Environment Disadvantage -4wkj-ndi

Global Warming Food Security

Deforestation of the amazon rainforest has massive effects on climate change

Greenpeace No date

(http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/climate-change, Greenpeace is the leading independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and to promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.) As our understanding of the role forests play in stabilizing global climate increases, it is becoming clear that their destruction is only exacerbating climate change. If we're serious about tackling this, then preserving our remaining ancient forests has to be a priority. Mature forests store enormous quantities of carbon, both in the trees and vegetation itself and within the soil in the form of decaying plant matter. Forests in areas such as the Congo and the Amazon represent some of the world's largest carbon stores on land. But when forests are logged or burnt, that carbon is released into the atmosphere, increasing the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and accelerating the rate of climate change. So much carbon is released that they contribute up to one-fifth of global man-made emissions, more than the world's entire transport sector. Deforestation has such a massive effect on climate change that Indonesia and Brazil are now the third and fourth largest emitters of carbon dioxide on the planet. This dubious honour comes not from industrial or transport emissions, but from deforestation - up to 75 per cent of Brazil's emissions come solely from deforestation - with the majority coming from clearing and burning areas of the Amazon rainforest.

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Offshore oil drilling leads to a host of environmental consequences, including warming

Eyre 12(September 26, 2012, Safia Eyre, “The Environmental impacts of offshore oil drilling : the case of BP oil spill,” http://www.iefpedia.com/english/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The-Environmental-impacts-of-offshore-oil-drilling-the-case-of-BP-oil-spill-SADIKI.pdf) In this phase, oil rigs release the wastes of oil E&P. these discharges contain mainly: • Produced water that form 98% of the total waste. It consists of hydrocarbons that cause water toxicity and eventually aquatic toxicity. • Drilling fluids (drilling muds) discharged during the drilling process. They contain toxic substances like: benzene, zinc, arsenic, chromium, iron, mercury, barium, and other contaminants that are used to lubricate drill bits and maintain pressure, e.g. barium acts as lubricant and increase the density of mud. Tests have found a high concentration of these metals accumulated in the sea floor, often causing: malformation, smothering organisms, genetic damage and mortality in fish embryos. In addition to these discharges, oil E&P release other dangerous substances among them: cutting (crushed rock), diesel emissions, and chemicals associated with operating mechanical, hydraulic, and electrical equipment such as biocides, solvent, and corrosion inhibitors. 3. Air pollution Statistics have shown that over its lifespan, a single oil rig can pollute as much as 7.000 cars driving 50 miles (80Km) per day. The main polluter factor is greenhouse gases (GHG) that are generated directly by offshore rigs, and indirectly through refineries’ emissions. These gases are behind climate change including: global warming, melting ice at the poles, and ocean acidification which means that ocean absorbs all CO2 therefore carbonate become less available to marine organisms that need it to build shells and skeletal materials. 216 The Environmental impacts of offshore oil drilling : the case of BP oil spill 4. Oil spills Oil spills are becoming more consistent due to different factors like : equipment failure, transportation accidents, human errors, tectonic events, and unstable weather conditions, for instance 115 platforms were destroyed and 124 spills were reported during Hurricane Katrina and Rita. Toxins within spilled oil have been related to a myriad of detrimental impacts to both marine and human life.
Global warming decreases food availability and increases food prices

Worldwatch Insitute 7/27(July 27, 2013, World Watch Institute “Climate Change: The Unseen Force Behind Rising Food Prices?,” http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5434) While governments and consumers decry the steady increase in food prices, groups like the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are taking a harder look at some of the factors contributing to this rise—including the role of climate change. Changing climatic conditions, in particular the decline in water availability, are forcing farmers to continually adapt their agricultural production. According to the FAO, climate change has both environmental and socioeconomic outcomes for agriculture: changes in the availability and quality of land, soil, and water resources, for example, are later reflected in crop performance, which causes prices to rise. Climate change has been attributed to greater inconsistencies in agricultural conditions, ranging from more-erratic flood and drought cycles to longer growing seasons in typically colder climates. While the increase in Earth’s temperature is making some places wetter, it is also drying out already arid farming regions close to the Equator. This year’s Inter-govermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report states that “increases in the frequency of droughts and floods are projected to affect local production negatively, especially in subsistence sectors at low latitudes.” The decline in production in the face of growing demand can drive up prices in markets that may lack the technology to fight environmental hazards to overall production. Such has been the case in Australia, where the once-fruitful food-production regions of New South Wales have been subject to a severe drought for the last five years. There is evidence of shifting rainfall patterns in the region, and a growing number of Australians now view this as a repercussion of climate change. The crop failures, economic hardship in rural communities, and subsequent jump in food prices are forcing the country to reassess its approach to climate change and to consider increasing food imports, a move that would drive prices up further. Speaking on the issue last year, Mike Rann, the premier of South Australia, remarked, “what we’re seeing with this drought is a frightening glimpse of the future with global warming.” By FAO estimates, the developing world will spend $52 billion between 2007 and 2008 on imports of wheat, corn, and other cereal crops. If current trends persist, these countries will also be worst affected by climate change’s pressure on food production and pricing, while experiencing the effects of more varied and more severe environmental conditions. Advances in technology make it unlikely that overall world food production will decline due to climate change, but agricultural capacity in large parts of Africa and Asia is expected to shift dramatically. Climate-related changes in agricultural conditions will likely only increase developing countries’ dependence on imported food, a pricey prospect considering rising global transportation costs.
Climate change poses a grave threat to global food security

