Water as a Commodity

Posted on September 24, 2013 by climatechangefork

Recently, I have been writing a lot about water- I feel honored that one of the local papers here in Brooklyn, Our Time Press, picked up one of my posts in its entirety to republish. I am trying to get my ideas out into the world, and it is gratifying to know that some people are listening.

In previous blogs (August 27, September 3 and September 10), I have made the case that Earth is not dealing with water shortage, but rather with water stress. Given that 70% of the planet’s surface is covered with deep oceans, and that the global water cycle accounts for the water’s flow through land, sea and the atmosphere, we will not have an actual shortage of water so long as the planet remains a habitable environment. On the other hand, there is a serious water stress that results from the imbalance between supply and demand of fresh water. My September 10 blog focused on one way of trying to alleviate the stress in fresh water: recycling used water, thus forming a smaller, separate fresh water cycle within the global one.

In this and the next blog, I will explore the “classic” economics of dealing with imbalances between supply and demand. This blog focuses on the demand side. Economists tell us that there are two conventional ways to reduce demand of any commodity: either use less or find alternative commodities that will function in a similar way. Unfortunately, water is distinct from other commodities on two levels. First, both physics and biology tell us that liquid water is unique in its ability to support life – no substitutions are possible. Additionally, the adequate availability of fresh water is now being regarded as an element of international human rights law.

Like any other commodity, there is no question that if we raise the price of water we will reduce consumption. The figure below, taken from a study on the effects of water pricing and wealth profiles on water use demonstrates the impact clearly.

Water as a Commodity GraphThe study was carried out by four Florida water management districts. The decline in use shown with the increased price is general. The price-induced changes in water consumption vary according to the property value. Profile 1 represents the properties with the lowest assessed values, while profile 4 shows those with the highest. It is clear from the graph that the properties with the highest assessed values had the correspondingly highest consumption of water while it was offered at a fixed price. However, these properties also reflected the largest price-induced changes. This is likely due to the fact that a significant portion of their consumption was for discretionary uses, which are not difficult to adjust. We must, however, bear in mind that this study was done in Florida –a rich American state in a rich country. It was also confined to single family houses, a distinction that further classifies the residents as belonging to an above average wealth bracket.

The table below tries to account for the global picture. It shows the water tariffs in various cities in the world that represent most global income levels. The United Nation defined water scarcity as water availability below 1000m3 (35,300ft3) of fresh water per year. The table compares the price of this quantity of water to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per person. The water tariff data for the various cities is taken from The Pacific Institute and the GDP from the World Bank database.

Country

City

Water Tariff (in US$/m3) (2008)

GDP/Person (in US$) (2008)

Tariff Calculated for 1000m3(US$) of Water

Percentage of the GDP/Person That Goes Toward the Water Tariff for 1000m3

Madagascar

Antananarivo

0.49

471

490

104

Kenya

Nairobi

0.34

786

340

43

India

Kolkata

0.15

1042

150

14

Egypt

Cairo

0.07

2157

70

3

China

Beijing

0.54

3414

540

16

Jordan

Amman

0.49

3797

490

13

Brazil

Rio de Janeiro

0.97

8623

970

11

Mexico

Acapulco

0.50

9508

500

5

Turkey

Istanbul

2.44

10379

2440

23

Venezuela

Caracas

0.21

11223

210

2

Russia

Moscow

0.82

11700

820

7

Japan

Tokyo

1.81

37972

1810

5

New York

USA

2.11

46760

2110

5

San Diego

USA

4.10

46760

4100

9

Copenhagen

Denmark

8.69

62596

8690

14

It is clear from the table that if an average resident of Madagascar (a lovely country that I visited for a few weeks) tries to pay his part of the tariff for this amount of water, he will end up paying more than his average share of the country’s GDP. He cannot do it. The same holds for much of Africa and even India. Meanwhile, an American that lives in New York ends up paying less than 5% of his share of the GDP, since New York doesn’t suffer from a shortage of fresh water, but an American in San Diego, which does suffer such a shortage, ends up paying about twice that. The water tariffs are not based merely on the costs of fresh water –instead, they usually include the costs of water treatments, water storage, transportation, collecting and treating waste water, billing, and in the case of privately run water companies, return on investment. In most cases the tariffs are regulated and should include recovery and maintenance of the water system and environmental criteria such as incentive to conserve. The large disparity between the tariffs is an indication that political considerations and ability to pay are important components of the mix. Since availability of water is essential for both the rich and poor, many of the basic requirements of sustainable systems of water supply and sanitation are either nonexistent or not being met.

A recent example from Venezuela illustrates some of these issues: Andre Soliani, a reporter from Bloomberg News wrote the following on September 4:

The carcass of a dead dog floats on the lake that supplies tap water to 750,000 Venezuelans. Witch doctor Francisco Sanchez has just dumped the previous night’s sacrifice from a cliff, contaminating the resource that has become more scarce than gasoline in Caracas.

The water from Lake Mariposa, polluted by sacrifices and garbage from a local cult,is pumped to a 60-year-old treatment plant that lacks the technology to make it safe for drinking, said Fernando Morales, an environmental chemistry professor at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas who has visited the site.

Eight kilometers (five miles) away from the lake, in Caracas, sales of bottled water are booming, with families paying the equivalent of $4.80 for a five-gallon jug, twice the price of gasoline.

“The treatment process has not adapted to the steady degradation of the water source,” Morales said in an interview at the university campus Aug. 22. “I wouldn’t use this water at home.”

