negotiations on the disputes, she was reviled in the Chinese press, while officials there refused to cede any ground at all.
As 2012 ended and the New Year began, the situation only deteriorated. On December 1st, officials in Hainan Province, which administers the Chinese-claimed islands in the South China Sea, announced a new policy for 2013: Chinese warships would now be empowered to stop, search, or simply repel foreign ships that entered the claimed waters and were suspected of conducting illegal activities ranging, assumedly, from fishing to oil drilling. This move coincided with an increase in the size and frequency of Chinese naval deployments in the disputed areas.

On December 13th, the Japanese military scrambled F-15 fighter jets when a Chinese marine surveillance plane flew into airspace near the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Another worrisome incident occurred on January 8th, when four Chinese surveillance ships entered Japanese-controlled waters around those islands for 13 hours. Two days later, Japanese fighter jets were again scrambled when a Chinese surveillance plane returned to the islands. Chinese fighters then came in pursuit, the first time supersonic jets from both sides flew over the disputed area. The Chinese clearly have little intention of backing down, having indicated that they will increase their air and naval deployments in the area, just as the Japanese are doing.

While war clouds gather in the Pacific sky, the question remains: Why, pray tell, is this happening now?

Several factors seem to be conspiring to heighten the risk of confrontation, including leadership changes in China and Japan, and a geopolitical reassessment by the United States.

* In China, a new leadership team is placing renewed emphasis on military strength and on what might be called national assertiveness. At the 18th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, held last November in Beijing, Xi Jinping was named both party head and chairman of the Central Military Commission, making him, in effect, the nation’s foremost civilian and military official. Since then, Xi has made several heavily publicized visits to assorted Chinese military units, all clearly intended to demonstrate the Communist Party’s determination, under his leadership, to boost the capabilities and prestige of the country’s army, navy, and air force. He has already linked this drive to his belief that his country should play a more vigorous and assertive role in the region and the world.

In a speech to soldiers in the city of Huizhou, for example, Xi spoke of his “dream” of national rejuvenation: “This dream can be said to be a dream of a strong nation; and for the military, it is the dream of a strong military.” Significantly, he used the trip to visit the Haikou, a destroyer assigned to the fleet responsible for patrolling the disputed waters of the South China Sea. As he spoke, a Chinese surveillance plane entered disputed air space over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, prompting Japan to scramble those F-15 fighter jets.

* In Japan, too, a new leadership team is placing renewed emphasis on military strength and national assertiveness. On December 16th, arch-nationalist Shinzo Abe returned to power as the nation’s prime minister. Although he campaigned largely on economic issues, promising to revive the country’s lagging economy, Abe has made no secret of his intent to bolster the Japanese military and assume a tougher stance on the East China Sea dispute.

In his first few weeks in office, Abe has already announced plans to increase military spending and review an official apology made by a former government official to women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. These steps are sure to please Japan’s rightists, but certain to inflame anti-Japanese sentiment in China, Korea, and other countries it once occupied.

Equally worrisome, Abe promptly negotiated an agreement with the Philippines for greater cooperation on enhanced “maritime security” in the western Pacific, a move intended to counter growing Chinese assertiveness in the region. Inevitably, this will spark a harsh Chinese response -- and because the United States has mutual defense treaties with both countries, it will also increase the risk of U.S. involvement in future engagements at sea.

* In the United States, senior officials are debating implementation of the “Pacific pivot” announced by President Obama in a speech before the Australian Parliament a little over a year ago. In it, he promised that additional U.S. forces would be deployed in the region, even if that meant cutbacks elsewhere. “My guidance is clear,” he declared. “As we plan and budget for the future, we will allocate the resources necessary to maintain our strong military presence in this region.” While Obama never quite said that his approach was intended to constrain the rise of China, few observers doubt that a policy of “containment” has returned to the Pacific.

Indeed, the U.S. military has taken the first steps in this direction, announcing, for example, that by 2017 all three U.S. stealth planes, the F-22, F-35, and B-2, would be deployed to bases relatively near China and that by 2020 60% of U.S. naval forces will be stationed in the Pacific (compared to 50% today). However, the nation’s budget woes have led many analysts to question whether the Pentagon is actually capable of fully implementing the military part of any Asian pivot strategy in a meaningful way. A study conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) at the behest of Congress, released last summer, concluded that the Department of Defense “has not adequately articulated the strategy behind its force posture planning [in the Asia-Pacific] nor aligned the strategy with resources in a way that reflects current budget realities.”

This, in turn, has fueled a drive by military hawks to press the administration to spend more on Pacific-oriented forces and to play a more vigorous role in countering China's "bullying" behavior in the East and South China Seas. “[America’s Asian allies] are waiting to see whether America will live up to its uncomfortable but necessary role as the true guarantor of stability in East Asia, or whether the region will again be dominated by belligerence and intimidation,” former Secretary of the Navy and former Senator James Webb wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Although the administration has responded to such taunts by reaffirming its pledge to bolster its forces in the Pacific, this has failed to halt the calls for an even tougher posture by Washington. Obama has already been chided for failing to provide sufficient backing to Israel in its struggle with Iran over nuclear weapons, and it is safe to assume that he will face even greater pressure to assist America’s allies in Asia were they to be threatened by Chinese forces.

Add these three developments together, and you have the makings of a powder keg -- potentially at least as explosive and dangerous to the global economy as any confrontation with Iran. Right now, given the rising tensions, the first close encounter of the worst kind, in which, say, shots were unexpectedly fired and lives lost, or a ship or plane went down, might be the equivalent of lighting a fuse in a crowded, over-armed room. Such an incident could occur almost any time. The Japanese press has reported that government officials there are ready to authorize fighter pilots to fire warning shots if Chinese aircraft penetrate the airspace over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. A Chinese general has said that such an act would count as the start of "actual combat." That the irrationality of such an event will be apparent to anyone who considers the deeply tangled economic relations among all these powers may prove no impediment to the situation -- as at the beginning of World War I -- simply spinning out of everyone’s control.

