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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The Burning Question
  • Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:34:11 -0700


The Burning Question
Tom Engelhardt
Editor of TomDispatch.com
February 17, 2009 | 03:59 PM (EST)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-engelhardt/the-burning-question_b_167670.h
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It turns out that you don't want to be a former city dweller in rural parts
of southernmost Australia, a stalk of wheat in China or Iraq, a soybean in
Argentina, an almond or grape in northern California, a cow in Texas, or
almost anything in parts of east Africa right now. Let me explain.

As anyone who has turned on the prime-time TV news these last weeks knows,
southeastern Australia has been burning up. It's already dry climate has
been growing ever hotter. "The great drying," Australian environmental
scientist Tim Flannery calls it. At its epicenter, Melbourne recorded its
hottest day ever this month at a sweltering 115.5 degrees, while
temperatures soared even higher in the surrounding countryside. After more
than a decade of drought, followed by the lowest rainfall on record, the
eucalyptus forests are now burning. To be exact, they are now pouring vast
quantities of stored carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas considered largely
responsible for global warming, into the atmosphere.

In fact, everything's been burning there. Huge sheets of flame, possibly
aided and abetted by arsonists, tore through whole towns. More than 180
people are dead and thousands homeless. Flannery, who has written
eloquently about global warming, drove through the fire belt, and reported:

"It was as if a great cremation had taken place... I was born in
Victoria, and over five decades I've watched as the state has changed. The
long, wet and cold winters that seemed insufferable to me as a boy vanished
decades ago, and for the past 12 years a new, drier climate has established
itself... I had not appreciated the difference a degree or two of extra
heat and a dry soil can make to the ferocity of a fire. This fire was
different from anything seen before."


Australia, by the way, is a wheat-growing breadbasket for the world and its
wheat crops have been hurt in recent years by continued drought.

Meanwhile, central China is experiencing the worst drought in half a
century. Temperatures have been unseasonably high and rainfall, in some
areas, 80% below normal; more than half the country's provinces have been
affected by drought, leaving millions of Chinese and their livestock
without adequate access to water. In the region which raises 95% of the
country's winter wheat, crop production has already been impaired and is in
further danger without imminent rain. All of this represents a potential
financial catastrophe for Chinese farmers at a moment when about 20 million
migrant workers are estimated to have lost their jobs in the global
economic meltdown. Many of those workers, who left the countryside for
China's booming cities (and remitted parts of their paychecks to rural
areas), may now be headed home jobless to potential disaster. A Wall Street
Journal report concludes, "Some scientists warn China could face more
frequent droughts as a result of global warming and changes in farming
patterns."

Globe-jumping to the Middle East, Iraq, which makes the news these days
mainly for spectacular suicide bombings or the politics of American
withdrawal, turns out to be another country in severe drought. Americans
may think of Iraq as largely desert, but (as we were all taught in high
school) the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the "fertile
crescent," are considered the homeland of agriculture, not to speak of
human civilization.

Well, not so fertile these days, it seems. The worst drought in at least a
decade and possibly a farming lifetime is expected to reduce wheat
production by at least half; while the coutry's vast marshlands, once
believed to be the location of the Garden of Eden, have been turned into
endless expanses of baked mud. That region, purposely drained by dictator
Saddam Hussein to tame rebellious "Marsh Arabs," is now experiencing the
draining power of nature.

Nor is Iraq's drought a localized event. Serious drought conditions extend
across the Middle East, threatening to exacerbate local conflicts from
Cyprus and Lebanon to Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel where this January
was reported to have been the hottest and driest in 60 years. "With less
than 2 months of winter left," Daniel Pedersen has written at the
environmental website Green Prophet, "the region has received only 6%-50%
of the annual average rainfall, with the desert areas getting 30% or less."

Leaping continents, in Latin America, Argentina is experiencing "the most
intense, prolonged and expensive drought in the past 50 years," according
to Hugo Luis Biolcati, the president of the Argentine Rural Society. One of
the world's largest grain exporters, it has already lost five billion
dollars to the drought. Its soybeans -- the country is the third largest
producer of them -- are wilting in the fields; its corn -- Argentina is the
world's second largest producer -- and wheat crops are in trouble; and its
famed grass-fed herds of cattle are dying -- 1.5 million head of them since
October with no end in sight.

Dust Bowl Economics

In our own backyard, much of the state of Texas -- 97.4% to be exact -- is
now gripped by drought, and parts of it by the worst drought in almost a
century. According to the New York Times, "Winter wheat crops have failed.
Ponds have dried up. Ranchers are spending heavily on hay and feed pellets
to get their cattle through the winter. Some wonder if they will have to
slaughter their herds come summer. Farmers say the soil is too dry for
seeds to germinate and are considering not planting." Since 2004, in fact,
the state has yoyo-ed between the extremities of flood and drought.

