Memo to Mayor Schaunaman: cutting down trees is bad for humanity. So says a new United Nations report on what we must do to fight climate change and keep our planet habitable:
A new United Nations science report on climate change says cutting down trees is making the world hotter and hungrier.
Although the report doesn’t pinpoint any country, scientists, when asked, pointed a finger at Brazil’s recent stepped-up deforestation of the Amazon [“UN: Deforestation Makes World Hotter, Hungrier,” AP via KELO-TV, 2019.08.08].
The report supports the thesis advanced by Swiss research posted last month that says reforestation may be the best way to fight climate change.
A lot of that deforestation happens as we clear land to raise all the meat that those darned urban people around the world want to eat.
The panel of scientists looked at the climate change effects of agriculture, deforestation and other land use, such as harvesting peat and managing grasslands and wetlands. Together, those activities generate about a third of human greenhouse gas emissions, including more than 40 percent of methane.
That’s important because methane is particularly good at trapping heat in the atmosphere. And the problem is only getting more severe [Rebecca Hersher and Allison Aubrey, “To Slow Global Warming, U.N. Warns Agriculture Must Change,” NPR: The Salt, 2019.08.08].
A little shift in our diets could go a long way to making room for more humans and trees at the global table:
The WRI estimates that if people in the U.S. and other heavy meat-eating countries reduced their consumption of beef (and other meat from ruminants) to about 1.5 burgers per person, per week, it would “nearly eliminate the need for additional agricultural expansion (and associated deforestation), even in a world with 10 billion people.” (The Better Buying Lab, an arm of WRI that focuses on getting people to eat more sustainably, has come up with some clever research-backed marketing ideas to get people to make the plant-centric switch.) [Allison Aubrey, “If We All Ate Enough Fruits and Vegetables, There’d Be Big Shortages,” NPR: The Salt, 2019.07.17]
The U.N. report notes that we can’t go planting trees everywhere—reducing ag land too much could raise food prices and lead to more hunger…
…but letting climate change run rampant will render even more ag land unproductive (hey, South Dakota farmers! how many of you got crops in during our climate-change-induced rainy spring?). Restore forests we’ve chopped down, plant more trees in places where combines can’t run (like all around Aberdeen’s parking lots!), and we’ll see net gains for a healthy planet.
U.N. Same organization that continues to be a joke in areas like human rights abuse, aid organization fraud, and so much more….like:
The United Nations Population Fund – um, read all about this “fund.” I’m sure lefties love it but it is death.
Security Council Corruption: According to a study by Ilyana Kuziemko and Eric Werker, there is a strong connection between the distribution of foreign aid payments and rotating membership of the United Nations Security Council.
Goodwill Ambassador – Robert Mugabe who as a dictator led a repressive regime for years. Yes they rescinded but how can this wonderful organization even put him up?????
In 1994 a small troop of UN peacekeepers were sent to Rwanda to help eradicate the violence, but since the group sent there was too small the UN didn’t prevent the Rwandan genocide and an estimated 500,000-1,000,000 people died. But it pays for a “climate change” study over and over with dire predictions….uh-huh.
The UN General Assembly decided to hold a moment of silence in honor of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il following his death in 2011.
UN Secretary General from ’72 to ’81 was a Nazi. In response to a telegram sent to Waldheim by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, applauding the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympics in Germany, a spokesman for the Secretary-General said that it wasn’t his practice to comment on such things. But when Israel later freed over a hundred airline passengers being held hostage at the Entebe airport, Waldheim was more than willing to comment, saying the rescue was a “serious violation of the national sovereignty of” Uganda.
U.N. Commission on Women: has included members such as Libya, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, where women aren’t even allowed to drive a car. In 2017, the Commission on the Status of Women issued only one condemnation of women’s rights resolution. The United Nations Economic and Social Council ratified it. Responsible for the many violations of women’s rights reported, only one nation in the entire world was mentioned. That nation was Israel.
