Environmental Law Prof Blog

A Little NEPA with Teeth: CEQA and the Duty to Mitigate

At least some courts are willing to give "hard law" that requires ecological sustainability teeth.  In City of Marina v. Board of Trustee of California State University, the California Supreme Court held that the state university trustees' duty under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to mitigate the offsite environmental effects of a major campus expansion was violated when the university planned to expand a small campus on a former Army base into a major institution, but refused to mitigate off-campus impacts on drainage, water supply, traffic, wastewater management, and fire protection and refused to share the cost of certain infrastructure improvements proposed by the base's new civilian governing authority.   The court held that the mitigation requirement was not rendered infeasible by any state constitutional or statutory restrictions on the trustees' funding of such mitigation measures. It reasoned that  the cost-sharing measures proposed by the authority were not rendered infeasible by state constitutional provisions prohibiting property taxation of state-owned property and gifts of public funds to public agencies, nor were they rendered infeasible by any uncertainty in the authority's ability to obtain the necessary funding. The court further held that off-campus mitigation was not exclusively the responsibility of the governing authority, but was properly shared by the trustees. Finally, given the feasibility of the proposed shared mitigation measures, the court held that overriding circumstances did not justify the trustees' certification of the EIR and approval of the proposed project. The court therefore held that the trustee's certification of the environmental impact report (EIR), despite the remaining unmitigated effects, was an abuse of discretion. 

Westlaw link: City Of Marina v. Board Of Trustees Of The California State University, (Cal.)

Oil Spill Threatens Mediterranean Coast

Sometimes its hard to keep things in perspective.  The rumor is flying around the blogosphere that the environmental situation in Lebanon is as serious as the Exxon Valdez spill.  Although Exxon Valdez taught us a lot about how long-lasting the natural resources damages from oil spills can be, I would not analogize a 110,000 barrel spill to an 11 million barrel spill.  As the graphic below illustrates the  Exxon Valdez spill extended about 470 miles --  which my metrically challenged brain thinks is roughly 750 kilometers -- greater than the length of this slick by a factor of 10.

AP report: Environmental Disaster Looms;  Oil spill threatens Mediterranean after power plant hit;  Cleanup along Lebanon's coast can't begin until fighting ends

BEIRUT — Endangered turtles die shortly after hatching from their eggs. Fish float dead off the coast. Flaming oil sends waves of black smoke toward the city. In this country of Mediterranean beaches and snow-capped mountains, Israeli bombing that caused an oil spill has created an environmental disaster. And cleanup can't start until the fighting stops, the United Nations said. Pools of oil disfigure a beach in the bay of Byblos, 42 kms north of Beirut. Lebanon's greens launched an international appeal for help to combat an environmental crisis caused by a huge oil spill south of Beirut, more than two weeks into an Israeli air war.(AFP/File/Nicolas Asfouri) World attention has focused on the hundreds of people who have died in the three-week-old conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The environmental damage has attracted little attention but experts warn the long-term effects could be devastating. Some 110,000 barrels of oil poured into the Mediterranean two weeks ago after Israeli warplanes hit a coastal power plant. One tank is still burning, sending clouds of thick black smoke across Lebanon. Compounding the problem is an Israeli naval blockade and continuing military operations that have made any cleanup impossible. "The immediate impact  can be severe but we have not been able to  do an assessment," said Achim Steiner, executive director of United Nations Environment Program, in Geneva. "But the longer the spill is left untreated, the harder it will be to clean up." The oil has slicked  about one third of Lebanon's coast, an 80-kilometre stretch centred on the Jiyeh plant, about 20 kilometres south of Beirut, Lebanese Environment Minister Yaacoub Sarraf said. It has also drifted out into the Mediterranean, already hitting neighbouring Syria. Experts warn that Cyprus, Turkey and even Greece could be affected.

