Monthly Archives: August 2011
In the Case of Tar Sands Oil – Oils Well, Will Certainly Not End Well
Canada’s growing interest in exporting some of the dirtiest crude oil in the world is a threat to not only North America’s wildlife but also a rational energy policy and a stable atmosphere. NASA and climate scientist James Hansen called this project a climate game-changer because burning Alberta “tar sands” oil could raise CO2 levels in the atmosphere by 200 parts per million (ppm), pushing us dangerously away from the 350 ppm safety net that he and other scientists have recommend (we are currently at 390 ppm of CO2 and rising at about 1-2 ppm per year).
If President Obama approves the proposed pipeline connecting the Alberta tar sands to refineries in the Gulf Coast (over 1700 miles away), it will show that oil runs thicker than environmental and human health concerns. The so-called Keystone XL pipeline may only be the beginning of more such projects to come. Another pipeline, known as the Enbridge (named for the oil company) pipeline, would connect Alberta tar sands oil with refineries in coastal BC, traversing First Nation’s and other pristine lands over a distance of nearly 800 miles.
To extract the tar sands oil, hot freshwater is combined with caustic soda and mixed with petro-laden sands dug out of the earth by giant excavating shovels. Boreal forests that get in the way are leveled in the process. The slurry is then piped to extraction areas where oil is skimmed off the top and toxic tailings sent to ponds where they pose wildlife hazards. The resulting process has been labeled the dirtiest oil on earth not only because it requires 2-5 barrels of freshwater for every barrel of bitumen (crude) extracted, but because in the extraction process 10-45% more greenhouse gas pollutants are emitted. The oil then needs to be shipped long distances via subsurface pipelines, introducing ground disturbances and possible pipeline leaks to farmlands, forests, and wildlife migratory pathways, including those of the endangered whooping crane. On July 27, 2010 an Enbridge pipeline spewed 800,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River (largest spill in Midwest history) and on July 2, 2011 a pipeline operated by Exxon Mobil leaked unknown quantities of oil into the pristine Yellowstone River causing local evacuations.
There is no denial that the topic of the moment, whether on Main Street, Wall Street, or the Halls of Congress, is jobs. And while the oil business generates thousands of jobs, it comes with a high cost to future jobs, future economies, life-giving freshwater, boreal forests, and marine life (should a spill occur). What would tomorrow’s labor force think of our quest today for jobs if myopic decisions set the stage for oil spills that will decimate commercial fishing, tourism, marine life, and freshwater?
Simply put, the more we depend on fossil fuel extraction, the further we are from transitioning to sane, rational, and sustainable connections to the very basic life-giving provisions in the natural world that sustain us. Nature has limits, our atmosphere has limits; inevitably, water will someday be worth far more than oil. Destroying boreal forests to extract oil, which absorb massive amounts of carbon, will also add to greenhouse gas pollutants, raising our procrastination penalty even further.
President Obama can block this project. For the plan to go forward, the President must sign off on it (and Congress has no role in that decision). This is a critical test for an administration that has so far failed to show the strong leadership on environmental issues that the nation—and voters—expected. Conservation groups have been protesting in front of the White House to make their point about dirty oil being a threat to the nation’s environmental security and that this pipeline is just bad politics (for more information go to www.350.org). The insatiable demand for fossil fuels by the US as well as China (which is the destination of much of the oil from tar sands) will someday come back to haunt us as it already has in the case of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and other tragic oil spills. Ultimately, maybe the dinosaurs will have the last laugh, as we liberate extracted molecules from their long-decayed buried bodies that now trap sunlight and cook the planet!
Dominick A. DellaSala is chief scientist and president of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and president of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology. He is the author of Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Creating Resilience: Trophic Cascades and Climate Change
Ecologist Robert Paine summed up the effects of keystone predator removal by saying, “You can change the nature of the world pretty simply. All you need to do is remove one species.”
In The Wolf’s Tooth, I compare ecosystems from which carnivores have been removed to a game of Jenga. This game involves removing wooden blocks one at a time from a tower without causing it to collapse. As you remove them, the tower starts to teeter, loosening some of the blocks, making them easier to remove. Eventually the whole system collapses.
In an ecological game of Jenga in an aspen forest, you might begin by removing species that may seem redundant. If you remove the black-capped chickadees first, not much happens, the system continues functioning more or less as usual. The number of chestnut-backed chickadees increases to fill the gap left by the black-caps. If you remove short-tailed weasels next, the mouse population initially increases, but then the coyotes start eating the surplus mice, as do the northern harriers, and mouse numbers go back down to the level they were at before you removed the weasels. A casual observer might not notice much missing. If you continue by removing white-tailed deer, the other ungulate species carry on, filling in the gap by producing more elk and moose. . . .Read more »
About Cristina Eisenberg
Cristina Eisenberg is a conservation biologist at Oregon State University, College of Forestry, and Boone and Crockett Fellow who studies how wolves affect forest ecosystems throughout the West.