Can such a crisis be averted? Yes, if the leaders of China, Japan, and the United States, the key countries involved, take steps to defuse the belligerent and ultra-nationalistic pronouncements now holding sway and begin talking with one another about practical steps to resolve the disputes. Similarly, an emotional and unexpected gesture -- Prime Minister Abe, for instance, pulling a Nixon and paying a surprise goodwill visit to China -- might carry the day and change the atmosphere. Should these minor disputes in the Pacific get out of hand, however, not just those directly involved but the whole planet will look with sadness and horror on the failure of everyone involved.
• Michael Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, a TomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left, just published in paperback.  A documentary movie based on his book Blood and Oil can be previewed and ordered at www.bloodandoilmovie.com. You can follow Klare on Facebook by clicking here.

.

Masonry Ovens

SUBHEAD: Masonry ovens, like thatched roofs, bale-building and cob, is an old method recently revived.

By Brian Kaller on 23 January 2013 for Restoring Mayberry -
(http://restoringmayberry.blogspot.com/2013/01/masonry-ovens.html)


Image above: Masonry Heater Association 2009 Bake Oven contest winner. From (http://www.mha-net.org/bake-ovens/).

Almost no one enjoys the cold, yet most people in the world live where it is cold for part of the year – even subtropical or Mediterranean climates can get chilly in the winter, and burning deserts can get cold at night. Right now, we keep warm through burning fossil fuels, or from electricity – most of which comes from burning fossil fuels. In the future, however, we can expect billions more people in the world, and far less fossil fuels.

We could turn to nuclear power, of course, but it takes years to build the plants, aside from any other problems. Solar, wind and tidal power do not supply the concentrated power that oil, gas, and coal do – that’s the reason they haven’t been cost-effective before now.

If you want to tell me that someone will invent something – well, I have no doubt someone will. But will it be a something that will solve all our problems, be affordable, be implementable around the world in a short time, and not have any side effects worse than the original problem? Because that would be a first.

The simplest method of keeping warm, of course, is the oldest one -- fire. Restoring fireplaces to our homes and offices, however, would present a few problems. First, we destroyed most of the world’s forests when we only numbered in the millions, or hundreds of millions, and now there are seven thousand million of us. We could coppice trees (cut them off at the base) or pollard them (cut them at man-height) and let them grow back. It is an old, and still valid, method of preserving forests, but trees like hazel still take a decade or more to return.

Compared to that, the second problem with fireplaces seems minor: they are spectacularly inefficient. Old buildings in Ireland will have the fireplaces stuffed with newspaper the whole way up, and there is still a draught. According to author David Lyle, a fireplace and chimney send only 10 percent of its heat to the room, and the other 90 percent goes out into the sky.

“Shelter magazines illustrate the scene often, in a spirit of nostalgia,” Lyle notes. “The open fire, the colonial family gathered around, the pot hung from a crane over the coals. Undeniably it’s an attractive scene. But by the tens of thousands Americans bricked up their handsome fireplaces as iron stoves became readily available. The fireplace used vast amounts of wood. It gave too little heat. It must also have been a trial for the woman who had to use it for cooking.

With the affluence of the oil age we have uncovered the old fireplaces in colonial homes. But today they are objects of aesthetic delight, not work spaces or devices for serious heating. And some of them, once again, are being bricked up in favor of stoves.”

Beyond that, there is the threat of fire spreading outside the fireplace. Believe it or not, kitchen fires were the leading cause of death for women in 18th century Britain, and presumably one of the leading causes of death for women in most places in most eras. We forget how flammable most cities were until recently, and how easily and frequently fires swept through cities until nothing remained.

Iron stoves were superior to fireplaces, but metal heats up quickly and loses heat quickly, so the fire must be frequently restarted or restocked if it is to keep heating the room. And, as their surface becomes very hot, they create a risk of catching the house on fire.

There is, however, a little-remembered method that was used in Central and Eastern Europe from the Middle Ages until the beginning of the fossil fuel era – the masonry stove. It relies on a simple concept: it is a hearth surrounded by a thermal mass like cob, brick or tile, which heats up with the fire and slowly releases heat throughout the day.

Instead of having a single vertical flue that takes the heat directly into the sky, masonry ovens have a flue that winds around several times before heading outside -- the smoke is typically cold by the time it reaches the outside. All the heat is transferred into the mass, and thence into the room.

Since the smoke and heat rise inside insulated ducts which do not conduct heat quickly, interior temperatures rise very high and hydrocarbon gases ignite as they do in a catalytic converter. Makers of masonry stoves claim their products are 85-90 percent efficient.

Fires in masonry ovens do not need to be tended and kept going, as it is not the fire itself that keeps the house warm but the thermal mass – most oven owners simply set one fire in the morning, and then let the heat radiate through the day. As they release the heat slowly, so they tend to be warm but not hot to the touch – some old Russian ovens were made with spaces on top for people to sleep where it was warm.

Perhaps most importantly, since the ovens need only a brief and quickly-burning fire, they do not require chopped wood for fuel, but can use faster-growing and more common material like straw or sticks. The fast-burning straw creates little soot to build up and block the flue, so their users say they require little cleaning.

Masonry ovens, like thatched roofs, bale-building and cob, is an old method recently revived when more people began to realize its advantages. If it takes off, millions of people could build sustainable heating systems out of nothing more than clay and stone, and heat themselves with material that is renewable and almost free.

For more information check out David Lyle’s excellent Book of Masonry Stoves, or a recent article on the subject by Low-Tech Magazine.

.