Sarraf said Israeli planes "purposely hit the tanks which are the closest to the sea," and knocked out the berms designed to prevent any ruptured tanks from flowing into the waters. "As long as there is no ceasefire and as long as we  don't have access to the sea, not only can we not start the treatment but we cannot even access or get the data which is essential," Sarraf said. "Chances are, our whole marine ecosystem facing the Lebanese shoreline is already dead. What is at stake today is  all marine life in the eastern Mediterranean." Israel's Environmental Affairs ministry in Jerusalem declined comment, referring questions to the Foreign Ministry, which did not immediately return phone calls.
Lebanon, whose flag features a cedar tree and which is known by many as Green Lebanon for its forested mountains, is one of the few countries in the Arab world that pays attention to pollution. Mini-buses  that run on diesel have been banned, while  factories are forced to abide by strict rules. Now, large parts of the country's sandy and rocky beaches, visited in the past by hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, are covered with thick black layers of oil. Many fishermen have been forced out of business, and people are getting scared to eat any fish at all. Baby turtles, usually born in late summer, die after they swim into the polluted water shortly after hatching from eggs. Syria was already  experiencing similar problems, said Hassan Murjan, who heads the environment department in the Syrian city of Tartous. "The oil pollution has caused serious environmental damage because our coast is rocky and this is very dangerous for marine life," Murjan told the official news  agency SANA. The first country to rush and
help Lebanon was Kuwait, which suffered a similar disaster during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But three truckloads of cleanup supplies the country sent in are stuck in Beirut, with crews waiting for the fighting
to wane before beginning their work, said Beirut's mayor, Abdel Monem Ariss. "We have no access to Lebanon territorial waters," Sarraf said. "This means we are already 10 days delayed and in terms of oil pollution, 10 days is a century." Three local environmental organizations demanded a ceasefire to no avail. "Cleanup operations should start as soon as possible otherwise most of the damage will be irreversible," warned Wael Hmaidan, head of the assessment group on the ground. "The more time we allow the oil to settle into the sand, rocks and seabed, the harder it will be to clean it up." Sarraf estimated it will cost between $34 million and $57 million to clean up the shorelines, and possibly 10 times that much for the entire effort. Optimistic assessments suggest it will take at least six months for the shore cleanup and up to 10 years for "the re-establishment of the ecosystem of the eastern Mediterranean as it was two weeks ago," he said. In Geneva, the UNEP's Steiner said the agency has teams on standby to move to Lebanon as soon as the conditions permit. "Oil and marine diversity do not mix well," Steiner said. "We are immediately concerned for marine life  in the area." Sarraf likened the disaster to the Erika spill off France in 1999, when the oil tanker split in two and dumped 70,000 barrels of oil into the Atlantic that  washed up along 400 kilometres of French shoreline.  But this case carries the added problem of the
burning tank, smoke from which has reached Beirut, he said.

Understanding Glacial Cycles

Three articles published in Science provide background on glacial cycles.  Those of you attempting to understand the science of global warming may want to check them out:

The episodic nature of Earth’s glacial and interglacial periods is believed to be caused by long-term changes in the amount of energy Earth receives from the Sun (insolation) and in seasonal variations driven by three major cycles: a 100,000-year eccentricity cycle (regular changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun), a 41,000-yr obliquity cycle (oscillations in the tilt of Earth’s axis), and a 23,000-year precession cycle (changes in the direction of Earth’s axis of rotation). Curiously, Earth’s glacial oscillations between 3 and 1 millions years ago have followed a 41,000-year cycle when the 20,000-year precessional effects should have been stronger. Two studies in the 28 Jul 2006 Science (published online 22 Jun) offered two new explanations for this paradox. Raymo et al. ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/313/5786/492 ) argue that the early glacial cycles appear to have a 40,000-year cycle because the opposing 23,000-year insolation cycles in the Northern and Southern hemispheres may have canceled one another. Huybers ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/313/5786/508 ), on the other hand, maintain that ice age models have been incorrectly using peak summer insolation to estimate ice mass variability, when they should have instead used the integrated amount of solar energy received over the duration of the summer. An accompanying Perspective by D. Paillard ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/313/5786/455 ) lent historical context to these new arguments.

