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Support Grows for Integrating Environment, Energy, Economy, Security in U.S. Government
›November 5, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarA new presidential administration always gives rise to a certain amount of bureaucratic restructuring. But for months now, momentum has been building behind the notion that governments need to improve the integration of their environmental, energy, economic, and security policies. Last month, Edward Miliband was named head of the UK government’s new department of energy and climate change. Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper tapped former industry minister Jim Prentice to lead a new ministry of environment, economy, and energy security. “I think that, as more and more countries are coming to realize, we cannot separate environmental and economic policy,” said Harper.
Yesterday, Grist’s David Roberts, noting that responsibility for addressing climate change is currently spread among the departments of State, Defense, Interior, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Energy, offered several possibilities for restructuring the U.S. government to improve its ability to address climate change and energy, including creating a cabinet-level Secretary of Climate; expanding and empowering the Department of Energy or the Environmental Protection Agency; or—my favorite—appointing “some kind of czar,” because “[e]verybody loves a czar.”
Initiatives linking these challenges are popping up in Congress, universities, and the military. Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) frequently speaks of the interrelated challenges of energy, environment, security, and economic growth “[O]ur addiction to foreign oil is a threat to our economic security, environmental security, and national security,” he said last year. The University of Colorado Law School recently established the Center for Energy and Environmental Security, which develops practical solutions to help move the world toward a sustainable energy future. In addition, the 2008 National Defense Strategy explicitly links energy, environment, and security: “Over the next twenty years physical pressures—population, resource, energy, climatic and environmental—could combine with rapid social, cultural, technological and geopolitical change to create greater uncertainty.”
A few small-scale initiatives to integrate environmental, economic, energy, and security policies within the U.S. government already exist. Yesterday, Carol Dumaine, deputy director for energy and environmental security at the Department of Energy, delivered a talk at the Harvard University Center for the Environment where she discussed a fledgling project to use unclassified data and a global network of experts in government, industry, and NGOs to identify interrelated environmental and energy security threats. Dumaine presented on the same project at a September 2008 conference on open-source intelligence sponsored by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will continue this and other ongoing projects, or instead launch new projects of its own on these issues. -
Rebels Overrun Government Troops in Eastern DRC; Thousands Displaced, Including Virunga’s Gorilla Rangers
›October 29, 2008 // By Rachel Weisshaar
Renegade General Laurent Nkunda’s fighters seized Virunga National Park headquarters at Rumangabo on Sunday, overtook the town of Rutshuru yesterday, and continue to advance on the regional capital of Goma, facing little resistance from either Congolese government troops or MONUC, the UN peacekeeping force. Thousands of local residents have fled the fighting, including 53 gorilla rangers who were in the park when it was taken by Nkunda’s rebels. Twelve of the rangers made it back to the relative safety of Goma today, after more than two days dodging bullets in the forest with no food or water, but the rest remain missing. Almost nothing is known about the condition of the park’s mountain gorillas, which represent half of the world population of 700. -
Close Quarters: Population-Climate Panel Draws Crowd at Society of Environmental Journalists’ Annual Conference
›October 23, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarAt “Close Quarters: Could an End to Population Growth Help Stabilize the Climate?,” the only panel on population at the annual Society for Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference, Steve Curwood, host and executive producer of Public Radio International’s “Living On Earth,” pointed out that while it’s “something we don’t talk about at all in America,” U.S. population growth increases emissions faster than developing-country population growth, due to our larger per capita consumption. Curwood discussed the major connections between population and climate change, such as water use; food production and consumption; economic growth; and migration. Hypothesizing that climate change will lead to great demographic shifts not only in developing countries, but also in the United States, he noted that historically, “we haven’t dealt with them well.”
The panelists explored environmental reporters’ relative silence on the impact of population growth and other demographic dynamics on environmental issues. According to moderator Constance Holden of Science, the possible barriers to coverage—listed below—should be “irrelevant” to working journalists:- Population’s association with controversial issues like contraception;
- Fear of appearing anti-immigration;
- The widespread belief that population growth is necessary for economic growth; and
- The difficulty of researching and writing about the complex issues related to population and demographics.
Robert Engelman, vice president for programs at the Worldwatch Institute, criticized journalists for not delving into population’s significant, albeit complex, impacts on the environment. Reporters may wish to avoid writing about problems they believe have no easy solutions, but it is just as important for them to explore these thorny topics as more straightforward subjects, he said.
As an example of a potential story angle, Engelman displayed a graph showing that U.S. carbon emissions and population grew by the same percentage between 1990 and 2004. Yet when the data are disaggregated by state, they reveal a very different, surprisingly diverse picture. Some states’ populations and emissions increased roughly equally, but others, like Delaware, managed to decrease their emissions even while their populations grew. Engelman suggested that reporters could explore which factors had influenced the population-emissions relationship in their state.
