2685. Lenin’s Eco-Warriors

By Fred Strebeigh, The New York Times, August 7, 2017

South Ural nature reserve

NEW HAVEN — Atop a granite cliff in Siberia this past winter, I stood gazing at what became, 100 years ago, the first in the world’s largest system of most protected nature reserves. To my west glistened mile-deep Lake Baikal. To the east rose snowy mountains, including one that reminded me of sharp-cut Half Dome, an icon of America’s Yosemite National Park. I was looking across Barguzinsky Zapovednik, a conservation area protecting more than 600,000 acres so free from human impact that visitors may not enter.

Barguzinsky began a chain of 103 zapovedniks, or nature reserves, that protect 68 million acres of Russia. Most zapovedniks date from the Soviet era and provide the world’s highest level of protection to the most land within any nation, under the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s designation of “strict nature reserves.”

How did Russia — hardly considered a cradle of environmentalism, given Joseph Stalin’s crash program of industrialization — become a global pioneer in conservation?

Much of the answer begins with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. In 1919, a young agronomist named Nikolai Podyapolski traveled north from the Volga River delta, where hunting had almost eliminated many species, to Moscow, where he met Lenin. Arriving at the Bolshevik leader’s office to seek approval for a new zapovednik, Podyapolski felt “worried,” he said, “as before an exam in high school.” But Lenin, a longtime enthusiast for hiking and camping, agreed that protecting nature had “urgent value.”

Two years later, Lenin signed legislation ordering that “significant areas of nature” across the continent be protected. Within three decades, some 30 million acres (equal in area to about 40 states of Rhode Island) from the European peaks of the Caucasus to the Pacific volcanoes of Kamchatka were set aside in a system of 128 reserves.

The roots of the zapovedniks were holy. Priests for years had sanctified forests by proclaiming a zapoved, or commandment: Thou shalt not cut. By the early 20th century, the sacred was resonating with the scientific: Mankind was exterminating “primordial nature,” a Moscow biology professor, Grigorii Kozhevnikov, told a conference in 1908. He argued that anthropogenic dominance would soon leave humanity unable to see nature except through man-made imitation, “obscuring the image of the vanished past.”

He proposed that Russia preserve vast lands where “nature must be left alone.” Each would serve not as a “pleasuring-ground” for people (the words of the law that created the first of America’s national parks, about which Russians were aware) but as a baseline established by observation of natural systems untrampled by people.

In the early 1920s, the Moscow Zoo began training a “circle of young biologists,” many of whom became leaders in the Communist conservation movement, establishing zapovedniks as far-flung as the Pacific coastal reserve created in 1935 to save the Siberian tiger.

Joseph Stalin, however, was not one for obeying anyone else’s commandment. In the 1940s, he initiated a “great transformation of nature” in the U.S.S.R. To open the country for a huge expansion of farming, logging, mining and hunting, he slashed the zapovednik system by 89 percent in 1951, leaving just 40 reserves comprising about 3.5 million acres.

After Stalin died in 1953, brave scientists fought back in defense of the reserves. By 1961, the system had rebounded to 93 zapovedniks on 15.7 million acres, with some additions and many restorations.

Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, was no friend of conservation, but the defenders were organizing. The reserves owe their survival, in part, to a 1960 law inviting the “participation of non-governmental organizations in the protection of nature.” Within days, a group of biology students at Moscow State University took up the challenge. They called their movement Druzhina, after the medieval warriors who defended their homeland against invaders seeking to destroy Russia’s Christian faith, and began to fight poachers and create nature reserves.

The students’ motto resounded with ironic romanticism: “For the success of a hopeless cause!” By the 1980s, about 140 brigades of Druzhina had sprung up across the country. As the years passed, Druzhina activists became leaders on university faculties, and in environmental organizations and Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources.

On my hike up the bluff that lies just outside the protected vastness of Barguzinsky Zapovednik, the researcher leading me was a Druzhina named Irina Kurkina. This reserve was Russia’s first, created in January 1917, before the Bolsheviks seized power (the Volga delta zapovednik proposed to Lenin by the young agronomist was the second to begin). Ms. Kurkina came here in 1986, fleeing a poultry farm to which the Soviet system had sent her to work, straight from college. She lives in this remote part of southern Russia far beyond the reach of any road.

“I would not do this job, be this kind of person,” she told me, if not for the inspiration of fellow students in the Moscow Druzhina, whose names she recited as we climbed.

Their activism carried risks. To combat poaching, Druzhina teams gained legal authority to make citizens’ arrests. At least three Druzhina were shot dead by poachers in different regions — near the Black Sea, the Ural Mountains and Lake Baikal — between the early 1970s and mid-1980s.

When the threat wasn’t physical, it could be political. One leader of the anti-poaching teams, Vsevolod Stepanitskiy, told me some years ago about a time when he and his university colleagues, on patrol near Moscow, caught some illegal duck hunters. One, they learned, was a “deputy minister of finance.” Worried at how their report would be received, the students presented their evidence to the Communist Party.