Sometimes its hard to keep things in perspective.  The rumor is flying around the blogosphere that the environmental situation in Lebanon is as serious as the Exxon Valdez spill.  Although Exxon Valdez taught us a lot about how long-lasting the natural resources damages from oil spills can be, I would not analogize a 110,000 barrel spill to an 11 million barrel spill.  As the graphic below illustrates the  Exxon Valdez spill extended about 470 miles --  which my metrically challenged brain thinks is roughly 750 kilometers -- greater than the length of this slick by a factor of 10.

AP report:
Environmental Disaster Looms;  Oil spill threatens Mediterranean after power plant hit;  Cleanup along Lebanon's coast can't begin until fighting ends
BEIRUT — Endangered turtles die shortly after hatching from their eggs. Fish float dead off the coast. Flaming oil sends waves of black smoke toward the city.

In this country of Mediterranean beaches and snow-capped mountains, Israeli bombing that caused an oil spill has created an environmental disaster. And cleanup can't start until the
fighting stops, the United Nations said.

Pools of oil disfigure a beach in the bay of Byblos, 42 kms north of Beirut. Lebanon's greens launched an international appeal for help to combat an environmental crisis caused by a huge oil spill south of Beirut, more than two weeks into an Israeli air war.(AFP/File/Nicolas Asfouri)

World attention has focused on the hundreds of people who have died in the three-week-old conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The environmental damage has attracted little attention but experts warn the long-term effects could be devastating. Some 110,000 barrels of oil poured into the Mediterranean two weeks ago after Israeli warplanes hit a coastal power plant. One tank is still burning, sending clouds of thick black smoke across Lebanon. Compounding the problem is an Israeli naval blockade and continuing military operations that have made any cleanup impossible. "The immediate impact  can be severe but we have not been able to  do an assessment," said Achim Steiner, executive director
of United Nations Environment Program, in Geneva. "But the longer the spill is left untreated, the harder it will be to clean up." The oil has slicked  about one third of Lebanon's coast, an 80-kilometre stretch centred on the Jiyeh plant, about 20 kilometres south of Beirut, Lebanese Environment Minister Yaacoub Sarraf said. It has also drifted out into the Mediterranean, already hitting neighbouring Syria. Experts warn that Cyprus, Turkey and even Greece could be affected.

