Oceans without Fish

Bluefin Tuna on the High Seas

When I was in college in the 1970s, it was unthinkable that the oceans could be defeated by mankind—polluted and emptied of fish within our lifetimes. The oceans are massive, covering over 70% of the planet’s surface and containing 97% of its water. They are so powerful they sit atop all the factors that influence climate and weather patterns, and its coastal surf manifests such awesome power that it is both feared and loved as a summer playground.

More than half of the world’s oceans are over 9800’ deep. The Mariana Trench is over 6 miles deep. Although less than 10% of the ocean has been explored, over 230,000 marine species are known to inhabit it. Whether we live on a beach in Provincetown, Rhode Island or on a mountainside near Denver, Colorado, the health of the oceans affects the quality of our lives—whether we eat seafood or not.

Earth’s oceans are in rapid decline. Oceans still have plenty of water, because the amount of water contained in the planet’s ecosystem is constant; it just moves from place to place; from liquid state to gaseous state or solid ice and back again. The decline is measured in the negative effects of pollution that make it uninhabitable to marine life, and the loss of that marine life—particularly fish, which is the primary source of animal protein for over a billion people.  

Scientists have established that the planet’s fish catch peaked in 1988; and each year since the catch has declined. Fully one-third of the ocean’s fisheries are in various stages of collapse. Is it possible that 90% of the

Atlantic cod

“big fish” (bluefin tuna, king mackerel, marlin, swordfish, and sharks) are gone as the Census on Marine Life http://www.coml.org/ says?  Studies show they are being fished or killed much faster than they can reproduce.

How can this happen?

Due to the amount of money to be made selling certain types of fish as seafood and sushi globally, many companies who fund and hire fleets of fishing boats are primarily concerned with making money and beating their competition without regard for the environment or future fish populations. After all but destroying near-shore fisheries that helped sustain the first 10,000 years of human civilization, industrial trawlers have moved into deep ocean waters where regulation is sketchy and difficult to enforce.

• Many governments give their fleets large subsidies that allow them to fish longer, harder and farther away than would be otherwise possible. The impact of these subsidies is so great that eliminating them is perhaps the single greatest action that can be taken to protect the world’s oceans.

• Governments regulate how many fish fisherman may catch in some areas of the world, but not everywhere. Fishermen simply move to unregulated areas where they can use methods that net huge quantities of fish, but destroy the ecosystem. Even worse, fishing methods like blast fishing, gill nets and certain other fish traps destroy other organisms that larger species feed on.

• Industrial fishing technology has been revolutionized, allowing fisherman to know the migrating patterns of fish, track them underwater by radar and create nets and traps sometimes large enough to hold a dozen jumbo jets. The “fishing boats” are mammoth floating factories that are not only trawlers but have on-board processing plants and frozen storage facilities. Restricting abuse of the technology and

  

  Super trawler Atlantic Dawn

  enforcing laws on the open ocean is nearly impossible in many areas of the globe. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that there are about 45,000 industrial trawlers on the high seas. Although only one per cent of the world’s fishing fleet, employing two per cent of the world’s commercial fishermen, they land 50% of the world’s fish. Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute told the Washington Post “What they’re doing out there is more like mining than fishing.”

• Bycatch from technology run amok escalates depletion of the fisheries exponentially. Bycatch is a fish or other marine species that is caught unintentionally while catching certain target species and target sizes of fish, crabs etc.  Bycatch of non-target species leads to loss of biological diversity and changes in ecosystem stability. Bycatch especially in mixed fisheries that target several stocks is perhaps one of the greatest fisheries management challenges because non-target species are often decimated, but are discarded. Catching undersized fish can also be a tragic and senseless problem. For example, even when the depleted North Sea cod stock manages to produce abundant offspring, the majority is discarded at a very early age and only a small percentage of the cod manage to reach maturity to produce more offspring. Bycatch problems extend to marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds and sharks.

