Blame it on Rio

Environmental concerns are often challenged on any number of bases. From poor nations: you in the West got rich by raping the environment thus becoming industrial powers, and now you expect the developing nations to abide by a new and different set of rules that restrains our economic potential?! From the rest of us: It’s really not man-made, just one more expected cycle from Mother Nature that will right itself as it has throughout the ages. Man was given the richness of the planet by God with a mandate to use those resources to build and grow; if there is concomitant environmental degradation that imperils mankind, don’t worry, because God has already pledged no more human-destroying mega-global disasters after the great flood (remember Noah and his ark?) and will protect us from harm. Nobody can prove that man created any real problems. The harm from climate change is vastly exaggerated; it will create new opportunities… we will easily adapt. Pick one – economic growth or environmental purity. Or the big one today: we cannot afford environmental purity in a time of profound economic difficulty; we need jobs and growth far more than we need clean air and water or to prevent climate change.

All of the above is fine until “IT” happens to you. The massive droughts that have raged throughout Africa and currently consume most of America’s southwest from Texas to Arizona and even California, where wildfires rage like never before, consuming millions of acres in parched devastation. The Oglala Aquifer – once the size of Lake Huron that sits under most of the Plains States and supplies water to much of our grain production – is slowly drying out, seemingly destined to be void of meaningful irrigation potential in the next few decades. Or the increase in the number of really powerful hurricanes that feed their intensity on rising Gulf and Atlantic Ocean temperatures. Forget about the rising tides inundating coast regions, the migration of toxic insects and disease that requires warmer weather or the failure of crops that were appropriate when they grew in a different average temperature zone. Don’t worry about polluted waterways, reduced food production for the rising global population, the increasing scarcity of safe water or air so thick with gaseous and particulate emissions such that sickness and death from simple breathing are not uncommon anymore.

But while food production suffers, potable water disappears and disease spreads in some parts of the world, Canada and Russia will see vast tracts of tundra slowly evolve into useable farmland. So what if the methane trapped in that tundra is over twenty times heavier than mere carbon dioxide, creating a more rapid greenhouse effect. And we are seeing a new Northwest Passage evolve above Canada. Forget that Russia and Canada are both claiming control of this waterway and building armed ships to implement their control.

What do Americans really think about the environment? “According to the poll, twice as many Americans think the environment will get worse over the next decade as think it will get better. More than three-quarters of those who see an eroding environment say humans have a mostly negative impact. Even among those who say the environment has not changed or has improved in recent years, a slim majority — 52 percent — say people are making things worse.

“Americans’ views of the environment divide along party lines, according to the poll. More than seven in 10 Democrats and independents say human activity has had a ‘mostly negative’ effect on the environment over the past decade; only a bare majority of Republicans agree. Democrats and independents are also more apt to say the environment has gotten worse over the past decade and are more downbeat about its prospects… Four in 10 Americans expect the environment to get worse in the coming decade — similar to the number who think it will hold steady — and about two in 10 think it will get better…Although the overall U.S. environmental outlook is far from rosy, pessimism has receded in recent years. A majority of the public in a 2006 ABC News-Time-Stanford poll—six out of 10—predicted that the environment would get worse in the coming decade.” Washington Post, June 19^th.

So nations have met, in Rio, Kyoto, Stockholm, Amsterdam, etc. to consider a unified multinational approach to saving our environment, noting that Mother Nature is hardly bound by international borders. Promises are made, treaties, accords and protocols are signed and even on occasion, some countries – notably excluding the United States and China, the biggest polluters – sign treaties with fixed emission goals to be achieved by dates certain. Well, it’s June and official representatives from over one hundred nations have gathered again in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for yet another Earth Summit also known as the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development or the Rio+20 Earth Summit (there was another such summit in Rio 20 years ago).

There were a few changes in this year’s gathering, but little in the way of concrete goals and meaningful timelines… lots of platitudes and lofty ambitions. A few major corporations attended, and that’s new, with more in the way of programs that they are committed to follow. “Coca-Cola pledged to develop plans to protect the water sources for its 200 bottling plants worldwide, while Dow Chemical said it will assess the economic value it gets from the ecosystems connected to its new bioplastics plant in Brazil.” The Post. In the end (June 22^nd), there was a 49-page report, nothing legally binding, dealing with the balance between poverty, development and environmental sustainability. The delegates went home, knowing little was accomplished, and effluents continued to pour into the atmosphere with no concrete steps to contain the damage.

And while nations often appear hamstrung between competing political factions, majors of cities that are becoming increasingly unlivable have begun to tackle the problem in the absence of meaningful direction from larger governmental bodies. “Four dozen of the world’s largest cities have taken steps to cut 248 million tons of greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020, according to a report issued [in mid-June], an announcement aimed at demonstrating that environmental progress can continue in the absence of a broad international climate agreement… The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group — a network of 59 cities, including Los Angeles [; New York]; Tokyo; Bogota, Colombia; and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — was launched in 2005 to provide support for mayors hoping to cut greenhouse-gas emissions in urban centers across the globe. The group analyzed data from 48 cities to determine a suite of policies that are now in place to cut 248 million tons of greenhouse gases, the equivalent of taking 44 million passenger vehicles off the road for a year.” The Post, June 18^th.

We may have passed the tipping point where we will never be able to return to the environment we may have had a decade or two. Major environment change won’t happen overnight, although a few natural disasters like hurricanes, floods and fires can strike quickly. There are jobs that come with pollution controls, if that is a consideration, and many of us will not be alive when true mega-change alters our entire standard of living. But that begs the big questions. What kind of world are we leaving behind for the trillions of people who will follow us? And why should we care? After all, when the economy falls, it is way too frequently, “me now, me first, let the rest take care of themselves”… even if the rest really can’t.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the next generations will be dealing with a planet very different from the one most of us were born on.