Sarraf said Israeli planes "purposely hit the tanks which are the closest to the sea," and knocked out the berms designed to prevent any ruptured tanks from flowing into the waters. "As long as there is no ceasefire and as long as we  don't have access to the sea, not only can we not start the treatment but we cannot even access or get the data which is essential," Sarraf said. "Chances are, our whole marine ecosystem facing the Lebanese shoreline is already dead. What is at stake today is  all marine life in the eastern Mediterranean." Israel's Environmental Affairs ministry in Jerusalem declined comment, referring questions to the Foreign Ministry, which did not immediately return phone calls.
Lebanon, whose flag features a cedar tree and which is known by many as Green Lebanon for its forested mountains, is one of the few countries in the Arab world that pays attention to pollution. Mini-buses  that run on diesel have been banned, while  factories are forced to abide by strict rules. Now, large parts of the country's sandy and rocky beaches, visited in the past by hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, are covered with thick black layers of oil. Many fishermen have been forced out of business, and people are getting scared to eat any fish at all. Baby turtles, usually born in late summer, die after they swim into the polluted water shortly after hatching from eggs. Syria was already  experiencing similar problems, said Hassan Murjan, who heads the environment department in the Syrian city of Tartous. "The oil pollution has caused serious environmental damage because our coast is rocky and this is very dangerous for marine life," Murjan told the official news  agency SANA. The first country to rush and
help Lebanon was Kuwait, which suffered a similar disaster during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But three truckloads of cleanup supplies the country sent in are stuck in Beirut, with crews waiting for the fighting
to wane before beginning their work, said Beirut's mayor, Abdel Monem Ariss. "We have no access to Lebanon territorial waters," Sarraf said. "This means we are already 10 days delayed and in terms of oil pollution, 10 days is a century." Three local environmental organizations demanded a ceasefire to no avail. "Cleanup operations should start as soon as possible otherwise most of the damage will be irreversible," warned Wael Hmaidan, head of the assessment group on the ground. "The more time we allow the oil to settle into the sand, rocks and seabed, the harder it will be to clean it up." Sarraf estimated it will cost between $34 million and $57 million to clean up the shorelines, and possibly 10 times that much for the entire effort. Optimistic assessments suggest it will take at least six months for the shore cleanup and up to 10 years for "the re-establishment of the ecosystem of the eastern Mediterranean as it was two weeks ago," he said. In Geneva, the UNEP's Steiner said the agency has teams on standby to move to Lebanon as soon as the conditions permit. "Oil and marine diversity do not mix well," Steiner said. "We are immediately concerned for marine life  in the area." Sarraf likened the disaster to the Erika spill off France in 1999, when the oil tanker split in two and dumped 70,000 barrels of oil into the Atlantic that  washed up along 400 kilometres of French shoreline.  But this case carries the added problem of the
burning tank, smoke from which has reached Beirut, he said.

Corruption, Democracy, and Environmental Policy: An Empirical Contribution

So this is why we hear so much about governance!  An empirical study by Pellegrini and Gerlagh, published in the Journal of Environment and Development, suggests that higher environmental standards are more likely to follow increased rates of economic growth when there governance improvements as well (democratic institutions, lack of corruption).  It makes some sense -- otherwise the increasing wealth simply gets diverted into the pockets of government officials who don't care about environmental standards.<>

  Link: Corruption, Democracy, and Environmental Policy

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Theoretical and empirical studies have shown that democracy and corruption influence environmental policies. In this article, the authors empirically analyze the relative importance of these determinants of environmental policy. When these variables are jointly included as explanatory variables in a multiple regression analysis, the authors found that corruption stands out as a substantial and significant determinant of environmental policies, while proxies for democracy have an insignificant impact. Nevertheless, democracy could affect environmental policy stringency given that countries with a history of democratic rule tend to be less corrupted. The authors argue that improving environmental quality following increasing income is less probable in developing countries with institutional disarray. Finally, and more optimistically, when considering the results in the context of institutions and growth, the authors conclude that there is scope for reaping a double dividend, when institutional improvements and reductions in corruption induce higher economic growth rates and stricter environmental policies.

 

Ocean Governance

Science has a policy forum article by Crowder and colleagues, Resolving Mismatches in U.S. Ocean Governance, that argues for marine spatial planning with comprehensive ocean zoning as the solution to fragmented governance as well as spatial and temporal mismatches between ocean ecosystems and governance mechanisms.  Its not a new analysis, but it succinctly states the problem and a solution, without requiring students to read the Executive Summaries of the Pew and U.S. ocean commissions.  [ocean governance article]

 That the oceans are in serious trouble is no longer news. Fisheries are declining, formerly abundant species are now rare, food webs are altered, and coastal ecosystems are polluted and degraded. Invasive species and diseases are proliferating and the oceans are warming. Because these changes are largely due to failures of governance, reversing them will require new, more effective governance systems.