• Ocean acidification caused by climate change takes a significant toll on marine species. Massive amounts of carbon dioxide are emitted into the air by the burning of fossil fuels. When absorbed by water, CO2 forms carbonic acid, and the accumulation of this acid is lowering the pH of the world’s oceans from 8.2 before the Industrial Age to 8.1 now. While that doesn’t sound like much of a drop, this lower alkalinity of seawater has already made it more difficult for certain shellfish and coral reefs to build and maintain their shells and structures.

• Algae thrive in warmer, more acidic water. Fed by nitrates from fertilizer washed off farm fields, city lawns and poorly treated sewage, algae populations explode. First they form a thick green slimy mass on top of the water that blocks light from reaching any plants below. Then when it decomposes it sucks all the oxygen out of the water, and sometimes releases toxins into it. That results in enormous dead zones, where nothing lives, at the mouths of most of the world’s rivers. There are more than 400 known dead zones currently-- the largest, off the mouth of the Mississippi, is as big as Connecticut. 

What can be done?

It is difficult to imagine how we as individuals can address the issues that deplete our fisheries, but one truth stands above all others.  Every contribution, every action, every example helps the cause as more and more people embrace healthy practices and demand the same from their fish vendors, restaurants, politicians. We also possess the knowledge and the means to turn the tide if we have the will to do so.

 Mediterranean Tuna almost extinct

There is no need, nor would it be practical to stop eating fish as a first step. Many of the solutions listed below are lifted shamelessly from Oceana, a leader in ocean conservation. http://oceana.org/en

Buy only sustainably-caught fish from responsibly managed fisheries. Do not be shy. Ask your waiter and your fishmonger where their fish was caught.

Moderate your serving size of fish. Five ounces of protein served with a bounty of fruit and vegetable is a far healthier way to eat.

Eliminate fisheries subsidies. According to Oceana, an ocean conservation group, eliminating fishing subsidies is “one of the greatest actions that can be taken to protect the world’s oceans.” These government subsidies make it not only affordable to undertake industrial fishing farther and farther from land, but make it lucrative to fishing industrialists at the expense of almost everyone else.

Canned to extinction?

Set science-based catch limits on commercial fishing fleets. Unsustainable quotas that satisfy the fishing industry do not take the pressure off fisheries so they can recover.

Reduce the size of the world’s fishing fleet. Between eliminating subsidies and limiting the size of the catch, those who own the fleet would be forced to rationalize their operations.

Penalize discarded bycatch with “cap, count and control laws.” Each fishing boat should be required to count bycatch as part of its total catch. Quotas on the catch’s total weight and species should be implemented providing a cap which would be the basis for charging for the size of the bycatch.

Eliminate destructive fishing practices. Ban drift nets, bottom trawling across the ocean floor and fishing in spawning and migration zones. Require the use of devices designed to exclude bycatch such as the turtle

Small boat, large net!

excluder device used by American shrimp trawlers in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

Create and maintain marine reserves. Marine reserves provide zones for species recovery, a safe haven protected from industrial and commercial exploitation.

Protect specific species and enforce the laws. We regulate or outlaw trade in ivory and furs so we should be able to protect endangered fish and marine species in the same way. A federal law prohibits trade in krill which is a critical food source for blue whales and other marine life. Protections should be extended for the big fish whose numbers are 90% lower than they were in the 1950s— bluefin tuna, swordfish, marlin, king mackerel and sharks.

Prohibit the use of fish as a feed for farm animals. According to Oceana, “a recent study showed that the world’s farmed pigs and chicken consume twice the amount of seafood in one year that the Japanese people consume as a nation and six times the amount we Americans eat.” Fish is not a natural food for either pigs or chickens.

Reform aquaculture. Build smarter fish farms that are well managed, built on a smaller scale, raising only highly efficient fish in terms of reproduction and feed. Consider tilapia or other fresh water fish who feed on algae, plankton or animal waste instead of other fish.

It is time to act. Choose the solutions with which you are most comfortable and sally forth. You can and must participate in this story of survival.

