NOAA’s contributions involve both the weather AND the climate

From an Article by Rob Hotakainen, E&E News, December 18, 2019

PHOTO from ARTICLE: Neil Jacobs (left) talks with a staffer at a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather forecasting and research facility in Norman, Oklahoma, in August 2018.

President Donald Trump today nominated Neil Jacobs, the acting chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to become the agency’s 11th administrator.

Jacobs’s nomination came a month after Trump’s first pick, Barry Myers, withdrew due to health concerns. The former CEO of AccuWeather Inc., Myers generated a storm of criticism from Democrats, who said his lack of a science degree disqualified him and that his ties to his family’s weather forecasting company constituted a conflict of interest.

Jacobs, a former chief scientist at Panasonic Avionics Corporation in Lake Forest, California, took over as NOAA’s acting administrator in February, replacing Timothy Gallaudet, who’s now the deputy administrator. He has a doctorate in numerical weather prediction from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife and two sons.

In a confirmation hearing, Jacobs would face certain questioning from senators on his role in this year’s Hurricane Dorian weather forecasting scandal. Jacobs conducted a weeklong damage control tour in September, meeting with weather forecast offices after the agency’s Washington office sided with Trump when he erroneously claimed Dorian would likely hit Alabama (Greenwire, Sept. 16).

Jacobs sent an email to employees in September, saying NOAA was “committed to upholding scientific integrity.” But the incident prompted three ongoing federal investigations: by NOAA’s acting chief scientist; the Commerce Department Office of Inspector General; and the House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Jacobs has already been through the confirmation process, having been approved by the Senate in 2017 as assistant Commerce secretary for environmental observation and prediction.

At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Jacobs told lawmakers he was naturally drawn to weather forecasting, having grown up in Florida and South Carolina and always living close to the ocean, enjoying surfing, diving and fishing.

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See also: “The world from our childhood is no longer here”: Report details drastic changes as Arctic warms, Jeff Berardelli, CBS News, December 10, 2019

Richard Heinberg Lecture Series

Chapter 5:  Think Resilience: Pollution

From a Series by Richard Heinberg, Resilience.Org, May 8, 2017

In nature, waste from one organism is food for another. However, that principle sometimes breaks down and waste becomes poison. Humans aren’t the only possible sources of environmental pollution. But these days the vast majority of pollution does come from human activities. That’s because we humans are able to use energy and tools to extract, transform, use, and discard ever-larger quantities of natural resources, producing wastes of many kinds and in ever-larger quantities.

Here, Richard Heinberg explores the topic of pollution — in particular greenhouse gas emissions, which are the greatest threat to humans and other species.

This is the fifth video in our 22-part online course “Think Resilience: Preparing Communities for the Rest of the 21st Century,” which explores how communities can build resilience in the face of our intertwined sustainability crises. The series is intended for students and concerned individuals of all ages.

View transcript

View Chapter 1: Introduction

View Chapter 2: Energy

View Chapter 3: Population & Consumption

View Chapter 4: Depletion

New chapters will be rolled out on a regular basis over the coming weeks, but you can also sign up to view all the videos right away.

Richard Heinberg's 22 Part Series

Blast Zone 2000 feet for 42 inch MVP

Study refutes positive local effects of natural gas pipeline

From an Article by Pamela Pritt, Beckley Register-Herald, October 8, 2015

An 18-page study released (last week) by the Greenbrier River Watershed Association says that economic benefits of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a natural gas pipeline slated to bisect Nicholas County and cut through portions of Summers, Greenbrier and Monroe counties, have been inflated by gas companies anxious to get their product to a market.

Dr. Stephen Phillips of Key-Log Economics, Charlottesville, Va., firm, wrote the study. Key-Log provides research “supplying rigorously developed ecological-economic information to shape and advance policy campaigns, as part of expert testimony, and for public education efforts,” according to its Linked-In account.

In addition, Key-Log is involved in program development by creating and delivering pilot programs to “help clients demonstrate and prepare to take full advantage of positive relationships between human and natural communities through such strategies as certification and labeling programs, payments for ecosystem services and nature-based marketing partnerships” and organizational development through low-cost-high impact strategy development,” the company’s Linked-In account says

EQT, the pipeline’s owner, released its own study in December 2014. The study says expenditures on goods and services during construction would “translate into job creation; economic benefits to West Virginia suppliers, their employees and the overall economy.” Further, the FTI said the MVP would bring operational benefits, requiring a skilled workforce for continued maintenance and generate annual property tax revenues. FTI’s study said both the state and the MVP passes through would be benefited from the “potential direct use of gas from the MVP project.”