Historically, ocean management has focused on individual sectors. In the United States, at least 20 federal agencies implement over 140 federal ocean-related statutes. This is like a scenario in which a number of specialist physicians, who are not communicating well, treat a patient with multiple medical problems. The combined treatment can exacerbate rather than solve problems. Separate regimes for fisheries, aquaculture, marine mammal conservation, shipping, oil and gas, and mining are designed to resolve conflicts within sectors, but not across sectors. Decision-making is often ad hoc, and no one has clear authority to resolve conflicts across sectors or to deal with cumulative effects. Many scientists are now convinced that the solution can be found in ecosystem-based management. Ecosystem-based management focuses on managing the suite of human activities that affect particular places. This is a marked departure from the current approach. The time has come to consider a more holistic approach to place-based management of marine ecosystems, comprehensive ocean zoning.

Management regimes for individual sectors operate under different legal mandates and reflect the interests of different stakeholders, so governance is riddled with gaps and overlaps. Fishing has a larger impact on biological diversity than any other human activity, but the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which governs fisheries, contains no mandate to maintain biodiversity. Ecosystem-based fisheries management is only a partial solution--it does not account for impacts on nontarget species or manage other activities that degrade fisheries, such as pollution or wetlands loss. The problem of fragmented governance is growing, as new place-based activities in the sea [e.g., aquaculture, wind farms, liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals] are increasing the potential range and severity of conflicts across sectors.

Science 4 August 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5787, pp. 617 - 618
DOI: 10.1126/science.1129706                                                

California's Channel Islands illustrate the potential for conflict and fragmentation of management authority (see figure, above). In 2003, California established a network of fully protected marine reserves and conservation areas that allow limited take in the state waters (0 to 3 nautical miles) of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. This followed a 5-year multiagency, multistakeholder process. Yet federal agencies still have not implemented the proposed reserves in federal sanctuary waters (3 to 6 nautical miles) because the roles of the two National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agencies (Fisheries and National Marine Sanctuaries) are unclear.

Spatial mismatches between scales of governance and ecosystems are common. Current subdivisions of state, federal, and international waters are understandable in historical and political terms. But it makes little ecological sense for managing highly migratory fishes or for LNG terminals, which can be built in state or federal waters.

Spatial mismatches typically arise from jurisdictional boundaries too small for effective management. Leatherback and loggerhead sea turtles forage over much of the Pacific, but bycatch reduction efforts required in U.S. fisheries are not used in foreign fisheries, which potentially contributes to ongoing declines. Western and Eastern substocks of Atlantic bluefin tuna migrate, so the high catches in the East may cancel the potential benefits of restricted catches in the West.

Sometimes, the causes of the problems are too far removed from the effects. Farming in the Mississippi River watershed contributes to nutrient loading and hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico, displacing fishes and other marine organisms. Jurisdictions can also be too large. Cod management in the northwest Atlantic focused on the whole region as local stocks experienced serial depletion.

Temporal mismatches between biological systems and human institutions can also degrade marine ecosystems. Annual appropriations and 2- or 4-year voting cycles drive many policy processes. But problems affecting marine systems can occur on time scales that are too fast for these policy rhythms (e.g., sudden collapses of fish populations, outbreaks of invasive species or harmful algal blooms) or too slow (e.g., increases in ocean temperatures, acidification, or the cumulative loss of wetlands). The white abalone fishery in California expanded and crashed rapidly in the early 1970s, 20 years before the management agency restricted fishing. Longline tuna fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico reduced oceanic whitetip sharks by 99.7% over five decades, but the change was so gradual that managers failed to notice or prevent it.

Problems generated by fragmentation and mismatches become particularly severe in systems that include multiple, interactive, and cumulative stressors. Just as stressed humans are more susceptible to opportunistic infections, stressed ecosystems lack robustness and resilience. On the U.S. West coast, the combination of degraded spawning habitat, shifting ocean temperatures, and overfishing led to population declines and endangered species listings for salmon. This did not occur in Alaska, because of better river conditions, protection of spawning habitat, and a spatial fisheries permit system.

These governance problems are difficult to alleviate even after they become well understood. Incremental improvements in sectoral governance can reduce some problems (e.g., overfishing of target species), but they generally cannot address fragmentation and mismatches.