Good Reading

For Cod and Country by Barton Seaver, Sterling Epicure publisher. Learn and be inspired by simple, delicious sustainable cooking.

Hooked—Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish by G. Bruce Knecht, Rodale Press. Learn how marketing transformed the Patagonian toothfish into Chilean Sea Bass reshaping the specie’s destiny.

Oceana by Ted Danson, Rodale Press. Yes, the Ted Danson from Cheers has devoted himself to ocean conservation for almost three decades.

Tuna by Richard Ellis, Alfred A. Knopf publisher. Learn about “tuna ranches” and how this fish has become a commodity and an endangered species.

Hitchcock's "The Birds" Revisited: Mystery Deaths Plague West Coast

Alfred Hitchcock and feathered friends

On August 18, 1961 the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported:

A massive flight of sooty shearwaters, fresh from a feast of anchovies, collided with shore side structures from Pleasure Point to Rio del Mar during the night. Residents, especially in the Pleasure Point and Capitola area were awakened about 3 a.m. today by the rain of birds, slamming against their homes. Dead and stunned seabirds littered the streets and roads in the foggy, early dawn. Startled by the invasion, residents rushed out on their lawns with flashlights, and then rushed back inside, as the birds flew toward their light. . . . When the light of day made the area visible, residents found the streets covered with birds. The birds disgorged bits of fish and fish skeletons over the streets and lawns and housetops, leaving an overpowering fishy stench.

A sooty shearwater in flight

News reports from that period described the sooty shearwater as a normally non-aggressive species that feeds on small fish and comes ashore only to breed far south of the Northern California coast. Those early reports speculated that domoic acid poisoning caused the massive suicidal bombing of the Capitola area.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel also reported that film-maker Alfred Hitchcock requested news copy of the mysterious event to use as research in developing his latest thriller. Within a month he had hired screenwriter Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain for his crime novels) to adapt Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 novelette, The Birds, to film. Set in du Maurier’s native Cornwall after World War ll, it is the story of a farm community that is attacked by flocks of seabirds in kamikaze fashion.

The Mystery Deepens

In late 1987, a serious outbreak of food poisoning in eastern Canada linked to cultured mussels harvested in Prince Edward Island made front-page newspaper headlines when three elderly patients died. All the victims, including the deceased, suffered long-term neurological damage including memory loss so the malady was named amnesiac shellfish poisoning. The mystery deepened as Prince Edward Island had never before been afflicted with toxic algae and the unusual neurotoxin symptoms were very different from those caused by paralytic shellfish poisoning toxins or other known toxins.

California Sea Lions

In 1991, dead and dying seabirds, including brown pelicans, began washing up on the beaches near Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay, CA. It was discovered the birds had been eating anchovy contaminated with domoic acid. In May and June of 1998, 400 California sea lions died of domoic acid toxicosis. By 2002, it became obvious that thousands of birds and mammals, including dolphins, sea lions, seabirds, and endangered brown pelicans have succumbed to domoic acid poisoning.

Why is this happening?

Since then, the mysterious poisonings have lost a good deal of their mystery. They occur with almost predictable regularity now, and the science behind them is becoming widely understood. When conditions are right, the marine phytoplankton, Pseudo-nitzschia australis, blooms and the tiny algae bloom, creating what is called “red tide”. The algae produce domoic acid. As the toxin accumulates up the food chain, fish become contaminated with the poison, and then the birds and marine mammals who feed on them. The toxin enters the bloodstream, then the brain, causing convulsions, coma, vomiting, seizures and finally, death.

Wildlife centers like The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito and the International Bird Rescue Research Center in San Pedro are often overwhelmed with dead and dying animals and desperately try to save them. Experience has shown that animals quickly rescued have a chance to survive if they receive massive fluid therapy, orally and intravenously, to flush the toxin from their bloodstreams.

What causes red tides?