Freelance writer Tom Horton explained how population growth has helped foil attempts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. As he wrote recently in Growing! Growing! Gone! The Chesapeake Bay and the Myth of Endless Growth, “[I]t seems questioning the expansion of the economy and the population are off the table, either because they are considered sacred cows, or they are just too hard to deal with. It is assumed we can cure the symptoms while vigorously expanding their root causes.” In an interview following the panel, Horton lauded the efforts of integrated population-environment programs in the Philippines, saying Filipinos “are far more advanced than we are” in their understanding of the relationships between coastal management and population growth.
While “Close Quarters” was the only SEJ panel to directly address population, Dennis Dimick, executive editor of National Geographic Magazine, noted the importance of population in a panel he moderated on agriculture and climate change. In addition, keynote speaker Rajendra K. Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, briefly mentioned the opportunities presented by India’s youthful population and the “demographic dividend.” However, he did not use the opportunity to discuss global population growth’s implications for climate change. -
Dictionary of Global Environmental Governance Hits the Mark
›October 22, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarIf you’re not too daunted by its size (it tops out at just over 400 pages), the Dictionary & Introduction to Global Environmental Governance serves as a useful primer on international environmental politics and policies. This volume could be particularly useful to those working in related, but distinct, sectors who want to familiarize themselves with global environmental governance’s history and recent developments. Ever wondered what an epistemic community is? What makes water soft or hard? Curious to see the authors attempt to define “environment” and “ecology”? This book answers all these questions and many more, and most definitions are distinguished by admirable clarity and brevity. -
Conservation Learning Exchange Highlights Climate, Energy, Population, Poverty
›October 15, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarThe Nature Conservancy’s first Conservation Learning Exchange, or ConEx, concludes tomorrow in Vancouver, Canada. It focuses on six themes: climate change and energy; poverty, population growth, and consumerism; ecosystem services; science and technology; working with others; and values and society. You can read more about the goings-on on the ConEx blogs. A sampling from today: “People, poverty and diversity are major themes running throughout this conference and the underlying buzz from the ballrooms to the bars is mission drift. In the sessions I’ve attended, over and over I hear that the Conservancy needs to bring people, of all races, religion and socio-economic backgrounds into our work. Conservation is not just about biodiversity, it is also about human diversity.” -
‘Time’ Honors Friends of the Earth Middle East With “Heroes of the Environment 2008” Award
›October 3, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarThe leaders of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), a joint Israeli, Jordanian, and Palestinian environmental organization that uses environmental advocacy as a peacebuilding tool, were recently recognized as “Heroes of the Environment 2008” by Time magazine. FoEME understands that “the road to sustainability, like the road to peace, is going to be a slow, messy human project of community organizing, education and trust-building,” says Time correspondent Andrew Lee Butters.
FoEME’s projects include Good Water Neighbors, which uses joint water management to strengthen ties between Israeli and Arab communities on opposite sides of the Jordan River; as well as a plan to build a transboundary peace park on an island in the Jordan River that would attract ecotourism. “We share the same environment, particularly the same water resources,” says Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of FoEME. “And if we don’t start working together, we’re not going to have an environment.”
For more information on FoEME’s environmental peacebuilding activities, see “Rehabilitating the Jordan River Valley Through Cross-Border Community Cooperation” (May 8, 2006) and “Good Water Makes Good Neighbors: A Middle East Pilot Project in Conflict Resolution” (January 22, 2003), two events hosted by the Environmental Change and Security Program. -
How America Gets Its Groove Back: Thomas Friedman Foments a Green Revolution
›October 2, 2008 // By Rachel Weisshaar“America has lost its groove,” argued New York Times foreign affairs columnist and bestselling author Thomas Friedman at a September 29, 2008, discussion of his new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How it Can Renew America, sponsored by the Wilson Center’s Division of International Security Studies and Environmental Change and Security Program. “We need to get back to an America that’s about the Fourth of July and not 9/11,” maintained Friedman, who believes the United States needs to assume a more active and less defensive posture in the world. “We get our groove back as a country…by taking the lead in solving the world’s biggest problems,” which he said include climate change, rising energy demand, and biodiversity loss.
The book’s title identifies three major trends of this century: Climate change is warming our planet; the rise of a global middle class is flattening the differences between rich and poor; and a rapidly expanding population is crowding the world. According to Friedman, these converging trends are driving “five global mega-trends” that will determine our future stability:- Energy and natural resource supply and demand: While some countries are taking steps to become more energy-efficient, the explosive growth of developing-country cities is outpacing these gains. Friedman asserts that there are not enough energy and natural resources for everyone to consume at Americans’ current rates and that everyone, Americans included, must address energy supply and demand.
- Petrodictatorship: We are “funding both sides of the war on terrorism,” said Friedman: the U.S. military with tax dollars, and terrorist groups (and the states that sponsor them) with gas dollars.
- Climate change: Friedman emphasized that the pace of climate change is exceeding many scientists’ predictions, including those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that we have little time to act.
- Energy poverty: The lack of a consistent electricity supply not only cripples 1.6 billion people’s ability to obtain high-quality health care and adapt to the effects of climate change, but also prevents them from accessing the myriad educational and economic opportunities provided by the Internet.