Oxfam 12 (March 2012, Oxfam Briefing Note, “Averting Tomorrow's Global Food Crisis,” http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/20120416-averting-tomorrows-food-crisis-en.pdf, Oxfam is a nonprofit international confederation of 17 organizations working in approximately 90 countries worldwide to find solutions to poverty and related injustice around the world.) Climate change poses a grave threat to global food security, adding further stress to an already creaking global food system. Research commissioned for the GROW campaign suggests that food prices could double by 2030, with around half the increase driven by the effects of climate change. 20 Just when more food is needed to feed a growing world population, climate change will put a brake on yield improvements. Meanwhile, an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events threatens further devastation for harvests. Already, slow onset changes in growing seasons are making it harder for poor farmers to know when best to sow, cultivate, and harvest their crops.

A Latin American role model is key to change environmental ideologies of other countries – Chile proves

Speiser 9 (July 29th, 2009, Robert M. Speiser “Chile fighting climate change — role model for the (developing) world”, http://blog.cleantechies.com/2009/07/29/chile-fighting-climate-change-role-model-for-the-developing-world/, Robert is an environmental and energy analyst currently working as an independent consultant on the carbon markets, environmental impact assessments, and on GHG quanitification issues in Santiago, Chile. He received his BA at UCLA.) The event brought together speakers from the Chilean private sector that gave concrete examples of their companies’ climate change and GHG management initiatives. First, it showed how Essbio, a water purification company, has been dealing with the ever-prescient and escalating challenges of decreasing water reserves due to climate change. Second, it illustrated the emissions and energy reductions Xstrata Copper, a mining company, has committed to and the steps it has taken to minimize the release of contaminants in its industrial processes. Third, it explained what Natura cosmetics has done since 2007 to become a “carbon neutral” business by calculating all GHG emissions in the company’s supply chain, transportation, and production of its various cosmetics products, and purchasing the equivalent amount of CO2 tonnage in carbon credits on the international carbon markets. One recent study from the University of Chile actually found that Chile’s national GHG footprint is projected to jump 4.2 times its current amount by 2030. This conclusion assumes the country continues on its current pace and manner of economic development, and with the increased reliance on new coal plants that are currently in different stages of construction. So, yes, not only are the effects of climate change real in Chile but so too is a growing movement and public consciousness to reduce people’s and companies’ carbon footprints. In addition to Essbio, Xstrata, and Natura, there are other enterprises in Chile making efforts to reduce GHG emissions in their industrial processes or take action in other local environmental issues. Yet, it is safe to say that such “climate change conscious” companies are still a small minority here in Chile. And, even though President Bachelet and the Minister of Energy are making genuine, good-faith efforts to bring the latest solar and geothermal energy technology to Chile such as with partnerships with California and the US Department of Energy, the situation of increasing national GHG emissions reveals a deeper complexity we all need to address: How can a middle-income economy, such as Chile, afford the latest in clean and renewable energy technology to reduce its climate change footprint, while at the same time, continuing to address more pressing needs of economic and social development? In other words, a country such as Chile still needs to put its food on the table by mining the copper, whether imported gas or a cheaper “clean” energy solution is currently available; and, if they are not available, a bunch of coal will certainly do.