The minister got away with a reprimand, Mr. Stepanitskiy recalled. But the students went unpunished, and felt victorious. Druzhina became, in the words of another warrior who later joined the biology faculty at Moscow State, “a prototype of civil initiatives” and, as she put it, “a sign of democratization in conditions of totalitarianism.”

Like many Druzhina, after graduating Mr. Stepanitskiy became a zapovednik researcher, starting in 1982 on Russia’s Pacific coast. In late 1991, when the U.S.S.R. dissolved, Mr. Stepanitskiy found himself heading the Zapovedniks Administration for the new Russian Federation. Despite economic hard times, he and his colleagues seized the initiative and created 18 new reserves in four years, including the spectacular Commander Islands, Russia’s Aleutians in the Pacific.

Nature conservation in Russia remains challenging. Three times in the first two decades of his post-Soviet leadership, Mr. Stepanitskiy resigned to express his opposition to management problems, including efforts to turn protected resources into financial resources. His second resignation came in 2002, when an official in the Ministry of Natural Resources ordered zapovednik directors to start making money by cutting down forests in their reserves. “Going to work,” Mr. Stepanitskiy announced, had become “like going behind enemy lines.”

Each time, Mr. Stepanitskiy went to work outside the government, helping environmental organizations and providing support to conservationists. But each time, apparently in tacit acknowledgment of Mr. Stepanitskiy’s judgment and leadership, the Russian government invited him to return to directing the zapovednik system.

In 2015, President Vladimir Putin, who famously enjoys photo opportunities in nature with tigers, bears and whales, announced that the centennial year for Russia’s zapodneviks, 2017, would be the “Year of Protected Areas.” His government pledged to increase Russia’s protected acreage by 18 percent over the next eight years.

But storm clouds have gathered. Ranger salaries, which Mr. Stepanitskiy has fought to raise, are only about $4,300 a year. New ski resorts, supported by wealthy corporations that Russian conservation groups believe have lobbied the government, seem likely to threaten Caucasus Zapovednik. While Mr. Stepanitskiy has encouraged educational tourism in small sections of the nature reserves, he has criticized ski construction as “not eco-tourism” and as likely to jeopardize a leopard reintroduction project that has had Mr. Putin’s backing.

Russia’s first zapovednik in the Arctic, Wrangell Island, is threatened by a new military base. After polar bears had been fed illegally, a construction worker tossed toward a bear an explosive device that detonated in its mouth, a horror shown by Russian TV. Proposed legislation would authorize Russia’s president to strip protection from zapovedniks for any reason, including “to ensure the security of the state.”

In April, Mr. Stepanitskiy resigned for a fourth time. Conservationists across Russia are following his now unbridled commentaries, including that the ministry views Russia’s nature reserves as “a resource that can be used for personal recreation and entertainment.” He has attacked the government for failing to uphold the system’s century-long “sacred idea.”

For now, at least, Lenin’s legacy is preserved and Russia remains the world leader, ahead of Brazil and Australia, in protecting the most land at the highest level. Russian naturalists continue to advance their not-yet-hopeless cause of keeping free a few vast landscapes on this planet where humans do not tread.

Fred Strebeigh is a senior lecturer at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the department of English.

2684. Worldwide Fossil Fuel Subsidies are $5 Trillion a Year

By John Abrahams, The Guardian, August 7, 2017

Fossil fuels have two major problems that paint a dim picture for their future energy dominance. These problems are inter-related but still should be discussed separately. First, they cause climate change. We know that we’ve known it for decades, and we know that continued use of fossil fuels will cause enormous worldwide economic and social consequences. 

Second, fossil fuels are expensive. Much of their costs are hidden, however, as subsidies. If people knew how large their subsidies were, there would be a backlash against them from so-called financial conservatives.

A study was just published in the journal World Development that quantifies the amount of subsidies directed toward fossil fuels globally, and the results are shocking. The authors work at the IMF and are well-skilled to quantify the subsidies discussed in the paper.

Let’s give the final numbers and then back up to dig into the details. The subsidies were $4.9 tn in 2013 and they rose to $5.3 tn just two years later. According to the authors, these subsidies are important because first, they promote fossil fuel use which damages the environment. Second, these are fiscally costly. Third, the subsidies discourage investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy that compete with the subsidized fossil fuels. Finally, subsidies are very inefficient means to support low-income households.

With these truths made plain, why haven’t subsidies been eliminated? The answer to that is a bit complicated. Part of the answer to this question is that people do not fully appreciate the costs of fossil fuels to the rest of us. Often we think of them as all gain with no pain.

So what is a subsidy anyway? Well, that too isn’t black and white. Typically, people on the street think of a subsidy as a direct financial cost that result in consumers paying a price that is below the opportunity cost of the product (fossil fuel in this case). However, as pointed out by the authors, a more correct view of the costs would encompass:

not only supply costs but also (most importantly) environmental costs like global warming and deaths from air pollution and taxes applied to consumer goods in general. 

The authors argue, persuasively, that this broader view of subsidies is the correct view because they “reflect the gap between consumer prices and economically efficient prices.”

