Backing into Eden: Chapter 3 – The Hopeless Voice

This is not most of my friends or most of my conversations, but it’s a thread nonetheless.  Some days, I can even hear the same voice inside of me.  A still, small version of the hopeless voice, but a real one nonetheless.

It seemed like a good idea to just get this off of our chests.  If you don’t want to think about your fears, skip this entry and wait for the next one.  But if you need or want a chance to vent out the still small voice inside of you, feel free to let go in comments, or in your journal…

I have my own fears, and I’ll list my three biggest ones at the end of this entry.  But I decided to start by asking others.  At dinner recently, I asked the household sixteen year old what she fears about the future and the natural world.  One thing she said is that she’s afraid we will stay selfish – that we’ll think about immediate gratification instead of the long term, and that we’ll leave all of this for her generation or her children to solve.  Another fear was losing sustainability in a long list of things from animals in general to water to polar bears.  My partner expressed a fear of toxins.  “Whatever we leave behind could be ruined, could be contaminated.”  She had just heard about small nuclear reactors that were portable and is worried about spills.

I asked on Facebook, and people talked about how we’re poisoning the sea and compounding the damage by strewing it with plastic waste.  They talked about excess trash and water, and the dangers of big food.  The front cover of The Futurist magazine sports the headline “From Land Grabs to Resource Wars?  What the global competition for food, fuel, water, and other resources could mean for future security.”  Almost every day a weather-related tragedy somewhere makes headlines, and often kills people.  We are surrounded by bad news about our present that fills our view of the future with fear.

Here are my top three:

Nuclear War:  Perhaps this a product of the pointless climb under your desks, grab your ankles, and kiss you life goodbye drills I suffered as a child.  That was the 60’s.  Fifty years later, we’re still worrying. Israel is rumored to be contemplating nuke-tossing at Iran, which may be on the verge of nuclear capability.  North Korea is outright claiming to be targeting the part of the US where I live.  I am not – perhaps oddly – afraid of nuclear energy.  But I can vividly imagine a scenario where a small country in the Middle East or Africa tosses a bomb in a fit of anger, and then another one, and then another one….

Runaway Climate Change:  We don’t know where the tipping points are.  Over and over again, the wild world – the actual climate – is reacting faster than our models predict.  Sea ice is melting quicker than expected.  Methane is poised to outgas from the Arctic tundra or under the sea or both.  Probably both.  Yet we’re busy digging as much shale oil as possible out of the ground and burning it just because we can, and even though we know we shouldn’t. I feel a bit like the proverbial frog sitting in a pot of cool water while the heat is on, unable to feel the slow and inexorable rise in temperature.  Unlike the frog in the pot, if we keep the heat on long enough – do enough damage to the climate – we may no longer be able to help simply by turning off the heat.

Political Freeze:  We have it here in the United States in spades.  Climate change is getting very little ink other than as a threat.  Solutions are pilloried.  Global corporations appear to be doing more damage than good via lobbying here and outright control in other places.  Financial gain for the top trumps livability for the masses.  All can be sacrificed.  The Arab Spring is a messy, messy process with an uncertain outcome.  Mexico is almost a failed state, at least near the borders with the US and many major ports.  What we need is a world governance group that can broker global issues about toxins and overfishing and carbon; what we have is a sea captain chasing Japanese whalers, a few very rich men and women working across political boundaries (think Gates and Branson and others like them), and a multitude of environmental groups doing great work, but sometimes with more faith than science and far less data and money than they need.  In America at least, we’re making decisions inside the long shadow of  a huge mistrust of science.  Maybe one of the worst tipping points we already passed is when we elected George Bush and should have elected Al Gore.

So that’s what scares me.  Feel free to talk about the things that scare you or make you hear that still small voice of despair.  In the next post, we’ll talk more ways we may be able to make our responsibility for the Earth we live on work out a little better.

Backing into Eden: Chapter 4 – Tools for Gardening a World 

In previous essays I’ve covered the idea that we have decided to own almost all of the land on the Earth, and thus we have taken both individual and collective responsibility.  I’ve also discussed the many ways we already choose what happens on most of the land, from growing crops and livestock to living and building businesses, from establishing preserves to strip mining.  The latest entry was all about our fear that we may just not quite be up to that task.

But we can succeed, and there is already evidence of success.

First, wehave information.  In general, we know far more than ever about what ecosystems exist where and how they interact with each other.  We are developing data about how they might change as a result of environmental pressures and human management or mismanagement.  For example, river ecosystems are far better understood and monitored in the Pacific Northwest since specific goals were set for salmon recovery.

Between vastly-improved geographical information services, better sensor technology, an increase in the number of tagged animals, and the advent of big data, our ability to map the garden we live in is increasing exponentially.

As a middle-grade student, I was in the 4H program and showed rabbits and horses at regional fairs.  There was never any talk of computers – just healthy feet and coats, feed options, and techniques to look good for the judges.  Today’s 4-H clubs have GIS (electronic mapping and modeling) tools available to them to help their communities with emergency preparedness, and active programs to help them understand wind and water.  The organization Conservation International showcases some of the GIS work that is being done on a global basis.

Second, we have a framework in which to make decisions. Not a perfect one, but a place to start.  Between the UN, Davos, multinational corporations and NGO’s, and the global information web, we have much of what we need and we are, in fact, using it well from time to time.  There’s a long way to go, but there is a path forward.

