DK GreenRoots

Promoted by editorsIn this weekly series we had been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including; better health, global food crisis, ,animal rights, frugal living, food safety and the huge contribution of livestock production to climate change/depletion of resources.

We may be at or near the tipping point of many of Earth's resources including water (pdf) and as DWG pointed out in his/her excellent diary we are fishing the oceans empty. The world has underestimated climate change effects from man made global warming, which are due to our addiction to oil.

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Back in 2008 I wrote two little noticed diaries about speculative buying that helped to drive food prices higher (here and here), and surprise, surprise, our friends from Goldman Sachs are well represented in this mix of global finance companies.

Two years later, the world food market is still seriously exposed to speculators artificially driving up prices and worsening the risks of malnutrition, and according to one of the world's leading agricultural researchers, Joachim von Braun, the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute (von Brown was one of the first to write about flawed regulatory regimes in banking and finance driving up food prices) an even bigger food crisis is looming, exacerbated as well by climate change. A visit to his site is well worth your time as he speaks eloquently about food and water.

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Pardon the oxymoronic title but these last two years - the world and in particular developing countries - the poor and the vulnerable have been hit by both food and energy crises. Add water to this nightmare: a growing population, changes in trade patterns, urbanization, dietary changes in emerging economies, rising transportation costs, blatant water privatization, increased bio-fuel production, incessant deforestation, climate change and regional droughts are all responsible. Dry water indeed.

I'm not sure which of the two issues is more pressing than the other: the incoming global food bubble (of which I will have a disturbing diary reporting food prices increases next week) or water scarcity. I am truly scared of what the future will bring. I have kids, as many of you do. What are we going to do when the water runs out? And why isn't this issue on the front burner?

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It was thought that currently 70 percent of available fresh water is used for agriculture, but with an estimated 40 percent increase in food production required by 2050 (according to FAO), water scarcity is likely to become a global problem for the food chain. Since dietary habits are rapidly changing with higher consumption of meat and vegetables (particularly in both China & India) it looks as though we're in for a shock unless we find new ways of growing grains & vegetables which would use less water.

Given the impending worsening of water security, particularly in some developing countries, water should really be at the centre of international development policy. But it isn't. Instead we have a handful of multinationals snapping up water rights as it is set to become the next currency: for all intents and purposes it has already been commodified. There is no water blueprint for the future, not that I know of. I hope I'm wrong.

Welcome to Edition #2 of This week in climate change.

In the past, we were lucky to have environmental series like Green Diary Rescue and PDNC's Climate Change News Roundup.

Despite pledges to revive Green Diary Rescue, it has not been posted by its creator in over 4 months. MB seems overworked already with the meta police job kos foisted upon him.

The latter has been posted just twice since Valentine's Day.

I bring up these series' absence not to shame their writers, but to thank them. They did untold hours of work on this issue in the past. I've decided to follow suit.

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This week also marks the 40th anniversary of EARTH DAY.

Climate news, Green Diary Rescue, and much more below the fold.

While the world is ever so slowly moving to address the challenges presented by climate change - rampant desertification and rapidly depleting supplies of fossil fuels, among other known facts - the same awareness does not seem to register when it comes to water. In fact we will probably run out of water long before we run out of fuel. We should not wait until it's gone.

Like most progressives I was saddened at the sight of Glenn Beck's puerile attempts at "explaining" to his viewers why we have experienced more snow and rain this winter, dismissing out of hand the simple facts that real climate scientists have been predicting all along: we're culpable and we will pay dearly for our collective lack of vision in the not so distant future. Rain & floods, by all means, do not mean endless supplies of water.

If you have a moment read the ten facts about Water Scarcity on the WHO site, it is sobering news.

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In this weekly series we have been discussing the benefits of a vegetarian diet including: better health, animal rights , frugal living, food safety , world food crisis and the huge contribution of meat production to global warming.

Who could resist this message from Rep. Dennis Kucinich?

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A catastrophic water shortage could turn out to be a much bigger threat to mankind this century than wars, soaring food prices and the ever relentless consumption of known sources of energy. The annoying thing is either water is so abundant (in some parts of the world) that it can be used leisurely and foolishly (amusement parks, fountains, golf) or it's so scarce that you fight wars over it. Which region will be most affected? I'll tell you over the jump.

Nicholas Stern, author of the Government's Stern Review on the economics of climate change, warned several years ago that underground aquifers could run dry at the same time as melting glaciers play havoc with fresh supplies of usable water. That report, dated October 2006, (lauded by such luminaries as Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs) states clearly that fresh rainfall is not enough to refill the underground water tables and that water is not a renewable resource. BTW, the very same Stern later this year will publish another huge UN study - dubbed the "Stern for nature" which will attempt to put a price on global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. I can't wait.

Here's the part of Stern's telling report that really worries me:

"The glaciers on the Himalayas are retreating, and they are the sponge that holds the water back in the rainy season. We're facing the risk of extreme run-off, with water running straight into the Bay of Bengal and taking a lot of topsoil with it. A few hundred square miles of the Himalayas are the source for all the major rivers of Asia - the Ganges, the Yellow River, the Yangtze, the Mekong, Brahmaputra, Salween, and Sutlej, among others - where 3bn people live. That's almost half the world's population."

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Climate change will do more than make life on Earth a bit warmer. Even a 5th-grader can tell you that. The problem with people like James Inhofe is that they are not smarter than 5th-graders.

If things don't change (for the better) quickly, we are looking at major die-off of the world's trees. If the trees go, we are not far behind.

From the ultra-liberal hippies at NASA:

Underlying Cause of Massive Pinyon Pine Die-Off Revealed
October 10, 2005

The high heat that accompanied the recent drought was the underlying cause of death for millions of pinyon pines throughout the Southwest, according to new research.

The resulting landscape change will affect the ecosystem for decades. Hotter temperatures coupled with drought are the type of event predicted by global climate change models. The new finding suggests big, fast changes in ecosystems may result from global climate change.

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Scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have published a study, Evidence for a recent increase in forest growth, suggesting that climate change can quite literally be measured by treehuggers. Like the average American citizen, American trees look to have had increasingly bulging middles in recent decades. Having spent their careers quite literally hugging trees, SERC scientists Geoffrey Parker and Sean McMahon have written a study documenting

evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change.

For over 20 years, Parker has gone into a set of forests in the mid-Atlantic, tape measure in hand, and giving them a hug to measure their size. Parker's own hugging has been extended with a robust group of volunteers conducting regular measurements of specified trees. (The boy scout to the right, while in a SERC forest, isn't engaged in actual measurements for the study.) Some 250,000 hugs later, he has quite a database in hand.

The results of analyzing hugs surprised these researchers. Based on the data from these 100,000s of hugs, Parker's and McMahon's analysis documents

that the forest is packing on weight at a much faster rate than expected. ... on average, the forest is growing an additional 2 tons per acre annually. That is the equivalent of a tree with a diameter of 2 feet sprouting up over a year.