Durban II: The United Nations World Conference Against Racism, known as Durban II, was boycotted by much of the free world, and saw many other western nations walk out during the conference. It was chaired by Libya, with the vice-chairman-rapporteur from Cuba and other vice-chairs from such countries as South Africa, Iran, and Pakistan. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gave an opening day speech condemning Israel as totally racist and denying the Holocaust. The conference went downhill from there.
Agenda 21: Using the admirable “Sustainable Development” catchphrase, Agenda 21 uses people’s natural concern about the world’s future to advance a more hidden agenda. A YouTube video, produced by the United Nations, defines sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. It aims to accomplish this by meeting 17 goals that make everyone feel warm and fuzzy. You can watch this video (or read similar published documents) several times and still not get any real information out of it. But you’ll end up feeling really hopeful about the future, knowing that something can be, and is being, done about it. Over the last few decades, Agenda 21 has spread widely and deeply within western society. Non-profit organizations, particularly ICLEI, promote Agenda 21 and its goals to local and regional governments, who seem more than willing to accept its benefits. Something that makes voters feel good about themselves, about the future, and about what government is doing to protect them and their descendants; what more could a politician want? The problem is, beyond the warm and fuzzy aspects, most of the actions being undertaken toward achieving these 17 vaguely defined goals don’t actually do much good. Who cares that private land is expropriated in order to build bicycle paths that don’t go anywhere and will barely be used? It’s the appearance of doing something to improve our lifestyles and protect future generations that is important. What these goals actually do accomplish though, is to increase the dependency of individuals on government, to get citizens comfortable with governments that are able to control things for the good of their future. And with regional committees and councils and public meetings, it’s easy to fool people into thinking that they are actually providing useful input and helping make decisions. (Exercise: check the historical definition of “soviet” and research how the “Delphi Method” can be abused.) It’s not the Big Brother state that we need to worry about (that’s already here); it’s the Big Mother state that we should fear. From hard-line communists to well meaning soft-hearted people, many individuals and groups have been promoting that society for over a century, a society without private property, in which everything is a service and nothing is a commodity. And with its Agenda 21, the United Nations adds yet another powerful tool to accomplish it. (If you think this is nothing but paranoid conspiracy theory nonsense, look into how the citizens of Kodiak Alaska realized what was about to happen to them and how they stopped their city council from adopting an Agenda 21 policy. Then, realizing that Agenda 21 is real, and that some people are willing and able to defeat it locally, research what Agenda 21 and ICLEI are really about. But be very wary of anything that presents vague glowing descriptions without actually giving any real facts.) Read UN Agenda 21 for a more detailed description.
I could keep going with pages of more examples.
Thank you, World Resources Institute. The only beef I eat is one 5 oz. burger per week on Sunday evening. (Mom always made cheeseburgers on Sunday night when we watched My Favorite Martian, Disney, and Bonanza). I may eat small amounts of sausage, during the week but not much. I’ve done this for over ten years and my health data is all in the normal range. I didn’t cut out meat to save the planet but it’s a great side benefit. Meat is like poison to the colon.
Have a pink slime day, SD. :0)
Goodwill Ambassador – Robert Mugabe who as a dictator led a repressive regime for years. Yes they rescinded but how can this wonderful organization even put him up?????
Putin gave us Drumpf. I would switch Drumpf for Mugabe anytime. No one has the right to declare the US any better or worse than the UN because you would be the newest Drumpf laughing stock heard ’round the world.
Agriculture accounts for 37% of man made emissions, that’s a whole bunch.
“Not only does agriculture and its supply lines account for as much as 37 per cent of all man-made emissions, current industrialized production and global food chains contribute to vast food inequality.
The report noted that while there are currently 2 billion overweight or obese adults, 820 million people still do not get enough calories.”
Cod and tuna..toxic from man. Boy, we have really screwed the pooch on our taking care of our home. Soon, we will all have to know chemistry to use our home labs to make a meal.
“Climate change and overfishing are increasing levels of toxic mercury in cod and tuna – and this can cause neurological disorders in children and babies whose mothers eat fish while pregnant, a study by Harvard scientists said on Wednesday.
