More on deforestation & global warming

Yesterday I wrote how deforestation contributes to global warming. This is a follow-up for yesterday's blog explaining in more detail how deforestation drastically increases global warming.  

It is vital to understand this since many companies make a very lot of money turning virgin forests into toilet paper and therefore will publish some very convincing PR to keep you using their unnecessary product when companies like Seventh Generation are producing an equally as good product not made from virgin forests. 

It is well known that the US and China are numbers 1 & 2 on the list of countries that emit the most carbon into the atmosphere. #3 on the list is a shock, Indonesia. Indonesia has very little industrialization compared to the US and China but it is #3 on the list because it has lost 40% of its forest since 1950.

Here is the scientific explanation from Roger D. Stone's article in the Washington Monthly on why Indonesia is #3 on the list: (please read this slowly and a couple of times until you understand this, its extremely important...you never know when there might be a pop quiz), Plants remove carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, from the atmosphere and turn it, via photosynthesis, into organic matter: leaves, bark, roots, and so on. This "fixing" process is most intense in dense tropical forests, which cover only 7 percent of the earth’s dry land but store (in the plants themselves and in the rich soils below) about 45 percent of all terrestrial carbon. Chopping down the rainforests removes this carbon-absorbing buffer while releasing vast amounts of stored carbon into the air as the brush is burned off.  

So not only does deforestation remove carbon from the atmosphere but it releases stored carbon into the atmosphere.  One of my favorite analogies to this is the Bush II presidency. Not only do we have to make up for the 8 years he spent removing environmentally protective legislation but we have to make up for 8 years of the benefits those pieces of legislation would have provided for the environment. So we actually have 16 years of beneficial environmental work to make up.  The same goes for carbon: If we continue to practice deforestation we are crushing our atmosphere twice with one blow. 

The bottom line is: Use toilet paper and paper towels made from post-consumer paper!!!!!!  You have absolutely nothing to loose and everything to gain, as in "Saving our Atmosphere", not a bad return for such a simple act.

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Deforestation causes massive global warming pollution

"Deforestation causes more global warming pollution than all the combined emissions of cars, trucks, buses, airplanes and ships in the entire world." Allen Hershkowitz, Senior Scientist NDRC.

Please read the above sentence over again just to make sure it is absolutely crystal clear to you because when I first read this I didn't believe my eyes. I bet you one case of post-consumer toilet paper that if you asked 100 of your closest friends what causes more global warming pollution; deforestation or the combined emissions of cars, trucks, buses, airplanes and ships they would all say the combined emissions. 

The following forests are at risk because of a product you use for an average of 3 seconds: ancient forests, old growth forests, virgin forests, second growth forests, natural forests, high conservation value forests, temperate forests, tropical and sub-tropical forests and boreal forests.  Literally millions of acres destroyed in Brazil by cutting and conversion for the manufacture of pulp made into toilet paper and other tissue products by Kimberly Clark and Proctor & Gamble. 

Before you buy another roll of virgin toilet paper and paper towel please think about the real cost of what you are doing, not just the actual price you pay at the checkout stand, but the "earth cost". 

Antibiotics for healthy animals, another absurdity

"The Obama administration announced Monday that it would seek to ban many routine uses of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of reducing the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans. " New York Times, 7-14-09

Feeding antibiotics to healthy animals to encourage growth so the meat industry can make more money off of each animal.  But what about the customer's health?  What kind of insane customer service is that.  Possibly poisoning your customers so you can make more money in the short term.  Don't you want to keep your customers healthy and/or alive so they will come back and shop again.

(Not to try to convince you not to eat meat regardless but; FYI from John Hopkins University:  Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer. )

Unfortunately this short term approach has been frequently used in many industries.  Convince customers they have to use their cleaning products if they really want their dishes, clothes, etc. really clean.  But don't tell them that what makes for clean dishes makes for dirty oceans. Maybe they should think long term as in longer life span and healthier happier lives. A novel approach for some, not for Seventh Generation who's been doing just this for decades.

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Simple Lifestyle Changes vs. Extravagant & Costly Ideas to Tackle Climate Change

A festival was held in Manchester UK this spring to provide a public forum where anyone could present their ingenious ideas to tackle climate change.  All ideas were given a forum, from incredibly sophisticated and expensive to simple and immediate. 