Without getting too deep into the weeds, the authors discuss both consumer subsidies (when the price paid by a consumer is below a benchmark price) and producer subsidies (when producers receive direct or indirect support which increases their profitability). The authors then quantify what benefits would be achieved if the fossil fuel subsidies were reformed.

Interested readers are directed to the paper for further details, but the results are what surprised me. Pre-tax (the narrow view of subsidies) subsidies amount to 0.7% of global GDP in 2011 and 2013. But the more appropriate definition of subsidies is much larger (8 times larger than the pre-tax subsidies). We are talking enormous values of 5.8% of global GDP in 2011, rising to 6.5% in 2013. 

The authors also broke the results down by fossil fuel type and usage (coal, petroleum, natural gas, electricity). It is not clear to me how the authors separated the various fuel sources out of electrical generation; however, the results show that petroleum and coal receive much larger subsidies compared to their counterpart fuels. The authors organized results by geographical region and found that the top three subsidizers of fossil fuels are China, USA, and Russia, respectively. The European Union is a bit less than half of the entire US subsidy. Other notable countries and regions are discussed.

There are two key takeaway messages. First, fossil fuel subsidies are enormous and they are costs that we all pay, in one form or another. Second, the subsidies persist in part because we don’t fully appreciate their size. These two facts, taken together, further strengthen the case to be made for clean and renewable energy. Clean energy sources do not suffer from the environmental costs that plague fossil fuels.

I asked one of the authors, Dr. Coady, why their work is important. He told me: 

A key motivation for the paper was to increase awareness among policy makers and the public of the large subsidies that arise from pricing fossil fuels below their true social costs—this broader definition of subsidies accounts for the many negative side effects associated with the consumption of these fuels. By estimating these costs on a global scale, we hope to stimulate an informed policy debate and provide renewed impetus for policy reforms to reap the large potential benefits from more efficient pricing of fossil fuels in terms of improved public finances, improved population health and lower carbon emissions.

As a climate scientist, I focus almost exclusively on the scientific questions related to climate change. But equally important are the economic issues that, when dealt with, will usher in a new era of energy.

2683. Cuba and the Future

By Nelson Valdez, Counterpunch, April 25, 2016

Nelson Valdez

Cubans as well as progressive people around the world continue to discuss the kind of society that will be produced by the reforms now taking place in Cuba. The question, of course, can be debated based on what ought to be rather than what the present circumstances dictate. Typically, Cuban revolutionaries had the tendency to be idealist on economic matters and realist on political issues.

It was once reported that Fidel Castro said, in a not-for-publication setting, “Hemos hecho la revolución que pudimos hacer y no la que quísimos hacer.” [We have made the revolution that we could make and not the one that we wished to make.] Human agency, he recognized, was insufficient to overcome structural conditions of underdevelopment.

Progressives, as a rule, tend to think that the sky is the limit and what a society can attain is merely a matter of wanting it. Marxists know better. In The German Ideology, Marx reminds us that “with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced.” It is clear that United States’ Cuba policy has been applied to block any possible improvements of the Cuban economy, particularly the state controlled sectors.

The question, then, is not whether the Cuban regime ought to choose between the side of the progressive angels or the capitalist devils. The question is what the prospects are for the best possible socioeconomic system and the greatest number of people while the US economic “embargo” continues. The issue is not ideological but empirical as well as political.

What do the Cubans have on their side? What do they have against it? What should and should not be reformed?

There are many Cubans who have no knowledge whatsoever of the most elemental aspects of economics despite the large number of economists the revolutionary regime has produced – over 40,000. Indeed, the early distribution policies of the revolution created a society of consumer-oriented Cubans rather than a society of producers actively involved in shaping the process of production, the administration of the workplace and determining what was to be consumed and how much was to be re-invested. There were numerous distribution policies (agrarian reform redistributed land ownership, rent reform reduced the price of rental housing, free education and health, and many other plans and programs). The consumerist ethic imposed by American influence did not end, but rather acquired a revolutionary character. The mentality of “me toca” (What is owed me) had no connection to the mentality of “cuánto nos cuesta”? (How much does it cost us?)

Now, the easy road seems to be to assume that somehow the logic and constraints of “the market” will fix everything and impose labor discipline on the non-working as well as working Cubans. This vision and premise seems to prevail within Cuba as well as outside, but for profoundly different reasons and expecting totally different outcomes. This, of course, is a road that has been travelled many times before. This naïve logic takes us back to Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees (1705) where personal selfishness benefits the whole of society.

As Sharpers, Parasites, Pimps, Players,

Pick-Pockets, Coiners, Quacks, Sooth-Sayers,

And all those, that, in Enmity

With down-right Working, cunningly

Convert to their own Use the Labour

Of their good-natur’d heedless Neighbour:

These were called Knaves; but, bar the Name,

The grave Industrious were the Same.

All Trades and Places knew some Cheat,

No Calling was without Deceit.

