Tag Archives: Oceans

How much will income inequality matter if the world’s oceans cannot produce food?

From the article titled “Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists” that appeared in the April 9th Edition of the New York Times:

This is a huge, looming planetary crisis, and we are sticking our heads in the sand about it,” said Justin Marshall, the director of CoralWatch at Australia’s University of Queensland.

Bleaching occurs when high heat and bright sunshine cause the metabolism of the algae — which give coral reefs their brilliant colors and energy — to speed out of control, and they start creating toxins. The polyps recoil. If temperatures drop, the corals can recover, but denuded ones remain vulnerable to disease. When heat stress continues, they starve to death.

It seems unimaginable that future generations may not be able to experience the beauty of these incubators for the majority of sea-life. The graphic provided is, to say the least, eye-opening:

Source: NOAA, GEBCO as published in The New York Times
Source: NOAA, GEBCO as published in The New York Times

Plastic Pollution On Track to Surpass Fish By 2020 while ALEC Derails Legislation to Curb the Problem

Fund Balance has covered the damage done to the world’s ocean’s by discarded plastic at great length. Based on World Economic Forum projections more pieces of plastic will contaminate the world’s ocean than there are fish within it by 2050. Only about 5% of plastic is recycled. There is no system in place takes these plastic materials back. So after their use they pollute the ocean. Freshwater systems suffer as well. Plastic pollution interferes with every aspect of the world’s water ecosystem.

Screen Shot 2016-03-21 at 1.50.40 PM
Photo Credit. The US Environmental Protection Agency.

 

All countries to one extent or another experience effects from the way plastic damages fish by filling up their stomachs causing them to starve or killing them by ensnaring them and causing serious injuries and even early death. Nations like the US and China, whose livelihood and or protein sources are highly dependent on the ocean worry.

The World Economic Forum argues that innovation will be essential for the world’s oceans. Yet we all have reason to wonder if such innovation will be choked off before its can be launched. The shadow governance group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) promotes model legislation to prevent local governments from banning plastic bags. Such moves run counter to innovation and seek to create and coddle ALECs corporate backers and their monopolies, particularly the Petroleum Marketers who provide substantial funding for ALEC. Petroleum is used to make plastic. The authors the World Economic Forum study argue that plastic manufacturing should be decoupled from fossil fuels. This will require doable and currently in process innovation. Such efforts will create many new economies and industries, as opposed to protecting one from the competition such innovation would bring. Apparently ALEC is not interested in the health and well being of future generations. If it did, it could use its abundant resources to help innovation of healthy ways to manufacture plastic materials.

Source: World Economic Forum
Source: World Economic Forum

How can such groups claim to be focused on the future when they seek to continue to sell products that make the leave behind a badly damaged ocean for future generations? And what is the impact of such efforts to stifle common sense legislation to ban plastic bags on the drivers for innovation our way out of the plastic trap?

Excellent Video (2:51) On How CO2 is Acidifying & Warming Oceans

Without healthy oceans the food supply for future generations and their very existence are at risk. And we know that even if all carbon being released today from fossil fuels were to halt, the climate would continue to warm for some time. Kind of like how just because you see an iceberg it doesn’t mean that you have time to steer the ship clear.

Position Statement: Heed Scientific Consensus, Decarbonize Economy, Pair Policy Innovations with Technological Breakthroughs

By Walter Borden

Science and Sustainability

We at Fund Balance are concerned that the only mention of climate change in President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address was “The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change.”

President Obama, State of the Union address 2012.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences states, “The world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible. Impacts are already apparent and will increase.” Greenhouse gas (GHG) induced climate change is a clear and present threat to our civilization and way of life. Its continued politicization is dangerous. We accept the consensus of the world’s scientific community which is summarized well by the American Chemical Society:

Careful and comprehensive scientific assessments have clearly demonstrated that the Earth’s climate system is changing in response to growing atmospheric burdens of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and absorbing aerosol particles. (IPCC, 2007) Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for—and in many cases is already affecting—a broad range of human and natural systems. (NRC, 2010a) The potential threats are serious and actions are required to mitigate climate change risks and to adapt to deleterious climate change impacts that probably cannot be avoided. (NRC, 2010b, c).

