ecospirit

Being able to fix atmospheric nitrogen has enabled us to feed 7 billion people, along with new seed strains from the steady, Herculean labors of Borlaug and his research associates. But nitrogen fertilizer is very costly in terms of CO2 use, and its regular overuse by farmers has created another transgressed boundary, the Nitrogen Cycle. Now, with the prospect of 9-10 billion by the end of this century, GM seeds put us on the threshold of making the next leap in yields, keeping within the Land Use limits that have us crowding the other species in the Cenozoic Ark. This is because GM seeds enable twice the grain yields of organic farming. This is the most important claim in the book. And if, as Lynas suggests, biotech researchers can find a way to induce grainseeds to fix their own nitrogen, that next leap would be assured.

Most of the planetary boundaries are involved with food production, which is not surprising, since feeding our species is the biggest single operation with which we task our host. Climate Change (CO2 emissions, but also methane); nitrogen cycle, land use, freshwater use, toxins, and of course biodiversity loss, which the Planetary Boundaries group ranks as number one, just ahead of climate change. Lynas argues that industrial ag, with the help of GMO's and intelligent use of market capitalism, is far more likely to feed the mass of humanity than traditional agriculture. In addition to huge conservation of land, he points to savings in freshwater usage, though two other boundaries don't fare as well, the nitrogen cycle and toxins. In these cases, though, he feels that new GM crops can help reduce both fertilizer and insecticide/herbicide applications. And he thinks many of the approaches of organic farming, including intercropping and biological pest control, can help in concert with GMO's.

Lynas accepts the importance of thinking ecologically, and grants the fact that this is now a matter of regular policy, business, and political concern - a huge victory for the environmental movement. But as activists, Greens tend not just to educate, but to prescribe, and this is where Lynas believes they once again go wrong in terms of agriculture. Since he was once one of the key anti-GM voices in the UK, he understands the dynamics well. As the journalistic voice of the 29 scientists in the Planetary Boundaries group, he extends the frame of ecological thinking, giving us a more complex and factually accurate basis for judging what are the appropriate tools and methods. For me, this means I must cooly take into account all the boundaries, not just accept the bundle of received opinions intertwined with deeply-held values and gut passions which have guided me heretofore.

I am a longtime organic advocate and organic gardener. And definitely anti-GMO. More than three decades ago, reading Jacques Ellul, I was struck by the gravity of the genetic encoding issue. If we started messing with that, I felt, we were crossing a line, eating not only from the Forbidden Tree, but creating an entirely new tree from which we would eat still more. Monstrous hubris, no?. Now we are routinely playing god, modifying the gene sequences to fit our needs, in agriculture as well as medicine. Monsanto, the biggest player in agricultural seedstock and chemical weed management, has recently won the World Food Prize (mistakenly called the “Nobel Prize for Agriculture”). Yet Monsanto is Greens' most hated agriculture corporation, the model for all that is wrong in industrial agriculture. If Lynas is right, I must be willing to rethink the once-sacred boundary of plants' genetic codes.

Beyond the issue of organic purity, what about the huge human population all these agricultural breakthroughs has afforded? Have we not already transgressed the number of human beings that the biosphere can sustainably support? Lynas insists that there is no numerical boundary for our population. Rather, we can reproduce as much as we would like as long as the nine boundaries are respected. But this is the man who cheerily says we have “only” broken three of the boundaries. Borlaug, on the other hand, lived under the Malthusian shadow. He felt his discoveries would provide a “temporary success in mankind's war against hunger and deprivation,” a breathing space in which to deal with the “Population Monster.”

My own boundary for human population, a gut number after reading many accounts from anthropological and green farming perspectives (while dismissing futurists and demographers, whose numbers I simply could not abide) is around 2 billion people – where we were at the dawn of modern agriculture. My guiding assumptions as I came up with this figure were principally using organic farming, leaving enough habitat for a significant portion of our Cenozoic cousins to survive, and enough fresh water for our species' activities, within reasonable limits that would preserve water for the other 8-10 million species. No matter that Donella Meadows, lead author of Limits to Growth, figured we could feed 10-12 billion. Bless her heart, she was sharp, but died an incurable optimist. That was not the kind of world I wanted to live in.