The concentration of methylmercury – an organic compound which can cause severe damage to the brain and nervous system – rose by 23 percent in cod and by 27 percent in bluefin tuna in the Atlantic Ocean’s Gulf of Maine over about three decades, the study said.”
By Mike Allen on Axios:
A UN report out today finds that climate change is putting dire pressure on the ability of humanity to feed itself, with the possibility that food crises could develop on several continents at once — a “multi-breadbasket failure,” the N.Y. Times’ Christopher Flavelle writes.
Why it matters: “A half-billion people already live in places turning into desert, and soil is being lost between 10 and 100 times faster than it is forming.”
Go deeper, via Axios’ Ben Geman: The climate peril from land degradation
Tesla, the answer to leave oil in the ground.
“Palo Alto-based electric automaker Tesla Inc. is making rapid progress on its new factory in China, and could begin producing Model 3 sedans there are soon as this November, according to analysts from Morgan Stanley who recently toured the site.
By all measurements, the project is moving at a rapid clip. Tesla secured a long-term lease on the 210-acre site in October 2018, and broke ground on the property in January, telling Chinese authorities the company hoped to complete construction on a $5 billion factory there by the end of the year.
The company secured a $522 million line of credit from Chinese banks, and says it will fund nearly all of the factory’s construction costs using Chinese debt.” https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2019/07/17/tesla-shanghai-china-model-3-factory-timeline.html
Booyah! Germany and the auto makers in the United States are about 5 years behind China in the EV development roll outs. Tesla is the only mass produced $35,000 to $40,000 complete EV available in the United States since GM knocked the Volt in the head.
5 years behind, that is absolutely amazing, not. By 2023 these slackers will have maybe something…or maybe not. Nothing in the driving range of Tesla or what the Chinese are producing. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/why-general-motors-is-ditching-the-chevy-volt#gs.uk364x
Agenda 21! The Truth Is Out There, Mulder!
Steve Pearson should cite pages more… because none of the pages he cites at the top of this comment section refute any of the science presented.
Waste less food, eat a little less beef, and plant more trees. All undeniably responsible actions of planetary stewardship. Pro-life actions, really.
I don’t know how hazelnuts are for carbon capture, but the bushes are good for the soil.
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“an ambitious effort to convince farmers to plant one million of the hybrid hazelnut bushes across the Upper Midwest, using the plant’s deep roots to prevent the runoff of soil and farm chemicals while giving farmers a new source of income.”
“The Universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin have been researching the elusive replacement crop for years. They teamed up in 2007 to create the Upper Midwest Hazelnut Development Initiative — funding research to breed and clone hybrid hazelnuts and scale up a market to make them financially feasible for farmers.
“Hazelnuts remain one of the most popular nuts and flavoring ingredients in Europe but they’ve never been readily available in the United States, said Jason Fischbach of the University of Wisconsin, who co-leads the development initiative.
“’Worldwide demand for hazelnuts is expected to double in the next 10 years,’” he said. ‘Some of that is because of almond fatigue. You find almonds everywhere, but hazelnuts can be hard to find here.’
“Some of that expected growth comes from the versatility of the nuts. With their high protein and oil contents, hazelnuts make for a better animal feed and biofuel ingredient than soybeans, and most soybeans grown in Minnesota end up in livestock troughs or ethanol. The high oil content makes them valuable for cooking oils and hand lotions.
“The U and UW estimated in 2017 that a fully mature hedgerow of hazelnuts would net between $3,400 and $4,200 an acre, with whole nuts at a market rate of $2 per pound.
“The average net return over the last 10 years for soybeans in southern Minnesota is just under $71 an acre, according to the U’s Center for Farm Financial Management.
“That hazelnut price would be expected to fall the more they are introduced to the market. The larger problem is getting the hazelnuts to full maturity. It takes about four years for the plants to even start producing nuts and start-up costs can be significant, Fischbach said.”
“Unlike almonds and most other crops grown in the United States, hazelnuts do not need pollinators. If butterflies and bees continue to die away, hazelnuts can survive — their catkins carried by the wind.”