Marine spatial planning with comprehensive ocean zoning can help address these problems. Although property rights and management arrangements in the sea differ from those on land, spatial planning could be initiated with cooperation among federal, state, tribal, and local authorities. Zoning would not replace existing fishing regulations or requirements for oil and gas permits, but would add an important spatial dimension by defining areas within which compatible activities could occur.

Key elements of successful zoning include locating and designating zones based on the underlying topography, oceanography, and distribution of biotic communities; designing systems of permits, licenses, and use rules within each zone; establishing compliance mechanisms, and creating programs to monitor, to review, and to adapt the zoning system. Not only does comprehensive ocean zoning directly address fragmentation and spatial mismatches, zoning also facilitates efforts to adjust governance to the rhythms of human institutions and the dynamics of spatially bounded ecosystems.

Of course, establishing an effective system of ocean zoning in the United States will present a formidable challenge. But other countries, including Belgium, China, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, have already begun implementing or experimenting with marine spatial planning. Massachusetts is considering legislation to develop and implement an ocean management plan. A striking example of comprehensive, multiple-use zoning of marine resources is Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. It provides specific areas with high levels of protection, while allowing other uses, including fishing, to continue elsewhere.

The transition to comprehensive ocean zoning in the United States will not be easy. Critics point to the contentiousness of efforts to introduce zoning, the difficulties of developing legislation acceptable to all stakeholders, and failures to achieve desired results even after zoning is established. But our current approach simply cannot address the critical issues in the oceans. Recovering ocean ecosystems will require a better understanding of the consequences of interconnections among ecosystem components, as well as a systemic change in the way we consider issues and make choices regarding ocean use.

The Science of Global Warming: An Obvious Positive Feedback Loop

 

ScienceNOW News reported today [Science report] on a study by Erickson published in Geophysical Letters that documents one of the more obvious positive feedback loops in the climate system: as global warming creates more heat waves, more CO2 will be produced to provide electricity for our air conditioners.  Erickson combined data from regional climate modelling with regional energy use modelling to assess the impact of warming temperatures on heating and air conditioning.  The  bad news is that winters will not warm enough to reduce CO2 produced from heating:

Think twice before you crank up that air conditioner--you just may be contributing to the heat. The fossil fuels that are burned to power our air conditioners fill the skies with the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, leading to a warmer world--but the warming won't be enough to lessen heating needs in winter, according to a new climate model. The model is the first to show directly how climate change drives energy use, and the findings could make it easier for policymakers to qualitatively link energy policies to climate change.

Climate researchers typically model Earth on huge supercomputers. A standard experiment might look at the planet between the years 1800 and 2100, tweaking the carbon dioxide levels, sunlight, or cloud cover to understand precisely how these variables affect global and local temperatures. These climate models can suggest what would happen if there were slightly less carbon dioxide in the air, or if there were significantly more snowfall in the Arctic, but they have no way to link economic factors such as increased electricity use to climate change: a 2 degree rise in summer temperatures, for example.

             In the August issue of Geophysical Research Letters, David Erickson, a geophysicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and colleagues in geophysics and economics make the connection. The team took temperature predictions for the years 2000 to 2025 from a standard climate model and plugged them into the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) developed by the Department of Energy. The program calculates energy consumption due to heating and air conditioning by dividing the United States up by county and taking into account local climate, typical building styles, and the fuel sources for electricity and heat used in each locale. Part of the result was predictable: Carbon dioxide emissions will rise as more coal is burned when the southern and western United States crank up the air conditioning during their ever warmer summers. But the rest was surprising: The northeast didn't necessarily have warmer winters and, furthermore, tended to use heating oil or natural gas instead of coal-fired electricity for heat. The net result was a rise in carbon dioxide emissions over the 25 years.