Karl Marx in The Critique of the Gotha Program said that “Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.” In other words, if Cuba is to move into the logic that capacity to purchase should be a significant mechanism to obtain things, how “fair” is that when some people have a head start because they have foreign exchange from abroad in their pockets while others do not? Is it that efficiency is to be measured by profitability, cost of production or something else? Is it that the social wage [services provided without citizens direct payment] will be reduced and the stress will be on personal income? Is the piece rate how work and income will be established? These are some of the questions concerning Cubans today. The newer policies and the expected outcomes could very well demolish the highly integratedand unique nation state that was created after 1959. It is this particular feature that separates Cuba from any society be it industrially developed or under-developed.

And then, of course, there is the new generalized theft taken from the state enterprises in order to supply the emerging “private sector.” The laborer as well as the administrator shows the income that the state enterprise was expected to earn by supplying the general population, but – in fact – the items are sold to the emerging private sector while the population receives much less. The state ends up with the proper income, but the consumer who depends on the state supply cannot compete with the price the “cuentapropista” can pay. The poorest consumers end up with less consumption and higher prices. [1] And, yet, the state earns what was planned. The majority gets less, the minority gets more and pays higher prices, and the state receives as payment what was planned as if the majority of the people had done the purchasing.

Abroad, many commentators (journalists, editorial writers, academics and politicians) assume that the supposed panacea of capitalism “could solve” Cuba’s problems today [although capitalism did not solve Cuba’s social problems pre-1959]. It is also presumed that none of the revolutionaries, starting with Fidel Castro, could conceive of making an opening to capitalist enterprise. Yet, there are over 600 state-owned “empresas” [mercantile societies] in Cuba that operate with stock [“acciones nominativas” – nominative shares] and follow the logic of capitalist cost accounting, profits, et al. Indeed, Cuban socio-economic reality is more complicated than recognized or imagined.[2]

Fidel Castro himself alluded to this matter at a major conference on the campus of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic on August 24, 1998:

“I remember that once I read how at a given moment Lenin imagined the construction of capitalism under the direction of workers, through a workers’ government. He said: Capitalism needs to be built; the productive forces need to be developed. But there was so much harassment and siege, so much aggression, and isolation and the situation turned so critical that he had no choice but to accept the challenge. Marx would have been very upset and would have raised his arms to the heavens, really.

“And I don’t blame them. I sincerely will say that if I had found myself in a similar situation, I would have done the same thing. I tell you, truly, if I had found myself in a situation such as that, I would have done so; because in the final analysis it would have been even more irrational to expect that our Revolution would have survived after the collapse of the socialist camp. Then the unipolar system surfaced and the enemy became ever more relentless, more powerful and strong than ever and we could not count on any foreign support… Presently we are not building socialism, fundamentally, at this time we are defending our sovereignty, the independence of the country and the achievements we had attained. If we can further socialism a bit, we will; but, the main thing that we want to improve is to enhance the quality of what we have done. [3]

Three years earlier, on August 6, 1995 Fidel Castro at stated,

The key to everything, comrades and friends is: the matter of power. Who has [political] power? …. We don’t have landlords but had them in the past… but we have thousands of independent farmers. Who has political power? Is it the bourgeoisie? Is power in the hands of the capitalists, for the capitalists and in their behalf? No. The key issue is who has power.

I have to say that some of the things we are doing is because we are seeking economic efficiency, we are doing many things to improve our socialism. But it is clear, ladies and gentlemen, that it is very difficult to socialize and collectivize the fixing of shoes – for example.

There was a time that we had such struggle and conflict inside the country that everything was nationalized. But there is in society and there will be many tasks that are appropriate for individuals to perform, which should be done by private persons, and the state should not attempt to do them. We reached that conclusion.” [4]

The Cuban political system is beginning to go through its most significant transition as the seasoned old revolutionaries step aside in what Havana is calling a “generational change,” while the United States government is attempting to foster as much growth in the Cuban private sectors of the island. In Washington, DC it is hoped that those Cubans born after 1980 will identify the revolution with all the shortages and difficulties that ensued after the demise of the Soviet bloc (post 1991), without acknowledging the national, social and cultural achievements.

Between 2014 and 2015 the money remittances from the US to Cuba drastically increased in amount and frequency. In the past the remittances had the main objective of providing financial resources to the relatives who stayed in Cuba and had to buy food and other commodities in a dollar based market. But, as state employment declined, those receiving remittances began to invest their foreign currency in other areas, not just consumption. The “cuenta propia” sector [small private enterprise appeared and grew in size and sectors]. As state employment declined the government allowed newer areas of private enterprise. 

