Mother earth backlash

It's been a while since I got in touch with environmental issues. For starters, I think we as humans and as living creatures who have been granted the gift of the mind should not neglect the fact that even though we are are constantly introducing new technologies to improve our lives, we have taken our earth for granted.

When was the last time any of us sat down to just ask ourselves, "will the world be a better place for my future generations?". The picture below is probably the most commonly used photo of our earth from space.

I don't know about you, but I think the earth is one of the unexplained wonders of this universe. Who would have thought a big rock sphere could sustain lives of so many living beings from the very minute form of microbes to sea creatures, land creatures and we humans? Did you know that the very blue planet in the picture sustains approximately the lives of close to 9 billion people?

At this juncture, our planet earth is suffering from global warming - a problem of which close to none of us care about or even think about in our daily lives. We get on with our lives, our daily routines and just live as if everything's okay. But the sad truth is, everything's not okay and very , very far from okay. Take a look at the graph below that illustrates how much the anomaly in temperature has drastically become over the years from 1880 to 2000, and believe you me at 2008, it has only gone higher - possibly bringing to light the term "off the charts". The source of the graph - NASA, for those who want to do some further reading.

No doubt, the trend of highs and lows in the temperature are still visible but the anomaly has clearly been going up and up. How much further are we going to ignore this clear warning from our mother earth? Countries worldwide are already in the Kyoto agreement leaving only the USA and Australia, which have not signed up yet, but we have to realise controlling the emission of CO2 is not merely a political act and there is only so much governments can do. It is up to us to make the change if we want a better tomorrow for our children.

To date, we have witnessed some drastic changes in the weather - increased in number hurricanes especially in the USA and Japan, unpredictable tsunamis, increase in seismic activities. I leave in Malaysia, and I can sure tell you the rains today and the rains I used to experience when I was kid are so different. Wind speeds have picked up ever since the mountains were mowed down to make room for development, temperatures 10 years ago in Kuala Lumpur used to be a comfortable 27C in the afternoon, now afternoon temperatures average between 33C to sometimes even 37C. Isn't that a clear enough sign?

Virtually all of us are stuck in this paradigm, ignoring the grave truth of global warming. If we want a better tomorrow, we have to start today; in fact we should have started yesterday or even the day before yesterday. One of us making a change isn't enough, but if all us can start spreading the word and changing our lifestyles to a more sustainable approach, I believe we can assist in bringing a more sustainable earth and future. Remember - 9 billion of us on earth can really make a change.

Further understanding: watch "The Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore, visit The Green Guide, Reuters Environment Blog

Trade bans, a blunt tool for saving endangered species?

At one point probably in the mid-nineties, elephants were in the list of endangered species due to poaching for the valuable tusks. The dwindling in number of elephants were mainly felt in Tanzania, Zambia, and Sudan.


The common believe is that when the buying stops, the killing stops but history might prove it wrong. Trade bans have hardly work, and it offers a pessimistic lesson. Over the last few decades, the black rhino has become extinct in 18 countries where they were common and their population continue to fall drastically in other countries. The same goes to the Yangzi river dolphin. Even with a fall in consumption, as with ivory, demand - and thus poaching - has a habit of coming back.


In addition, contrary to stopping the poaching by way of trade bans, it has actually made poaching more rampant. This is due to the fall in supply, and the very fundamentals of economics explains that continuing growth in demand but with difficulties in sourcing for supplies only spurs the increase in price. To make matters worse, the trade ban opens a very lucrative door to illegal traders to make a lot of money in the black market. Over the recent years, there has also been an increse in criminal gang activities that is as close as impossible to eliminate.


Moreover, species worldwide are reducing in numbers due to many other reasons besides poaching. Wildlife is threatened by the loss of land, fragmentation of habitats, deteriorating ecosystems and invasive foreign species - all of which are human doing. By banning trade, it has not help in protecting species but rather made the problem of dwindling number worse because trade ban makes such animals worthless - killing is made simple or these animals are simply left to die.


The better solution, would be the revers - by making wildlife more valuable to man. Tourism, for instance offers great rewards. Gorillas in Rwanda are doing well population-wise and the country earn financially with tourists paying handsomely to see the gorillas. On the contrary, gorillas in Congo are suffering due to hunters who clear them out and possess their land.

