Alien Species Eroding Ecosystems and Livelihoods

Australia, with its long history of bad-news invaders like rabbits and cane toads (pictured above), insists that visitors surrender all fresh food, animal and plant products. by J. Polák

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Stephen Leahy
May 22, 2009 - Inter Press Service

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Continent-hopping alien species are worsening poverty and threaten the agriculture, forestry, fisheries and natural systems that underpin millions of livelihoods in developing countries, warn biodiversity experts.

"The livelihoods for 90 percent of people in Africa directly rely on natural resources such as marine coastal biodiversity," said Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Australia, with its long history of bad-news invaders like rabbits and cane toads (pictured above), insists that visitors surrender all fresh food, animal and plant products. Credit:J. Polák"Around the world more than 1.6 billion people depend directly on forests for their survival," he told IPS from Montreal.

Biodiversity is not just fuzzy animals and pretty birds. It is the diversity of life on Earth that comprises ecosystems which in turn provide vital ecosystem services including food, fibre, clean water and air.

"Biodiversity is poor countries' most precious asset," Djoghlaf stressed.

Alien species are plant, animal, insect and other species that have been introduced outside of their natural habitats. They have become one of the two or three major drivers behind the current extinction crisis.

Today, one in four mammals is on the verge of extinction. Of the 44,838 species catalogued by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 38 percent are on their way out. Currently, one species goes extinct every three hours.

And at least 40 percent of all animal extinctions, for which the cause is known, are the result of invasive species.

The scope of this global biological invasion is stunning. New Zealand has more than 20,000 introduced plant species competing with the 2,000 or so endemic plant species. Many of the aliens can't survive outside gardens or farm fields but at least 2,000 aliens have become 'naturalised' and are indeed competing with the locals, causing several documented extinctions of native New Zealand flora that do not exist anywhere else.

"The scale and speed of this is unprecedented in Earth's history," said Anthony Ricciardi, an invasive species biologist at Montreal's McGill University.

"Walk into the Canadian woods and one in five species growing wild will be a non-native," Ricciardi said in an interview.

But doesn't this global shuffling of species produce more biodiversity, or at least keep it the same?

"At the local scale, it can look like there are more species and sometimes there are," he acknowledged.

However. this mass movement of species is reducing overall biodiversity. When the Nile Perch was introduced into Africa's Lake Victoria, 100 to 150 endemic fish species were wiped out.

There are many similar instances but most often the invaders do not directly cause extinctions. Instead they compete for food, habitat and other resources, reducing local species numbers to low levels. And then a bad weather event, disease or some other stress comes along and suddenly the native species is gone, Ricciardi said.

"Every invasive species has an impact but most go undocumented. They are insidious and often subtle in terms of impacts," he said.

Unnoticed, some invaders spread far and wide, adapt to local conditions and then years afterwards become a major problem by degrading or dramatically altering the ecosystems they are in.

"Invasives are a form of biological pollution, but one that can change and adapt," Ricciardi said.

Local species are vulnerable to these invaders because they do not have any evolutionary experience to cope with them. There many examples of large numbers of species on isolated islands decimated by goats, cats and rats simply because those species never lived there until someone introduced them. And that is the key - invasions are tightly connected to human behaviour.

Keeping all aliens out is impossible. The best hope for biodiversity is to know which species are the potential troublemakers and figure out how they are or could be moved around. That is the containment strategy of most countries, where anyone crossing the border is asked if they are carrying plants, seeds or animals.

Australia, with a long history of bad-news invaders like rabbits and cane toads, insists that visitors surrender all fresh food, animal and plant products.

Climate change is also making it easier for some species to shift their traditional ranges and move into new regions where it had been too cold previously. While the initial jump by the West Nile virus from North Africa to New York City in 1999 wasn't climate related, its continued survival and spread ever northwards into central Canada is related to warmer winters in the region. And that virus has reduced populations of a number of bird species and has killed dozens of people.

Invasive species affect all aspects of society just as the loss of biodiversity does, said Ricciardi. "We simply don't know all the impacts of losing species," he added.