We further acknowledge and accept the conclusions of our medical community. The American Medical Association (AMA) urges that we as a society confront the health issues of climate change now.

Scientific evidence shows that the world’s climate is changing and that the results have public health consequences. The AMA is working to ensure that physicians and others in health care understand the rise in climate-related illnesses and injuries so they can prepare and respond to them. The Association also is promoting environmentally responsible practices that would reduce waste and energy consumption.

We see that escalating carbon emissions are seriously damaging our oceans depleting them of oxygen and acidification. Carbon dioxide emissions caused by human activities over the last century have increased the acidity of the world’s oceans far beyond the range of natural variations, which may significantly impair the ability of marine organisms to live. We realize that rapid deforestation increasingly impedes nature’s ability to buffer carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere and thus keep our air suitable for breathing.

The time is now for President Obama and Congress to heed science and pursue evidence based policy formation in addressing the real and gathering dangers of Climate Change. Putting a price on carbon is a critical first step.

Continue reading Position Statement: Heed Scientific Consensus, Decarbonize Economy, Pair Policy Innovations with Technological Breakthroughs

The Gulf Oil Spill, Financial Engineering and The Law of Unintended Consequences

Burning Oil in the Gulf

The financial crisis that was precipitated in 2007 by structured finance (credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations et al.) parallels the Deepwater Horizon spill in important ways. And indeed, the very first credit default swap was engineered to offset Exxon’s exposure to remediation, fines and legal costs resulting from the Valdez spill.

Experts and regulators from both industries acknowledge the lack of proven methodologies both for assessing the risks of derivatives and the risks of deepwater and ultra-deep water drilling platforms.

Both are examples of advanced engineering methods applied in advance of thorough testing and risk assessment.  The practitioners, policymakers, and stakeholders involved with deploying these systems either ignored or failed to understand the risk and potential economic impacts of these technologies on the world in which we live. As a consequence, their customers, constituents and the natural world have suffered greatly.

Both disasters are examples of the lax enforcement of existing regulations and the failure or unwillingness of regulators to keep up with the astonishing systemic complexity that emerges from 21st century technology, whether software or hardware. For example, Warren Buffet famously called CDO and CDS’s, or derivatives, “financial weapons of mass destruction” and sought recently to protect Berkshire Hathaway’s holdings of certain tranches of derivatives, from new regulations on how to value them, since they are indeed so hard to value. As we can see, like deep-water drilling, the practitioners  and owners of these sophisticated technical financial instruments find them incomprehensible as well.

Interestingly, the SEC’s indictment of Goldman Sachs over its derivatives strategy and the havoc it caused dominated headlines in the weeks preceding the tragedy at Deepwater Horizon.

Economy Cube - Can This Puzzle Be Solved?

Until the government enacts legislation without multiple loopholes, euphemistically referred to as compromises, the public will continue to suffer and subsidize the failures of  untested and unproven technologies when they fail. One hears frequently about how top tier investment banks and petrochemical conglomerates attract the best and brightest. At Fund Balance, we want to see this amazing pool of human capital utilized to developing a sustainable economic future.

Capital Preservation: Protecting the Ocean’s Collapsing Fisheries

Mainstream media coverage of the critical depletion of key fish populations – and the serious economic threat it represents – echoes a key refrain at Fund Balance. Time Magazine covers how climate change is warming oceans and thus reducing their ability to support life, and CNN.com has a post by Fedele Bauccio addressing ways to halt overfishing.

Blue Fin Tuna

In addition the U.N. recently released new findings and recommendations for how humanity can decelerate the rapid depletion of the ocean’s biological capital.  Some key points:

  • Blue Fin Tuna populations have dropped by 83% in the past 30 years.
  • The annual 27 billion dollars in government subsidies to fishing, mostly in rich countries, is misguided since the entire value of fish caught is only 85 billion dollars.
  • As a result, fishing fleet capacity is 50 to 60 percent higher than it should be.
  • About 20 million workers will be displaced by ending these subsidies and thus retraining will be required.
  • Fish populations can rebound quickly if no-fishing zones are expanded and their limits enforced; for example, by allowing tuna to live twice as long as they currently do, they are able on average to produce twice as many eggs.

