writeaboutwarming

August 23, 2019 The Amazon is an enormous rainforest in South America. It covers forty percent of the South American continent, and can be found in eight countries. If it were laid over a map of the 48 contiguous states of the United States, it would encompass nearly two-thirds of it. Because trees breathe in carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, it is essential that we protect them, wherever they grow. In Brazil, where much of the Amazon is located, the president of that country has been encouraging farmers, ranchers, and loggers to exploit the riches that can be found there. That means clearing away the trees by incinerating them. So hellbent are farmers on enlarging their holdings and growing more food, they organized a "fire day" last week. In order to accommodate them, President Bolsonaro of Brazil has weakened regulations intended to protect forests and indigenous lands. His failure to halt deforestation, in keeping with the Paris Climate Accords, has caused Germany and...

I like Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General.   He doesn’t just talk about doing things; he makes things happen.   I refer specifically to a new collaboration between the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).   These two organizations intend to restore at least 150 million hectares of forest by 2020 (a hectare is slightly more than 2 acres).   Their joint effort will be announced at the Secretary-General’s Climate Summit on September 23, 2014. Restoring 150 million hectares of forest, an area about the size of Alaska, would sequester roughly 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide and/or the equivalent thereof every year, reducing the current emissions gap by 11 – 17 percent.   The target date of 2020 is ambitious, but would generate US$85 billion per year in ecosystem services that would benefit the rural poor all  over the world. The rate of global deforestation has slowe...

April 27, 2014 – A report that makes a very thorough assessment of the environmental gains to be made by reshaping our farming methods was issued last Friday. The study was authored by scientists at two consulting firms: Climate Focus (CF) and California Environmental Associates (CEA).   It was funded by the Climate and Land Use Alliance, a coalition of major U.S. foundations.   Strategies studied were numerous; they include managing soil nutrients, halting deforestation, reductions in animal husbandry, using less fertilizer, storing carbon in croplands, and converting manure into compost and biogas through anaerobic digestion.   Consumers, for their part, need to eat less meat and reduce food waste.   A “demitarian” – a term I’d never heard before - is someone who cuts their consumption of red meat in half. Countries poised to make the biggest contributions in this area are, no surprise, big ones: Brazil, China, India, the EU, and the United States. ...

February 11, 2013 - It's time to put it in writing: I've had a lifelong love affair with the Scandinavians. Oh, don't be shocked - they don't even know about it. They're completely innocent. What else, though, can a person do? First there are the Danes, the happiest people in the world. They don't go around bragging about it, the way we would. They're too busy having a great time! Next come the Swedes, perfectly content with their amazing social welfare system and its cradle-to-grave healthcare and education benefits, all paid for by their government. Not that I intend to write about either of these nations, however spectacularly pragmatic they may be. No, my heart skips a beat these days because of those rock-solid, straight-ahead Norwegians. Ogle, ogle, sigh, sigh. What did they do when the little South American country of Guyana came knocking on their door, asking them to foot the bill if Guyana agreed to halt deforestation? After thinking about it car...

February 20, 2012 - Have you seen that picture of the Amazon that looks like it ought to be captioned "Iowa Farmland?"  It's been awhile since I saw it, but it's difficult to forget my dumbfounded surprise when I realized it was actually a picture of the Amazon rainforest.  I recall lovely rows of something being grown - it was resplendently green - with a pathetic patch of forest, growing so avidly it broke the heart to see its eagerness, having been beaten back into a corner of the picture.  My gosh, didn't my soul just ache.  If it were possible to take a picture of avarice, that surely was it.  What a loss, what a loss, what a loss. All the more reason, then, for the rest of the world to take care of their forest heritage.  I have good news to share on that point, good in more ways than one.  A federal appeals court in Denver has refused to review the Clinton administration's rule barring most logging and road building in nearly 60 mill...

August 29, 2011 - I was reading today that birdwatchers in California are disturbed because of the deaths of six Golden Eagles that collided with wind turbines. Some of the most enjoyable hours of my adult life have been spent birdwatching, and my concern regarding birds' plummeting populations has gone on for a long time now. Certainly the loss of these majestic birds hits home for a number of reasons: 1) the dead birds were found and accounted for, which had to be unnerving because 2) they are extremely large birds, as American birds go; 3) wind turbines are still a relatively new technology with which we are only beginning to grow accustomed; and 4) all of us in the birdwatching community realize there are lots of other accidents that can and do happen to birds every day, particularly the young, inexperienced birds. The reason I mention the fact that the birds were seen and identified is that so, so many of "our birds" winter in Central and South America, where loss...