There are major studies underway to take a stab at figuring that out, said the CBD's Djoghlaf. "In 2010, we hope to release a Stern-like report on the economic value of the loss of biodiversity."

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change released in 2006 examined the impacts of climate change on the world economy.

"Biodiversity needs to be seen and understood as not just a 'green issue' but an important economic asset in need of protection," Djoghlaf said.

Rx and the Single Payer

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Bill Moyers / Michael Winship
May 22, 2009 - CommonDreams.org

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In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program."

Single payer. Universal. That's health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it. Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It's a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as two-to-one.

There was only one thing standing in the way, Obama said six years ago: "All of you know we might not get there immediately because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate and we have to take back the House."

Fast forward six years. President Obama has everything he said was needed -- Democrats in control of the executive branch and both chambers of Congress. So what's happened to single payer?

A woman at his town hall meeting in New Mexico last week asked him exactly that. "If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense," the President replied. "That's the kind of system that you have in most industrialized countries around the world.

"The only problem is that we're not starting from scratch. We have historically a tradition of employer-based health care. And although there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with their health care, the truth is, is that the vast majority of people currently get health care from their employers and you've got this system that's already in place. We don't want a huge disruption as we go into health care reform where suddenly we're trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy."

So the banks were too big to fail and now, apparently, health care is too big to fix, at least the way a majority of people indicate they would like it to be fixed, with a single payer option. President Obama favors a public health plan competing with the medical cartel that he hopes will create a real market that would bring down costs. But single payer has vanished from his radar.

Nor is single payer getting much coverage in the mainstream media. Barely a mention was given to the hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals who came to Washington last week to protest the absence of official debate over single payer.

Is it the proverbial tree falling in the forest, making a noise that journalists can't or won't hear? Could the indifference of the press be because both the President of the United States and Congress have been avoiding single payer like, well, like the plague? As we see so often, government officials set the agenda by what they do and don't talk about.

Instead, President Obama is looking for consensus, seeking peace among all the parties involved. Except for single payer advocates. At that big White House powwow in Washington last week, the President asked representatives of the health care business to reason together with him. "What's brought us all together today is a recognition that we can't continue down the same dangerous road we've been traveling for so many years," he said, "that costs are out of control; and that reform is not a luxury that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait."

They came, listened, made nice for the photo op. and while they failed to participate in a hearty chorus of "Kumbaya," they did promise to cut health care costs voluntarily over the next ten years. The press ate it up -- and Mr. Obama was a happy man.

Meanwhile, some of us looking on -- those of us who've been around a long time -- were scratching our heads. Hadn't we heard this before?

Way, way back in the 1970's Americans were riled up over the rising costs of health care. As a presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter started talking about the government clamping down. When he got to the White House, drug makers, insurance companies, hospitals and doctors -- the very people who only a decade earlier had done everything they could to strangle Medicare in the cradle -- seemed uncharacteristically humble and cooperative. "You don't have to make us cut costs," they promised. "We'll do it voluntarily."

So Uncle Sam backed down, and you guessed it. Pretty soon medical costs were soaring higher than ever.

By the early '90s, the public was once again hurting in the pocketbook. Feeling our pain, Bill and Hillary Clinton tried again, coming up with a plan only slightly more complicated than the schematics for an F-18 fighter jet.

This time the health industry acted more like Tony Soprano than Mother Teresa. It bludgeoned the Clinton reforms with one of the most expensive and deceitful public relations and advertising campaigns ever conceived -- paid for, of course, from the industry's swollen profits.

As the drug and insurance companies, hospitals and doctors dumped the mangled carcass of reform into the Potomac, securely encased in concrete, once again they said don't worry; they would cut costs voluntarily.

If you believed that, we've got a toll-free bridge to the Mayo Clinic we'd like to sell you.

So anyone with any memory left could be excused for raising their eyebrows at the health care industry's latest promises. As if on cue, hardly had their pledge of volunteerism rung out across the land than Jay Gellert, chief executive of Health Net Inc. and chair of the lobbying group America's Health Insurance Plans, assured his pals not to worry abut the voluntary reductions. "We believe that we can do it without undermining the viability of companies," he said, "and in effect enhancing the payment to physicians and hospitals." In other words, their so-called voluntary "reforms" will in no way interfere with maximizing profits.