Venezuela is an oil rich country that sits somewhere in the middle of the table in terms of GDP/person. Its water tariff is among the lowest in the table. Lower than Madagascar. Even so, 1000m3 of water amounts to approximately 50,000 five-gallon jugs that will cost $240,000 a year. This is way out of the average Venezuelan’s ability to pay – it is obvious that not every Venezuelan is taking part in the shift towards bottled water. Neglect has consequences.

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Syria and the Meaning of “Self”

Posted on September 17, 2013 by climatechangefork

Before the Jewish New Year, I got the following message from a friend:

On Rosh Hashanah, it is written… On Yom Kippur, it is sealed. May it be written and may it be sealed that you and all your loved ones have a new year that brings fulfillment and happiness, peace and prosperity. Have a Happy, Healthy New Year, – L’Shana Tova!

It was a lovely message of well wishes. I thanked her and took the message to heart. For Jews, this is a time of the year for reflections. Following tradition, I did a personal accounting of my own doings and undoings, and since I am not religious, the sealing was my own. I have found myself to be far from perfect but I was ok to my family and friends, and for the most part did what I am “supposed” to do (the perspectives of family and friends notwithstanding :(), with the knowledge that any aspirations for  “perfection” are unrealistic. My mind drifted to my role as a member of humanity, and not surprisingly, considering my background, my mind drifted to Syria.

I make my living teaching, writing and doing research on the dangers and challenges of climate change. This blog is one of my outlets. I stirred up a great deal of commotion by using every forum that I had at my disposal to compare climate change with the Holocaust. The comparison was based on defining climate change as a “self inflicted genocide” – a collective suicide.

Here is what I wrote in my May 14, 2012 blog to justify the comparison:

Many thoughtful comments on this blog (thanks!!) have focused on my so-called “dragging” the Holocaust into the climate change debate.  The claims were that I am “cheapening” the Holocaust, that I am not able to distinguish between deniers and skeptics and/or that I am accusing climate change deniers of using “Nazi methods” simply by using the term deniers in the context of climate change. First of all, I could not and would not “cheapen” a genocide that killed most of my family and deprived me of my childhood between the Warsaw Ghetto and Bergen-Belsen.  I was born three months before the start of this genocide in which we were targeted for annihilation because we belonged to a group that the Germans did not think had a right to exist. But, of course, I am using the term “denier” to make a point.  In 1933, very few people believed that Hitler would seriously try to accomplish what he preached and almost no one could imagine the consequences of his deadly reign.  Although there was evidence available – Hitler was clear about what he wanted to do in Mein Kampf – why did people not pay attention?  These “deniers” might as well have been called skeptics in their day.

My definition of climate change as “self inflicted genocide” was anchored on the dictionary definition of genocide as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of racial, political or cultural groups” (See my first post on April 22, 2012). Climate change is not a documented genocide like the Holocaust; it is a projected genocide. Any phenomenon projected for a distant future is uncertain. The call for action to prevent climate change is based on the premise that it can be prevented or at least minimized. Past genocides are unchangeable – history cannot be prevented after the fact.

Now we have Syria.

By almost every account, there is a genocide taking place in Syria. The over two years of conflict have resulted in more than 100,000 dead and countless wounded. More than 2 million of Syria’s 23 million residents have left the country as refugees, while another 4 million were displaced from their homes. A United Nations commission of inquiry presented a report with the following quote:

Bolstered by weapons and money from regional and global powers waging a proxy war, Syria’s government and rebel forces have committed murder, torture, rape and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, without fear of future punishment.

 On August 21st the atrocities breached an important threshold (red line?): poison gas was used in large scale on a suburb of Damascus that was under the control of the government opposition forces. Photographs of the innocent victims that were killed in their sleep circulated throughout the world. In an assertion supported by the Russian government, the Assad regime has claimed that it was the opposition forces that released the gas, as a call for the outside world to intervene. Almost everybody else has blamed the government, arguing that the opposition doesn’t have the means to carry out such an attack.

It is clear who the victims of this genocide are: the Syrian people – but who are the perpetrators?  In the absence of better identification, we have to say that the Syrian people are also playing that role. This is a self inflicted genocide taking place now –one which could be stopped by outside intervention. It is obvious here that the “self” does not include every individual. Most of the people are the victims. It is a cruel civil war. Of course, all wars are cruel, but I have come to believe that most civil wars are better characterized as self inflicted genocides. The distinction between such wars and the possible consequences of climate change by the end of the century is that in most civil wars, there is an outside world. The outside world can intervene and try to stop the collective suicides. In the case of a planetary conflict with our physical environment, there is no outside world.

For two years, nobody has lifted a finger to try to stop the Syrian conflict, and the UN was paralyzed. President Obama has declared the use of poison gas a red line and after it was crossed he called for the use of American power to hit Syria and deter the government from further use of poison gas. While most of the American public and the rest of the world didn’t want to have anything to do with any direct involvement, the threat was enough to lure the Russians to join in an effort to at least eliminate the very real danger that the Syrian government might again make use of chemical weapons. Meanwhile, the brutal civil war continues.

President Obama declared the use of poison gas as a red line because it violates the Chemical Weapons treaty – an international norm that prohibits the use of chemical weapons. However, America’s threats to use force in deterring Syria from further usage also speaks to the violation of an international law – one which allows the use of force between sovereign countries only under explicit authorization by the United Nations Security council or for self defense. Neither condition was satisfied here. Syria is not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons treaty (it has now offered to join under some conditions as a part of the Russian initiative to solve the issue without the use of force). So now we have reached a situation where one brutal violation of international law is being addressed by the threat to violate another international law.

