350.org is an international campaign that’s building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis–the solutions that science and justice demand.

350 parts per million (ppm) is, according to leading climate scientists, the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Accelerating arctic warming and other early climate impacts have led scientists to conclude that we are already above the safe zone at our current 392ppm. The 350 campaign is focused on making the connections between our actions and climate change easier to understand so we can turn this around.

This year, 10/10/10 is the 350 Global Climate Work Party. Thousands of groups across New Zealand, and in over 180 countries, will join together and get to work on climate change. From holding a tree planting day to installing solar hot water heating on local buildings, we’ll be sending a call to leaders that they have our support in getting us back to 350ppm.

With more than 1300 global events registered already, there is plenty to get involved in. More information on actions taking place in Aotearoa can be found at 350.org.nz, or why not organise your own event – for details and suggestions go here, or register your event here.

Watch this video from last year’s 350 day to be inspired:

With their 1994 battle cry, “Ya basta!” (“Enough already!”) Mexico’s Zapatista uprising became the spearhead of two convergent movements: Mexico’s movement for indigenous rights and the international movement against corporate globalization.

Skip to 2010: the movements for indigenous rights and against corporate globalization have converged again, this time globally, in the climate justice movement. Following the widely acknowledged failure of the climate negotiations in Copenhagen last December, the greatest manifestation of these converging movements took place this past April at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

While political forces have conspired to make the Zapatistas largely invisible both inside Mexico and internationally, their challenge has always been to propose a paradigm of development that is both just and self-sustaining. It seems fair, then, to see if Zapatismo can shed any light on the muddle of politics around the climate crisis. Can the poetic riddles of Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos serve as signposts on the rough road toward just climate solutions?

One No and Many Yeses

Soon after the Zapatistas appeared to the world in 1994 as an armed insurgency, they put down their weapons and revealed that alongside their “One NO” — the rejection of imposed authority, whether by the Mexican government or by the global institutions that govern trade, investment, development and security policy — they stood for “Many Yeses.” Yes, for the Zapatistas, signified the careful, conscious, and painstaking development of alternative forms of governance and resource use: multilingual schools, community clinics, seed banks, sustainable agriculture, accessible and affordable water and basic sanitation, and, above all, organized experiments in direct democracy.

When 30,000 members of civil society from 140 countries, including 56 government delegations, gathered in Cochabamba in April, they asserted clearly and forcefully that the climate crisis, with its attendant impacts of drought, flood, crop loss, increased disease burden, displacement, and widespread instability, has one essential root cause. In the words of the People’s Agreement forged in Cochabamba, “The corporations and governments of the so-called ‘developed’ countries, in complicity with a segment of the scientific community, have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system.”

Whatever climate solutions we consider, the Southern social movements say, they must be rooted in the acceptance of social and ecological limits to growth. Recognition of such limits is what the Zapatistas would call “the No.”

The many “yeses,” meanwhile, come in the form of the best demands of the climate justice movement: strengthening local economies, practicing ecological agriculture and rights-based governance; drastically reducing consumption and waste by Northern countries and Southern elites in order to improve quality of life for the billions of marginalized and exploited; protecting forests, biodiversity, culture, and those among us who are most vulnerable; investing in and attending to women, youth, and those who’ve earned the right to be called “elders.” The many yeses, for climate justice, are the manifold paths toward mitigation and adaptation, equity and justice. The “yeses” are embodied in a notion that has recently gained currency in development circles: grassroots resilience.

Justice with Dignity

Implicit in the surging forth of the indigenous people is their demand to be approached with the respect due to all human subjects. As Subcomandante Marcos wrote over a decade ago, “The powerful with all their money don’t understand our struggle. The power of money and pride cannot understand, because there is a word which does not walk in the understanding of the great sages who sell their intelligence to the rich and the powerful. This word is dignity.”