The FTI study projects EQT will spend $712 million on equipment, materials, labor and services in West Virginia, creating nearly 4,000 jobs at the peak of construction in 2017 (560 of those “indirect jobs”). “Cumulatively, the MVP project would create more than 8.250 job-years over the course of construction,” the FTI study said. Once the pipeline is in service, the MVP would employ 54 people across the state “with average annual wages and benefits of almost $65,000.” Also, annual property taxes would amount to $14.6 million, or 16 percent of the total 2013 combined budgets for the 10 counties the MVP will pass through.

“(T)he MVP project could provide significant fuel cost savings to the residential, commercial and municipal sectors of Monroe, Summers and Webster counties through fuel switching,” the study said.

Key-Log’s study refutes each of those claims, saying the benefits to communities are overstated. Just as important, the Key-Log study said, “a full accounting of the likely costs (negative economic effects) must be developed, and its results must be compared to more realistic estimates of benefits.”

“Benefits during construction are overestimated due to inherent issues with the models used and the choice of the size of the study region,” the Key-Log study said, “in part due to overly optimistic assumptions about whether and to what extent” MVP would induce businesses and individuals too switch to natural gas from other fuels.

The Key-Log study said:

• Input-output analysis is inappropriately used to estimate long-term impacts, “resulting in bloated estimates of jobs ‘created’ by the ongoing operation and maintenance of the MVP.”

• Fuel-switching estimates are dependent on the level and volatility of future natural gas prices, and assuming because businesses and households could use gas, they would use gas

• Tax revenue projections do not take into account “downside financial risk” such as shale gas prices, competition, rising export costs and a reduction in surrounding property value because of the pipeline.

The Key-Log study said FTI “assumed a static economy,” meaning no pricing or labor changes or changes in consumer taste and preferences.  “Due to these restrictive assumptions, economic base models have a dismal track record when it comes to predicting economic growth in the real world and in the long run,” the Key-Log study said. “The ‘long-run’ is more than a year into the future

The Key-Log study said FTI’s study largely ignored “public and external costs that would attend the construction, operation and presence of the MVP. “This nearly exclusive focus on benefits means, at a minimum, that the jury is still out on whether the MVP is good or bad, at least economical, for the citizens and communities it will affect in Virginia and West Virginia,” the Key-Log study said.

Consideration of the public or external costs of the MVP should be thoroughly covered in the FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). “To date, MVP LLC offers only vague assurances that the proposed MVP would impose no or only minor costs on agriculture, recreation and other economic activities. It also claims that there would be no impact on property values,” the Key-Log study said.

“In the meantime, other entities, including local governments, citizen groups and businesses would be wise to conduct their own independent assessment of these costs to better ensure that all of the relevant information can be brought to bear on the permitting decision,” the Key-Log study continued.

The Key-Log study said local entities in counties where the MVP is forecast to go should consider:

• Lost eco-system services. Surface and subsurface disturbances, alteration of watercourses, impacts on groundwater, fragmentation of habitat, visual blight, creation of travel corridors for invasive species, lost timber production and other changes are all likely.

• Higher community service costs. Some 90 percent of the workers who build the MVP will be transient, and may increase the need for social services, law enforcement, drug abuse treatment and other services. “All of these add to the local costs, and added tax revenues or other fees paid by energy companies might or might not cover the added bill,” the Key-Log study said.

• Reduced property values. Properties within the earshot, blast radius, leak plume and other physical contact with the pipeline right-of-way and compressor stations will suffer the greatest loss in value, the K-L study said. Even properties farther away become less desirable,the K-L study continued.

• Diminished economic development opportunity. Natural gas development and operations can upset the economic apple cart in these communities by reducing quality of life, the K-L report said. Not only will other economic development opportunities shy away from pipeline areas, but those already in place may not perform as expected, the report said.

“It is impossible to say at this point what the net effect, positive or negative, of the MVP would be,” the K-L study concluded. “We can be certain, however, that more careful estimates of expected benefits would be lower than those presented by MVP LLC via the FTI studies to date. We can also be certain that the costs — that is the negative economic impacts — of the proposed MVP (if constructed) will be higher than zero, which is the level stated or implied by the studies reviewed here.