The combination of regional climate modeling with state of the art economic modeling "makes this study the first of its kind," says Tom Wilbanks, a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on the Human Dimension of Global Climate Change, who was not involved in the study. The team says the next step is to feed the carbon dioxide trend back into the economic model to see whether ever warmer temperatures lead to ever more air conditioner use.

 

The Great Warming and the Great Depression: Its More Than An Analogy

In a replay of the beginning of the Great Depression, more than 60 percent of the United States now has abnormally dry or drought conditions.  The drought stretches from Georgia to Arizona and across the north through the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin.  Brad Rippey, a USDA meteorologist in Washington, said this year's drought is continuing one that started in the late 1990s. "The 1999 to 2006 drought ranks only behind the 1930s and the 1950s. It's the third-worst drought on record."   Mark Svoboda, a climatologist for the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, was reluctant to say how bad the current drought might eventually be.  "We'll have to wait to see how it plays out - but it's definitely bad...and the drought seems to not be going anywhere soon."  See Seattle PI report

In addition to ranchers losing their herds and farmers losing their crops, farm ponds and other small bodies of water have dried out from the heat, leaving the residual alkali dust to be whipped up by the wind. The blowing, dirt-and-salt mixture is a phenomenon that hasn't been seen in south central North Dakota since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

Cities join California in taking independent action on global warming

The Bush administration is toting up quite a foreign policy record: Iraq, Lebanon and now the ever-supportive Tony Blair prefers diplomatic ties to California and major US cities to those with the federal government:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los Angeles, London, New York, Seoul and 18 other cities joined forces on Tuesday in a global warming project aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Launched by former President Bill Clinton's foundation, the initiative will allow cities to pool their purchasing power and lower the price of energy-saving products and provide technical assistance to help them become more energy efficient.  Urban areas are responsible for more than 75 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, making reduced energy crucial in the effort to slow the pace of global warming.  Energy-efficient traffic lights, street lighting, the use of biofuels for city transport, and traffic congestion schemes were some of the practical steps that cities are expected to take to reduce greenhouse gases.  "The world's largest cities can have a major impact on this. Already they are at the center of developing the technologies and innovative new practices that provide hope that we can radically reduce carbon emissions," said London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who launched the initiative in Los Angeles with Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.  The Clinton Foundation said it hoped that coordination between major cities will boost efforts now being made by some areas on an individual basis.  The partnership with the foundation began with the participation of 22 cities -- Berlin, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Caracas, Chicago, Delhi, Dhaka, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Melbourne, Mexico City, New York, Paris, Philadelphia, Rome, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Toronto and Warsaw.

Movie Review: The Great Warming

Here's another entry in the world's best global warming films contest!  The current contestants are Brokaw's Global Warming, Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and now The Great Warming.  For my earlier review of the former two, see 7/2/06 Movie Review: Brokaw and Gore.  I reviewed Brokaw based on a screening copy: now everyone wants to know where to get one.

The Great Warming is a film documentary, produced by Stonehenge, sponsored by Swiss Re, narrated by Alanis Morissette and Keanu Reeves, and aired this spring in Canada by the Discovery Channel.  It was screened in Salem today at First Congregational Church, U.C.C.

The Great Warming is a relatively comprehensive look at global warming science, with plenty of experts.  It documents the impacts of far more modest El Nino events on Peruvian fishing villages, the incredible difficulties facing nations like Bangladesh that lie 80% within the flood plain, the impact that adding another 4 billion people will have on energy use, and the pressing need for China, India, Brazil and other developing countries to adopt a better energy path than the disasterous fossil fuel path that developed countries have followed.  It provides plenty of scenic photography, discussion of innovative technologies, and practical solutions. 

The Great Warming also has a particularly interesting slant.  It highlights, in particular, the growing concern in the American Evangelical community about global warming.  It has received endorsements from Rev. Richard Cizik for the National Association of Evangelicals [Rev. Richard Cizik ], Paul de Vries, Dean, New York Divinity School [New York Divinity School], Fr. Jon-Stephen Hedges [St. Athanasius Orthodox Church], the National Council of Churches, Evangelical Environmental Network and the Coalition on Environment and Jewish Life.