We hope that the ongoing Gulf Coast disaster heralds a new time – one where:

  • The false dichotomy between ecology and economy in the public mind is finally eliminated.
  • Government and industry realize that an environment where pollution and unchecked exploitation are controlled and tightly regulated is an environment that supports healthy economic growth.
  • People and governments vigorously address the fact that Climate Change is not the only impact of fossil fuel extraction and combustion, and that “market-based” strategies like cap and trade must be combined with other, precautionary and complementary policies.
  • The public consciousness is imprinted permanently with the understanding that drawing down capital at a rate that exceeds one’s ability to replace it is economic and biological folly at best and suicide at worst, whether of banks or fisheries.

Reversing the Expansion of Dead Zones in the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay

Fund Balance has been examining the Dead Zones occurring in coastal and estuarial zones over the last year. Their magnitude is striking. Their damage to ocean ecosystems, seafood supplies and business is severe. And they are connected to vital food supply economies in the Midwest. Nitrogenous run-off from fertilizer used in large scale agriculture binds up and removes oxygen in the Gulf.

Does it have to be one set of regional American economic interests over another? The answer is no. For example, research performed at Dauphin Island Sea Lab off the coast of Alabama develops “resource management strategies which will foster the wise stewardship of diminishing natural resources”. There are ways that such principles are being applied in the Midwest along the Mississippi river. The book, “From the Corn Belt to the Gulf” (Nassauer, Santelmann, and Scavia, eds., Resources for the Future Press), details how farmers and industrial agricultural operations could reduce the amount of nitrogen flowing into the Gulf of Mexico by 40 percent. And it is increasingly clear that by planting specific types of grasses and engineering buffers, grain production in the great American Midwest does not have to contract in order for coastal economies to thrive.

Scientists and policy-makers in the Midwest have been at the forefront on this work. The Science Museum of Minnesota has produced an excellent presentation on the Deadzone in the Gulf of Mexico.  Fund Balance is working with policy-makers and bankers on our capital markets strategy for dealing with this issue in Washington, DC.

The Blue Economy: Inaction at Doha and the Rise of Dead Zones

This past week, countries meeting in Doha at the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species voted down a proposal by Monaco and the United States to ban international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna. The species, Thunnus Thynnus, is spiraling toward extinction, and is listed as endangered by the U.N. and every major international conservancy group.

This outcome underscores the need for policy makers and those charged with execution of policy to factor in the serious crisis that the world’s oceans and riverine systems face: our Blue Economy in peril.

Dead Zone Remote Sensing Imagery: Sannich Inlet off coast of Vancouver, British Columbia

A major issue for the world’ s coastal regions are the rise of Dead Zones. These vast expanses of ocean contain oxygen levels that are too low to support life outside of algal blooms. The Gulf of Mexico Dead

Zone is the size of New Jersey, or approximately 22, 608 square kilometers. The hypoxic state of these dead zones is caused by run-off from fertilizers used in industrial agriculture. Some recent informal polling at i-say.com conducted by Fund Balance gives some hope that the issue registers with the public. In addition, Fund Balance learned from several Iowan farm ope

rators about their efforts to reduce their run off: from  relocating feed lots farther away from rivers, to applying buffers made of specific nitrogen loving indigenous plants and compounds of gravel and sand. Many have realized economic gains from reducing nitrogen application to crops and benefited from increased production. Informative coverage on these Dead Zones can be found at Link TV.

Demarcation from living to dead zone off the coast of North Carolina

Such activity makes important steps forward. These actions require increased attention from agronomists, urban planners, policy makers and consumers. Just last week major media expanded its coverage of Dead Zones off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington. Such man-made disasters unfold daily in the Chesapeake Bay as well as in within coastal regions across the globe.

Fund-balance covers the Blue Economy: As oceans fall ill, Washington bureaucrats squabble

WASHINGTON — Off the coast of Washington state , mysterious algae mixed with sea foam have killed more than 8,000 seabirds, puzzling scientists. A thousand miles off California , researchers have discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling vortex roughly twice the size of Texas filled with tiny bits of plastic and other debris.

Every summer a dead zone of oxygen-depleted water the size of Massachusetts forms in the Gulf of Mexico ; others have been found off Oregon and in the Chesapeake Bay , Lake Erie and the Baltic and Black seas. Some studies indicate that North Pole seawater could turn caustic in 10 years, and that the Southern Ocean already may be saturated with carbon dioxide.