The United States doesn’t have great credibility in ratifying international agreements. The table below lists the status of some of the most important international laws, as of 10 years ago:

Updated July, 2003

Convention on Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) Signed July 17, 1980, never ratified The US remains one of a handful of countries, including Iran and Sudan, not to ratify CEDAW. Although Bush has called the treaty “generally favorable,” the treaty faces resistance from US conservatives.
Convention on the Rights of the Child Signed Feb. 16, 1995, never ratified At the UN, only the United States and Somalia, which has no functional government, have not ratified the Convention. Conservatives who favor the death penalty for minors strongly oppose the treaty.
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR) Signed Oct. 5, 1977, never ratified The US maintains that economic, social and cultural rights are “aspirational,” not inalienable or enforceable. 142 countries have already ratified the Covenant.
UN Framework Convention on Climate Control (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol Ratified UNFCCC Oct. 15, 1992 Signed Kyoto Protocol Nov. 12, 1998, never ratified Although President Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol, mandating a reduction in carbon emissions to below 1990 levels by 2012, a 2001 State Department memo rejected the protocol on the basis that it would harm the US economy and exempt developing countries from reduction requirements. Of industrialized states, only the US, Australia and Israel haven’t ratified the protocol. The US did ratify the UNFCCC, but has not complied.
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Signed Sep. 24, 1996, never ratified The US Senate voted in 1999 to reject ratification of the test ban treaty. Taking another step away from the agreement, the White House released the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in early 2002 hinting at a return to testing and reserving the right to use nuclear weapons in a first-strike attack. The NPR also states that arms reductions can be reversed.
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty Signed and ratified Summer 1972, US unilateral withdrawal Dec. 13, 2001 The US became the first major power to unilaterally withdraw from a nuclear arms control treaty. Citing “terror threats,” the Bush administration will pursue an enormously costly missile defense program, even though its scientific feasibility remains dubious.
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) and Draft Proposal Signed April 10, 1972, ratified March 23, 1975, rejected Draft Proposal in June, 2001 After the BWC was drafted in 1972, its 144 state parties agreed that the convention’s enforcement mechanisms were inadequate. An “Ad Hoc Group” formed in 1994 to negotiate changes. When the group presented its draft proposal in 2001, the US rejected it and refused to return to negotiations, effectively derailing the treaty.
Chemical Weapons Convention Signed Jan. 13, 1993, ratified Apr. 25, 1997 The US ratified the Convention, but set extensive limitations on how it could be applied in the US, essentially gutting its provisions. The US specifies that material cannot be transferred outside the country for testing, limits which facilities can be tested, and gives the president the right to refuse inspection on the grounds of “national security.”
Mine Ban Treaty Never signed The US remains the only member of NATO besides Turkey, and the only state in the Western Hemisphere besides Cuba, not to sign the Mine Ban Treaty. The US used anti-personnel land mines in the first Gulf War, and claims that land mines are essential to protect US soldiers in heavily armed places like the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Signed Dec. 31, 2000, unsigned June 6, 2002 In 2002, the US made the unprecedented move to “unsign” the treaty establishing the ICC. Since then, the US has systematically undermined the ICC by signing bilateral agreements with states to exempt US military and government personnel from the court’s jurisdiction.

I subscribe to the notion that our collective governance on any level requires that we care for each other.  The collective includes everyone –from immediate family, to local community, to sovereign states – all the way up to the entire human race. That is one of our distinctive features as compared to other living organisms – we are “our brother’s keepers” and we have the means to be. We have decently effective enforcing mechanisms for collective governance up to the level of sovereign states. International treaties are agreements between sovereign states, but it is up to the states to abide by them and enforce them.

What Syria demonstrates now, and climate change will demonstrate in the future, is that individual sovereign states are almost powerless to confront issues of global concern such as genocides, whether man-to-man or resulting from man destroying the physical environment that serves all of us.

Global issues cannot be addressed by local authorities. By definition, such authority lacks jurisdiction over some of the terrain. I have argued before against the “citizen of the world” concept (August 6 blog) that would abolish the authority of sovereign states, but the planet is getting too small for all of us and it is high time to start a collective thinking that will effectively govern issues on a planetary scale. The veto-prone UN Security Council is no longer (if it ever was) a sufficiently effective tool. We need to find alternatives and put them into operation as soon as possible.

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Water Recycling

Posted on September 10, 2013 by climatechangefork

As I have discussed previously, the Earth does not lack for water in general; instead, it is the serious shortage of fresh water that inflicts stresses all around the world. This trend is projected to get even worse as a result of both the increasing global population and climate change (see the September 3 blog). Can we do something useful to address these stresses?

Water is crucial for the survival of living organisms on this planet (including us humans). The uniqueness of Earth’s abundance of liquid water coincides with the uniqueness (so far as we know) of our planet’s ability (among the billions of billions of other star systems) to sustain life. There is an ongoing search for other star systems that are suitable for sustaining life (see the January 28 blog on the Physics of Sustainability). The list of potentially habitable planets changes often, and is critically dependent upon our ability to identify conditions on planets outside our own solar system (exoplanets). A partial list can be found on Wikipedia. The existence of liquid water on the surface or close to the surface constitutes the main criteria for possible suitability to sustain life in any form.