“Further stronger and more comprehensive research is needed to determine how well more realistic estimates of benefits compare with the likely costs.”

EQT spokesperson Natalie Cox said her company remains confident in the results of the FTI study.

“Opponents of the MVP project have been challenging the results of our economic benefits analysis since its initial release in December 2014; therefore, the findings that are outlined in a critique that was funded by opponents are to be expected,” Cox wrote in an email. She said FTI took a “conservative and reasonable approach” in its study of the MVP.

The process of estimating annual pipeline property (ad valorem) taxes, once in operation, were discussed at length with Virginia and West Virginia state tax officials and thus are in-line with how the states would determine the property taxes owed by MVP, Cox said. For state taxes, the model estimates taxes based on historical state tax revenues and the sources for those revenues, she continued. The state tax analysis reflects taxes generated mainly from one-time construction and commissioning spending.

Cox said the studies in both West Virginia and Virginia were reviewed by economists in both states.

Last Program of Moyers & Company

Nature’s Trust by Prof. Mary Christina Wood Tells Our Basic Rights to Protect the Natural Order

Last Article from Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company, January 1, 2015

The very agencies created to protect our environment have been hijacked by the polluting industries they were meant to regulate. It may just turn out that the judicial system, our children and their children will save us from ourselves.

The new legal framework for this crusade against global warming is called atmospheric trust litigation. It takes the fate of the Earth into the courts, arguing that the planet’s atmosphere – its air, water, land, plants and animals — are the responsibility of government, held in its trust to insure the survival of all generations to come. It’s the strategy being used by Bill’s recent guest, Kelsey Juliana, a co-plaintiff in a major lawsuit spearheaded by Our Children’s Trust, that could force the state of Oregon to take a more aggressive stance against the carbon emissions.

It’s the brainchild of Mary Christina Wood, a legal scholar who wrote the book, Nature’s Trust, tracing this public trust doctrine all the way back to ancient Rome.

Wood tells Bill: “If this nation relies on a stable climate system, and the very habitability of this nation and all of the liberties of young people and their survival interests are at stake, the courts need to force the agencies and the legislatures to simply do their job.”

See the program video here: http://vimeo.com/115286097

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Prof. Mary Wood releases ‘Nature’s Trust’ empowering citizens to protect ecological rights

Article from the Newsroom, Oregon Law, University of Oregon, October 23, 2013

Leading experts say book is ‘Silent Spring’ for the new millennium

Empowering citizens worldwide to protect their inalienable ecological rights. That is the goal of University of Oregon School of Law Professor Mary Wood‘s just-released book, “Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age.”

Wood writes that environmental law has failed us. Her work exposes the dysfunction of current environmental law and offers a transformative approach based on the public trust doctrine. The trust doctrine asserts public property rights to crucial resources. At its core, notes Wood, the doctrine compels government, as trustee, to protect natural inheritance such as air and water for all humanity.

Ultimately, Wood’s book teaches the reader how a trust principle can apply from the local to global level to protect the planet, offering a new framework for environmental law.

“Nature’s Trust” already has received numerous positive reviews and endorsements from some of the world’s leading environmental thinkers including James Gustave Speth, author of “America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy” and former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Speth says the impact of Wood’s book will be comparable to that of “Silent Spring.”

“What ‘Silent Spring’ did for our perception of the environment, ‘Nature’s Trust’ should do for our perception of environmental protection,” he noted.

Kathleen Dean Moore, author of “Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril,” said, “‘Nature’s Trust’ is the book we have been waiting for, a new paradigm that can correct the course of history.”

Wood is the Philip H. Knight Professor of Law and the faculty director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program at Oregon Law. She is an award-winning teacher who has taught for more than 20 years in the areas of environmental law, property law, federal Indian law and other subjects. Wood is the co-author of two casebooks, one on natural resources law and the other on the public trust doctrine. She is a frequent speaker on climate crisis and environmental issues.

As Wood elaborates in her book, captured agencies use their discretion to allow mounting environmental losses that harm communities — precisely the damage that the statutes were designed to prevent. “I wrote this book to empower average citizens to assert their ecological rights and hold government accountable, as trustee, of our public resources,” Wood explained.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Who’s an environmentalist? What do they believe?

Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV
 
After a recent article about the damage I expected from fracking on my farm, in some quarters there is this stir about whether I am an “environmentalist” or a (farming) businessman who expects to get his capital slashed and his production reduced for years with little or no compensation.  Let me assure anyone who doesn’t understand, “environmentalists” are like Methodists, they have an occupation, too.
 