Historic Temperate Rainforest Agreement Down to the Fine Print
After 30 years of controversy that tore at the social fabric of Tasmania, the federal and Tasmanian governments of Australia finally signed the Tasmanian Forests Intergovernmental Agreement to provide support and funding that will help the timber industry transition out of native-forest logging and will protect the region’s high-conservation-value rainforests. In sum, the government will provide much-needed financial support for workers and contractors to cease logging native forests while it takes legal steps to protect these forests as formal reserves similar to national parks. Financial support for a major pulp mill, which would have literally chipped away at globally irreplaceable rainforests, will be abandoned due to a prohibition on use of government funds for the mill (for further details, see a discussion on the Wilderness Society, Australia, website).
Native forests in Tasmania are global champions in carbon storage and include the tallest flowering trees on earth. These forests are now part of an historic agreement to end logging of native forests in Tasmania thanks to the efforts of conservation groups. Photo credit: Vica Bayley, The Wilderness Society (Tasmania).
Tasmania’s temperate rainforests are world class. Both the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International ranked them among the most outstanding rainforests on earth, and several of the proposed high-conservation-value forest reserves are juxtaposed with World Heritage Sites recognized for their importance to global biodiversity. In these rainforests, size matters as they include the largest flowering tree – sweet gum (Eucalyptus regnans) – which can grow taller than a 25-story building and live longer than 400 years, the largest (nearly 1 meter) freshwater crustacean (tayeta), eagle (Tasmanian wedge-tail), and marsupial (the infamous Tasmanian devil). The 477,000-hectare (1.2-million acres) Tarkine Wilderness in northwestern Tasmania is one of the largest intact temperate rainforests in the world and this, among several other areas, would be protected under the agreement.
Many of Tasmania’s amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals are found nowhere else on earth, and some of the plants have affinities dating back to an ancient landscape when dinosaurs were dominate and continents were joined as Gondwana. Tasmanian rainforests, as well as those on the Australian mainland, also have been crowned by scientists as global champions in storing vast amounts of carbon in massive trees, dense foliage, and productive soils, an amount equivalent to nearly six times Australia’s annual carbon dioxide emissions. Turning rainforests into wood chips for glossy magazines, as previously proposed, would release most of this stored carbon as a greenhouse gas pollutant, impacting threatened species like the wedge-tail eagle.
Although the ink has barely dried on this historic agreement, the fight to protect these rainforests is far from over. Conservation groups are busy advocating for specific set asides as additions to World Heritage Sites, support is needed from all political parties of the Tasmanian Legislative Council, reforms are being proposed for plantation management, and there is much-needed private lands conservation work ahead. Should all go as planned, the Tasmanian agreement will be hailed as a global model in efforts to save these remarkable but forgotten rainforests. In the weeks ahead, I will be drafting a scientist sign-on letter thanking Australia’s prime minister and Tasmania’s premier for their commitments to the agreement and requesting the designation of high-conservation-value forests identified by conservation groups as new set-asides. Stay tuned!
Sources: Australia’s temperate rainforests store about 300 metric tons per hectare (Keith, H., B.G. Mackey, and D. B. Lindenmayer. 2009. Re-evaluation of forest biomass carbon stocks and lessons from the world’s most carbon dense forests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106 (28):11635-11640). Carbon dioxide emissions were obtained from the United Nations data source on emissions (2007).
Dominick A. DellaSala is chief scientist and president of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and president of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology. He is the author of Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation.
About Dominick A. DellaSala
Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist and President of the Geos Institute in Ashland, Oregon, and President of the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology.
Why the Earth is Green: Trophic Cascades on Land and Water
We have been discussing the powerful and essential ecological link between apex predators, their prey, and the foods prey eat. Based on the revolutionary ideas of Hairston, Smith, and Slobodkin, who in 1960 ingeniously proposed that the world is green because predators limit their plant-eating prey, trophic cascades science has since then explored the consequences of predator removal from ecosystems worldwide.
In all ecosystems, researchers have found a strong link between predator removal, plant community simplification, and reduced energy flow. Lacking apex predators, ecosystems become capable of supporting fewer species, because the trees and shrubs that create habitat for these species have been over-browsed. With top predators in them, they contain richer and more diverse habitat, and thus can support a greater number of species such as songbirds and butterflies. Apex predators are thus thought to exert top-down effects on ecosystems.
A picture is worth a thousand words. . . See the pictures and read more »
About Cristina Eisenberg
Cristina Eisenberg is a conservation biologist at Oregon State University, College of Forestry, and Boone and Crockett Fellow who studies how wolves affect forest ecosystems throughout the West.
Assessing Emerging Challenges in U.S. Environmental Health
Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician and epidemiologist, has spent her professional life trying to understand and alleviate threats from environmental sources, including the impact of chemical exposures on children. Her interest in the field dates back to her childhood in Galveston, Texas, where she grew up along the Gulf of Mexico surrounded by oil refineries and chemical plants that lit up the night sky with eerie blue, green, and orange hues.