Scientists prefer to call red tides Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB), and they have been reported along every US coastal state. Their frequency appears to be on the rise. They are a concern because they affect the health of people, wildlife and ecosystems—as well as the health of local economies. Not all algal blooms are harmful, however. Most blooms, in fact, are beneficial because they provide food for marine life. In fact, they are the major source of energy that fuels the ocean food web. So what causes the profusion of harmful red tides?

Red tide algal bloom

The short answer is fertilizer over-use. See this blog’s post titled The Problem with Fertilizer, December 30, 2014.

Natural upwelling from the ocean’s depths of nitrogen rich nutrients are of limited duration. They feed the algae and dissipate with minimal effect on other marine life since their presence is not constant. Over-use of fertilizer provides a constant stream of nutrients to algae and tips the balance from beneficial to harmful.

Back to The Birds

It wasn’t until 2011 that the 1961 “bird attack” in Capitola was positively identified as a domoic acid event. Researchers at Louisiana State University examined samples from plankton and marine animals collected in 1961 and identified an unhealthy accumulation of domoic acid which was found in 79 per cent of the plankton ingested by anchovies and squid.

Over a short period, that would become potent enough to cause fatal consequences for predators that ingested the creatures. "Here we show that plankton samples from the 1961 poisoning contained toxin-producing Pseudo-nitzschia, supporting the contention that these toxic diatoms were responsible for the bird frenzy that motivated Hitchcock's thriller," says Sibel Bargu, lead researcher.  

Although the usual suspect would be pesticides from farmland, the researchers note that there was a house-building boom in the area at the time, and posit that leaky domestic septic tanks were instead to blame.

Life imitates art once again. The picture-perfect California coast attracts millions who are inspired by its beauty and the movie culture that springs up around it. In the movie, havoc ensues as birds attack to punish human excesses, but the reality turns out to be that excess is punished by Mother Nature in less theatrical but more devastating ways.

More reading

NOAA at      http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/redtide.html

The Marine Mammal Center at http://www.marinemammalcenter.org/science/#.VKdVbCvF98E

The Poison Review at http://www.thepoisonreview.com/2011/12/30/angry-birds-or-domoic-acid-toxicity/

The International Bird Rescue Research Center at http://bird-rescue.org/

The Problem with Fertilizer

Too much of a good thing is bad.  Just as too much food leads to obesity and tight pants, too much fertilizer contaminates the land and water we depend upon for food even while aiding the production of that food. The main environmental problem associated with fertilizer abuse is contamination of water with nitrates and phosphates, and the main problem with stories like this is that the technical explanation often goes in one ear and dribbles out the other. I’ll try to simplify the story here.

Only a fraction of nitrogen-based fertilizer is absorbed into plant matter. The rest accumulates in the soil where it is eventually converted by bacteria to nitrates, or is lost as run-off.  Nitrates are highly water-soluble, and leach into ground water or wash out of the soil into streams and rivers. High nitrate levels in drinking water are dangerous to human health. Because nitrogen is odorless and colorless, only testing can determine whether contamination has occurred. In January 2013, the California State Water Resources Control Board reported that more than 400 private wells and more than 200 water systems in the state were contaminated with nitrates.

When babies and the elderly drink water with high nitrogen levels, they can develop symptoms such as gastrointestinal swelling and irritation, diarrhea, and protein digestion problems—a condition called methemoglobinemia, or "blue baby syndrome." Infants whose skin tissues are low in oxygen appear to be blue or purplish in color. This occurs when nitrates mix with iron in red blood cells, leaving the blood unable to transport oxygen to the body's cells. Nitrates are dangerous enough; now let’s take a look at phosphates.

Although phosphorus itself is not washed out of soil, it combines with soil particles and travels with them to shallow water.  Phosphorus is not dangerous by itself, but in slow-moving water, it stimulates the growth of algae. Algae is not dangerous either – until it dies and decomposes removing oxygen from the water.  This kills fish and many other organisms. Scientists, never at a loss for unpronounceable obscure words, call this process eutrophication.