Relatives from abroad sent dollars to help out. It was reported that new areas opened: investments in small businesses, loans to private entrepreneurs, rudimentary commercial transactions, “mules” bringing assets to private bed&breakfast and financially fronting “family” owned restaurants. The magazine TEMAS (Havana) noted that in an 18 month period, over 390 restaurants were opened in the city of Havana alone and it was estimated that 65% of the original investments originated from relatives and friends from abroad. And such was the case before the Obama administration announced its change of policy. Presently, Cubans living in the US can send up to $6000 per year to relatives and friends.” [5]

In fact, the emerging cuentapropistas [self-employed] in Cuba take for granted a number of items that are not that secure in the United States: free education from child care to university, free health care as well as numerous subsidies(food, medical prescriptions, retirement payments, transportation, and unemployment benefits) not found in most of Latin America. The recent re-gentrification of Cuba is another serious change. From one day to the next, housing which had been a use-value was transformed into an exchange value. That is, owners of homes that have been given by the state to most dwellers since the 1960s, for the first time were allowed to sell their homes. [6] Such a policy change, effective since January 2015, allowed the transformation of an asset into real capital. As a result, a large number of Cuban emigres began the process of buying real estate in Cuba. More remarkable still, the marketization of housing was done without much state mediation, except the change of legal titles. There was no establishment of a state controlled market that might generate state income from the transactions between the private seller and buyer. Physical money exchanged hands, or transactions with third parties abroad produced the transaction. Laissez faire was triumphant, in this case.

The re-stratification of Cuban society had begun. One should note that the size of the work force involved in state employment has declined while the private sector continues to grow.

Recent changes in US policy toward the island reveal the Obama administration objective: riding such major shifts in Cuban employment and property patterns in order to foment a Thermidorean Reaction that would bring to an end the Cuban revolutionary regime.*

In his recent public speech, Fidel Castro said, “To our brothers and sisters of the world we have to say, the Cuban people shall overcome.” [7] Fidel Castro has considered the possibility of two alternative Cuban revolutionary regimes: one without capitalism, the other with it but under the leadership of the Communist Party. In either case the issue, as in 1959, is sovereignty.

Notes.

* Thermidorean Reaction refers to the overthrow of the French Revolutionary Regime of 1789 and the establishment of a more moderate and conservative/traditional set of institutions and practices; and the restoration of the old social order. Crane Brinton was the main exponent of the classic interpretation claiming that revolutions go through a natural cycle going from the rule of moderates to radicalization to a conservative [Thermidorean] reaction that restores many of the old practices and institutions. Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution, NY: Vintage, 1938 [republished in 1965].

[1] http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2016/02/15/presentan-estudio-sobre-el-trabajo-por-cuenta-propia-en-cuba-en-feria-del-libro-video/#.VxkkNvkrLbg

[2] http://www.one.cu/ryc/nocambian/articulo.pdf

[3] Conferencia Magistral del Presidente de la República de Cuba, Fidel Castro Ruz, en el acto convocado por la Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Primada de América, efectuado en el Centro de Eventos y Convenciones, República Dominicana, el día 24 de agosto de 1998. http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1998/ing/f240898i.html

[4] Discurso pronunciado por el Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz, Primer Secretario del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba y Presidente de los Consejos de Estado y de Ministros, en la clausura del festival Juvenil Internacional Cuba Vive, efectuada en el Teatro “CARLOS MARX”, el 6 de Agosto de 1995. http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1995/esp/f060895e.html

[5] http://temas.cult.cu/articulo/1484/las-nuevas-relaciones-estados-unidos-cuba-formaci-n-factoresy-fantasmas and http://ocamd730715.cubava.cu/piramide-socio-economica-invertida/tate assets

[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/75000-will-get-you-a-lot-of-house-in-havana–if-youre-cuban/2015/05/25/bbed3d78-fd8f-11e4-8c77-bf274685e1df_story.html

[7] http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2016/04/19/fidel-castro-el-pueblo-cubano-vencera/#.Vxgen_krLbg It is informative to read Fidel’s article responding to President Obama’s visit to Cuba.

See also: http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2016/03/28/articulo-de-fidel-el-hermano-obama/#.VxgqL_krLbg

** I would like to acknowledge the very useful comments by Helen Jaffe, Arturo López Levy and Robert Sandels.

2682. A History of Global Warming, In Just 35 Seconds

By Brian Kahn, Climate Central, August 4, 2017

Last year, there was the temperature spiral. This year, it’s the temperature circle that’s making the trend of global warming crystal clear.

A new video shows the rhythm of global warming for countries around the world, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Bars representing each country’s annual average temperature anomaly pulse up and down. It's like watching a heartbeat on a monitor.

ather than staying steady like a normal heartbeat, it’s clear that temperatures for more than 100 countries are climbing ever higher on the back of increasing carbon pollution. While there are individual variations in how hot any year is, the signal of climate change is unmistakable.

“There are no single countries that clearly stand out from the graph,” said Antti Lipponen, a physicist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute who made the graphic. “The warming really is global, not local.”

While the temperature spiral showed the global average temperature, Lipponen’s animation uses NASA data to show individual countries separated by regions. The format invites you to look for your country or the place you took your vacation last year.

But step back to look at the graphic as a whole and it’s clear we’re all in this together. No country is immune from rising temperatures, let alone the other impacts of climate change.

It’s also clear that global warming is accelerating. In the past three decades (which starts around the 14-second mark in the video), the bars start pushing further and further from the center. Cooler-than-normal years start to become more rare and by the 1990s, they’ve almost disappeared completely.