Also last week, John Lechleiter, the chief executive of drug giant Eli Lilly, blasted universal health care in a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "I do not believe that policymakers have yet arrived at a full and complete diagnosis of what's wrong and what's right with U.S. health care," he declared. "And I am very concerned that some of the proposed policies -- the treatments, to continue my metaphor -- will have unintended side-effects that make our situation worse."

So why bother with the charm offensive on Pennsylvania Avenue? Could it be, as some critics suggest, a Trojan horse, getting the health industry a place at the table so they can leap up at the right moment and again kill any real reform?

Wheelers and dealers from the health sector aren't waiting for that moment. According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, they've spent more than $134 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009 alone. And some already are shelling out big bucks for a publicity blitz and ads attacking any health care reform that threatens to reduce the profits from sickness and disease.

The Washington Post's health care reform blog reported Monday that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has hired an outside PR firm to put together a video campaign assaulting Obama's public plan. And this month alone, the group Conservatives for Patients' Rights is spending more than a million dollars for attack ads. They've hired a public relations firm called CRC -- Creative Response Concepts. You remember them -- the same high-minded folks who brought you the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the gang who savaged John Kerry's service record in Vietnam.

The ads feature the chairman of Conservatives for Patients' Rights, Rick Scott. Who's he? As a former deputy inspector general from the Department of Health and Human Services told The New York Times, "He hopes people don't Google his name."

Scott's not a doctor; he just acts like one on TV. He's an entrepreneur who took two hospitals in Texas and built them into the largest health care chain in the world, Columbia/HCA. In 1997, he was fired by the board of directors after Columbia/HCA was caught in a scheme that ripped off the Feds and state governments for hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus Medicare and Medicaid payments, the largest such fraud in history. The company had to cough up $1.7 billion dollars to get out of the mess.

Rick Scott got off, you should excuse the expression, scot-free. Better than, in fact. According to published reports, he waltzed away with a $10 million severance deal and $300 million worth of stock. So much for voluntarily lowering overhead.

With medical costs rising six percent per year, that's who's offering himself as a spokesman for the health care industry. Speaking up for single payer is Geri Jenkins, a president of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee -- a registered nurse with literal hands-on experience.

"We're there around the clock," she told our colleague Jessica Wang. "So we feel a real sense of obligation to advocate for the best interests of our patients and the public. Now, you can talk about policy but when you're staring at a human face it's a whole different story."

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Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS.

Green Camo: Seeing Through the Military’s New Environmentalism

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Bryan Farrell
May 22, 2009 - WIN Magazine

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As the single largest consumer of energy in the world, the U.S. military is poised at the center of two of the most life-altering issues of our time: climate change and the height of oil production ("peak oil"). Surprisingly, the Pentagon began taking both matters seriously much sooner than the rest of government, which still has its fair share of skeptics.

A 2007 Pentagon-funded report by 11 high-level retired officers concluded that climate change is a "serious threat to America's national security." A few weeks later, another Pentagon-commissioned report called on the military to "fundamentally transform" its assumptions about energy because the current strategy of global engagement with highly energy consumptive technologies is "unsustainable in the long term."

Before the antiwar movement rejoices in the end of U.S. hegemony and environmentalists celebrate the move toward sustainability, it's important to remember that the Pentagon is still developing solutions to these issues and in the world of warfare things often don't get fixed until they are first completely destroyed (e.g., Iraq and Afghanistan).