Environmentalism is a belief system, and people of many occupations “believe” in it.  There is a fellow named Harry in Ohio who used to grow organic ginseng who got acres of a sensitive crop, carefully managed, ruined. Another in Ohio is a lady that runs a restaurant on a university campus.  There are wineries in southern New York and at least one in eastern Maryland owned by environmentalists. There are organizations of chefs in New York and California who don’t want their food contaminated, thus identify themselves as environmentalists.
 
The Eastern Brook Trout People, Trout Unlimited and Isaac Walton League are made up of environmentalists, as are hunting groups, in part because they have a self-interest in their recreation.  So also are groups who want to preserve National Forests, state and local parks, cemeteries and churchyards.  People who worry about public water supplies, destruction of the nature of their communities, such as the Finger Lakes of New York. There are many of this genre who are environmentalists, in part because of the damage they have received or seen.  There are at least two groups of professional scientists  strictly devoted to environmental problems of fracking, and several faith groups have expressed concerns.  There’s even a Mothers for Sustainable Energy (fracking is one of their concerns) that certainly would be called environmental.
 
You get the idea, lots of different people are environmentalists.  Lots of kinds of people.  Some do make a living in environmental leadership.  Of course Methodists have pastors, and environmental groups have paid, full time leaders.  Like pastors, the pay is low and the hours are erratic, and they tend to be dedicated to their belief. 

Let’s describe the belief system.  Environmentalists value clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, cook with, wash in and swim in.  They know there is a mechanism by which these things are produced in nature.  The mechanism involves living plants and some animals, and a huge variety of microorganisms.  They know that the basis for all life is chemical – that is, every real thing is chemical.  And environmentalists know this chemistry can be interfered with.
 
Beyond this, many realize life is a closed loop of very complicated reactions.  I’m not saying the moral and social worlds don’t exist, indeed they do. What I’m saying is that if it is actually living – including you and me and our ancestors and our descendants – it is part of the reactions (some still unknown) called biochemistry.  Outside this loop lies what I will call the mineral world, other chemicals in rocks and those synthesized by humans.
 
Energy enters this loop of life by photosynthesis using light from the sun, and leaves as heat radiated out into space, which is much colder than the earth’s surface where we live.
 
Investigating this loop of life, usually small parts of the whole total of life, is the work of a significant part of the world’s scientists today.  It consists of reactions which occur because of enzymes.  Wikipedia has this to say about enzymes: “They are highly selective catalysts, greatly accelerating both the rate and specificity of metabolic reactions, from the digestion of food to the synthesis of DNA. Most enzymes are proteins, although some catalytic RNA molecules have been identified.”  Also, “Since enzymes are selective for their substrates and speed up only a few reactions from among many possibilities, the set of enzymes made in a cell determines which metabolic pathways occur in that cell.” 
 
On the other hand, the chemicals synthesized by humans are usually produced by heat, pressure and much more crude, non-biological catalysts.
 
The long and the short of it is – these biochemistry reactions, particularly the enzymes, are easily “screwed up.”  Frequently, a small number of synthesized chemicals “tie up” or otherwise destroy biochemicals from the loop of life.  In more common words, act as poisons.  They prevent some of the necessary biochemical reactions from happening.
 
So what is environmentalism?  It is a belief system that doesn’t put first priority on profit and growth to get more profit.  Its time scale extends beyond the current business investment cycle.  It recognizes the importance of a good life for other people.  It recognizes that life has a long history, but the prognosis isn’t good if we all don’t understand what is going on.  The precautionary principle is an important part of it.  (Wikipedia definition of precautionary principle: if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action.)
 
This is a belief system and commitment that seeks a good future for our children and our children’s children.
 
The Freedom Industries’ major chemical leak debacle recently contaminated the Elk River and Kanawha River here in West Virginia. After this, do you really think we don’t need protection from the chemical industry, the coal industry, the fracking industry?
 

Kent Residents: ‘We Evacuated Ourselves’

Neighbor: ‘It Looked Like the Whole Valley Was Exploding’

From the Article by Sarah Harmon, The Wheeling Intelligencer, September 29, 2013

KENT, W.Va. – Delbert Wade heard a pounding at his door. It was just before 1:30 a.m. Saturday, September 21.  Lorri Davisson heard the same pounding just minutes later. A neighbor stood outside. Nearby, at the Blue Racer Midstream Plant operated by Dominion Resources and Caiman Energy, which process natural gas and natural gas liquids, a fire raged.

