A really good air-travel carbon calculator

I just stumbled upon a really helpful carbon calculator for air-travel, Atmosfair.  They also offer carbon-offsets (which I can't vouch one way or the other for).  What's particularly nice is that longer flights that fly at higher elevations are penalized for their damage.  And, you can add up your flights and easily figure out your real impact.

pole and line harvested tuna

Some pole and line harvested tuna fisheries are certified by the Marine Stewardship council as sustainable.  I guess I never really knew what this involved until seeing this YouTube video.  Wow!  Quite different from purse nets (which might be dolphin friendly but kill everything else brought up with the tuna feeding frenzy!).

Green Fire

Just saw a wonderful film, Green Fire, about Aldo Leopold (a very influential conservation biologist from the last century), his life, and his creation of a land ethic.  Check it out if you can.  The Leopold Foundation is running screenings and post-film discussions.

Living Room Conversations

I just stumbled upon a blog,  Living Room Conversations, that shares many ideas with Eating our Way to Civility (it's more general).  Great idea!  They have a number of great conversation ground rules for constructive conversations which I reproduce below:

Conversation Ground Rules

Be Curious and Open to Learning

Listen to and be open to hearing all points of view. Maintain an attitude of exploration and learning.

Balance Advocacy and Inquiry

Seek to learn and understand as much as you might want to persuade. Conversation is as much about listening as it is about talking.

Show Respect and Suspend Judgment

Human beings tend to judge one another, do your best not to. Setting judgments aside will enable you to learn from others and contribute to others experiences being respected and appreciated.

Seek Alignment rather than Agreement

Alignment is shared intention, whereas agreement is having a shared belief or opinion. In this conversation, we look for alignment primarily and simply appreciate that we will disagree on some beliefs and opinions.

Be Authentic and Welcome that from Others

Share what’s important to you. Speak authentically; from your personal and heartfelt experience. Be considerate to others who are doing the same.

Be Purposeful and to the Point

Notice if what you are conveying is or is not “on purpose” to the question at hand. Notice if you are making the same point more than once. Do your best to make your point with honesty and depth.

Own and Guide the Conversation

Take responsibility for the quality of your participation and the quality of the conversation by noticing what’s happening and actively support getting yourself and others back “on purpose” when needed.

Organic farming isn't quite as productive as 'industrial' farming

A meta-analysis published in the scientific journal Nature today reports that organic farming is generally less productive than non-organic alternatives.  However, the crop and context matter a lot.  By identifying these discrepancies, it should be possible to improve organic farming's yields.

Here's the abstract:

Numerous reports have emphasized the need for major changes in the global food system: agriculture must meet the twin challenge of feeding a growing population, with rising demand for meat and high-calorie diets, while simultaneously minimizing its global environmental impacts^1, 2. Organic farming—a system aimed at producing food with minimal harm to ecosystems, animals or humans—is often proposed as a solution^3, 4. However, critics argue that organic agriculture may have lower yields and would therefore need more land to produce the same amount of food as conventional farms, resulting in more widespread deforestation and biodiversity loss, and thus undermining the environmental benefits of organic practices⁵. Here we use a comprehensive meta-analysis to examine the relative yield performance of organic and conventional farming systems globally. Our analysis of available data shows that, overall, organic yields are typically lower than conventional yields. But these yield differences are highly contextual, depending on system and site characteristics, and range from 5% lower organic yields (rain-fed legumes and perennials on weak-acidic to weak-alkaline soils), 13% lower yields (when best organic practices are used), to 34% lower yields (when the conventional and organic systems are most comparable). Under certain conditions—that is, with good management practices, particular crop types and growing conditions—organic systems can thus nearly match conventional yields, whereas under others it at present cannot. To establish organic agriculture as an important tool in sustainable food production, the factors limiting organic yields need to be more fully understood, alongside assessments of the many social, environmental and economic benefits of organic farming systems.

The real cost of an iPhone...

Love your iPhone?  Want the newest model?  Consider skipping a generation or two.  Check out The real cost of an iPhone.  Better yet, consider the ecological impact of all your major purchases as a thoughtful way to reduce your ecological footprint.

The Last Generation?

Earth Day is approaching and this gives us an opportunity to reflect on our planet’s condition. Unfortunately, the diagnosis is not great, and the prognosis is worse. The biggest environmental challenges we face are that our climate is rapidly changing, we are poisoning and toxifying our environment in unknowable ways, our water sources are polluted and running dry, and the biodiversity that sustains us is threatened from habitat destruction and over-harvesting of natural resources. Experts disagree about specifics, but virtually all agree that the trajectories are dire. So, that leaves us with a social question: what to do?  Regardless of your politics or religion, these issues affect us all. Further, they affect humanity’s future. We would like to ask a provocative question: are we the first human generation that would be satisfied with being the last?

Let us be clear: we are not really going to be the last generation. The question is about our attitude rather than a projection. Humanity will continue. But, it will be a different less humane civilization, for we will be the last generation living under our current conditions. The world will be very different and much less habitable. To imagine what it will look like, look no further than the sprawling urban slums in many developing countries. Many of us will struggle to make ends meet. We certainly will eat less. And, lifespan will decline. Indeed the health problems associated with poverty will be more widespread.

Whether you believe global warming is natural or human caused, what is indisputable is that global atmospheric temperatures are rising. Warming temperatures will result in a variety of problems our future generations must solve. Sea levels will rise, resulting in high frequency of flooding events like the flooding of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina. Weather will be less predictable and there will be a greater frequency of ‘weather events’ like hurricanes, tornadoes, and heat waves. Moreover, drastic changes in temperatures like the one we are currently experiencing are historically associated with an increased risk of war over dwindling resources. As living conditions decline globally, violent conflict becomes inevitable.

Yet, the news on global warming is not all bad. We can still make a difference for our future generations if we quickly and resolutely reduce our use of coal, oil, and natural gas and shift to a very low carbon society. This task certainly seems daunting and possibly extreme at first. However, the point is that we believe that we must try, rather than continuing to ignore the issues or putting off solutions to ‘future technological innovations’. Stopping global warming now will be much more effective than if we procrastinate and deal with this issue further down the line.

We are currently undergoing the sixth, and possibly most severe, mass extinction in the Earth’s history, which is defined as losing at least 75% of the world’s species. There are valid ethical reasons for stopping this extinction event and preserving our natural ecosystems but a good reason is quite practical: we use the earth’s biodiversity to find cures for diseases. Antibiotics, anti-malarials, and anti-cancer drugs come from natural products. Without them, or with a much smaller palate to choose from, we are severely hindering our ability to find new cures for old and emerging diseases.

Here too, we can make a difference by stopping the overharvesting of resources and destruction of habitats that are necessary for species preservation. We can use less, lobby corporations and businesses that engage in ecologically irresponsible behavior, and vote in favor of laws that protect biodiversity and habitat preservation.

So, what’s it going to be? Will we sit by and watch while we destroy our planet? Or, will we do something that can stop this trajectory? These changes (among them drastically and immediately using less carbon, reducing rather than increasing the use of pesticides and other man-made chemicals, saving instead of developing habitat, and conserving the earth’s natural resources such as fisheries) may not, initially, be easy, but they are essential. It really is up to us. Are we really the first generation content with being the last? What will you do to prevent this?

Alvin Y. Chan is a recent graduate of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA where Daniel T. Blumstein is a Professor and Department Chair, as well as a Professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and co-author of the recent book The Failure of Environmental Education (And How We Can Fix It).