At first glance it would appear that the Pentagon is serious about reducing its dependency on oil, if not its greenhouse gas emissions. In the two years since those reports came out, the Pentagon has pledged to get 25 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025. It's already leading the way among all other government agencies with nearly 12 percent of all Department of Defense (DoD) electricity coming from renewable sources. In fact, the Air Force is the number-one consumer of renewable energy in the United States and has built the world's largest solar photovoltaic system at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada. Meanwhile, the Navy operates the largest wind/diesel hybrid plant in the world—located in, of all places, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The DoD also likes to brag that its total site-delivered energy consumption declined more than 60 percent between 1985 and 2006, but when the reasons for this drop are examined the green veneer starts to fade. As energy analyst Sohbet Karbuz noted in a 2007 paper for the Energy Bulletin, "The main factor behind that reduction was the closure of some military bases, privatization of some of its buildings, and leaving some energy related activities to contractors." The most important factor in energy consumption—vehicles, which account for nearly three-quarters of DoD site-delivered energy—went up during that period.

Furthermore, despite all its green efforts, the military has some major—if not insurmountable—hurdles to overcome. For starters, each soldier consumes 25 percent more energy than the average U.S. citizen—who already consumes 15 times more energy than does the average person in a developing country. Seventy-eight percent of the Pentagon's energy consumption comes from oil, and the average U.S. soldier in Iraq uses more than four gallons each day. War and energy expert Michael Klare compared that figure to the one-gallon–per-day oil consumption rate of the average WWII soldier and postulated that "if this rate of increase continues unabated, the next major war could entail an expenditure of 64 gallons per soldier per day."

Back in 2007, when the Pentagon received those two reports, Klare warned of the "green" approach, calling it "an environmentally-friendly facade" that does little to prevent it from maintaining and developing its existing, interventionist force structure. Add to that the inability to prevent more greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere. A 2008 report by the Institute for Policy Studies found that for every dollar Washington allocated to climate change in last year's budget, $88 would be spent on military. And for every dollar spent on researching climate-related technologies, $20 would be spent on developing new weapon systems.

While it's no surprise that the military continually seeks to upgrade its equipment, most of the existing Air Force, Navy, and Army fleets run on oil and are expected to last until 2030. Replacing them would be not only a logistical nightmare, but also extremely expensive. That's why explorations into biofuels and synthetic liquid fuels from natural gas and coal are underway. Unfortunately, merely creating such alternatives emits more greenhouse gases than conventional oil.

This notion plays into Klare's second warning, that of a continuation of the Carter Doctrine, whereby "the Pentagon will increase its efforts to maintain control over foreign sources of supply, notably oil fields and refineries in the Persian Gulf region." Evidence of this scenario can already be seen in Obama's ever-expanding timeframe for withdrawal from Iraq and reluctance to discuss the closure of bases within the country.

So if the military's plan is to invest in enough renewable energy as to give the appearance of progressive green thinking and prolong the life of whatever oil is left, but not invest enough to change its agenda of global dominance by 2030, we are left squarely in the middle of both issues. By most accounts, peak oil is expected to occur somewhere around 2015—right around the time we will know whether the world has averted the tipping points that would send the planet into certain uncontrollable climate change. Of course, avoiding tipping points by keeping emissions down will be impossible if the world's largest consumer of oil and energy continues consuming at even three-quarters its current pace.

By the Pentagon's own figures, the U.S. military uses more fossil fuels than any other single entity. But the Pentagon's figures only take into consideration vehicle transport and facility maintenance. They don't account for the energy needed to build something like the massive imperial embassy or mega-bases in Iraq or reconstruct the rest of the country. They also don't factor in the energy used by related branches, like NASA, the nuclear industry, or the thousands of contractors that make or do things for the military.

In this light, it's hard not to see the military as the reason we may very soon witness a significant sea-level rise, accompanied by droughts, crop failures, and the mass migration of millions from the global south. Yet the U.S. military isn't listed as one of the World Wildlife Fund's "footprint issues." Nor is it mentioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council or Sierra Club as the largest consumer of the "dirty fuels" both lobby against.

How could such an oversight exist? Noted writer and farmer Wendell Berry, who has spent most of his life linking issues of the environment to the many maladies of our society, once said that just as military violence is ignored by most conservationists, violence against the earth is a matter ignored by most pacifists. The antiwar and environmental movements must bond over this common enemy and see, as Berry put it, that we cannot hope to end violence against each other until we end our violence against the earth.