Water is essential to life. Life can flourish in the oceans but many living species (including humans) need fresh water for survival. How can we manage the availability of fresh water to satisfy the ever growing needs driven by increasing demand?

The figure below outlines our current global use of fresh water. The data is rather enlightening:

Recycling Water Fig 1

Humankind’s long-term fresh water needs can be satisfied with a combination of three different strategies:

  1. Efficient management of use through pricing.
  2. Recycling.
  3. Desalination of salt water.

I will start here with recycling and elaborate on the two other aspects in future blogs.

In order to assure long-term sustainability (February 4 blog) we must, one way or another, recycle all of the commodities that we extract from Earth. The one commodity that physics limits our ability to recycle is energy. I will elaborate on the reasons for that later on; for now (please) take my word for this. Almost all other commodities can be either recycled/ reused, or can be replaced by alternatives that are more easily recyclable. Water is the exception here – we need fresh water for both direct and indirect use – for everything from the food that we eat to our sanitation needs. Other uses of water, such as for the cooling of power stations, can be modified to be able to use ocean water directly. In my previous blog (September 3) I described in some detail the global water cycle, which details how all water that we use has been (and will perpetually be) recycled water (see the previous blog for the qualifiers to this statement). The real question is: can we then convey this concept to a more human scale for local use?

In this case, the aim is to create a closed cycle to recycle and regenerate fresh water; mirroring the natural global system in a smaller, human-controlled setting. A perfect cycle implies complete conservation of the recycled quantity, in this case – fresh water. Since the two are inextricably linked, as the demand for fresh water increases, so too does the amount of resulting waste water. The waste water, if not treated, will rejoin the water cycle contaminated from its use. This contaminated water will ultimately end up back in the ocean. Throughout history, people have accepted this practice under the assumption that since the oceans are so large, “dilution is an acceptable solution.” This is no longer a sustainable argument – with 7 billion water users and advanced scientific understanding of the chemistry of the ocean, there is a growing understanding that this practice cannot continue. Additionally, while this practice acknowledges the issue of dumping waste water, it doesn’t address the correspondingly increasing need to supplement the depleting fresh water reservoirs.

In developed countries, the technology to treat waste water has not yet reached the stage where families reuse theirs, but in many developing countries, where family plots serve as a main source of food, family waste water is used as source of irrigation. This is especially relevant since, as we saw earlier, irrigation is presently the main consumer of fresh water.

Certain forms of water recycling are being practiced around the world (“The Global Water Recycling Situation” by B. Van der Bruggen in “Sustainable Water for the Future: Water Recycling Versus Desalination;” Isabel Escobar and Andrea Scafer Editors;  Elsevier – 201, p. 41).  This is specifically true in stressed regions with severe fresh water shortages. It was reported that in China (1989 data), the average fraction of fresh water reused in 82 large cities was 56%. The maximum fresh water use in these cities has reached 93%.

Recycled water has been utilized in multiple capacities, including agricultural irrigation, process water in industry and the production – either direct or indirect –of potable (drinking water). Every application requires its own specifications in terms treatment and the technology can be optimized to fit the need.

Each of these uses has received (at least majority) approval –all of them except the application as drinking water (potable water).

The two cartoons below demonstrate the problem with the concept:

Recycling Water Fig 2

Recycling Water Fig 3

http://www.toonpool.com/cartoons/recycling%20water_169706

Human psychology plays an important role in the setbacks to the success of this system. In an article titled “From toilet to tap,” Sadie F. Dingfelder ( American Psychological Association publication) describes the dilemma this way:

The method makes water that is “abundant and safe,” says Brent Haddad, PhD, associate professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “The technology is remarkable and can treat water to an often higher quality than the water that originally entered the system.”

However, attempts to reintroduce purified wastewater into the aquifers and rivers from which cities draw their supplies has met vehement opposition from citizens’ groups, stalling water recycling projects in cities from San Diego to Tampa, Fla. According to Haddad, who studies the success of water reuse initiatives, and University of Pennsylvania psychologist Paul Rozin, PhD, who studies disgust and contamination, this opposition comes more from a knee-jerk response to wastewater–the “yuck” factor–than from concerns about the water’s chemical composition.

In people’s minds it’s “once in contact, always in contact,” explains Rozin. “Even if you convince people you did every conceivable thing to [purify] the water they would still be reluctant to drink it.”

The effect is known (in some circles) as the “yuck factor” or the “wisdom of repugnance.”  While psychologists (especially Prof. Rozin from the University of Pennsylvania) are trying their best to find remedies to this mental stumbling block, it is up to all of us to help. We must overcome our squeamishness, even as we take other steps to mitigate and adapt to the root causes of these problems.

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Climate Change and the Water Cycle

Posted on September 3, 2013 by climatechangefork

It seems almost ironic that people must deal with water shortage and water stress, given that 70% of Earth’s surface is comprised of oceans, some of which reach depths of more than six km (close to 4 miles), yet that is one of the biggest concerns the world is now facing.

Global water availability is summarized in the table below:

Water Distribution TableThe oceans hold almost all of Earth’s water. Ocean water is a solution of various salts; most abundantly, what we call common salt. The most common unit used to expresses the salinity of water is Parts Per Thousands (ppt), which measures the number of grams of salts in one kg of solution. For example, the salinity of ocean water ranges between 30 – 50 ppt, while fresh water is defined as having a salinity of less than 0.5 ppt. For drinking and agriculture we need fresh water, yet most of that is stored in the form of ice caps, glaciers and permanent snow. The only parts of these resources available for human consumption are those that melt and feed ground water, lakes and rivers.