(Repair work continues at the Blue Racer Midstream processing plant in Marshall County following the September 21st explosions and fire.) 

Davisson called the experience “a terrifying experience. It looked like the whole valley was exploding. The whole sky was orange and it sounded like landing airplanes.”

Kent residents were kept out of their homes for about two hours. No injuries were reported in the fire, and an investigation continues. Since September 21, the story has been that Marshall County officials evacuated the 25 residents who live in Kent. But the folks there have a different story to tell.

Wade and Davisson said they and their neighbors evacuated themselves after a neighbor saw the fire and alerted the community by going door to door. Wade noted a State Police officer did later arrive in Kent, but most of the community had left by that time. Wade said he evacuated to a family member’s home in Glen Dale. He said he was contacted by Dominion officials the next day.

Given what could have happened with the explosion and fire, Wade expects some answers from the company. Wade said the community does not have an early warning system in place with Dominion if the event of an emergency. He noted PPG has a pole with a buzzer installed in the neighborhood that emits a loud blast in case of an emergency, with three blasts meaning to evacuate the area immediately.

Wade said Dominion met with the community about a year ago and assured residents there was no reason to be concerned about the plant’s activities, but said they didn’t have a warning system in place yet. Wade said he hasn’t heard from the company since that meeting.

“We don’t feel safe,” Wade said. “None of us do. We are a relaxed community and we’ve lived here for 50 years and it’s been home to us. We are afraid to go to bed at night and everybody I talk to wants to sell out and relocate. Our safety doesn’t seem to be a concern.”

Davisson said she and her family could feel the heat from the fire when they fled their home, going to her sister-in-law’s house in Marshall County. Davisson said she has not yet received a phone call or a visit from Dominion about the fire. ”If Dominion has an emergency plan in place, it’s not a good one because I haven’t heard of it,” she said.

Marshall County Emergency Management Director Tom Hart confirmed many of the residents had evacuated the area before State Police arrived, noting self-evacuation is not uncommon in these situations. ”If I lived there and (saw) what they initially saw, I would have evacuated, too,” Hart said.

According to Ray Seech, director of Natural Gas Liquids operations for Blue Racer Midstream, it is in Dominion’s emergency plans to have Marshall County Emergency Management and the State Police notify residents to evacuate during an incident. Seech noted Dominion has done drills periodically with local fire departments and Marshall County EMS.

“Safety is our core value, for the public and employees and any person in the area,” Seech said. “The fire was contained in a small part of the plant and extinguished.” Seech said a third-party investigator was on site at the plant all last week, but the fire’s cause has not been determined.

Hart said a review of how the fire was handled will take place between Blue Racer and the public agencies involved to determine what went well and what needs improved.

Also last week, Robert C. Orndorff Jr., managing director of state and local affairs for Dominion, spoke to the Marshall County Commission saying he had talked to about 25 residents in Kent after the fire. What has been said to residents remains unclear.

Presentation on the Future

FACE THE FACTS AND SAY IT LIKE IT IS

Commentary by Paul B. Brown, August 9, 2013

We may have the technical means to reverse global warming, mass extinction, and overpopulation, but I don’t think we have the societal means. Commonly proposed solutions are far too little, too late.

For perspective, here are just a few stories from one day in my free daily esamizdat newslink service (contact me to subscribe): Oregon Fires To Burn Half-Million Acres, 5 Months; Climate change pushing marine life towards the poles; Powerful California water district backs tunnel plan; ‘Drip, Jordan’: water supply as a focal point of occupation; Monsanto and Big Food Pull Out the Big Guns; Bagram: Torture, Detention Without End at US Military’s ‘Other Guantanamo’; What It’s Like to Spend Years in Solitary Confinement; Why ALEC Fabricated Public School Failures; Cache of spent fuel rods grows at Comanche Peak; German and US Spy Agencies Share Vast Metadata Trove; Is U.S. Exaggerating Threat to Embassies to Silence Critics of NSA Domestic Surveillance?; A way of life on the brink of extinction in the Louisiana bayous; EPA Fracking Study Rebukes Agency’s Own Safety Claims; Fracking Gas Flares Double In Bakken Oil Fields of North Dakota; Oil companies frack in coastal waters off California.

These are all related: can you see the connections?

