Six Degrees Could Change the World

I watched National Geographic Channel's "Six Degrees Could Change the World" last week and still have it very much on my mind. It is powerfully graphic with estimates of what could happen to the natural systems on the planet after each degree rise of Earth's average temperature up to six degrees warmer.

At one degree rise, scientists predict the plains of the western US will become hyper arid, wiping out grazing and dry land farming in the region. At two degrees, the Midwest would be a dust bowel. As the average temperature rises, areas of the world that are now productive agricultural land will see great reductions in productivity and areas such as northern Canada will become the new breadbaskets to the world. It hasn't been until recently that science has had computers powerful enough to develop models that could help in predicting the consequences of global warming, but knowledge of the fundamental principle of heat trapping emissions and their influence on Earth's temperature has been around since 1896.

One degree, or even six degrees doesn't seem like it could impact something as complex as nature. I certainly can't discern the difference between 50 and 51 degrees from one day to the next and our daily temperatures can fluctuate nearly one hundred degrees in a single day. But we are talking averages here, and in the case of climate change, scientists use air temperatures on land and the temperature of the ocean in determining the average degree of the earth, which is calculated on the Celsius scale. I never took a class in statistics, but in reasoning through what I learned way back in high school, when dealing with a lot of numbers it takes major change in many of the numbers to change the average significantly. Also, while air temperature fluctuates wildly on a daily basis, water requires significant amounts of energy to raise its temperature, especially when you are considering the volume of water Earth's oceans contain. I'd love to see a mathematician's explanation of just how big a change it takes to move the average temperature one degree.

Reliable data concerning global temperatures has only been available since the late 1800's. Since that time Earth's average temperature has changed just about .8 degrees--in part because the industrial revolution caused humans to start burning fossil fuels in large amounts. The last time it changed that much in my region, it took thousands of years to change, but the results were the same--the desertification of the western plains. When the earth's temperature changed as much as six degrees during the age of dinosaurs, it caused their extinction and required hundreds of millions of years for the Earth to sequester the increased amount of carbon from its atmosphere to create the environment with which humans are familiar. So temperature change isn't unprecedented on our planet, but the rapidity of change is. More information is available on the website of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

NGC's program made a profound impression on me because it translated an obscure set of statistics into concrete possibilities. Ever increasing severity of weather could cause massive starvation and relocation of hundreds of millions of people, the extinction of thousands of plants and animals, along with the economic and political fallout that results from the ensuing turmoil. It's not the kind of world I wish upon my daughter and her descendants. You can read about some of the schemes to reverse global warming here--all of which would cost billions and have potentially serious unintended consequences.

For anyone unable to watch the program--it is available on cable's National Geographic Channel (check times for your area here)--I will send a copy on DVD to anyone pledging to show it to at least ten people and am happy to send multiple copies to anyone who feels inspired to expose greater numbers to this information. Just email me with your mailing address at dryideas AT gmail DOT com. With the election coming up in November, it's important to understand the immediacy of this problem and work to ensure elected officials place a priority on climate change.

Photo: Thanks to catchke2ro

The Economics of Natural Services

Coming Soon--the real skinny on the economic value of natures services. The journal Nature has an article estimating the value of natures services to human society at somewhere around $33 trillion.

Why Nature Matters

Our lives depend upon the natural world. We can’t eat, breath, or drink without it. Yet, humanity has been fairly cavalier about keeping that natural world functioning. We’ve polluted the air and water, altered 95% of habitat, and consumed a vast amount of non-renewable resources over the ages as humans have come to dominate the earth. Global warming is being caused by human activity at a rate unprecedented in the history of the planet. We have reached a critical juncture, where it is time to modify our treatment of the natural world or face terrible consequences.

We must reel in our consumption of resources, stop polluting the air and water, and restore habitat sufficiently to sustain the web of life and the efficient functioning of natural services. No longer can we afford to disregard the environmental impact of our actions. The lives of future generations depend upon the natural world remaining intact; in order to continue to provide us with clean water, food and air we can breathe. We must learn to live sustainably—consuming no more than can be reasonably provided without destroying the natural services that sustain life on earth.

The landscape industry is in a unique position to contribute to the restoration of the natural world. We have the opportunity to position ourselves as part of the solution to restoring the full functioning of natural services or we can stand as an obstacle to that restoration. We can lead the way, establishing our profession as experts in the stewardship of precious resources, or we can drag our feet—providing roadblock after roadblock, until society legislates our industry out of existence.

One of the biggest ironies of our industry is that the current process of creating built landscape destroys the natural world. We take complex ecosystems that provide efficient services we depend upon and modify them into simplistic environments that actually tax those services. Where multi-faceted, intact natural landscapes filter precipitation, process waste, manufacture oxygen and nitrogen, sequester carbon, moderate temperature, and provide habitat for the majority of species in this world; simplistic, built landscapes contribute much less toward these functions and provide habitat for only a handful of species. Instead, we create landscapes that require constant input of resources—water, fertilizer, chemicals, and labor to keep them from reverting to their natural state.

Elsewhere, in this world, we wouldn’t tolerate such inefficiency. Businesses don’t succeed if there’s more going out than coming in. It’s time we hold landscapes up to a higher standard—requiring them to sustain plants and wildlife that in turn provide us with air to breath, water to drink, and food to drink.