Water journeys from sea to land to the atmosphere by way of the water cycle. A schematic representation from the United States Geological Service (USGS), one of the US government agencies  charged with monitoring this flow, is shown below: .

Water Cycle DiagramThe cycle is driven by solar energy, which powers the evaporation of water from the oceans and drives the vapor into the atmosphere against the gravitational field. It also describes the various ways in which water returns to the ocean. In a perfect cycle, there would be no gain or loss of water; the same amount of water that evaporated would eventually return. This cycle is not completely perfect, especially if we measure the water over a short time period. Precipitation in the form of snow which stays in the form of ice caps for thousands of years will show up back in the ocean only when the snow and ice melt. In addition, a “small” amount of ocean water penetrates the relatively thin crust at the bottom of the oceans to interact with the magma. These deviations from a perfect cycle are relatively small, especially if measured over a long time.

The water that evaporates from the ocean is “fresh” water. It reacquires its salt content through its journey back to the ocean. Almost all of the processes in the Water Cycle are driven by evaporation and condensation. Since the oceans make up 70% of Earth’s surface, most of the precipitation falls directly back into them. Only about 10% finds its way to land through the weather system. The water cycle is almost a perfect cycle, but only when viewed globally and over a sufficiently long time. Individual places on earth do not make up their own full cycles. We have had countless droughts and floods throughout history.

Climate change is causing an increase in global temperature. Since the rate of evaporation increases with temperature, the rate of evaporation from the ocean should increase with climate change. However, the rate of evaporation from land and plant transpiration will also increase, requiring even more fresh water to accommodate the loss. The net effect is that while climate change has a pronounced effect on the intensity of the water cycle (as can be measured through the rates of evaporation or global precipitation), it cannot cause global water shortage.

That being said, droughts, floods, extreme storms, sea level rise, salination of ground water, etc… represent indications of the main impacts of climate change. These impacts are being amplified by the simple, mostly regional, overuse of fresh water – caused by both an increasing population and an ongoing increase in the standard of living.

The situation is best summarized by the United Nations poster shown below:

water scarcity posterFresh water is not a luxury good that we can substitute with alternatives. We can manage it more effectively, but management in areas like South Saharan Africa and the Southwestern United States might require different strategies. In future blogs I will try to make the case that the most promising strategies should involve collective management of both global energy and water usage. To be successful in mitigation and adaptation to climate change, the management of both water and energy must become a coordinated effort.

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TV Interview

Posted on August 28, 2013 by climatechangefork

I am excited to announce that I recently gave an interview with Pleasantville Community Television, where I talked with Martin Wilbur about my book, Climate Change: The Fork at the End of Now, as well as the science and skeptics of climate change. I look at the role that individual countries can play in combating climate change, emphasizing how crucial it is to remember that it is a global issue.

I explain what I mean when I equate climate change with self perpetrated genocide, and why I think that is the correct term.

I also speak of my role in making the short documentary, “Quest for Energy,” about a community of people living in the Sundarbans in India, amidst the mangrove forests, and their struggles for electricity and sustainability.

It is the first time that I have tried to put most of the loose ends of my activities into a common framework. I hope that you watch the interview and let me know what you think!

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Water Stress?

Posted on August 27, 2013 by climatechangefork

As it wages a civil war to determine whose lifestyle will dominate the country, Egypt has become the focus of global concern. Rampant intolerance has led to mass killings. The cause of the conflict, however, contradicts former President Anwar Sadat’s 1979 prediction that, “The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.”

His opinion was one shared by another famous Egyptian:

In 1988 then-Egyptian Foreign Minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who later became the United Nations’ Secretary-General, predicted that the next war in the Middle East would be fought over the waters of the Nile, not politics. Rather than accept these frightening predictions, we must examine them within the context of the Nile River basin and the relationships forged among the states that share its waters.

They were obviously both wrong in this instance. Water is not the point of contention in the present upheaval in Egypt. However, according to Thomas Friedman from the New York Times, it is the cause of the situation in neighboring Yemen:

I am in the Yemen International Hospital in Taiz, the Yemeni city in the central highlands that is suffering from such an acute water shortage that people get to run their taps for only 36 hours every 30 days or so, they have to fill up as much as they can and they rely on water trucks that come through neighborhoods and sell water like a precious commodity. I am visiting Mohamed Qaid, a 25-year-old laborer from the nearby village of Qaradh who was struck the night before in the hand and chest by three bullets fired by a sniper from Marzouh, the village next door. The two villages have been fighting over the rapidly dwindling water supply from their shared mountain springs. Six people have been killed and many more wounded in clashes since 2000 that have heated up of late. One was killed a night ago. Qaid is in pain, but he wanted to tell people about what is happening here. I have one question: “where you really shot in the fight over water?” He winced out his answer: “it wasn’t about politics. It wasn’t about the Muslim Brotherhood. It was about water.”

It seems almost ironic that people must deal with water shortage and water stress, given that 70% of Earth’s surface is comprised of oceans, some of which reach depths of more than six km (close to 4 miles).