Hint: the one percent are consolidating their power over the 99 percent so they can continue business as usual in the military-corporate state, at the cost of other humans’ lives, the environment, and perhaps our very species.

What are the real problems that are no longer scientifically debatable? The planet is heating up from insufficient reflection of solar energy due to lost reflectivity (caused by loss of ice cover, caused by global warming) and trapping of more heat by greenhouse gases (caused mostly by burning fossil fuels). Positive feedbacks such as loss of reflectivity, desertification, increased forest fires, and emission of methane from warming tundra and the ocean floor, are speeding up this process. Destructive weather events are increasing, sea level is rising and oceans are becoming acidic as a result of these processes. As a result of these processes and loss of habitat, pollution and over-killing of life forms, species we depend on are going extinct at least as fast as they did in the largest recent extinction, which wiped out the dinosaurs. The planet is on its way to becoming uninhabitable for human beings.

The underlying cause of these trends is undeniably clear: Humans are consuming resources unsustainably, that is faster than they can be replenished by natural processes. Many resources, such as rare elements, can’t ever be restored. The equation describing this defines our total consumption as the product of number of people times per capita consumption, and both are skyrocketing.

That’s all established fact. The following are my personal opinions, largely shared by experts.
    
Consider tax schemes proposed to use market forces to reduce CO2 emissions. None would work because they would be too little, too late, especially because market solutions provide little incentives for the one percent, who do the most harm. The best tax scheme I’ve seen for reduction of CO2 emissions is one that’s rarely discussed. Everyone would be taxed for carbon combustion in any form, from fossil fuels to “renewable” fuels, for any purpose including the transport of food (an average of about 1500 miles). At the end of the tax year, everyone gets an equal share of the revenues as a tax credit. Those who used the most carbon would have a net loss, those who used the least would have a net gain.

But we are out of time for such a slow method to work, if it would work at all. The one percent would still have little incentive, although we could expect major changes such as the rebirth of small farms for local food consumption. We have to stop making carbon available for combustion by ending fossil fuel wars and using the money previously devoted to military support of oil supply lines to re-employ military personnel to rebuild infrastructure for carbon-free electric energy supply and storage; divert all carbon waste to biochar (inactive elemental carbon) which we would use for farming, construction, and sealing of coal mines and gas and oil wells; and convert all vehicles (including trucks, rail, ships, airplanes) to renewable electricity with swappable batteries.

With current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, the planet would continue to heat up for centuries, species will continue going extinct at record speed, and we would be fried, especially in the case of runaway warming caused by positive feedbacks – even if we stopped burning carbon today. Therefore we need to do much more: increase albedo by painting manmade surfaces white; pull carbon out of the air as fast as we can with rapid-growth trees, algae, whatever will do it fastest (and converting that biomass to biochar); reduce forest fires with better management of forests and more aggressive fire fighting; reverse desertification and return as much land to forest as possible; and neutralize acidification of oceans.


None of this will be adequate unless we reverse the mass extinction. We have to reduce our footprint to restore habitat for endangered species, and perhaps use genetic engineering techniques to restore important extinct ones; reduce fertility to one child or fewer per woman; and reduce heroic efforts to prolong the lives of those very elderly and terminally ill who are capable of informed consent. That’s how bad things are. A sustainable population might be four billion very modest consumers on a healthy planet. A recovery-mode population is undoubtedly less than a billion, and quickly, on a badly wounded planet that needs all our efforts to heal.

The longer we wait, the lower that number will get. In order to reduce our footprint, we also need a tax scheme to reduce all forms of consumption, similar to the one for carbon combustion, and to encourage home production of energy and food. It will take more than a tax scheme to achieve this, however (think one percent again). Money saved can be used to increase energy efficiency and go to all-electric energy use (e.g., to heat homes).
    

This can’t happen in our current society. The one percent won’t allow it. I don’t know how to overcome them, because only an informed citizenry can do that and implement the changes I suggest. Information itself is controlled by the one percent, so our citizens aren’t informed. I don’t think there is enough time left for, and our government may be unresponsive to, civil disobedience or other forms of non-violent action. Insurrection is unlikely to succeed in our militarized surveillance state. 
    

Maybe there are adequate societal changes that are possible, but they need to be based on facing reality and saying it like it is. People will die just for doing that, but people will die anyway. Here we go-o-o.




Paul B. Brown, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physiology, WVU, Morgantown, WV.
EMAIL: pbrown4348@comcast.net