In a letter to the editor a few weeks ago, I said it was not such a bad thing that the fairly weak cap-and-trade bill that passed the US House in 2009 failed in the Senate. If things had gone otherwise, we might have congratulated ourselves and become prematurely complacent. Cap-and-trade failed in Europe and Japan because the system was subject to gaming and manipulation. What we need is a carbon tax, which international leaders from both left and right have tried to enact. A carbon tax is fairer and much harder to cheat, the main issue being pricing carbon high enough to put a brake on CO2 emissions, encouraging rapid development of alternative energy sources. Senator Maria Cantwell's CLEAR act was a brave, though flawed start.

On the eve of the 2012 election, it is almost absurd to be discussing the possibility of government being able to do anything about the impending climate doom I outlined in the last two posts. Though dissatisfaction with Congress is at record levels, pundits predict the GOP will retain its hold on the House, while the Democrats are likely to barely hold onto the Senate, an essentially frozen institution shackled by its own bizarre rules. So even if the candidate who has most consistently aligned himself with science in the past wins, the chances of getting something done through the legislature is close to zero. Perhaps our nation's approach to international climate action needs to shift.

Looking at the failure of international negotiations to slow down climate change, MIT policy wonk David Victor argues in Global Warming Gridlock for a new strategy, a series of bilateral agreements among countries with similar goals and interests. Immediately, I thought of the US and China, who together produce over 50% of the world's emissions. We are also huge trading partners. A bilateral agreement with China, preposterous as it seems, could turn nationalist competition into global climate security. Like the Russians with their space program in 1960, China is ahead in the Green Revolution, giving it more resources by far than any other country (though admittedly they are still challenged by the growth of their grid, still mostly fueled by coal). Such a priority shift in a somewhat frosty relationship could definitely dampen global warming in one huge blow. And of course there are other parties highly motivated to work against climate change, including the large economies who were signatories to the Kyoto Accord. With a new international accord proving unlikely, bilateral treaties modeled on trade accords could work with a carbon tax to achieve goals in CO2 reduction. The favored model is tax and distribute, and the distribution just might be tailored to offset the huge inequalities in historical carbon production.

Sure, this is a tall order, but the US diplomatic corps is large, with some very talented people. China is ramping up its diplomats, and its climate scientists have the ear of the regime. The biggest obstacle remains massive denial here in the US fueled by a calculated attempt by think tanks and ad agencies funded by Big Carbon. The PBS program Frontline recently aired a report on the key players in this process. The alarming shift in public opinion is hugely abetted by the Republican Party, which is fast cleansing itself of those who have the courage to go on on record that anthropogenic climate change is for real. We need to undo the right wing assault on climate science and the coalition of the Tea Party with the Christian Right.

Secular environmentalists and liberal Christians need to form bonds with more conservative Christians to elevate ecojustice to its fundamental position as a Christian witness. West Coast evangelicals include a significant, vocal minority of young folks who are putting their bodies on the line, tree-huggers for Christ. A large number of citizens signed a petition to Jim Lehrer to ask a climate change question in the first debate. At the second, Young Evangelicals for Climate Action met in silent prayer under banners to awaken the campaign to the enormous centrality of climate change. Their mentor, Richard Cizik, though thrown out of the National Association of Evangelicals for supporting committed gay relationships, continues to fire up steady crowds who come to hear his prophetic climate action message.

And of course we need political leadership. A first-term President Obama made the fateful choice to prioritize health care. After that protracted, draining battle, the 2010 elections ended his window of opportunity for major legislative initiatives. A second-term Obama would not have to work for re-election, leading hopeful liberals and progressives to dream that he might bust out of his prison. Thus far he hasn't shown that kind of leadership, consistently being a pragmatic deal-maker. But a climate deal with China, though initially radical, would require a lot of the lawyerly deal-making that he finds natural.