Dignity, it turns out, is central to the climate negotiations. “Development,” with its implicit assumption that the health of a society is best measured by its level of consumption, comes, precisely, at the cost of human dignity. Southern climate campaigners make clear that the North, burdened by overconsumption to the point of obesity, needs to reduce consumption, while much of the South, in the face of perennial scarcity, needs to increase it. Sara Larrain, director of an NGO called Chile Sustentable, writes, “The objective of human dignity surpasses the objective of overcoming poverty, and refers to the negotiation of environmental space and social equity between the North and South.”

The “Line of Dignity” that Larrain formulated, in concert with groups from Brazil, Uruguay and Chile, is essentially a proposal to replace the poverty line — an austere and denigrating economic metric based on only the most fundamental human survival needs — with a measure that takes into account cultural, political, and environmental rights. “The Line of Dignity,” Larrain writes, “is a convergence point that fosters lowering the consumption of those above, and raising that of those below. This permits the assurance to the population of the levels of access to environmental space necessary for subsistence and dignity.”

The Line of Dignity proposes that equity between North and South can only be reached when the Northern notion of environmental sustainability (preservation of resources for planetary needs and future generations) is matched with the Southern demand for social sustainability (equity, and full social, environmental, political and cultural rights). Thus, in order to raise the standard of living of the billions who currently live below the line of dignity, a certain measure of environmental space (carbon sinks, fisheries, and open grazing land, for example) must be surrendered by the North. The wealthy must reduce their use of resources. They must commit to degrowth.

Rather than manage the climate catastrophe, as the neoliberal establishment is attempting to do, the climate justice movement chooses to use the crisis as an opportunity — perhaps the last opportunity — to construct dignity.

Everything for Everyone, Nothing for Us

Probably the most commonly asked question of people just arriving at a deep concern for the ecological crisis is, “What can I, as an individual, do to make things better?” The simple answer, which I learned from living among Zapatista villagers, is nothing. Because we have to stop acting as individuals if we are to survive; the Earth won’t be affected by our individual actions, only our collective impact.

The Zapatistas’ slogan, “Para todos todo, para nosotros nada” (“Everything for Everyone, Nothing for Us”) rang true in the mid-1990s and still rings true today. But this slogan has a certain mystery. The demand “nothing for us” runs so counter to anything any of us — the resource-hungry individuals of the so-called First World — would ever think of demanding. As the saying goes, no one ever rioted for austerity. Yet, without feeling cheated, we need to build our capacity to live by another old saying: Enough is better than a feast.

The proposals of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales for a Climate Debt Tribunal and a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth put equity and ecology (as opposed to, say, technical fixes or market-based solutions) at the center of climate negotiations. Such proposals are, at bottom, radical expressions of an ethic that demands everything for everyone, nothing for us. Such proposals also require a radical rethinking of what “development” means. Inspired by the Andean notion of “el buen vivir” — living well, as opposed to living better — the emerging climate justice movement posits that, this close to the brink of ecological collapse, development and progress should be understood not in terms of accumulation, but in terms of sharing.

A World in Which Many Worlds Fit

The Mexican establishment perceives the Zapatista project as a threat to the very integrity of the nation-state. This threat lies in the Zapatistas’ demand for the formal recognition, within state boundaries, of diverse ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious groups. In the Andean region, and in Bolivia in particular, this is called (in its cultural dimension) pluriculturality, or (in its political dimension), plurinationality — a nation in which fit many nations. The notion of pluriculturality differs significantly from the U.S. concept of “multiculturalism,” for it goes beyond multicultural education to include respect for collective claims to territory and for collective rights.

The world is in the middle of the greatest mass extinction since the twilight of the dinosaurs. Half of all species on Earth are expected to vanish within 100 years. The major ecosystems (including the Amazon), the world’s freshwater systems, and the coral reefs are all approaching a “tipping point” from which they may never recover. As such, scientists and social movements tend to agree: Diversity as a basis for decision-making is at the heart of both ecological and cultural survival. The Zapatista push for “A World in Which Many Worlds Fit,” much more than a call for mere “tolerance,” is a clear recognition that what science has recently come to call “biocultural diversity” is a bottom line.