- Biodiversity loss: The Earth is losing species 1,000 times faster than normal, claimed Friedman. “We are the first generation of humans that is actually going to have to think like Noah,” said Friedman, to save rapidly disappearing plants and animals.
Friedman thinks these trends are “a series of incredible opportunities masquerading as impossible and insoluble problems” because all five can be reversed by “abundant, cheap, clean, reliable electrons” and energy efficiency. The country that becomes the leader in new energy technology (ET) will have the most stable economy and garner the most respect on the international stage, said Friedman. If the United States does not take the lead in the ET revolution, others—China, India, Europe—will, but they won’t do it as fast or as well as the United States, he says.
Friedman believes the market is the key to igniting an ET revolution. “This country has never been more alive in terms of innovation,” he says, but our leaders have not capitalized on it. He thinks the government must play an important role—“for markets to produce innovation, they need to be shaped”—but not by launching a “Manhattan Project” for energy. “We are not going to regulate our way out of this problem; we are only going to innovate our way out of this problem.”Friedman criticized the pop culture environmentalism that claims people can save the Earth by changing their daily lives in small, painless ways. “Easy should not be in the lexicon,” he maintained. But even if an ET revolution will be difficult, it is still achievable: “We have exactly enough time, starting now,” said Friedman.
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Senators McCain, Obama Announce Priorities for Alleviating Poverty, Tackling Climate Change at Clinton Global Initiative
›September 25, 2008 // By Rachel WeisshaarSpeaking at a Clinton Global Initiative plenary session (webcast; podcast) this morning, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) laid out their proposals for addressing the interconnected problems of global poverty, climate change, and disease. Excerpts from each senator’s speech are below.
Senator McCain:
“We can never guarantee our security through military means alone. True security requires a far broader approach using non-military means to reduce threats before they gather strength. This is especially true of our strategic interests in fighting disease and extreme poverty across the globe.”
“Malaria alone kills more than a million people a year, mostly in Africa….To its lasting credit, the federal government in recent years has led the way in this fight. But of course, America is more than its government. Some of the greatest advances have been the work of the Gates Foundation and other groups. And you have my pledge: Should I be elected, I will build on these and other initiatives to ensure that malaria kills no more. I will also make it a priority to improve maternal and child health. Millions around the world today—and especially pregnant women and children—suffer from easily prevented nutritional deficiencies….An international effort is needed to prevent disease and developmental disabilities among children by providing nutrients and food security. And if I am elected president, America will lead that effort, as we have done with the scourge of HIV and AIDS.”
“America helped to spark the Green Revolution in Asia, and…[we] should be at the forefront of an African Green Revolution. We should and must reform our aid programs to make sure they are serving the interests of people in need, and not just serving special interests in Washington. Aid’s not the whole answer, as we know. We need to promote economic growth and opportunities, especially for women, where they do not currently exist. Too often, trade restrictions, combined with costly agricultural subsidies for the special interests, choke off the opportunities for poor farmers and workers abroad to help themselves. That has to change.”
Senator Obama:
“Our security is shared as well. The carbon emissions in Boston or Beijing don’t just pollute the immediate atmosphere, they imperil our planet. Pockets of extreme poverty in Somalia can breed conflict that spills across borders. The child who goes to a radical madrassa outside of Karachi can end up endangering the security of my daughters in Chicago. And the deadly flu that begins in Indonesia can find its way to Indiana within days. Poverty, climate change, extremism, disease—these are issues that offend our common humanity. They also threaten our common security….We must see that none of these problems can be dealt with in isolation; nor can we deny one and effectively tackle another.”
“Our dependence on oil and gas funds terror and tyranny. It’s forced families to pay their wages at the pump, and it puts the future of our planet in peril. This is a security threat, an economic albatross, and a moral challenge of our time.”
“As we develop clean energy, we should share technology and innovations with the nations of the world. This effort to confront climate change will be part of our strategy to alleviate poverty because we know that it is the world’s poor who will feel—and may already be feeling—the effect of a warming planet. If we fail to act, famine could displace hundreds of millions, fueling competition and conflict over basic resources like food and water. We all have a stake in reducing poverty….It leads to pockets of instability that provide fertile breeding-grounds for threats like terror and the smuggling of deadly weapons that cannot be contained by the drawing of a border or the distance of an ocean. And these aren’t simply disconnected corners of an interconnected world. And that is why the second commitment that I’ll make is embracing the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015. This will take more resources from the United States, and as president, I will increase our foreign assistance to provide them.”
“Disease stands in the way of progress on so many fronts. It can condemn populations to poverty, prevent a child from getting an education, and yet far too many people still die of preventable illnesses….When I am president, we will set the goal of ending all deaths from malaria by 2015. It’s time to rid the world of a disease that doesn’t have to take lives.”
Showing posts by Rachel Weisshaar.
Renegade General Laurent Nkunda’s fighters seized 
“America has lost its groove,” argued New York Times foreign affairs columnist and bestselling author Thomas Friedman at a September 29, 2008, 