When speaking of global water availability, we must take into account the Water Cycle: through various processes such as evaporation and precipitation, water rotates between oceans, land, various reservoirs, and the atmosphere. This means that water is conserved within the cycle, not “lost” entirely. Water stress doesn’t come from a shortage of water in general, but rather, refers to the shortage of fresh water suitable for direct human consumption and the irrigation of crops needed for food production. To increase our allotment of fresh water and distribute it to where we need it takes energy, and therefore costs money. One of the toughest problems is figuring out who will pay for this, and what kind of energy we can use to do this most efficiently. This is a very complicated issue but is a central component of managing humankind’s sustainability.

Not surprisingly, the impact of climate change on water stress occupied a dominating role at the Mauritius conference attended recently (See the July 2 blog for the program). The range was broad:  it spanned from computer projections of global water scarcities, given a predicted 2.50C temperature rise, to current effects of water scarcity on food supply and agricultural employment in Africa.

Once I came back, I was immediately confronted with the many aspects, both local and global, of the interrelations between energy use, climate change and water scarcity, as well as the need for comprehensive solutions that acknowledge all three. I will try to address this issue in the coming blogs.

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One Big Family

Posted on August 20, 2013 by climatechangefork

My original intention was to use today’s blog to explore water as the central issue in climate change: both with regards to projected impacts, and to adaptation efforts. My focus on water came about largely as a result of the Mauritius conference, where much of the discussion revolved around the impact of climate change on water supply, agricultural productivity and food supply.

As often happens, however, major events have the power to disrupt our best intentions. Even in a blog such as this, I cannot ignore the intense global upheaval that is currently taking place in Egypt, where disparate factions of society are fighting for the power to monopolize Egyptian life. The concept of “live and let live” is sort of disappearing from the lexicon, as hundreds of people are being killed.

The second event that drew my attention had nothing to do with the first, and was, instead, a pleasant event. One of my relatives that lives in Germany, with whom I had lost contact with for more than 40 years, came with his wife to visit us in New York. To make full use of the occasion, I decided to try to update my family tree to incorporate his branch, about which I knew very little. While doing that, something interesting started to emerge. Family trees need constant updating – adding marriages, births, deaths, divorces, etc… More than that, even if we are satisfied with what we have documented, the family tree is never complete. Every marriage adds a potential link to a new tree, and more often than not, that new tree is itself undergoing constant revision. The only “complete” tree set is the global population – all of us.

My desire to construct my family tree stemmed in large part from my Holocaust history, which resulted in the murder of most of my family, with survivors setting down roots in a wide geographic spread that spans the globe. My objective was not to try to trace my ancestry to Adam and Eve but rather, to try to establish the family connections to all of the living members of my family. I was fortunate; both in that the computer technology that facilitates the gathering of such information has developed, and that some members of an older generation are still alive, and able to share some of the crucial links.

It is not unreasonable to assume that the same motivation could potentially expand to include all of humanity. The software is not there yet, but we can identify the requirements. This is not exactly the “Six Degrees of Separation”  concept, but it is closely related. Once accomplished, everyone would know in detail how he or she is connected to everybody else. I am fully aware that access to elementary education is not yet universal, and that most people have more immediate concerns in their lives, but I find the possible consequences fascinating.

If, for one reason or another, we wanted to kill somebody, we would know in great detail that we were killing a relative. This knowledge would obviously not eliminate murder from society.  The Wall Street Journal compiled murder statistics in the US in the decade of 2000 – 2010. The relation between victims and killers are given below.

Murder RelationshipsOne can set the parameters at will of what constitutes family, but a very significant fraction of these individual murders can be characterized as in-family. Additional familiarity with the family connections between victims and killers, therefore, would probably have little to no effect here.

On the other hand, awareness of family connections might have a major effect on mass killings and genocides. In the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 the Hutus depicted the Tutsis as “cockroaches,” and the ensuing massacre was portrayed as a mass disinfection. The revelation that many of the Hutus and Tutsis had family connections might have brought some new light to the situation, since if one group consisted of “cockroaches,” then so did the other. Similarly, in the case of the Nazis’ call to exterminate the Jews and Gypsies, realization of family connections might have made a significant change in the political landscape.

Moving away from the discussion of mass killings to instead address today’s environmental issues, the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) phenomenon is a major obstacle that prevents us from taking action to mitigate causes of environmental destruction. I have discussed this throughout my blogs (go to the search box and type NIMBY for the full list). It is defined as a belief that, while certain actions are necessary for the common good, others should have to implement them (elsewhere), so that the group in question would not have to get involved. One of the best examples of this has been the reaction to wind turbines, which generate electricity by utilizing the wind energy (and indirectly, solar energy). The general response has been “build them somewhere else, so that they’re somebody else’s problem.” It is easy to shunt off such a necessary burden onto a group of strangers; less easy when it comes to family and acquaintances. If the distinction between “them” and “us” were to disappear, the NIMBY motivation might go away as well, leaving all of us better equipped to collectively take care of our common assets.

It is a dream that will not come true within my lifetime, but it is a dream worth dreaming.

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The Many Faces of Sovereign Islands

Posted on August 13, 2013 by climatechangefork

My July 30th blog described Mauritius as a country concerned with climate change, as evidenced by its hosting our conference on the topic, and the creation of its own task force, “Maurice Ile Durable” (MID) to examine all aspects of government in terms of preparations for climate change, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation. The influx of large, violent storms is partially associated with climate change, especially when regarding their frequency and intensity, both of which are expected to increase. But in spite of one such catastrophic storm the country recently experienced, the general feeling appears to be that Mauritius is not in immediate danger of being swept under a rising sea in the near future.