Rather than seeking to divide resources to serve an atomized multitude, the climate justice movement envisions multiplying resources to serve the common good. For peasants and indigenous peoples, by and large, this means merging age-old traditions and systems of ownership and authority with the modern practices that complement, foster, and enhance them. In other words, a just transition to a post-carbon world requires precisely the kinds of strategies that have sustained land-based peoples for millennia, accompanied by the best sustainable technologies current science has to offer: organic subsistence agriculture plus fair trade; seed sovereignty ensured by genetic testing of seed stocks; locally produced electricity via wind, solar, and biogas; collective (public) transportation powered by waste oil; zero waste practices and small-scale, clean production; and local water stewardship enhanced by low-cost water treatment. To respond to a crisis with diverse, local manifestations in a way that achieves a world in which many worlds fit demands diverse, local, people-powered solutions.

The Earth Is for They Who Work It

The Zapatistas’ struggle has been, above all else, for territory. They want the simple right to work the land that they consider historically to be theirs. In this, their struggle has many parallels throughout the indigenous world.

While fighting for the Earth, the Zapatistas have never identified themselves, even incidentally, as “environmentalists.” Nor do they talk much, in their voluminous decade-and-a-half of communiqués, about “ecology” or “conservation.” And yet, as poet Gary Snyder once said, “The best thing you can do for the environment is to stay home.” As indigenous peasant farmers struggling for territorial autonomy, the Zapatistas’ struggle is precisely to “stay home.”

One of the controversial topics in the UN climate negotiations, hotly contested in Cochabamba and denounced outright by many segments of the climate justice movement, is the program called Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). REDD seeks to reward governments, companies, or forest owners in the South for keeping their forests standing, to act as carbon sinks, instead of cutting them down. Liberal NGOs tend to support the essentially corporate REDD program because it provides a mechanism for protecting forests. But this mechanism also provides polluting industries with the right to continue polluting. In addition, REDD’s version of “forest protection” may well be one of the largest land grabs in history.

Tom Goldtooth, director of the U.S.-based Indigenous Environmental Network, calls REDD “a corruption of the sacred.” Forests, especially for those who live in them, are not mere carbon sinks. “Lungs of the Earth” or not, they are forests first. The Earth, as Emiliano Zapata urged, is for its true stewards. Yes, urges the climate justice movement, keep forests standing — and pay to do so if necessary. But rather than putting distant economic interests in charge of forests in order to save them, as REDD proposes, why not encourage the kind of valuation that land-based peoples have always practiced? We should reduce the pressures on forests by keeping out those who don’t directly steward them — that is, most of us.

In denouncing REDD and other carbon offset schemes, climate justice activists argue that the market can’t resolve a crisis of its own making. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, released in Britain in 2006, described climate change as “the biggest market failure in history.” Yet, at the same time, carbon markets became the only solution advocated by governments and the corporations and NGOs close to them. When the European carbon market failed, with the price of a ton of carbon dropping dramatically below the range at which renewables can compete with fossil fuels), there was barely a whisper. The Obama administration continued to push for cap-and-trade, the UNFCCC continued to press for REDD and other offsets, and the atmosphere continued to be for those who wanted to pay to pollute it.

Walk by Asking Questions

In many of his communiqués, Subcomandante Marcos uses stories of the old gods, those who were there before the world was the world, to show how the struggle to reinvent society is linked to the moment of creation. One lesson these stories return to time and again is that those who created the world did so by “walking while asking questions.” It is a powerful poetry.

Yet, in the midst of growing climate crisis, we barely have time to ask the questions. Can the massive numbers of landless, small landholders, fisherfolk and indigenous peoples be given incentives — and support — to stay on their land rather than migrate to overcrowded and overheated cities? Can we reasonably stop the burning of coal, oil, crops, and waste, and still live well? Is another development possible? These questions don’t have easy answers. But in asking them as we walk, quickly, we may — we must — find the answers emerging.