The lethal combination of excess nitrates and phosphates constitutes pollution that should be mitigated, but fertilizer is not the sole culprit. Other sources of these pollutants include industrial waste, sewage, detergents and manures. The problem of high nitrate levels in groundwater was actually recorded as early as 1860, long before synthetic fertilizer was invented.

A Little History…

In the 1910s and 1920s, Fritz Haber, a bespectacled German chemist, devised a way to manufacture ammonia from methane gas (NH₃) and molecular nitrogen (N₂). The ammonia from the Haber process, a process still used today, was then converted into nitric acid which led to the development of synthetic fertilizer—and significantly aided the German war effort. The synthetic supply of nitric acid was explosively useful in the manufacture of munitions.

Even more significantly than its destructive capabilities, The Haber process supported global population growth. It has been estimated that almost half the people on the planet are fed as a result of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use. Ramped up to an industrial scale, ammonia synthesis has enabled widespread fertilization of croplands ever since. As a direct result, the world's population skyrocketed from 1.6 billion to six billion during the 20th century.

But Haber's nourishing discovery has a dark side. The surfeit of fertilizer has come at a high price for the environment.  And the story gets even better…

 Dead zone along coast of Maryland

Fertilizer’s Dark Side

Earth’s surging population demands ever increasing amounts of energy, and the burning of fossil fuels threatens the planet with catastrophic climate change as a warming blanket of greenhouse gases warms the oceans and melts arctic ice. In order to mitigate this problem, alternatives to fossil fuels are becoming more attractive. Biofuels perhaps?

Biofuels production in the US consists of ethanol manufactured from corn. Cornell University environmental biologist Robert Horwath who also chairs the International Scope Biofuels Project says, “The production of ethanol from corn in the US is a disaster in terms of fertilizer flowing down the Mississippi River.”  

He is undoubtedly concerned about the seasonal dead zone spreading from the Louisiana coast to Texas—covering approximately 5,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of Connecticut. The eutrophication in this dead zone is formed by nutrients that flush into the Gulf's waters -- largely agricultural fertilizer and wastewater from the Mississippi River. The resulting algae blooms suck up the oxygen in deep water, according to NOAA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Marine life struggles to find enough oxygen to survive within the zone.

As if this scenario weren’t scary enough already, fertilizers release significant quantities of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas with 300 times the heat-trapping capacity of carbon dioxide (CO2). Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, and his colleagues worry that cultivation of current biofuel crops, corn included, will wipe out any CO2 savings by releasing higher emissions of nitrous oxide and nitrogen oxide. The latter destroys the so-called “good” ozone, which shelters us from damaging ultraviolet radiation. It also contributes to ground level ozone, the main constituent in smog, widely known to exacerbate human respiratory ailments. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, millions of Americans live in areas that exceed the national standards for ozone exposure.

What Can We Do?

Despite the dangers posed by over-use of fertilizers, they enhance the growth of our food crops and beautify our landscapes—so they have value.  However, there are things we can do to alleviate the effects of fertilizer pollution, and small steps taken by many people can make a big difference.

•        Before fertilizing, have your soil tested; then test every three years or so to determine the pH of your soil since crops require difference acidity levels.
•          Follow package label instructions carefully and mix the fertilizer accurately.
•          Do not allow excess water to run into streets or gutters, and leave a buffer zone when near a body of water.
•          Apply fertilizer 4 to 6 inches into the soil using a coring device or a spike, and clean up all spilled fertilizer.  
•          Because plant clippings contain phosphorus, debris should be removed and not directed into the street.
•          Allow soil to replenish its nutrients naturally by giving it a break from crop production and by rotating crops.
•          Avoid using fertilizer during the rain, and never apply it to frozen ground.
•          Use organic fertilizers that consist of manures and animal wastes when practical.