A recent bird kill off the coast of Washington state came without warning, said Jane Lubchenco , the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration . “There will be more surprises than that,” she said.

The danger signals are everywhere, some related to climate change and greenhouse gases and others not:

— Every eight months, 11 million gallons of oil run off the nation’s roads and driveways into waters that eventually reach the sea, the Pew Oceans Commission said in 2003. That’s the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez-size oil spill.

— Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the oceans have absorbed 525 billion tons of carbon dioxide. They’re now absorbing about 22 million tons of carbon dioxide a day. As that happens, the oceans become more acidic, threatening the marine food chain. The acidity could eat away the shells of such animals as the petropod, a nearly microscopic snail with a calcium carbonate covering that’s eaten by krill, salmon and whales.

— More than 60 percent of the nation’s coastal rivers and bays are moderately to severely degraded by nutrient runoff from products such as fertilizer, creating algae blooms that affect the kelp beds and grasses that are nurseries for many species of fish.

Even that doesn’t tell the entire story, as competing uses for the sea multiply. Traditional ones such as fishing and shipping are competing with offshore aquaculture farms. On the energy front, it’s no longer just oil and gas drilling. There are plans for deepwater wind farms and tidal and wave power-generating projects.

As the grim news mounts, a storm is brewing in Washington, D.C. , over who should oversee oceans policies. A White House task force has recommended creating a National Ocean Council that would develop and implement national ocean policy and include the secretaries of state, defense, agriculture, interior, health and human services, labor, commerce, transportation and homeland security.

It also would include the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget , the administrators of NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency , the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission . Plus the president’s advisers on national security, homeland security, domestic policy and economic policy. The chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy would head the council.

However, NOAA, the nation’s primary ocean agency, which includes the National Ocean Service, the nation’s premier science agency for oceans and coasts; the National Marine Fisheries Service, which manages living marine resources; the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research , which studies climate, weather and air quality; and the National Weather Service — is missing from the task force’s list.

“I am mystified why NOAA has been exempted,” said Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe , the top Republican on the subcommittee.

“It was a surprise,” Sen. Maria Cantwell , D- Wash. , said in an interview. “I didn’t know it would be this sensitive.”

Cantwell chairs the oceans subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee . Her panel held a hearing on the issue last week.

“NOAA is the nation’s primary ocean agency,” NOAA administrator Lubchenco told the subcommittee. “Our name says it all.”

Created in 1970, NOAA does everything from issuing daily weather forecasts and severe storm warnings to monitoring the climate and managing fisheries. It includes a satellite office and a research arm. It operates two geostational satellites that monitor the Earth and a fleet of research ships that monitor the oceans.

Instead of being a freestanding agency like NASA or the EPA , however, NOAA is part of the Commerce Department . The commerce secretary would be a member of the National Ocean Council , but Cantwell and Snowe said that wasn’t good enough.

“It’s not the same,” Cantwell said, adding that the commerce secretary has far broader responsibilities than just oceans.

In recommending the creation of a National Ocean Council , the White House task force noted the web of federal, state, tribal, local and international regulations and interests and found a need for “high-level direction and guidance from a clearly designated and identifiable authority.”

The nation’s oceans, coastline and Great Lakes are regulated by 140 laws administered by 20 federal agencies, in what’s been called a “Swiss cheese” of overlapping authorities and sometimes conflicting missions.

The task force made its proposal for a National Ocean Council in an interim report released in September. A final report is due early next year.

Whatever its composition, one challenge for the council will be what’s called “marine spatial planning,” ocean zoning, or the marine equivalent of urban planning.

“It’s going to be a difficult process,” Nancy Sutley , the chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality , said during the Senate hearing. “We need to do it from the bottom up.”

Native American tribes and groups such as those that represent sport fishermen warned that plans have to be developed regionally because a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work.

A recent example of marine spatial planning involved the Coast Guard , NOAA and other agencies working to reroute shipping lanes near Cape Cod to minimize the chances of vessels colliding with North Atlantic right whales, but even that came with an unexpected twist.

“We were going to move the lanes into a site where there was an application for an offshore LNG plant,” said Adm. Thad Allen , the Coast Guard commandant, referring to liquefied natural gas.