In The Value of Nothing, Raj Patel cites “walking by asking questions” as a fundamental principle of democracy. “The mistakes that get made along the way are part of the process,” he nevertheless acknowledges. In challenging a broken system, it’s essential to enter uncharted territory. Actually engaging the most affected people in the process of fixing the climate disaster is part of this territory. And yes, mistakes will be made.

But in order to prevent mistakes from becoming disasters, interventions must be made at a human scale. It was mistakes — big ones — that got us here. Oil companies like BP, for instance, drilled far beyond their capacity to prevent or clean up accidents. More spectacular failures are in the pipeline, such as geo-engineering. When BP Vice President David Eyton announced in 2008 that BP was getting onboard with geo-engineering, he said, “We cannot ignore the scale of the challenge.” Unfortunately, we also cannot afford the scale of the disaster to follow. If anything goes wrong (and it will), it will go wrong, like the BP experiment in deepwater drilling, in a big way.

As we walk by asking questions, we should repeat the following mantra: big questions, small mistakes.

Ya Basta!

As profound as any of their other poetic slogans, the Zapatistas’ initial battle cry of “Enough already!” defines the urgency with which we must approach the climate crisis. This year will likely mark the hottest summer on record. The hurricane season is predicted to be more catastrophic than ever. The BP spill is now recognized as the worst environmental disaster of all time. And the latest predictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that the Arctic could be free of summer ice in 30 years. Governments play politics as usual, and corporations eye huge profits from carbon markets. But scientists and activists agree: We can’t alter the physical limits of climate devastation with market fixes.

In 1994, the Zapatistas clearly told the world that we had exhausted all other options. In the teeth of climate catastrophe, every living thing on the planet is now backed against the same wall. Change takes time, argues every prudent voice. But after centuries of toxic industry, decades of climate change denial, and years of playing politics as if there were winners and losers, time has run out. In a drawn-out competition against the climate crisis, there can be only losers. As Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN, Pablo Solón, said recently at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, “We are only going to have one chance in this century to fight climate change. And that time is now.” In these words can be heard the echo of the Zapatistas: Ya Basta!

In 2009, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in China—the world’s leading emitter—grew by nearly 9 percent. At the same time, emissions in most industrial countries dropped, bringing global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use down from a high of 8.5 billion tons of carbon in 2008 to 8.4 billion tons in 2009. Yet this drop follows a decade of rapid growth: over the 10 previous years, global CO2 emissions rose by an average of 2.5 percent a year—nearly four times as fast as in the 1990s. Increasing temperatures and the resulting melting ice sheets and rising sea levels demonstrate the destructive effects of the carbon accumulating in the atmosphere.

Emissions in many wealthier countries fell in 2008 and 2009 as the global recession took hold. In the United States, CO2 emissions shrank by nearly 10 percent from 2007 to 2009, from a high of 1.58 billion tons of carbon to 1.43 billion tons, the lowest level since 1995. Emissions from oil, which is largely used for transportation, declined by nearly 11 percent, while those from coal, which is mainly burned to generate electricity, fell by over 13 percent.

The United Kingdom’s CO2 emissions fell by over 10 percent from 2007 to 2009. German emissions dropped by 8 percent, and French emissions dropped by 5 percent. Japan saw its emissions decline nearly 12 percent over the two-year period.

At the same time, CO2 emissions in the world’s most populous countries, China and India, continued to grow rapidly. China’s emissions rose to 1.86 billion tons of carbon in 2009, representing nearly a quarter of global emissions from fossil fuel burning. With average annual emissions growth of 8 percent over the past decade, China overtook the United States in 2007 as the world’s leading CO2 emitter. India’s emissions grew by close to 5 percent a year over the past decade; the country passed Russia in 2007 to become the world’s third largest emitter.