In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Goldman — a former assistant administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton — discusses the many challenges that remain. They range from the continuing health toll exacted by air pollution, to the threat posed by endocrine disrupting chemicals found in everyday products. One thing is certain, says Goldman: Without bipartisan political support, urgently needed legislative action to deal with 21st century environmental health threats will never come to pass.
“I can’t point to a single successful piece of environmental legislation that was enacted by one party,” Goldman told Yale e360 contributor, Lizzie Grossman. “Environmental protection has always been the concern of both parties.”
Read the interview at Yale Environment 360 »
About Elizabeth Grossman
Elizabeth Grossman is the author ofHigh Tech Trash, Watershed: The Undamming of America (Counterpoint Press, 2002), and Adventuring Along the Lewis and Clark Trail (Sierra Club Books, 2003). She is also the co-editor of Shadow Cat: Encountering the American Mountain Lion (Sasquatch Books, 1999). Grossman’s writing has also appeared in a variety of publications, including Amicus Journal, Audubon, California Wild, Cascadia Times, Chicago Tribune, Environmental News Network, Grist, The Nation, New York Times Book Review, Newsday, Oregonian, Orion, the Patagonia catalogue, Salon.com, Seattle Times, Washington Post, and Yes! A native of New York City, she has a BA in literature from Yale University. She now lives a minute’s walk from the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. When not at her desk writing she's out exploring—hiking, camping, paddling, sketching, and watching birds.
Hazards of the Harvest: Children in the Fields
While the rest of the country has been experiencing an epic heat wave, in the Pacific Northwest where I live, thus far the summer has been unusually cool. One consequence of the cool weather is a slow-to-appear local tomato crop, made evident to consumers by some remarkably high prices. A pint of organic cherry tomatoes at my neighborhood market recently jumped more than a dollar within a week to $4.99, prompting me to wonder precisely what goes into the price of tomatoes.
Regional growers, distributors, and retailers all told me that prices are typically determined by a combination of weather, what growers call inputs – what physically goes into producing a crop – real estate and labor costs. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture labor costs make up between 17 and 40 percent of these overall farm expenses. But this also got me thinking more broadly about farm work and its human costs, costs that are far from evident in the glistening piles of yellows, greens, reds, and purples of summer fruits and vegetables. These costs became all too evident two weeks ago, when two children were killed while doing agricultural work. . . . Read more »
About Elizabeth Grossman
Elizabeth Grossman is the author ofHigh Tech Trash, Watershed: The Undamming of America (Counterpoint Press, 2002), and Adventuring Along the Lewis and Clark Trail (Sierra Club Books, 2003). She is also the co-editor of Shadow Cat: Encountering the American Mountain Lion (Sasquatch Books, 1999). Grossman’s writing has also appeared in a variety of publications, including Amicus Journal, Audubon, California Wild, Cascadia Times, Chicago Tribune, Environmental News Network, Grist, The Nation, New York Times Book Review, Newsday, Oregonian, Orion, the Patagonia catalogue, Salon.com, Seattle Times, Washington Post, and Yes! A native of New York City, she has a BA in literature from Yale University. She now lives a minute’s walk from the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon. When not at her desk writing she's out exploring—hiking, camping, paddling, sketching, and watching birds.
Aldo Leopold and the Mark of the Wolf’s Tooth
In the early 1900s, while cruising timber as a young forester, American conservationist Aldo Leopold, founder of the science of wildlife biology, encountered a female wolf with her pups. The common wisdom of that era was that the only good predator was a dead one, so he and his crew opened fire. But as he stood there watching the “fierce green light” fade in the wolf mother’s eyes, he felt a sharp, surprising pang of remorse. It would take him decades to parse out his feelings about her death.
In 1935, Leopold bought an abandoned farm in southwestern Wisconsin as a hunting reserve. Today known as the Leopold Memorial Reserve, this land, which he and his family dubbed “the shack,” became the site of some of his deepest lessons about the ecological value of predators. In shack journals between 1939 and 1940, he noted that deer were nipping plants and trees down to eighteen inches in height. In a 1940s game survey, he found that humans had eliminated wolves throughout North America, causing an explosion in deer and elk numbers, and resulting degradation of forests through over-browsing. Meanwhile, back at the shack, deer calmly stood their ground in the absence of wolves, chronically browsing tender young saplings to death.
Near the end of his life, in possibly his most famous and poignant essay, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” Leopold reflected on his early encounter with that mother wolf and the wildlife management implications of her death: “While a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.” . . . Read more »
About Cristina Eisenberg
Cristina Eisenberg is a conservation biologist at Oregon State University, College of Forestry, and Boone and Crockett Fellow who studies how wolves affect forest ecosystems throughout the West.