Meanwhile, scientists predict that, as global warming strengthens, the
American southwest, parts of which have struggled with varying levels of
drought conditions for years, could fall into "a possibly permanent state
of drought." We're talking potential future "dust bowl" here. A December
2008 U.S. Geological Survey report warns: "In the Southwest, for example,
the models project a permanent drying by the mid-21st century that reaches
the level of aridity seen in historical droughts, and a quarter of the
projections may reach this level of aridity much earlier."

And talking about drought gripping breadbasket regions, don't forget
northern California which "produces 50 percent of the nation's fruits, nuts
and vegetables, and a majority of [U.S.] salad, strawberries and premium
wine grapes." Its agriculturally vital Central Valley, in particular, is in
the third year of an already monumental drought in which the state has been
forced to cut water deliveries to farms by up to 85%.

Observers are predicting that it may prove to be the worst drought in the
history of a region "already reeling from housing foreclosures, the credit
crisis, and a plunge in construction and manufacturing jobs." January,
normally California's wettest month, has been wretchedly dry and the
snowpack in the northern Sierra Mountains, crucial to the state's water
supplies and its agricultural health, is at less than half normal levels.

Northern California, in fact, offers a glimpse of the havoc that the
extreme weather conditions scientists associate with climate change could
cause, especially when combined with other crises. In a Los Angeles Times
interview, new Secretary of Energy Steven Chu offered an eye-popping
warning (of a sort top government officials simply don't give) about what a
global-warming future might hold in store for California, his home state.
Interviewer Jim Tankersley summed up Chu's thoughts this way:

"California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the
century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act
to slow the advance of global warming... In a worst case... up to 90% of
the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage
system for water vital to agriculture. 'I don't think the American public
has gripped in its gut what could happen,' [Chu] said. 'We're looking at a
scenario where there's no more agriculture in California.' And, he added,
'I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going' either."


As for East Africa and the Horn of Africa, under the pressure of rising
temperatures, drought has become a tenacious long-term visitor. For East
Africa, the drought years of 2005-2006 were particularly horrific and now
Kenya, with the region's biggest economy, a country recently wracked by
political disorder and ethnic violence, is experiencing crop failures. An
estimated 10 million Kenyans may face hunger, even starvation, this year in
the wake of a poor harvest, lack of rainfall, and rising food prices; if
you include the drought-plagued Horn of Africa, 20 million people may be
endangered, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies.

Recently, climatologist David Battisti and Rosamond Naylor, director of
Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment,
published a study in Science magazine on the effect of extreme heat on
crops. They concluded, based on recent climate models and a study of past
extreme heat waves, that there was "a 90% chance that, by the end of the
century, the coolest temperatures in the tropics during the crop growing
season would exceed the hottest temperatures recorded between 1900 and
2006." According to the British Guardian, under such circumstances Battisti
and Naylor believe "[h]alf of the world's population could face severe food
shortages by the end of the century as rising temperatures take their toll
on farmers' crops... Harvests of staple food crops such as rice and maize
could fall by between 20% and 40% as a result of higher temperatures during
the growing season in the tropics and subtropics."

Not surprisingly, it's hard to imagine -- perhaps I mean swallow -- such an
extreme world, and so most of us, the mainstream media included, don't
bother to. That means certain potentially burning questions go not just
unanswered but unasked.

The Grapes of Wrath (Updated)

Mind you, what you've read thus far represents an amateur's eye view of
drought on our planet at this moment. It's hardly comprehensive. To give
but one example, Afghanistan has only recently begun to emerge from an
eight-year drought involving severe food shortages -- and, as journalist
Christian Parenti writes, it would need another "five years worth of
regular snowfall just to replenish its aquifers." Parenti adds: "As snow
packs in the Himalayan and Hindu Kush ranges continue to recede, the rivers
flowing from them will diminish and the economic situation in all of
Central Asia will deteriorate badly."

Nor is this piece meant to be authoritative, exactly because I know so
relatively little. Think of it as a reflection of my own frustration with
work not done elsewhere -- and, by the way, thank heavens for Google
University. Yes, Googling leaves you on your own, can be time-consuming,
and tends to lead to cul-de-sacs ("Nuggets end 17-year drought in
Orlando"), but what would we do without it? Thanks to good ol' G.U., anyone
can, for instance, check out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's Drought Information Center or its U.S. Drought Monitor, or
the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center and begin a
self-education.