 Further Reading

UNESCO has a web site worth exploring.   Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment
Discover Buzzle at  http://www.buzzle.com/articles/how-do-fertilizers-affect-the-environment.html
Visit NOAA at  http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/estuaries/media/supp_estuar09b_eutro.html

Even more http://www.fertilizer101.org/

Dam Trouble

 

Hoover Dam

It can be said that large dams like Hoover Dam on the Colorado River and Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River boosted the United States to superpower status by enabling its industrial might to spur the Allies to victory in World War II.  Hydroelectric power from these two dams powered the industrial plants in Los Angeles and Seattle that built warplanes and ships, the military hardware that won the war.  Cheap electric power also fueled the American Dream as every household either filled their homes with labor saving electric appliances or dreamed of doing so.

The American Dream according to GE

Indeed, imagine Las Vegas which is only 30 miles from Hoover Dam if the dam had never been built.  Not only is Sin City or The Entertainment Capital of the World, if you prefer, dependent upon the dam’s hydroelectric output, but roughly 90% of its water comes from Lake Mead cached behind the dam. 

The spectacular success and phenomenal growth of Los Angeles, Southern California and Las Vegas have fueled the conventional wisdom that these dams were well worth the investments in them – in dollars spent, lives lost during construction, and ecosystems destroyed in their path.  Both of these dams were built in the 1930s.  Large dam construction peaked in the early 1970s.


During that 40 year span, the best dam sites were built upon and the world began to experience the massive destructiveness of large dams.  Nevertheless, there are more than 45,000 dams spanning 60% of the world’s major river basins, and the water backed up behind them covers more land than the State of California. Yet, nary a year passes without new dam proposals to ponder.

The World Bank Ignores Itself

It should be emphasized that dams are much more destructive than their proponents would have us believe.  A curious flip-flop unfolded in the early 2000s as the World Bank created the World Commission on Dams to blunt criticism of its lending policies to third world countries who were buying dams at their behest – at great expense and dubious benefit.  The Commission aired its long awaited report in November of 2000 with a special keynote speech by Nelson Mandela.  The report was titled Dams and Development:  A New Framework for Decision-Making.  Among its findings, which the World Bank has chosen to ignore:  

·         Environmental impacts of large dams are more negative than positive; have, in many cases, led to irreversible loss of species and ecosystems;

·         Irrigation dams typically do not recover their costs, did not produce the volume of water forecast and are not as profitable as forecast;

·         Large dams have led to the impoverishment and suffering of millions;

·         Large dams tend to sustain schedule delays and significant cost overruns; and

·         Large dams, particularly shallow tropical dams, contribute to global warming by emitting greenhouse gases released by vegetation rotting in reservoirs and carbon inflows from watersheds.

International Rivers Network

To understand the technical, scientific pitfalls presented by dams one should visit www.internationalrivers.org.  Some of the problems they describe with great clarity are:

·         Dams prevent nutrients from flowing to the deltas, the floodplains, where they benefit the soil, fisheries and marine life in general;

·         Dams trap all the free flowing silt that is carried by a river’s turbulence;

·         Salt once carried to the ocean by undammed waterways is deposited in concentrated form on irrigated lands-- slowly poisoning the soil; and

·         Dams diminish the ocean’s ability to absorb CO² by curtailing the nutrient plume that fertilizes phytoplankton that therefore die and sink to the ocean floor encapsulating the carbon for the long-term.

Dams Are Not Forever

Both the World Commission on Dams and the International Rivers Network state that dams contribute to global warming.  This conflicts with conventional wisdom which assumes that fossil

fuels are the only culprit in climate change, and that hydroelectric power is clean.  Clean or not, it has

been reported that 30 – 70% of California’s Sierra snow pack will disappear this century. California’s 1000 dams will face greater pressure from flooding as glaciers melt, making them potential hazards to millions of people living downstream.  On the other hand, once the snowpack

Snowpack in Sierra Nevada

vanishes, the dams will be obsolete anyway.

Dams and levees can never be fail-proof, and when they fail, they do so spectacularly and sometimes catastrophically.  They also provide a false sense of security that encourages risky development on vulnerable floodplains.  Think of New Orleans in 2005.