The past three years have been the hottest ones ever recorded. A number of countries were more than 2°C warmer than the 1951-1980 baseline used in the graphic. That puts them well above the warming limit enshrined in the Paris Agreement, serving as a warning of how fast we’re pushing into new territory.

The world itself touched 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for a few months in 2016. If global warming permanently crosses that threshold, it will likely cause small island states to be swallowed by the sea, coral to die and heat waves to become more common and severe.

Those numbers alone are abstract, though. Even plotted on a line graph, they fail to fully convey the trajectory we’re on.

Lipponen said he made the animation because he wanted a “nice looking, clear, and informative” way to convey that information in a way people can understand. Mission accomplished.

2681. Light Pollution: A New Threat to Nocturnal Species

By Science Daily, August 2, 2017

Abu Dubai at night

Artificial light disrupts nocturnal pollination and leads to a reduced number of fruits produced by the plant. This loss of night time pollination cannot be compensated by diurnal pollinators. The negative impact of artificial light at night on nocturnal pollinators might even propagate further to the diurnal community, as ecologists of the University of Bern were able to show.

The number of bees and other diurnal pollinators is declining worldwide -- due to diseases, introduced parasites, pesticides, climate change and the continuing loss of habitats. Now, Eva Knop's team from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Bern, shows for the first time, that nocturnal pollinators can be affected by artificial light leading to a disruption of the pollination service they provide. "So far, nocturnal pollinators have been largely neglected in the discussion of the worldwide known pollinator crisis," says Knop. However, there are numerous nocturnal pollinators, and they play an important role for plants, as the study in the Bernese Prealps shows. Knop's team found out, that flowers on meadows which were experimentally illuminated with street lamps are visited around two thirds less frequently by pollinators, than those that were on meadows without any light sources in the vicinity. This has an effect on the fruit set, and therefore the reproduction of plants. The study has now been published in the magazine "Nature."

Loss of nocturnal flower visitors

In the last 20 years, the light emissions have increased by 70%, particularly in residential areas. "As it is possible that light sensitive insects have already disappeared in regions with high levels of light pollution, we conducted our study in the still relatively dark Prealps," explains Knop. The researchers could show that during night a total of almost 300 insect species visited the flowers of around 60 plant species on ruderal meadows without any artificial light sources in the vicinity. Interestingly, on meadows with experimentally set up street lights, the nocturnal pollination visits were 62% lower than in the unlit areas. The LED lamps used, are used as standard for public street lighting.

Consequences for biodiversity

This loss of nocturnal flower visitors leads to a reduction of the fruit set of plants, as the researchers have proved for the first time, with the example of the cabbage thistle (Cirsium oleraceum). The pale flower heads of the cabbage thistle are a rich and easily accessible source of pollen and nectar, for numerous species of insects, and are amongst the most visited plants both during the day and at night. The team investigated a total of 100 cabbage thistles, which were growing on five meadows experimentally illuminated with LED street lamps, and five meadows without artificial light. The illuminated plants were visited much more rarely by pollinating insects at night, than the unlit plants. The decline in pollinators had a significant influence on the reproduction of the cabbage thistles: at the end of the test phase, the average number of fruits per plants was around 13% lower. "The pollination during the day obviously cannot compensate for the losses in the night," says Knop.

Diurnal pollinators also affected

The study also shows, that the nocturnal pollinators indirectly promote the diurnal pollinators, by visiting the same plants. The underlying mechanisms are still unknown -- a possible explanation could be that the plants have a fitness advantage thanks to the nocturnal pollinators, and therefore provide more nutrition for the diurnal pollinators. A loss in nocturnal pollination due to increasing light pollution, could therefore also indirectly have a negative effect on the diurnal pollinator community. According to Knop, this still needs to be researched in detail, as well as the long-term consequences of the pollination losses for the biodiversity.

The findings have driven the researchers to demand action: "Urgent measures must be taken, to reduce the negative consequences of the annually increasing light emissions on the environment," says Knop. This will be big challenge, as residential areas are worldwide increasing.

---

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Bern. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

1. Eva Knop, Leana Zoller, Remo Ryser, Christopher Gerpe, Maurin Hörler, Colin Fontaine. Artificial light at night as a new threat to pollination. Nature, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/nature23288

2680. Humans Have Been Altering Tropical Forests For At Least 45,000 Years

By Science Daily, August 3, 2017

The first review of the global impact of humans on tropical forests in the ancient past shows that humans have been altering these environments for at least 45,000 years. This counters the view that tropical forests were pristine natural environments prior to modern agriculture and industrialization. The study, published today in Nature Plants, found that humans have in fact been having a dramatic impact on such forest ecologies for tens of thousands of years, through techniques ranging from controlled burning of sections of forest to plant and animal management to clear-cutting. Although previous studies had looked at human impacts on specific tropical forest locations and ecosystems, this is the first to synthesize data from all over the world.