Independently, climate change will cause resource wars over water that spill over globally

Science Codex 9

(October 6, 2009, Science Codex, “Scientist predicts resource wars as climate change takes its toll,”http://www.sciencecodex.com/ water_scarcity_will_create_global_security_concerns, Science Codex posts articles on the latest science findings from all over the world. The Earth Science feed is for news related to climate science, energy and geology issues such as earthquakes and volcanoes.) Water scarcity as a result of climate change will create far-reaching global security concerns, says Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Pachauri spoke this morning at the 2009 Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN. "At one level the world's water is like the world's wealth. Globally, there is more than enough to go round. The problem is that some countries get a lot more than others," he says. "With 31 percent of global freshwater resources, Latin America has 12 times more water per person than South Asia. Some places, such as Brazil and Canada, get far more water than they can use; others, such as countries in the Middle East, get much less than they need." And the effects of a warmer world will likely include changes in water availability. "Up to 1.2 billion people in Asia, 250 million Africans and 81 million Latin Americans will be exposed to increased water stress by 2020," Pachauri says. Water shortages have an enormous impact of human health, including malnutrition, pathogen or chemical loading, infectious disease from water contamination, and uncontrolled water reuse. "Due to the very large number of people that may be affected, food and water scarcity may be the most important health consequences of climate change," Pachauri says. When communities fight over water resources, there's a great danger for a disruption of peace and security. "That water scarcity plays a role in creating the preconditions of desperation and discontent is undeniable," he says. Competition for water from the river Jordan was a major cause of the 1967 war. India has been in dispute with Pakistan over the Indus and with Bangladesh over the Ganges. "Over 260 river basins are shared by two or more countries," he says. "As the resource is becoming scarce, tensions among different users may intensify, both at the national and international level. In the absence of strong institutions and agreements, changes within a basin can lead to trans-boundary tensions." "We live on a small planet where communication and influences go from one corner of the Earth to another," he says. "If there's a major disruption to peace in one part of the globe, no other part is insulated from it. We need to look at what happens to the rest of the world with some degree of alarm; these influences have very dangerous implications for the rest of the world." Societies so far have been able to adapt to changes in weather and climate – via crop diversification, irrigation, disaster risk management, and insurance – but climate change might go beyond what our traditional coping mechanisms can handle, Pachauri suggests. Even societies with "high adaptive capacity" are vulnerable to climate change, variability and extremes, he says, citing examples of the 2003 heat wave that took the lives of many elderly in European cities and 2005's Hurricane Katrina. "A technological society has two choices," Pachauri says. "It can wait until catastrophic failures expose systemic deficiencies, distortion and self-deceptions, or the culture can provide social checks and balances to correct for systemic distortion prior to catastrophic failures." "Global emissions of greenhouse gases will have to decline by 2015. If we can achieve that, we may be able to avoid the worst effects of climate change," he says. "The costs of this are not high. A major mitigation would only postpone growth domestic product growth by one year at most over the medium term. That's not a high price to pay for the world." "There is no more crucial issue to human society than the future of water on this planet," he says. "We must work diligently to see that the worst effects don't come to pass. We have very little time. Unless we act with a sense of urgency, there will certainly be conflict and a disruption of peace."

Climate change leads to questions of sovereignty and resource wars – empirics prove

Mayoral et. al. 11 (June 10, 2011, Amanda Mayoral et. al. “Hot and Cold Resource Wars: One More Reason to Care about Climate Change,” http://inec.usip.org/blog/2011/jun/10/hot-and-cold-resource-wars-one-more-reason-care-about-climate-change, This is a joint posting by Amanda Mayoral, Program Assistant for the Sustainable Economies Center of Innovation at the U.S. Institute of Peace and Michelle Swearingen, Moderator of the International Network for Economics and Conflict) As people worldwide become more and more engaged in the climate change issue, this blog directs attention to a relatively unexplored aspect of the topic – the impact of climate change on conflict dynamics. Climate change can trigger conflict in many ways, such as forcing migration and displacement, destabilizing group power relations, increasing or decreasing availability of resources and raising issues of sovereignty as new lands and seaways appear. Economic research has shown historical trends between conflict and changes in temperature and precipitation. There are also documented case studies that demonstrate this type of impact from the time of the Neanderthals to modern day societies.[1] Broadly speaking, hot and cold wars represent the distributed effects of a warming planet, as resources are transferred from hot to cold states, causing scarcity in hot states and abundance in cold. As the name suggests, hot wars are those climate-related conflicts that take place in equatorial countries, many of which are already poor and conflict-affected. Hot wars occur from heightened resource scarcity and induced migration. Coupled with rising populations these conditions diminish living standards and provide conditions for conflict. Specifically, climate change causes increases in volatile rainfall patterns, occurrences of droughts, and the spread of water borne illnesses – all leading to stress on access to clean water. We can see how climate change has been a factor in the conflict in Darfur with droughts and famines pitting agriculturalists and pastoralists against each other as well as in Gaza where increasing water scarcity has exacerbated other conflict triggers in the region. Hot wars tend to go on for long periods and grow in intensity and frequency as populations increase and make the strain on resources more acute.

Resource wars lead to nuclear winter and extinction – brings in major powers

Lendman 7(June 06, 2007, Stephen Lendman, “Resource Wars – Can We Survive Them?,” http://www.globalresearch.ca/resource-wars-can-we-survive-them/5892, Stephen Lendman was born in 1934 in Boston, MA. In 1956, he received a BA from Harvard University. Two years of US Army service followed, then an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1960. After working seven years as a marketing research analyst, he joined the Lendman Group family business in 1967. He remained there until retiring at year end 1999. Writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005.)