The professor who invented one of the first machines to harness wave energy proposed having a fleet of ships to spray seawater into the sky to increase cloud cover which could reduce the earth's temperature. 

Another free thinker proposed tipping large amounts of lime into the ocean. This, he claimed, would increase the sea's ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as well as reduce the dangerous acidity which has also been a byproduct of decades of emissions. 

The idea I liked the best came from a psychotherapist who led "carbon conversations" to encourage people to change their high carbon lifestyle.  So very simple and inexpensive it seems literally insane for everyone on our planet not to engage in such discussions.  Multiply the carbon lifestyle changes of these few people by a billion or so and the reduction in global warming could be astronomical and immediate. 

Anyone care to help save a couple of million trees?  How about some toilet paper made from 80% post consumer paper?  It's really as simple as that.

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Corporate Transportation and Global Warming

Fascinating article in the NY Times discussing public transportation and how the poor planning and implementation of has significantly contributed to global warming.  

Unlike many cities in the US cities located in "third world" countries have taken it upon themselves to tackle the problems of global warming caused by corporate driven transportation systems.  The article describes how almost a decade ago the city of Bogota, Columbia built a Bus Rapid Transit system that has allowed the city to remove 7000 smaller buses from its roads reducing the use of bus fuel and the harmful exhaust by 59%.  

Versions of these systems are being planned or built in dozens of developing cities around the world — Mexico City, Cape Town, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Ahmedabad, India.  

And now for the startling fact:

Subways cost more than 30 times as much per mile to build than a B.R.T. system, and three times as much to maintain. And bus rapid transit systems can be built more quickly. “Almost all rapidly developing cities understand that they need a metro or something like it, and you can get a B.R.T. by 2010 or a metro by 2060,” said Walter Hook, executive director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, in New York.

Aren't taxpayers funding a subway system in Los Angeles?  How did that project get funded and who's benefiting from that?  We need to control our own destiny and take it away from people who are using our money to benefit themselves.

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We must do our part to make up for the irresponsibles.

What you don't know about could kill you.  

They were so many underhanded environmentally harmful actions taken by the powerful that we who care have no choice but to work harder to make up for their irresponsible actions.  The following story illustrates one of many behind the scenes actions taken by Bush II during his 8 years of anti-environmental policies. 

"A recent meeting was the latest action in a long-running campaign aimed at influencing environmental standards for perchlorate and implementing major new cleanups and liability costs for the military and its subsidiaries.  It all began in an obscure but powerful office established by the Bush-era Department of Defense."  Environmental Health News, 7-8-09

Ray Dubois, a Bush pentagon official from 2001 to 2004 created the Emerging Contaminates Directorate.  Basically this was a Bush Ploy to allow the Pentagon to influence the EPA.  Dubois wanted the EPA to get out of the Pentagon's way.  For example, allow Pentagon contractors to release a chemical called Perchlorate into the environment during manufacturing even though it could adversely effect human health.  

Hopefully Obama will remove the Emerging Contaminates Directorate.  But how many other similar departments were created during the Bush II years?  Can the present administration eliminate or even find them all.  

Sound hopeless, but only if we stand still.  You can rest when you, your children and their children are safe. 

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Climate Change Impact on Hunger

"Climate change's most savage impact on humanity in the near future is likely to be in the increase in hunger … the countries with existing problems in feeding their people are those most at risk from climate change," Oxfam International.  

Fortunately, my family, friends, and I have plenty to eat. I never have had to think about going without food. But, for many people hunger is just a normal way of life. If we all could put our wants and desire aside for just a brief period of time, we could help stop this unfortunate lifestyle. 

A simple way to contribute to helping those going without a meal and preventing climate change is to buy green friendly products. 

Important questions before you make a purchase:

 Did the manufacture of this product contribute to global warming?  

What is the real cost of the product, not just the actual purchase price but the global price? 

 Was the product manufactured, including all packaging, by using organically grown materials and/or with the highest post consumer material possible?  

Will any of the ingredients of the product cause environmental harm while they are being used or after their use? 

Help fight hunger by stopping global warming.

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