Still, emissions per person in developing economies remain far below those of most of the industrial world. The tiny nation of Qatar ranks highest in per capita emissions, at 11.5 tons of carbon per person in 2009, followed by several other oil-rich countries. Australia, the United States, and Canada lead the major industrial countries, emitting 4–5 tons of carbon per person in 2009. Per capita emissions in these countries are three times those in China and nearly four times the world average. At the same time, many European countries, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, have comparable standards of living to the United States but emit only half as much carbon dioxide per person.

Emissions totals for individual countries include all fossil fuels burned within their borders. For manufacturing giants like China, this means that their total emissions include those resulting from the production of goods destined for other countries. A recent study by researchers at Stanford University found that 22 percent of Chinese emissions resulted from the production of goods for export. The study also found that the manufacture of goods imported by the United States was responsible for 190 million tons of carbon emissions per year. If emissions totals were adjusted to account for Chinese exports and U.S. imports, the United States would again be the world’s leading emitter.

While fossil fuel use is responsible for the majority of carbon dioxide emissions, changes in land use, such as clearing forests for cropland, also emit a substantial amount of CO2. In 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, global emissions from land use change were estimated at 1.2 billion tons of carbon. The vast majority of these emissions were from deforestation in the tropics; Indonesia and Brazil alone represent over 60 percent of land use change emissions.

More than half of the carbon dioxide emitted annually is absorbed by oceans, soils, and trees. The rapid rate at which carbon dioxide is pouring into the atmosphere is overwhelming these natural systems, posing a particular threat to ocean ecosystems. The large amounts of dissolved CO2 alter ocean chemistry, making seawater more acidic, which makes it more difficult for organisms such as reef-building corals or shellfish to form their skeletons or shells. The world’s oceans are now more acidic than they have been at any time in the past 20 million years. Experts have estimated that if CO2 emissions continue to rise on their long-term trajectory, coral reefs around the world may be dying off by 2050.

Recent research has also indicated that the oceans’ capacity to absorb carbon dioxide may be unable to keep up with the rising level of emissions. The CO2-absorption ability of both the Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica, and the North Atlantic Ocean has decreased in recent decades.

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Twenty-five years ago Saturday, two bombs planted by secret agents working for the French government sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbor, New Zealand, killing Fernando Pereira, a photographer and father of two. This was a desperate move by France to stop the activists on board from bearing witness to its nuclear testing in the South Pacific.

I remember hearing about the attack over my father’s transistor radio in our township outside Durban, South Africa. The apartheid government had recently imposed a state of emergency and it was not often that international news made its way to us. What had happened with the Rainbow Warrior was so outrageous that even we heard about it.

As a young anti-apartheid activist, I was particularly taken with two elements of the event.

The first was that a powerful, democratic government could feel so intimidated by a small group of peaceful men and women holding up banners on a boat that it would resort to violence. It was my first exposure to the Quaker-inspired tradition of bearing witness in order
to shine a spotlight on injustices or crimes that might otherwise go unnoticed.

The second was the idea that there existed people who would eschew personal gain and dedicate their lives to the greater good of our planet. Coming from a place where the struggle was inherently personal, the fact that the Greenpeace crew was planning to sail out to the middle of the ocean to oppose nuclear testing, which would not touch them anymore than it would touch anyone else, was an epiphany.

Of course, Greenpeace is not alone in its struggle to save the planet. Nongovernmental organizations and civil society — trade unions, faith-based organizations, school groups and others — have been working
independently or together for decades to promote the cause of social justice and fight the great threats of the day.

A couple of years after the sinking of the first Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace volunteers bought a used trawler and transformed it into a new Rainbow Warrior. Many of the same crew then continued their
struggle against the French government until it finally gave up its nuclear testing program in 1996. The saying of the day became: “You can’t sink a Rainbow.”

While the threat of nuclear destruction is not over, a danger barely recognized at the time has taken its place as the No. 1 threat to our planet. Climate change has now become the biggest threat to security and peace in the future. Kofi Annan’s Global Forum estimates that in 2008 alone, 300,000 people died of the consequences of climate change.