The film contains frank, hard-hitting comments from scientists, health providers, and other opinion-makers taking America’s  leadership to task for failing to address what is certainly the most critical environmental issue of the 21st century.  The film analogizes the current era of Great Warming to the era of the Great Depression.  And reminds us that our children and grandchildren will ask why we didn't do something about it.

This film does discuss the faith perspective, which may not be satisfactory for all students.  But, it is a great primer on global warming science, the impacts of climate change, and possible solutions.

THE GREAT WARMING
www.thegreatwarming.com

So, what is the bottom line.  Except for the evangelical angle, I'd chose the Great Warming over the other two.  But, given law student reaction to anything that smacks of spirituality or religion, I still think Gore did the best job with the science.

A Cure for the Bird Flu Blues

The good news is that simply gene exchange may not cause H5N1 to trigger a pandemic.   The bad news is that there are other ways that it could evolve into a pandemic virus.  Nature story on bird flu ferret experiment   Nature 442, 490-491(3 August 2006) | doi:10.1038/442490b; Published online 2 August 2006

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Eulogy for the Tigers

Five years ago I went to northern India and stayed in tiger country.  I never saw a tiger.  The villagers in the area I stayed reported one night that a tiger was on the prowl.  I ventured into a national park that was closed because of tiger poachers -- I was escorted by a ranger.  He showed me where they live and the ungulates that are tiger food.   Just to be in an area where tigers roam was exciting and a bit of an adrenaline rush.  I hope to return and spend time with tigers some time in the future.  Unfortunately, I may not make it in time.  Tigers are disappearing at a tremendous rate, as the results of this study make clear.

The most comprehensive scientific study of tiger habitats ever done finds that the big cats reside in 40 percent less habitat than they were thought to a decade ago. The tigers now occupy only 7 percent of their historic range. The report and related materials can be downloaded at www.tigermaps.org

This landmark study, commissioned by the Save The Tiger Fund and produced by some of the world's leading tiger scientists at World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park and Save The Tiger Fund, calls for specific international actions to safeguard remaining populations. The study finds that conservation efforts such as protection from poaching, preservation of prey species, and preservation of tigers' natural habitat have resulted in some populations remaining stable and even increasing. But it concludes that long-term success is only achieved where there is a broad landscape-level conservation vision with buy-in from stakeholders.

"This report documents a low-water mark for tigers, and charts a way forward to reverse the tide," said John Robinson of the Wildlife Conservation Society. "We can save tigers forever. However, tiger conservation requires commitment from local partners, governments and international donors, along with effective, science-based conservation efforts to bring the species back to all parts of its biological range."

Synthesizing land use information, maps of human influence, and on-the-ground evidence of tigers, this study identifies 76 "tiger conservation landscapes" -- places and habitats that have the best chance of supporting viable tiger populations into the future. Large carnivore populations like tigers are highly vulnerable to extinction in small and isolated reserves. Half the 76 landscapes can still support 100 tigers or more, providing excellent opportunities for recovery of wild tiger populations. The largest tiger landscapes exist in the Russian Far East and India. Southeast Asia also holds promise to sustain healthy tiger populations although many areas have lost tigers over the last 10 years.

"As tiger range spans borders, so must tiger conservation," said Eric Dinerstein, chief scientist and vice president of conservation science at World Wildlife Fund. "Asia's economic growth should not come at the expense of tiger habitat and the natural capital it protects."

The group's key conclusion from the study is that to safeguard remaining tigers, increased protection of the 20 highest priority tiger conservation landscapes is required. The group also stands ready to support the 13 countries with tigers in a regional effort to save the species. The report's authors suggest that the heads of state of those countries convene a "tiger summit" to elevate tiger conservation on their countries' agendas.

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