Now let me explain why I even bothered to write this piece. It's true that,
if you're reading the mainstream press, each of the droughts mentioned
above has gotten at least some attention, several of them a fair amount of
attention (as well as some fine reporting), and the Australian fire storms
have been headlines globally for weeks. The problem is that (the
professional literature, the science magazines, and a few environmental
websites and blogs aside) no one in the mainstream media seems to have
thought to connect these dots or blots of aridity in any way. And yet it
seems a no-brainer that mainstream reporters should be doing just that.

After all, cumulatively these drought hotspots, places now experiencing
record or near-record aridity, could be thought of as representing so many
burning questions for our planet. And yet you can search far and wide
without stumbling across a mainstream American overview of drought in our
world at this moment. This seems, politely put, puzzling, especially at a
time when University College London's Global Drought Monitor claims that
104 million people are now living under "exceptional drought conditions."

Scientists generally agree that, as climate change accelerates throughout
this century (and no matter what happens from here on in, nothing will
evidently stop some form of acceleration), extreme weather of every sort,
including drought, will become ever more the planetary norm. In fact,
experts are suggesting that, as the Washington Post reported recently, "The
pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions,
because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly
than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing
feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems."

Now, no one can claim beyond all doubt that global warming is the cause of
any specific drought, or certainly the only cause anyway. As with the Texas
drought, a La NiƱa weather pattern in the Pacific is often mentioned as a
key causal factor right now. But the crucial point is what the present can
tell us about the impact of a global pattern of extreme weather, especially
extreme drought, on what will surely be a more extreme planet in the
relatively near future.

If global temperatures are on the rise and more heat means lower crop
yields, then you're talking about more Kenyas, and not just in Africa
either. You're probably also talking about desperation, upheaval, resource
conflicts, and mass out-migrations of populations, even -- if scientists
are right -- from the American Southwest. (And in case you don't think such
a thing can happen here, remember Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath or think
of any of Dorothea Lange's iconic photos of the "Okies" fleeing the
American dustbowl of the 1930s.)

Burning Questions

Right now, the global economic meltdown has massively depressed fuel prices
(key to farming, processing, and transporting most crops to market) and
commodity prices have generally fallen as well, including food prices.
Whatever the future economic weather, however, that is not likely to last.

So here's a burning question on my mind:

We're now experiencing the extreme effects of economic bad "weather" in the
wake of the near collapse of the global financial system. Nonetheless, from
the White House to the media, speculation about "the road to recovery" is
already underway. The stimulus package, for instance, had been dubbed the
"recovery bill," aka the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the
question of when we'll hit bottom and when -- 2010, 2011, 2012 -- a real
recovery will begin is certainly in the air.

Recently, in a speech in Singapore, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the
International Monetary Fund, suggested that the "world's advanced
economies" -- the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan -- were "already in
depression," and the "worst cannot be ruled out." This got little attention
here, but President Obama's comment at his first press conference that
delay on his stimulus package could lead to a "lost decade," as in Japan in
the 1990s (or, though it went unmentioned, the U.S. in the 1930s), made the
headlines.

If, indeed, this is "the big one," and does result in a "lost decade" or
more, here's what I wonder: Could the sort of "recovery" that everyone
assumes lies just over a recessive or depressive horizon not be there? What
if our lost decade lasts long enough to meet an environmental crisis
involving extreme weather -- drought and flood, hurricanes, typhoons, and
fire storms of unprecedented magnitude -- possibly in some of the
breadbasket regions of the planet? What will happen if the rising fuel
prices likely to come with the beginning of any economic "recovery" were to
meet the soaring food prices of environmental disaster? What kind of human
tsunami might that result in?

Once we start connecting some of today's drought dots, wouldn't it make
sense to try to connect a few of the prospective dots as well? After all,
if you begin to imagine what the worst might look like, you can also begin
to think about what might be done to mitigate it. Isn't that more sensible
than looking the other way?

If the kinds of hits regional agriculture is now taking from record-setting
drought became the future norm, wouldn't we then be bereft of our most
reassuring formulations in bad times? For example, the president spoke at
that press conference of our present moment as "the worst economic crisis
since the Great Depression." On an extreme planet, no such comforting
"since the..." would be available, nor would there be any historical road
map for what was coming at us, not if we had already run out of history.

Maybe the world we knew but scarce months ago is already, in some sense,
long gone. What if, after a lost decade, we were to find ourselves living
on another planet?

Feel free, of course, to ignore my burning questions. After all, I'm only
an amateur with the flimsiest of credentials from Google U. Still, I do
keep wondering when the media pros will finally pitch in, and what they'll
tell us is on that distant horizon, the one with the red glow.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation
Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory
Culture, a history of the American Age of Denial. He also edited The World
According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a
collection of some of the best pieces from his site and an alternative
history of the mad Bush years.





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