The alternative to relying on dams for flood control is flood risk management which assumes that floods will happen and that we need to learn to live with them as best we can.  Effective flood risk management reduces their speed, size and duration where possible, while it protects our most valuable assets, and situates them out of a flood’s destructive path.  Flood risk management assumes that all flood protection infrastructure can fail and creates plans for recovery. This alternative recognizes that all floods are not inherently bad – and indeed that floods are essential for the health of riverine ecosystems.

In the end all dams will die.  They are not permanent or eternal.  They topple over, are dismantled, fill with sediment or lose their financial rationale.  Assessing the cost of erecting a dam should include the cost of safely decommissioning it to prevent catastrophic destruction downstream if they fail. That cost must also include funds to maintain aging dams whose maintenance costs rise as time passes.

Alternatives to Damming the Planet

At the top of the list is conservation.  Conserving water speaks for itself.  Although the amount of precipitation can vary from year to year, the earth has a finite amount of water which cannot be increased.  A very brief and painless internet search will yield over 100 tips on how to save water so I won't belabor the point here.  Every little bit helps.

Reducing the impact of our use of energy also reduces our reliance on hydroelectric power.  While our sources of energy must be made cleaner, our first priority must be to use energy more efficiently.  Efficiency turns out to be cheaper, cleaner and faster to install than any other energy option.  Efficiency is not only cheaper than all other energy options, it also leads to growth in personal income, because lower energy bills free up money that can be spent elsewhere.

Up to 75% of the electricity used in the US today could be saved with efficiency measures.  Developing countries, which will account for 80% of global energy demand growth to 2020, could cut their demand by more than half using existing technologies to improve energy efficiency, according to the McKinley Global Institute.  “This would leave energy consumption some 22% lower than it would otherwise have been – an abatement equivalent to the entire energy consumption of China today,” the institute states.

                                                   Read more at www.internationalrivers.org.

A very good read . . .

Deep Water, The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People and the Environment by Jacques Leslie, Copyright ©2005   Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Tell it Like a Politician

“Framing” is to politicians and pundits what storytelling is to concerned parents.  The term was coined by George Lakoff, Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley—who calls it the mechanism by which conservatives structure public debate on just about every issue.

Professor George Lakoff

Politicians and parents seek to convert their audiences to their point-of-view, and both leverage overwhelming tactics to prevail.  Although the tactic of shouting loudly can be intimidating and overwhelming, it lacks the power of sustained, repetitive framing which blocks consideration of facts and interpretations that don’t fit the frame.  If you say something often enough, it begins to sound true.

Some examples of framing:  government regulation is interference in free markets; poor people are undisciplined and to blame for their own poverty; environmentalists are idealists who care more about frogs than people and progress; critics of US foreign policy support the enemy—and my personal favorite—tax cuts are tax relief.

As Lakoff says:

When conservatives discuss tax reduction, the phrase ‘tax relief’ is repeated over and over.  For there to be relief, there must be an affliction, an afflicted party harmed by the affliction, a reliever who takes the affliction away and is therefore a hero.  And if anybody tries to stop the reliever, he’s a villain wanting the suffering to go on.  Add ’tax’ and you have a metaphorical frame: taxation is an affliction.  The taxpayer is the afflicted party, the conservatives are heroes and the liberals are villains… Read more of Lakoff’s illustrations of framing at http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/5.GeorgeLakoff

As the image implies, a well-built frame deflects logic, facts and other inconvenient truths.  Frames are built around values shared by self-interested people seeking support and reassurance from like-minded souls.  Since values tend to ignite passions, they tend to trump facts-- which is why political arguments are rarely won based on the facts.

To win, it is usually more effective to reframe an argument.  Again from the very sage Lakoff:

Suppose he (your opponent) starts touting smaller government.  Point out that conservatives don’t really want smaller government.  They don’t want to eliminate the military, or the FBI, or the Treasury and Commerce departments, or the nine-tenths of the courts that support corporate law.  It is big government that they like.  What they really want to do away with is social programs.  Such a position contradicts the values the country was founded on… the idea of a community where people pull together to help each other…

It is generally agreed that conservatives wield a more forceful framing hammer because their common interests, values and world views are more cohesive than those of progressives.  Having more varied, often conflicted stakeholders under the tent is no excuse for not seeking common ground upon which to build a frame, however.  After all, the vast majority of progressives can rally around equality, democracy, government providing a better future, ethical business practices and moral foreign policy.