Another way available is to exploit the animals in more sustainable manner. After all, killing individual creatures need not necessarily harm the populations. Animals can be bred for trade purposes - Rhino horns can be cut off without killing the rhinos.


In a nutshell, it is understandable that sustainable exploitation is not easy and will not always work. But it is a start, and a good start would be create a valuable product - animals. From there, get the backing from the law and the government. The locals must feel the sense of ownership and the sense of security in what they produce if they are going to protect them. But one thing is for sure - sustainable exploitation beats trade bans: it earns money thereby giving these precious animals a glimmer of hope!

Further reading: The Economist March 8th 2008.

Biofuels: solution to global warming or a hidden agenda for the rich to get richer?

Global warming has been gaining much focus of late, and many have been suggesting solutions to reduce the threat of global warming. Ask anyone the main cause for global warming, and you'll find fingers are pointing at fossil fuel usage. It is difficult not to blame fossil fuel for being the main cause of global warming and let us not forget we too contribute to global warming (i.e. car fuel comes from fossil fuel, cooking gas, diesel generators that produce household generators).

With the growing number of fingers pointing at fossil fuel, many have proposed the use of biofuels. Naturally, the parties suggesting it are mainly developed countries. After all, they are the ones with the knowledge and technology to develop biofuels. However, the idea of biofuels has fueled much disagreement and controversy.

Here are quotes from authoritative voices in the environmental arena:
"The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and the world's two billion poorest people." -–Lester Brown (more on Lester Brown HERE)

"The only goal [of biofuels] is to maintain current patterns of consumption in the First World and high rates of profit for multinational corporations." —MST (the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement)

The current hype in the biofuel industry is based on using agricultural produce to generate fuel to replace the use of fossil fuel. This has led to many big corporations to sink billions into ethanol and biodiesel plants, huge plantations of soy, corn, sugarcane, oil palm or other sources of agrofuels, as well as genetically engineered (GE) trees and microbes for future supplies of cellulosic ethanol.

On the surface, biofuel may look like the way to go to replacing fossil fuel but if we were to take an utilitarian approach to assessing biofuel, it may not necessarily be the way forward. I did further reading and I can come up with a few reasons why we should all re-look the idea of biofuel.

1) Biofuels are creating competition between food for people and fuel for cars, leading to skyrocketing grain prices and increasing numbers of people who cannot afford to eat. As one example, the amount of grain needed to create enough ethanol to fill the tank of a single SUV could feed one person for an entire year. There simply isn't enough grain to feed all of the people and all of the cars.

2) The increasing demand for land for biofuel plantations is causing deforestation and destruction of some of the last and largest primeval forests, which are being logged and burned to clear land for these biofuel plantations. In Indonesia, millions of acres of primordial rainforest are at stake. The government plans to clear vast tracts of this forest for oil palm plantations for biodiesel for export to Europe, threatening the existence of wildlife including orangutans, rhinoceros and tigers.

3) The logging and burning of forests for biofuel plantations releases huge quantities of greenhouse gases which are unlikely to be offset by the biofuels created from the crops grown on these former forest lands. The burning of the forests of Indonesia each year (largely for oil palm plantations) makes it the world's third largest producer of global carbon emissions, even though most of the population lives in poverty.

4) Indigenous peoples who depend on forests for food, medicine, shelter, livelihoods or culture are being forcibly displaced from their lands to make room for biofuel plantations.

6) The biotechnology industry is using rising demand for biofuel as a new way to sell their highly unpopular, unpredictable and problematic genetic engineering technology. Monsanto's stocks are soaring as demand increased for their genetically engineered corn and soy for biofuels. ArborGen is genetically engineering trees for release in the Southeast US and Brazil that have specifically been modified to produce cellulosic ethanol.

7) The rich get richer because biofuel. With the introduction of GE trees, there is bound to be the patenting of tree genes and tree cells. Big conglomerates then use the patents to earn exorbitantly high patent fees to plant GE trees.

8) There is virtually no study on the side effects of releasing GE trees into the environment. Just like how releasing certain species of fish into a pond can destroy the entire pond's ecosystem, GE trees may well carry such risks hence bringing forth more destruction than benefits. We have to take note that genetic contamination is irrevocable and its costs far from measurable.

Biofuels the way to fueling our daily lives? Think again.............