Unlike nuclear testing, climate change is difficult to “bear witness” to because its causes (carbon emissions) lie in so many different factors and its resolution will require major, international cooperation of business leaders, politicians and other decision-makers. This does not mean civil society can or should stop trying to hold leaders accountable for changes they are unwilling to make.

History tells us that whatever injustice we face — whether it was apartheid in South Africa, civil rights in the United States, a woman’s right to choose — it was only when determined men and women were
willing to stand up and say, “Enough is enough, I am prepared to peacefully break the law and even go to prison to get our message across,” that change finally happened.

When all other attempts at discussion or negotiation have faltered, these organizations must have the option of turning to civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, we have witnessed a dramatic shrinking of democratic space, with civil rights being curtailed beyond measure. In the past 9 years, 65 countries have passed laws cutting the rights of
NGOs and dictating what they can and can’t do.

Speaking last week at an international conference on the promotion of democracy and human rights, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it well when she said, “Democracies don’t fear their own people. They recognize that citizens must be free to come together, to advocate and agitate.”

At Greenpeace we find that even the peaceful act of hanging banners now often comes with greater consequences. After last December’s failed U.N. climate talks, four of our activists were detained for 22 days after holding up a banner at a head of state dinner reading, “Politicians Talk, Leaders Act.”

Much has changed in the quarter century since the first Rainbow Warrior was bombed. Fortunately, the two elements that so impressed me at the time, are just as valid today as they were back then: the power of people to change the will of governments, and the dedication of those committed to saving the planet for future generations.

According to all those who knew him, Fernando Periera did not consider dying for his cause. Nor do the great majority of those who speak out against injustice today. All they ask is a space in which to be heard, a place to speak truth to power, when those who have the capacity to make the changes necessary to save our planet seem unwilling to do so.

Greenpeace was founded on a prophecy from Canada’s First Nation peoples which reads: “There will come a time when the Earth grows sick and when it does a tribe will gather from all the cultures of the world who believe in deeds and not words. They will work to heal it…they will be known as the ‘Warriors of the Rainbow.”’ If we are to be successful in our fight against catastrophic climate change then perhaps we all need to become Rainbow Warriors.

From guardian.co.uk

The world is going to get hungrier this century, and on a scale that will make the famines of the 1980s look paltry. The maths are simple and devastating: in 40 years’ time the global population will be 9.2 billion people – a third larger than it is now. But to feed us all, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says, we will need to produce twice as much food.

That’s because, despite the threats of this century, most developing countries will get richer. At present 350m households in the world live on £8,000 a year or more. That figure is projected to increase to 2.1bn by 2030. And the richer they are, the more wastefully people eat. Generally the poor eat vegetables, while the rich eat food that eats vegetables. Lots of it. To produce 1kg of beef takes 10kg of grass or soya-based feed. A farmed fish will have eaten three times its weight in wild fish. And the rate at which the richest consume these things is amazing: Americans consume 120kg of meat each per year; in the developing world they eat 28kg.

If the world develops as economists predict, it is hard to see how we can possibly meet these demands: environmentalists like to say that the 2050 population would require the resources of two earths to sustain it. No wonder the British government’s chief scientific adviser John Beddington says: “Food security represents a greater threat to mankind than climate change itself.”

There lies the other big problem. While we look for ways to produce that extra food, the rapidly changing climate is going to make the earth a less efficient piece of farmland. Large swaths of the tropics and the equatorial regions will get hotter and drier, and while that won’t leave them unable to grow things, what they can grow will change radically. The 2°C increase in average temperatures that is accepted as the likely minimum this century is enough to cause major shifts in the seasons and in what crops work where.