These progressive principles provide sturdy structural elements that support focused and enlightened frames around political discourse.

Framing is not a bad storytelling device.  It aids the audience by providing context in which an argument is relevant.  In fact, progressives should master the technique to elevate the health of our competitive national political discourse and our collective understanding of the issues that affect us.

Where Have All the Fishes Gone?

Steelhead Trout

A visit to Healdsburg, California and its surrounding wine country is an opportunity to visit Warm

Dry Creek Valley is wine country

Springs Dam, Lake Sonoma, its recreation area and the Don Clausen Fish Hatchery.  It’s an opportunity to visit nature and experience a bit of Dry Creek Valley’s history.

The story told by the US Army Corps of Engineers on all the facility’s displays is relatively simple.  The dam, finished in 1983, was built to control the annual flooding of Dry Creek Valley which

Dry Creek, home to endangered Coho salmon,
threatened Chinook salmon and steelhead

displaced farmers, residents and businesses at great annual cost.  The dam eliminated the ability of Coho salmon and Steelhead trout to return home to spawn, so Congressman Don Clausen spearheaded the effort to build a state-of-the-art fish hatchery.

The recreation area resulting from the effort includes “wildlife areas”, water skiing, hiking/biking/equestrian trails, an archery range, picnic areas, camping, swimming, boating and a marina.  On its face, these are all great justifications for building the dam and funding the US Army Corps of Engineers’ management of the area.

There is more to the story.  The struggle and controversy over the dam is mostly suppressed by the beauty of the surrounding wineries, olive groves, magnificent vistas and quaint farm houses—and forgotten in the march of time and progress.

Another side to the story...

The ranger on duty explained the necessity of building the hatchery as a way of recovering the lost fish resource and then opined that the dam was probably not strictly an environmental solution. 

Male Coho Salmon

That is not to say that the hatchery is not a marvel of technology and science accomplishing its mission.  The hatchery is educational and inspiring beyond expectation and the dedication of the people working there is contagious.

Further inquiry, however, indicates there was great controversy back in the ‘70s and 80’s over the dam’s financing and environmental impacts.  A flood control request from only 25% of the valley’s property owners was sufficient to trigger tax assessments for all.  Water from Warm Springs Dam covers many prehistoric Pomo Indian sites of archeological value.  Some botanical materials like

Pomo Indian basket

sedge, willow, lobatium and angelica used by the Pomos to make some of the world’s finest indigenous basketry were replanted in unaffected areas, but many of the 65 prehistoric and 45 historical sites important to Pomo culture were covered with water.

The loss of natural fish habitat and spawning grounds along with everything else submerged under the dam’s 381,000 acre-feet of water was of little concern to the special interests intent upon developing the valley by providing more water to the region.

Old-timers in the area acknowledge that there was almost annual flooding, but they scoff at the damage control justification for building the dam.  The flooding was an expected seasonal, nutrient-rich blessing to farmers and no one of sound mind built significant permanent structures in flood-prone plains.  Even worse, the earth dam sits precariously between the Healdsburg and Porter Creek geological faults.

Birthing at a hatchery...

Mix it all up

Harvesting eggs from female
salmon

Collecting milt from male salmon

Time will tell whether the dam and its hatchery were a successful solution providing water, a fish recovery scheme and flood control in a sustainable manner.  The consequences of unsustainable development and mismanagement of our natural resources can deliver attractive valleys like Dry Creek and its superb wineries, but it results in loss of fish habitat.  It’s troubling, though, that the same pattern is repeated all across California, and the rest of the country for that matter.  Is it any wonder the salmon have dwindled off our coasts?