Near the end of WW II, Franklin Roosevelt met with Saudi King ibn Saud on the USS Quincy. It began a six decade relationship guaranteeing US access to what his State Department called a “stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history” – the region’s oil and huge amount of it in Saudi Arabia. Today, the Middle East has two-thirds of the world’s proved oil reserves (around 675 billion barrels) and the Caspian basin an estimated 270 billion barrels more plus one-eighth of the world’s natural gas reserves. It explains a lot about why we’re at war with Iraq and Afghanistan and plan maintaining control over both countries. We want a permanent military presence in them aimed at controlling both regions’ proved energy reserves with puppet regimes, masquerading as democracies, beholden to Washington as client states. They’re in place to observe what their ousted predecessors ignored: the rules of imperial management, especially Rule One – we’re boss and what we say goes. The Bush administration is “boss” writ large. It intends ruling the world by force, saying so in its National Security Strategy (NSS) in 2002, then updated in even stronger terms in 2006. It plainly states our newly claimed sovereign right allowed no other country – the right to wage preventive wars against perceived threats or any nations daring to challenge our status as lord and master of the universe. Key to the strategy is controlling the world’s energy reserves starting with the Middle East and Central Asia’s vast amount outside Russia and China with enough military strength to control their own, at least for now. These resources give us veto power over which nations will or won’t get them and assures Big Oil gets the lion’s share of the profits.

In Iraq, the new “Hydrocarbon Law,” if it passes the puppet parliament, is a shameless scheme to rape and plunder the country’s oil treasure. It’s a blueprint for privatization giving foreign investors (meaning US and UK mainly) a bonanza of resources, leaving Iraqis a sliver for themselves. Its complex provisions give the Iraqi National Oil Company exclusive control of just 17 of the country’s 80 known oil fields with all yet-to-be-discovered deposits set aside for foreign investors. It’s even worse with Big Oil free to expropriate all earnings with no obligation to invest anything in Iraq’s economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire local workers, respect union rights, or share new technologies. Foreign investors would be granted long-term contracts up to 35 years, dispossessing Iraq of its own resources in a scheme to steal them. That’s what launched our road to war in 1991 having nothing to do with Saddam threatening anyone. It hasn’t stopped since. The Bush (preventive war) Doctrine spelled out our intentions in June, 2002. It then became NSS policy in September getting us directly embroiled in the Middle East and Central Asia and indirectly with proxy forces in countries like Somalia so other oil-rich African nations (like Sudan) get the message either accede to our will or you’re next in the target queue. With the world’s energy supplies finite, the US heavily dependent on imports, and “peak oil” near or approaching, “security” for America means assuring a sustainable supply of what we can’t do without. It includes waging wars to get it, protect it, and defend the maritime trade routes over which it travels. That means energy’s partnered with predatory New World Order globalization, militarism, wars, ecological recklessness, and now an extremist US administration willing to risk Armageddon for world dominance. Central to its plan is first controlling essential resources everywhere, at any cost, starting with oil and where most of it is located in the Middle East and Central Asia. The New “Great Game” and Perils From It The new “Great Game’s” begun, but this time the stakes are greater than ever as explained above. The old one lasted nearly 100 years pitting the British empire against Tsarist Russia when the issue wasn’t oil. This time, it’s the US with help from Israel, Britain, the West, and satellite states like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan challenging Russia and China with today’s weapons and technology on both sides making earlier ones look like toys. At stake is more than oil. It’s planet earth with survival of all life on it issue number one twice over. Resources and wars for them means militarism is increasing, peace declining, and the planet’s ability to sustain life front and center, if anyone’s paying attention. They’d better be because beyond the point of no return, there’s no second chance the way Einstein explained after the atom was split. His famous quote on future wars was : “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Under a worst case scenario, it’s more dire than that. There may be nothing left but resilient beetles and bacteria in the wake of a nuclear holocaust meaning even a new stone age is way in the future, if at all. The threat is real and once nearly happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962. We later learned a miracle saved us at the 40th anniversary October, 2002 summit meeting in Havana attended by the US and Russia along with host country Cuba. For the first time, we were told how close we came to nuclear Armageddon. Devastation was avoided only because Soviet submarine captain Vasily Arkhipov countermanded his order to fire nuclear-tipped torpedos when Russian submarines were attacked by US destroyers near Kennedy’s “quarantine” line. Had he done it, only our imagination can speculate what might have followed and whether planet earth, or at least a big part of it, would have survived.