The great irony of this change is that, initially at least, most of us in the richer parts of the world will benefit. It’s in the tropics, where most of the world’s poor live, that climate change is damaging agriculture, and will continue to do so. Essentially, the belt round the centre of the earth will get hotter and drier, while those of us who live in the north of the northern hemisphere will see more warmth but also more rain. This will extend our growing seasons and increase the geographical area where it’s possible to grow crops. Canada and Russia are among the countries expected to do well, as are northern China and northern Europe. But the Mediterranean countries, southern American states and California don’t look comfortable at all. Spain, for one, is painted a nasty red on all the maps showing where water will be short come 2050.

But this is nothing compared with the changes that are happening or imminent in the tropical world. Rice production, the staple food of most of Asia, is already moving northwards, forcing millions of people to change ways of living that have sustained them for centuries. Along the coastal fringes of Asia, people’s lives are changing radically, as a huge increase in storms coupled with a rise in sea levels (which is now predicted to be a metre this century) brings salt to their fields and makes growing rice impossible.

Half of the poorest billion people in the world live in South Asia, as do many of the 5 million children who die every year of diseases caused or exacerbated by malnutrition. According to a report by the Asian Development Bank, 1.6 billion south Asians will find their food security at risk because of climate change.

In Africa and parts of Latin America predictions are just as hair-raising. Maize is one of the world’s four most important food crops and the staple of more than a quarter of a billion east Africans. It’s a hugely important food for animals as well. Maize is vulnerable to water problems and to temperature changes. As Andy Jarvis, an award-winning crop scientist, puts it: “When you look at the graph, under even small average heat rises, the line for maize just goes straight down.” It’s estimated that maize production will drop in sub-Saharan Africa and much of India by 15% in the next 10 years alone. By 2080, according to government scientists in South Africa, the region can expect to see a 50% drop in crops of all the cereals.

Among the luxuries of living in our comfy corner of the world, is the fact that climate change still seems to be a problem of the future, something that we need to worry about less for ourselves than our grandchildren. But for many millions of people the devastation caused by changing seasonal patterns and unpredictable weather is already a clear and present danger. First-person accounts collected by Oxfam from agricultural workers around the world all say the same. Whether they’re in the east African savannahs, the Peruvian altiplano or the fertile coastal wetlands of Indonesia, all complain that the seasons have become less certain, rainfall unpredictable and that their crops or their animals have suffered. There are new pests and diseases.

While it is still not possible to say with certainty that this is caused by human beings burning fossil fuels, it is undeniable that catastrophic changes are going on in the climate system. Filter the news with a climate change alert for a few months, and you watch a stream of worrying official statistics trickle in – all of them bad news. The southern Indian state of Karnataka reports a drop in rainfall of 6-8% since 1990. Tanzania and other east African countries report already an average warming of 1.5°C since 1990. Chinese meteorologists say that parts of their country have experienced the same. These figures may not seem enormous, but their effect is dramatic. According to the research of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, just half a degree of average temperature increase will reduce the yield of India’s wheat crop by 20%. And India is the world’s second largest producer of wheat. …

Full article

Polar scientists are united on the likelihood of level rises – but how much and when? When 2500 polar scientists gathered in Oslo this month to compare notes at the conclusion of the International Polar Year, a common thread ran through their presentations and papers:

“Unless we better understand the probable melt rate of ice in Antarctica and Greenland we haven’t a hope of being adequately prepared for the inevitable sea level rise in the decades ahead.”

The conference, described as the largest gathering of polar scientists ever, saw satellite data from both poles, including images and ice elevation calculations, which confirmed the annual melt in the Arctic and Antarctica was faster over the last summers than most had predicted.

Antarctic geologists from New Zealand, key players in the Antarctic Drilling Project (Andrill) in the Ross Sea, explained how the rate of ice melt won’t be linear.

Rather there will be a cumulative, run-away effect as the greenhouse influence raises ocean temperatures, shifts ocean currents and alters the frequency of climatic events.

