Sharing

Here is an article that was written by the girlfriend of a very good colleague of mine. She works for Rolling Stone magazine and is helping to spread the word about what our impacts on the environment are, as well as what we can do to fix them. I have covered the topics she discusses in this article before, but it is good to see that the message is getting into popular forms of news and cultural reading. Every little bit helps.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/plastic-stones-melting-snails-3-new-ways-to-maim-a-planet-20140624

What Does It All Mean, Doctor?

My partner asked me last week if I had heard the news that scientists discovered that the ice in Antarctica was melting and would be completely gone in the next few centuries. I remarked that I had seen a headline that had mentioned the Antarctic and sea-level rise, but I didn't read the article due to time restraints. In the days following that initial discussion with my partner, the story about this research has been everywhere. And for good reason.

Sea-level rise is one of the biggest threats humans face from a warming planet. As I learned in my Coastal Environments class more than a year ago, we are already experiencing sea-level rise. This is why coastal storms such as Sandy and the winter storms which battered the British coast this year were so devastating. Sea barriers that had been built to withstand 1 in 100 or 1 in 500 year storms were easily overtopped because the sea-level was higher than when these defenses were built (most "modern" sea defenses were built 50 - 100 years ago). In my class, we discussed how the IPCC 2007 report predicted a 0.6 to 1.9 feet rise in current sea-level by 2100 (The most recent report put sea-level at 1.7 to 3.2 feet higher than current levels by 2100). This prediction did not take into account ice melt from the great Antarctic ice sheets, but rather was derived from a combination of glacier melt (including some major glaciers in Greenland) and expanding water due to warmer sea temperatures. Of course, we all discussed the possible scenarios if Antarctica melted. It wasn't good, but since the scientific research had not yet provided any direction on the plausibility of this scenario, it wasn't entertained for long.

However, this week humans did get some definitive scientific research on this scenario. Forty years of careful research, monitoring, and analysis have led a team of scientists to conclude that the West Antarctic is on an unstoppable path to losing its land ice. They said their research has indicated that it will be slow at first but in the next 200 to 500 years, it will suddenly jump into high gear leading to a sea-levels at least 12 feet higher in addition to what has already been projected by climate scientists. Another, less-talked about study found that an ice basin in East Antarctica was also destabilizing, but the time-scale for that was much longer 5,000 to 10,000 years.

So what does this all mean for us? For starters, two-thirds of the world's population live in coastal areas, so the impact of sea-level rise is a clear and present danger. Even the meager 1.7 to 3.2 feet rise will cause havoc with infrastructure, buildings, communities, and agriculture in all areas of the world. Some island nations face obliteration based on the current IPCC prediction. This new study on the West Antarctic ice sheets has brought this very serious challenge back into public consciousness. It presents a litany of problems and questions such as: where will all the people go? how long will it take governments to come up with "managed retreat" plans to avoid mass refugee events? how big will the fight be between property owners and government if a "retreat" plan is implemented? will we wait to the last minute to confront this crisis as well?

Of course, this study is just the first one. More will come and need to be carried out. But the fact that 40 years of monitoring went into this study gives it a lot of weight. That is a lot of evidence that has built up. What does it all mean? Perhaps it is that we really have to address the fact that we are a part of this planet. We can innovate, we can engineer, but ultimately the human race is subject to the same forces that all other species are. It means that there will be more haggling and debate in the 200 years about whether the science is real, and who will get the pay out. It means a drastically different world beyond a chaotic climate. I am confident that humans will do something about this, however, it is really clear that our glutinous consumption of fossil fuels in the 20th and early 21st centuries will alter how our posterity will live for centuries to come.

What's In Your Bottle?

Firstly, I apologize for not writing anything in the past two weeks. I won't provide a lame excuse, but for those of you who actually look forward to reading this I am sorry for the big gap. Today I hope to more than make up for it.

One of my first post's on this blog looked into the looming water crisis. While it focused on the water shortage in Libya and how mismanagement is exacerbating the problem, the topic was just a sliver in the larger water crisis we face. Here is another example: a few days ago, I was grabbing some lunch and chose to go with water instead of one of my regular (and favorite) sugary drinks. My choices were Fiji and Aquafina brands of bottled water. I was going to treat myself to some of the nice Fiji Water, but as my hand reached for the square bottle I vaguely remembered hearing or reading something about how Fiji bottled water production is harmful to the environment. Since I know that Aquafina is just re-purposed tap water, I decided to go for that instead.

So was that vague memory accurate? Yes, and, as it turns out, in more ways than one. Firstly, the water source - a large, underground aquifer - has been given almost exclusively to the Fiji Water company. This aquifer is being depleted at an accelerated rate due to the popularity of Fiji-brand water amongst celebrities and the elite, making it one of the go-to brands for the rest of us. The implications for the future water supply of this collection of small islands is grim, as sea-level rise threatens other aquifers and sources of freshwater for the citizens of Fiji. The other environmental problems caused by Fiji bottled water come from the poverty and military conflict imposed on the citizens by the military dictatorship governing Fiji. The military benefits from promoting and protecting the Fijian company, while crumbling infrastructure and government indifference force people to live in conditions that are many generations behind our own society (put another way, people cannot live in an environmentally conscious way because they are just struggling to survive). The company does all it can to exploit the resource and maximize profits, but does not go out of its way to give back to the community or the environment.

Fiji Water is just one of many bottled-water companies out there vying for our dollars. Its actions, which are indeed horrendous, are indicative of a much larger problem driven by us - the consumer. All bottled-water companies such as Nestle, Coca-Cola, Evian, etc. have created a product that we don't really need in the developed world, while exploiting a dwindling supply of clean and replenishable water. Despite the great advertising tricks which have made us seek bottled water in record amounts, most of us don't need it. We get clean, safe water from the taps, why do we need to buy the same thing that is in a bottle? Just because it is from a spring or reverse-osmosified doesn't make it any better or more essential for us.

I admit to drinking the occasional bottle of water. It's handy on the go or if you want water but the place you are patronizing doesn't offer tap water. Barring the very occasional use, bottled water consumption shouldn't be so high. Why do we throw away the bottle when we are finished just to buy more, when we could refill the empty bottle with our own clean tap water? Why do we insist that bottled water is cleaner and better for us when that is just not true? Bottled water should be mainly used by those who do not have a direct, constant source of clean water in their midst. Instead it is the other way around. We should vote with our dollars and stop buying bottled-water in such large quantities. If enough of us do this and return to our tap water, not only will the environment be better protected but the poor will not be oppressed by large corporations over such an essential resource.