The paper, by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Liverpool John Moores University, University College London, and École française d'Extrême-Orient, covered three distinct phases of human impact on tropical forests, roughly correlating to hunting and gathering activities, small-scale agricultural activities, and large-scale urban settlements.

Big impacts of small hunter-gatherer groups

In the deep past, groups of hunter-gatherers appear to have burned areas of tropical forests, in particular in Southeast Asia as early as 45,000 years ago, when modern humans first arrived there. There is evidence of similar forest burning activities in Australia and New Guinea. By clearing parts of the forest, humans were able to create more of the "forest-edge" environments that encouraged the presence of animals and plants that they liked to eat.

There is also evidence, though still debated, that these human activities contributed to the extinction of forest megafauna in the Late Pleistocene (approximately 125,000 to 12,000 years ago), such as the giant ground sloth, forest mastodons, and now-extinct large marsupials. These extinctions had significant impacts on forest density, plant species distributions, plant reproductive mechanisms, and life-cycles of forest stand, that have persisted to the present day.

Farming the forest

The earliest evidence for farming in tropical forests is found in New Guinea, where humans were tending yam, banana and taro by the Early-Mid Holocene (10,000 years ago). Early farming efforts in tropical forests, supplemented by hunting and gathering, had significant consequences. Humans domesticated forest plants and animals, including sweet potato, chili pepper, black pepper, mango, banana and chickens, altering the forest ecologies and contributing significantly to global cuisine today.

In general, when groups employed indigenous tropical forest agricultural strategies based on local plants and animals, these did not result in significant or lasting damage to the environment. "Indeed, most communities entering these habitats were initially at low population densities and appear to have developed subsistence systems that were tuned to their particular environments," states Dr. Chris Hunt of Liverpool John Moores University, a co-author of the study.

However, as agricultural intensity increased, particularly when external farming practices were introduced into tropical forests and island environments, the effects became less benign. When agriculturalists bringing pearl millet and cattle moved to the area of tropical forests in western and central Africa about 2,400 years ago, significant soil erosion and forest burning occurred. Similarly, in Southeast Asia, large areas of the tropical forests were burned and cleared from c. 4,000 years ago following the arrival of rice and millet farming. For example, the increase in demand for palm oil has led to clear-cutting of tropical forests to make room for palm plantations. "These practices, which induce rampant clearance, reduce biodiversity, provoke soil erosion, and render landscapes more susceptible to the outbreak of wild fires, represent some of the greatest dangers facing tropical forests," notes Hunt.

Sprawling cities in the jungle

Despite previous notions of tropical forests as "green deserts" not suitable for human habitation, recent discoveries using new technologies have shown that ancient populations created vast urban settlements in these habitats. New data, including surveys made with canopy-penetrating Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) mapping, have revealed human settlement in the Americas and Southeast Asia on a scale that was previously unimagined. "Indeed, extensive settlement networks in the tropical forests of Amazonia, Southeast Asia, and Mesoamerica clearly persisted many times longer than more recent industrial and urban settlements of the modern world have so far been present in these environments," notes Dr. Patrick Roberts of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, lead author of the paper.

Lessons can be learned from how these ancient urban centers dealt with environmental challenges that are still faced by modern cities in these areas today. Soil erosion and the failure of agricultural systems necessary to feed a large population are problems encountered by large urban centers, past and present. In some Mayan areas, urban populations "gardened" the forest, by planting a variety of complementary food crops in and around the existing forest rather than clearing it. On the other hand, other groups appear to have over-stressed their local environments through forest clearing and monoculture planting of corn, which, in combination with climate change, resulted in dramatic population declines.

Another interesting finding is that ancient forest cities showed the same tendency towards sprawl as is now being recommended by the architects of modern cities in these zones. In some cases these extensive urban fringes appear to have provided a sort of buffer-zone, helping to protect the urban centers from the effects of climate change and providing food security and accessibility. "Diversification, decentralization and 'agrarian urbanism' appear to have contributed to overall resilience," states Dr. Damian Evans, a co-author of the paper. These ancient forest suburbs are now being studied as potential models of sustainability for modern cities.

Lessons for the future

The global data compiled for this paper shows that a pristine, untouched tropical forest ecosystem does not exist -- and has not existed for tens of thousands of years. There is no ideal forest environment that modern conservationists can look to when setting goals and developing a strategy for forest conservation efforts. Rather, an understanding of the archaeological history of tropical forests and their past manipulation by humans is crucial in informing modern conservation efforts. The researchers recommend an approach that values the knowledge and cooperation of the native populations that live in tropical forests. "Indigenous and traditional peoples -- whose ancestors' systems of production and knowledge are slowly being decoded by archaeologists -- should be seen as part of the solution and not one of the problems of sustainable tropical forest development," states Roberts. The researchers also emphasize the importance of disseminating the information learned from archaeology to other disciplines. By working together, these groups can help to establish a better understanding of the tropical forest environments and how best to protect them.