Data from Andrill enables scientists around the world to model what is likely to happen to the two massive polar ice sheets at each end of the Earth as temperatures rise, based on an extensive range of data – geological, biological and climatic – hidden within the rock cores when similar climatic events occurred millions of years ago.

Award-winning climate palaeontologist Tim Naish from Victoria University, whose findings were published in the prestigious Nature journal last year, noted that the last time CO2 levels in the atmosphere were as high as now, the average global temperature was as much as 5C warmer.

It is also becoming apparent that the height of sea level rise will differ from one land mass to another around the globe, depending on its latitude and the volume of ocean surrounding it.

There is now little doubt we’re all going to have to adapt to a sharp increase in sea level, which in many parts of the world will have unimaginable social and economic consequences.

New Zealand scientists, with their acknowledged expertise and experience operating in Antarctica, will continue to play a key role in the quest for more certainty around when, where and how much.

* Rob Fenwick attended the IPY Conference in Oslo, Norway in his capacity as chairman of Antarctica NZ, the Crown entity responsible for developing, managing and executing New Zealand Government activities in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, in particular the Ross Dependency.

Some of Monckton’s assertions are breath-taking in their brazen disregard of facts. He has gravely misrepresented papers and authors he refers to, in some cases he appears to have created data, graphs and trends out of thin air: at least that was how it appeared to Abraham when Monckton gave no references and his graphs and figures starkly contradicted the published science.

(As reported by the Guardian, full article here)

I doubt it’ll make much difference to avid climate change deniers, but for the rest of us it’s at least a little satisfying.

A United Nations report has identified the world’s rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs.

The 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow, also surveys the damage done by sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world’s 1.5 billion cattle are most to blame. Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.

Burning fuel to produce fertiliser to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it – and clearing vegetation for grazing – produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.

Livestock also produces more than 100 other polluting gases, including more than two-thirds of the world’s emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain.

Ranching, the report adds, is “the major driver of deforestation” worldwide, and overgrazing is turning a fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert.Cows also soak up vast amounts of water: it takes a staggering 990 litres of water to produce one litre of milk.

Wastes from feedlots and fertilisers used to grow their feed overnourish water, causing weeds to choke all other life. And the pesticides, antibiotics and hormones used to treat them get into drinking water and endanger human health.

The pollution washes down to the sea, killing coral reefs and creating “dead zones” devoid of life. One is up to 21,000sqkm, in the Gulf of Mexico, where much of the waste from US beef production is carried down the Mississippi.

The report concludes that, unless drastic changes are made, the massive damage done by livestock will more than double by 2050, as demand for meat increases.

However Read has recently locked horns on the issue of biochar with Guardian columnist George Monbiot in an argument on what the impacts of changing land use dramatically to accomodate biochar production might be.

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This movement aims not only to ensure a community’s resilience against these challenges, but also to strengthen community relationships as people work together in initiatives such as community gardens.

Increased economic hardship, food security, and health concerns about industrial produce are all reasons why urban agriculture makes a lot of sense. On top of this, cities are most often built on places of fertile soil and readily available water, making them perfect sites for agriculture. There is no need for fertilisers, and organic waste can be used productively rather than sent into landfill.

So how can you get involved?

Wellington Community Gardens Network is host to several different Wellington Co-ops. For example, Common Ground is a garden in Island Bay that aims to “provide a space where Wellingtonians can learn about sustainable living, and how to practice examples of urban sustainability in their homes and neighbourhoods. We aim to be inclusive, accessible, relevant and welcoming, providing opportunities for people to work together and strengthen community relationships.”

Common Ground began in 2005 with just an empty field and has now grown to encompass a large garden space, fruit trees, a composting system, and a shed of shared tools. In addition to the large communal garden, there are small plots cared for by individuals.

Operation Green Thumb is a community garden initiative run by the Wellington City Council in council housing complexes, as well as in 3 public community gardens. Their website has information on how to get an individual plot, get involved as a volunteer, setup your own co-op, or just general gardening help.

So join your local initiative, or start your own!