This attitude is different from that taken by other sovereign islands. Cases in point: the Maldives, whose president, Mohammed Nasheed, has taken a leadership role in trying to wake up the world to the dangers of climate change, recently going so far as to hold a cabinet meeting underwater, and the Kiribati government, which is pursuing a “migrating with dignity” policy, by  encouraging its people to adapt by moving to safer grounds in Australia. One of the main reasons for the different attitudes is the difference in topography. Most of the populations of Kiribati and the Maldives live in a flood zone, with no place to move. As the March flood showed, most of Mauritius’ population also lives in a flood zone, however the middle of the country is endowed with mountains more than 2000 ft high.

The outlook on flooding vs. moving is not the only one with disparity among island nations.  Another difference in attitude became evident to us before we arrived in Mauritius, during our visit to Madagascar, where we went to see the lemurs, for which the island is so widely known. Madagascar is a very poor country, whose historically unstable government recently gained notoriety when an army-led group ousted the elected president.

The conversation with our driver quickly turned to the present political situation. I posed a question about the prospects of finding off-shore oil and gas along the very long shore line. He responded that, according to many, this was one of the main reasons for the coup d’état. Everybody wanted a piece of the profit. It is starting become clear that while the nature of islands leaves them vulnerable to flooding and other adverse impacts of climate change, it also means that they inherently have a perimeter of shoreline; something which gives them plentiful off-shore exploration rights for oil and gas. As the technologies of off-shore exploration and drilling have improved, so too have the chances of findings. I decided to compile list of the haves and have nots, using a list of sovereign islands from Wikipedia and a compilation of data for the latest oil and gas production of these island from the US Energy Information Administration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we can see from the table, the three islands that I have mentioned are listed as lacking any oil or gas production capabilities. However, databases on this issue are becoming obsolete very quickly. Meanwhile, although I cannot speak to any current oil or gas exploration in Kiribati or Mauritius, Madagascar is reported to sit on a potential of 17 billion barrels of oil, with 3 billion recoverable reserves.

New findings of oil and gas, in countries formerly without them, can create mixed voices in terms of mitigating climate change; ones that sound very similar to those that we hear in the rest of the world.

Stay tuned.

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Citizen of the World?

Posted on August 6, 2013 by climatechangefork

On my way back from Mauritius (see July 3 blog) we passed through Israel to attend a family wedding and meet up with some old friends. During a pleasant dinner with some of these good friends, I was asked if I was planning on returning to live in Israel.

I arrived in Israel in 1945 with my mother (three years before the creation of the state) as a Holocaust refugee. I grew up there, I was educated there, I fought in some of the wars there, my son was born there, and even though I have lived in the United States since 1969, I still feel Israeli. My wife is American born and my whole family, all of which lives in the United States now, is proud and happy to be American. I hold both Israeli and American citizenships, and I share their pride.

Unavoidably, any conversation about Israel has to address the political climate. My friends, my wife and I all believe that a political agreement with the Palestinians to create a Palestinian state side by side with Israel is absolutely necessary and the conditions to facilitate such a solution must be created in the near future.

My answer to my friends’ question was that I am happy where I am and that I cannot see myself returning to Israel to retire. They were not surprised by my answer, having decided that I have become a “true” American. I responded with a “declaration” that I actually think of myself neither as an American, nor an Israeli, but rather as a “Citizen of the World.” I explained that I dearly love both Israel and the United States, but I have come to realize that the planet that we live in is in peril and this affects all of us.

I left the dinner with a bad taste in my mouth. “Citizen of the World???” What was I thinking? It sounds bombastic and meaningless. I was absolutely convinced that everyone around the table felt the same way.

I came back home, and as I was going through the New York Times, one of the first things that popped up was an obituary and front page article on Garry Davis (NYT-July 29) by Margaut Fox: “Garry Davis, Man of No Nation Who Saw One World of No War, Dies at 91.” Before reading it, I was completely ignorant about his existence and the movement that he was promoting.

According to the article, Garry Davis renounced his American citizenship on May 25, 1948. He remained stateless until his death. This self-inflicted status gave him some difficulties in traveling, but he managed to work around them. His theory was that most wars are caused by sovereign states, so, if we were to eliminate sovereign states, we would ensure peace. Renouncing his citizenship was the first step in that direction. He was regarded as the Dean of the “One World” movement that, according to the article, can count approximately one million members. He referred to himself not as a person without a country, but instead, as one without a nationality. According to the article, adherents to the One World movement have included some very prominent people, among them, Albert Schweitzer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Einstein and E. B. White.

I was not aware of any of this at the time of my short dinner chat in Israel. However, learning of it didn’t make me feel better; I am not inclined now to join the “One World” movement and renounce my two citizenships. My concern during the discussion was not for world peace; instead, I looked to our ability to take care of the planet, focusing on climate change. If the planet starts to become uninhabitable, things all around us will get ugly, both physically and politically.

At present, world governance is based on sovereign states. Only sovereign states can enforce rules and regulations, including those agreed upon in international treaties.

Abolishing sovereign states would not eliminate wars. Some of the most destructive wars in recent history didn’t take place between sovereign states, but were instead civil wars or wars focused on international terrorism. Renouncing nationalities would only make such wars worse. Abolishing states and relying on “World Government” would remove any form of control from the hands of the constituents and make governing impossible.