---

Story Source:

Materials provided by Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Patrick Roberts, Chris Hunt, Manuel Arroyo-Kalin, Damian Evans, Nicole Boivin. The deep human prehistory of global tropical forests and its relevance for modern conservation. Nature Plants, 2017; 3 (8): 17093 DOI: 10.1038/nplants.2017.93

2679. The Symptoms of Dying

By Sara Manning Peskin, The New York Times, June 30, 2017

You and I, one day we’ll die from the same thing. We’ll call it different names: cancer, diabetes, heart failure, stroke.

One organ will fail, then another. Or maybe all at once. We’ll become more similar to each other than to people who continue living with your original diagnosis or mine.

Dying has its own biology and symptoms. It’s a diagnosis in itself. While the weeks and days leading up to death can vary from person to person, the hours before death are similar across the vast majority of human afflictions.

Some symptoms, like the death rattle, air hunger and terminal agitation, appear agonizing, but aren’t usually uncomfortable for the dying person. They are well-treated with medications. With hospice availability increasing worldwide, it is rare to die in pain.

While few of us will experience all the symptoms of dying, most of us will have at least one, if not more. This is what to expect.

We suspected the patient wouldn’t survive off the ventilator. A blood clot had crawled up one of the vessels in the back of his brain, blocking blood flow to the area that controlled alertness. He would die from not being awake enough to cough.

The beat of the death rattle began when the breathing tube was removed and continued until life was done. It was a gurgling, crackling sound, like blowing air through a straw at the bottom of a cup of water. The average time between the onset of death rattles to death itself is 16 hours. For him, it was six.

The death rattle is a symptom of swallowing dysfunction. Normally, our tongue rises to the top of the mouth and propels saliva, liquid or food backward. The epiglottis, a flap in the throat, flops forward to protect the swallowed substance from entering the airway.

In the dying process, the symphony of swallowing becomes a cacophony of weak and mistimed movements. Sometimes the tongue propels saliva backward before the epiglottis has time to cover the airway. Other times, the tongue fails to push at all and saliva trickles down the airway to the lungs in a steady stream. The death rattle is the lungs’ attempt to breathe through a layer of saliva.

Despite the sound’s alarming roughness, it’s unlikely that the death rattle is painful. The presence of a death rattle doesn’t correlate with signs of respiratory distress.

As often happens in medicine, we treat based on intuition. To lessen the volume of the death rattle, we give medications that decrease saliva production. Sometimes, we are successful in silencing the rattle. More of the time, we placate our instinctive concern for a noise that probably sounds worse than it feels. Without hurting our patients, we treat the witnesses who will go on living.

Air Hunger

“You villain touch! What are you doing? My breath is tight in its throat” (Walt Whitman)

The patient was a wiry woman in her 80s who had smoked for seven decades. Cigarettes turned her lungs from a spongelike texture to billowing plastic bags that collapsed on themselves when she exhaled. It was like trying to scrunch all the air out of a shopping bag. Air got trapped.

Air hunger — the uncomfortable feeling of breathing difficulty — is one of the most common end-of-life symptoms that doctors work to ease.

The treatment? Opiates, usually morphine.

People sometimes ask why the treatment for painful breathing is a medication that can depress breathing. You’d guess that opiates would worsen air hunger.

The answer hinges on defining why air hunger is uncomfortable in the first place.

Some researchers think the discomfort of air hunger is from the mismatch between the breathing our brain wants and our lungs’ ability to inflate and deflate. Opiates provide relief because they tune our brain’s appetite for air to what our body can provide. They take the “hunger” out of “air hunger.”

Others believe that the amount of morphine needed to relieve air hunger may have little effect on our ability to breathe. Since air hunger and pain activate similar parts of the brain, opiates may simply work by muting the brain’s pain signals.

The patient traded her cigarettes for a breathing mask when she came to the hospital. She quit smoking for the umpteenth time and made plans to go home and live independently again. A few days later, her thin frame tired. She died in hospice.

Terminal Agitation

“Do not go gentle into that good night” (Dylan Thomas)

My grandfather screamed two days before he died. “Open that door and let me out! Right now! It’s a travesty! Open that door!”

It was the scream of a lost child. My grandfather’s eyebrows, which had been lost over the years from the outside inward so that only a centimeter of long gray hairs near the middle remained, tilted toward each other.

Until then, we were preparing for missing and absence. Not for an agitated delirium. Not for rage.

A famous poet once wrote that “dying is an art, like everything else.” For hospice doctors, the artists of death, terminal agitation is the subject’s revolt against the shaper. It’s uncommon, but it can be difficult to watch when it happens.

Instead of peacefully floating off, the dying person may cry out and try to get out of bed. Their muscles might twitch or spasm. The body can appear tormented.

There are physical causes for terminal agitation like urine retention, shortness of breath, pain and metabolic abnormalities. There are medications that quell it. Yet it’s hard to discount the role of the psyche and the spiritual.

People who witness terminal agitation often believe it is the dying person’s existential response to death’s approach. Intense agitation may be the most visceral way that the human body can react to the shattering of inertia. We squirm and cry out coming into the world, and sometimes we do the same leaving it.

Sara Manning Peskin is a neurology resident at the University of Pennsylvania and a blogger at Borderwise.