Behind Strib paywall. http://strib.mn/2KBel3k
That’s ungodly copyright infringement, but grudnzick approves. You may continue, Ms. Geelsdottir. Plus, and I don’t know if you knew this, but I grow hazel nuts.
Allow grudznick to pile onto the Strib quoting. With some take. Hazelnuts can be a headache to grow. grudznick knows.
Subcontinent Indians planted 220 million trees in one day. Trees are important, Aberdeen. https://beta.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indians-plant-220-million-trees-in-single-day/2019/08/09/d0dccd0c-baa5-11e9-8e83-4e6687e99814_story.html?outputType=amp
Why do the lefties have it in for beef? Sure they put out methane and by the nature of their ruminant digestive system perhaps more than a non ruminant. Ruminant’s along with termites are able to turn cellulose into protein and are capable of living off the plants that were here before man came along to mess things up. No other critters are. I argue that pouring on fertilizer made from oil to produce feed grains is at least as dangerous as beef production.
We worry about the methane that cattle are producing but aren’t about to let little people sell power back to utility’s that they can produce with a methane digester on their confinement livestock buildings. Methane that is now just being lost into the atmosphere.
Of course since we are rapidly becoming a third world country I guess it is only appropriate that we move towards a third world diet.
Clyde, I don’t think we can dismiss criticism of beef as some lefty obsession. That’s not where I’m coming from. I like eating beef (and I like my steak well done, thus increasing the carbon emissions), but I recognize that producing beef has climate impacts. That’s not political bias; that’s simple science.
Lefties (and the rest of us) could lodge a similar critique of fruit and vegetable production in the US. A lot of our tomatoes come from faraway farms and are shipped across the country at significant cost in fossil-fuel usage and carbon emissions.
And we can all agree with your critique of petro-fertilizers.
Our food production system and consumption habits are rich with practices that aren’t ecologically sustainable. We can make a number of changes toward sustainability. We don’t have to do away with beef. The above study doesn’t call for banning beef. It just says eat a little less beef. The above study doesn’t say we should adopt a “third-world” (by which I assume you mean substandard, less healthy) diet; it says we should seek substitute sources of nutrition that have less carbon impact. Even if we don’t change our eating habits, we can waste less (not throwing away a hamburger would reduce demand just as much as not eating a hamburger).
One major change we could make that would address all of the above concerns is to eat more locally, sustainably grown food. Don’t ship beef or produce across the country or across the hemisphere when we could eat similar goodies right from our gardens and backyard chicken coops and neighbor farms just down the road. Buy from neighbors we know who don’t rely on industrial-scale production and all the chemicals necessary to that scale to grow food. Get beef from the pasture instead of the CAFO.
There’s nothing inherently (and thus, for some, dismissably) lefty about that reform of our food system. There’s just a desire to eat better and live longer as a planet.
Saving the planet…. The EPA under Drumpf has removed salmon from protected species to allow the Pebble Mine to be built on the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska. Bristol Bay contains the largest wild salmon runs and fisheries on the planet and supports 20000 indigenous people and their entire cultures.
Billions of gallons of cyanide and other poisonous laden water will be stored behind a 700 foot high earthen berm in an active earthquake zone. What could possibly go wrong?
Obama stopped it. Because he did, Drumpf wants the gold mine built regardless of environmental damages.
Alaska is working through some issues with its dependence upon oil revenues. I suspect that as oil wanes, that the mining for rare earth minerals in Alaska will become more important. Particularly if our supply is restricted from China.
We will need more of the critical elements as we increase the batteries, wind turbines, solar cells, and other modern technologies that everybody SAYS that they want. But will we want them if they have to be mined?
The answer is not to have hypocritical “good mining” for renewable-related technologies and “bad mining” for other uses that are still critical in our economy. The answer is to make mining as safe as possible regardless, and to promote recycling or downcycling where feasible.
A well deserved shot in the arm for all science, compliments of my hometown.(weather permitting)
https://ktiv.com/2019/08/09/movie-night-to-be-held-in-cherokee-ia-during-peak-perseid-meteor-shower-viewing/