During my recent travels in Southern Africa, I observed how much of a difference the presence or absence of effective government made in how people were doing. Four countries that we visited during our recent trip will serve to illustrate the importance of functioning government to the well being of the people and the environment: Botswana, Mauritius, Zimbabwe and Madagascar. Botswana and Zimbabwe are land locked states, while Madagascar and Mauritius are islands in the Indian Ocean. All four countries got their independence from the colonial powers after 1960, starting out as very poor nations with little infrastructure. Botswana and Mauritius are now flourishing, middle income, fast growing countries, with stable governments. Zimbabwe and Madagascar, meanwhile, are failed states (this is a commonly accepted term there), whose income/capita is not much different from the corresponding data from when they first got their independence. (One can get more data about the economic performance of all four countries at the World Bank website).

In the coming blogs, I will focus on environmental impacts in some of these countries and the mitigation and adaptation steps that are being taken. The performance of the local governments will play a central role. There is no question that the present state of world governance can be improved, mainly through the establishment of fair enforcement mechanisms to preserve the physical characteristics (both regional and planetary) that are essential to our collective survival. Abolishing national government would have the reverse effect.

Comment on a potentially game changing Op-Ed in Thursday’s (August 1, 2013) New York Times.

It is rare for me to post a comment about a current event after having already written my blog. It is even more uncommon for me to agree with every word of an Op-Ed written by four prominent Republicans. Thursday’s Op-Ed in the New York Times, “A Republican Case for Climate Action” by William D. Ruckelshaus, Lee M. Thomas, William K. Reilly and Christine Todd Whitman,  marked just such an occasion.

Republicans have occupied the White House for 20 of the 31 years since the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The four writers of the Op-Ed collectively held the office of the Administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency for 12 of these years. Anne Burford, the first administrator of the EPA under President Reagan, died in 2004. As they and a growing percentage of the population concede, the numbers with regards to climate change speak for themselves. The acknowledged need for domestic and international action to mitigate climate change is no longer divided neatly between our two major political parties. Hopefully this will lead to progress on more than just a dogmatic note.

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Back From Mauritius

Posted on July 30, 2013 by climatechangefork

I am back from the climate change conference in Mauritius (See my July 2 blog for the full program). I was away for almost a month in total – a long time on the road. I visited a few countries in southern Africa on my way to Mauritius, and on the way back, I made a detour through Israel, where I visited friends and attended to some family business. In the next few blogs I will detail some of my observations, starting here, with a short description of what I learned during the conference.

I have attended several conferences in the past. This one focused on adaptation to climate change in African countries. The most unique aspect of this conference was the relatively large participation of African researchers, including quite a few from Mauritius, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa. This was further emphasized by additional contributions from researchers in developed countries, who also focused their work on African countries.

A map of Mauritius is shown above. It is a small, beautiful island that serves as home to about 1.3 million people.

In Mauritius, the people are obviously aware of the dangers of Climate Change. But unlike other small islands such as the Maldives, where President Mohammed Nasheed held an underwater cabinet meeting to emphasize the existential danger, Mauritius didn’t view the danger as immediately threatening to its existence until recently. One of the reasons is the topography of the island that is shown on the map above. The Maldives, the planet’s lowest country, with the lowest natural highest point, faces an impending risk of total submersion. In contrast, the center of Mauritius consists of high mountains (the highest mountain, Piton de la Petite Rivière Noire, is 2700 ft high). The capital, Port-Louis (population – 138,000), is also surrounded by beautiful mountains. The photograph below was taken from the window of my hotel where the conference was held.

On March 30, 2013, however, the view was very different. The city experienced torrential flooding, with water coming from the surrounding mountains, and rendering the city almost invisible. Photographs of the flood are all over the internet.

The intensification of extreme weather events, that climate change is causing, didn’t escape the government’s attention; the impact was not much different from that which hurricane Sandy had made on the United States a few months earlier.

Up to that point, Mauritius’ attitude towards climate change was similar to that of most other countries. On September 4, 2009, the Prime Minister’s Office set up a Steering Committee, which was made up of representatives from various Ministries and Departments, members of the Academia and international development partners. The committee’s objectives were:

  1. to coordinate the “Maurice Ile Durable” (MID) (Mauritius Sustainable Island) project from a more holistic perspective
  2. to harmonize efforts in the MID endeavor, and
  3. to look into all aspects of sustainability.

The full report can be seen at the MID webpage.
On July 15, 2011, the Steering Committee was converted into the Commission on Maurice Ile Durable which operates under the aegis of the Prime Minister’s Office in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development and other stakeholders. The responsibility of the MID Commission is to ensure the finalization of the Action Plan on Maurice Ile Durable and its timely implementation. While the flooding has not ultimately made a direct change to policy initiatives, its effects have been visible in guiding conversations about the present and future of the country.

The Chair of the commission was one of the plenary speakers at the meeting. He recounted some of the steps that the MID has taken over the past few years, and summarized the report I mentioned above.

Other presentations focused on specific sections of the economy: mainly as it related to tourism and agriculture. Concerns for climate change’s predicted impact on tourism, for example, centered mostly on the changes to bio diversity, as well as on the quality of the beautiful beaches. The concern was that these changes, coupled with the vast array of competing tourist’s attractions all over the world, would discourage tourists from coming. The projected impact on agriculture through climate change’s impacts on weather patterns is a concern common to most countries; I will discuss it in a separate blog.

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