I read rather widely in order to support my thinking about this blog series, and one of the books I have used is “The God Species,” by Mark Lynas.  This book specifically explores our current world in light of work done at the Stockholm Environment Institute that explores planetary boundaries research.  Take 18 minutes to understand this important research and listen to an excellent TED talk on the subject. John Rockstrom on Planetary Boundaries at TED

I’m in my early fifties.  Throughout my life, I’ve seen many changes in the way we treat animals.  While some have been bad (the industrialization of egg farms, for one example), there is a relentless social pressure to gain more rights for animals and to treat them better. This is necessary if we want the commercial food chain to produce healthy meals for us.  To take it a step further, there is a growing movement to grant animals “personhood.”  This has already been done in some places for great apes and is being discussed for other animals.  The more we actually learn about animals, the less any form of cruelty seems acceptable.  Dolphins call each other by name.   Dogs understand fair play.  Elephants have complex and matriarchal family structures.  From better rules and laws about simple animal cruelty to more rights, there are serious changes happening in many countries to improve animal rights.

Third, we are gaining the global will to care for the planet.  It is one thing to have empathy and another to do something about it.  Governments all along the East Coast of the United States are working to figure out how to design more barriers to rising seawater after Sandy.  A recent USA Today Poll shows Americans are getting back around to believing that climate change matters.  Reports suggest that China is about to enact a carbon tax.  Climate change is not the only planetary boundary, but it has gotten far more media attention than the others.  Still, I meet more people lately who are also aware of the current rate of extinction, of the dangers of chemical poisons, and of ocean acidification.  Yes, I know that we aren’t doing nearly enough yet.  But there is real progress in the tools we have available to us.  In the next few chapters, I’ll dig a little deeper into once subject at a time.

Backing in Eden: Chapter 5 – Big Data

I write in the evenings and in the early mornings.  During the day, I’m a Chief Information Officer.  In my case, that means I’m responsible for the data and information systems for the City of Kirkland, Washington, in the USA.  The topic of the year for people in my business has moved from “cloud” to “big data.”  For those not immersed in technology on a daily basis, that means that a lot of data is now available on the Internet.  Data is also collected in large private datasets.  This includes my Amazon shopping habits, but it also includes a lot of information about the Amazon rainforest.  This data is in what is called the cloud, which really means that a lot of it is accessible.  “Big Data” is all about making that data dance about and yield up its secrets.

This is necessary if we are going to manage our natural resources.

For example, just today, the IMF announced that it thinks energy prices are too low not only in the United States but in many other countries as well.  This conclusion was based on analysis of huge datasets about the cost of gasoline around the world, the cost of extraction and delivery, and the amount and types of tax subsidies.

In January of this year, NASA released an article that warns us about the rate of forest degradation in the Amazon because of droughts caused by climate change. The article is complete with illustrative maps.  Linked from the same page are related articles on climate change predictions and rates of de-forestation (which are getting much better).

About a month ago, I attended Microsoft Research’s Techfest “Day 0” where they let customers and press in to look at some of their work.  Imagine a grown-up version of a high-school science fair.  I watched a young man who was excited about an application he had developed.  The application mapped threats (such as poaching or loss of habitat) on top habitat locations and also identified species on the “red list” of endangered species.  It accessed multiple data sets from many locations to create the single view of the world.  A few years ago, this information would have been hard to locate, the necessary data would have been invisible to most people (hidden behind corporate and government firewalls) and it would have been almost impossible to get big enough data pipes to access the data from different places across the world.

Yesterday, I was back on the Microsoft campus and I saw Excel being used to process huge datasets without almost no secret arcane computer-speak required.

Accessible big data tools means we are on our way to being able to learn some of the many things we need to know to manage ecosystems:

• We’ll understand what happens at the edges of reserves and be better able to protect them so that natural processes inside of reserves can remain as undisturbed as possible.


• We’ll be able to show the affects of various farming experiments.  For example, we might illustrate how GMO crops actually affect other crops (good and bad), and see the affect of GMO crops on public health data and economic indicators.


• We’ll be able to track species movement due to climate change and predict possible extinctions better than we can today (which will let us make choices about whether or not to intervene, and how to intervene if we choose to).


• We’ll be able to actually model the various laws that govern private property use.  This is a first step to modifying rights to support worldwide health (I never said this would be easy!).


• We’ll be able to combine datasets in new ways, many of which we haven’t even thought about yet.  Perhaps it would be interesting to look at disease patterns compared to insect populations inside of metropolitan areas, or to compare air quality to disease vectors in mice all over the world.


• We might map algal blooms and manatee deaths in Florida against changes in currents and surface water temperatures across the world, and run that across historical data to verify assumptions and against climate models about the future to predict mass mortality in manatees.

Big data in this context is a tool for understanding the natural world. We’ll be able to grasp cause and effect more closely, and to use actual information to help us drive hard political decisions.  Yes, I know it’s not as simple as I’m making it sound.  Verifiable data quality is going to matter a lot, as is ways to share and explain the lessons we learn.  But nevertheless, I am amazed at the possibilities.  I grew up before cell phones and in the first technology job I held, we ran a whole city on less information processing capability than I have in my watch these days.

Big data is going to drive change as fast as the Internet did, and faster than other change drivers like 3D printing and nanotechnology.  Costs are plummeting.  Speed is increasing exponentially.  Humans are curious, and this is going to be a fabulous tool in the fight to maintain our planet.

Links:

Linked Brazilian Amazon Rainforest:  http://linkedscience.org/data/linked-brazilian-amazon-rainforest/

Amazon showing signs of degradation due to climate change, Nasa warns, Jonathon Watts, Guardian.co.uk, January 18, 2013:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/18/amazon-rainforest-climate-change-nasa

National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis list of Ecological and Spatial Data Sources: http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/data

The IUCN Redlist of Threatened Species: http://www.iucnredlist.org

IMF:  Gas prices don’t reflect true costs, NPR, March 28th: http://www.npr.org/2013/03/28/175550949/imf-gas-prices-dont-reflect-true-costs