Worse than financial crunch

The world is heading for an "ecological credit crunch" far worse than the current financial crisis because humans are over-using the natural resources of the planet, an international study warns today.

The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species. As a result, we are running up an ecological debt of $4tr (£2.5tr) to $4.5tr every year - double the estimated losses made by the world's financial institutions as a result of the credit crisis - say the report's authors, led by the conservation group WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund. The figure is based on a UN report which calculated the economic value of services provided by ecosystems destroyed annually, such as diminished rainfall for crops or reduced flood protection. Read full article in THE GUARDIAN

Find out how you can reduce ecological footprint

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what it does to climate change

A Cantonese old saying goes “anything that walks, swims, crawls or flies with its back to heaven is edible”. I agree, mostly. I love eating meat. Korean galbi, wagyu beef from Kobe, spicy Portuguese chorizo, roasted lamb shoulder…

I also know that climate change is a real threat that affects all of us and that we can only overcome this challenge by doing something together, shoulder to shoulder. I am prepared to do my part. I just didn’t know that eating less meat is one step humanity can take in order to assist in tackling climate change challenges and threats.

Last week, UN climate change expert, Chairman of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and India’s seventh Nobel laureate Dr Rajendra Pachauri encouraged people to eat meat less and become vegetarians at least once a good to assist in solving global warming. Dr Pachauri argued that diet change was important because of the huge greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems - including habitat destruction - associated with rearing cattle and other animals. It was relatively easy to change eating habits compared to changing means of transport.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the meat production accounts for nearly a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. These are generated during the production of animal feeds, for example, while ruminants, particularly cows, emit methane, which is 23 times more effective as a global warming agent than carbon dioxide. The agency has also warned that meat consumption is set to double by the middle of the century. Read the full article in The Guardian. [Sung]

Shape of things to come

Some have argued that Katrina was not the only category 5 hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast and that the Gulf Coast has always been vulnerable to hurricanes, with or without global warming. What we do know is the physics of tropical hurricane and that it forms over warm ocean water. We also know that since the early 1950s, the average intensity of tropical storms has increased globally and that this trend correlates with the increase in average sea surface temperatures in the tropics.

Carlos Pascual and Strobe Talbott from the Brookings Institution also point out in their recent article titled “7 Years to Climate Midnight” that greenhouse gas emissions are raising the Earth's temperature and the Earth is on a trajectory to warm more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit by around mid-century and that exceeding that threshold could trigger a series of phenomena: Arable land will turn into desert, higher sea levels will flood coastal areas, and changes in the convection of the oceans will alter currents, such as the Gulf Stream, that determine regional weather patterns, Manhattan and Florida would be under water, while Nevada would have no water at all. Read "7 Years to Climate Midnight". [Sung]