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GOING GREEN Credit: © Shutterstock It is wrong to choose just one species to represent conservation, but the turtles are among the most unique and the most threatened of all How much longer will be we be able to touch the largest chelonian, before their unique lifestyle disappears, along with all the others we have destroyed? Change is certainly needed among those who can create enormous directional modifications to this mad flight to self-destruction, and it is needed right now. Two perspectives on the biosphere Economic growth is useless if all the forests are gone Julia Marton-Lefèvre and E.O. Wilson are two people you probably aren’t aware of. That is because they are, respectively Director General of IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) for eight years, and Pulitzer Prize-winning sociobiologist and renowned evolution and ant expert! Not exactly the pop world. They share one great criticism this week of the world’s politicians and technologists. While one criticises the lack of logic in politicians’ behaviour towards conservation of resources, the other suggests that ethics are needed for a solution to the same problem: unless we save other species, then our own is doomed to extinction too. Professor Wilson has a sciencecentric way of thinking that deludes the non-scientific. Politicians believe him to be egocentric, unless they are scientists themselves. On the other hand Julia Marton-Lefèvre is able to state that 9bn people need to gain their food, water and shelter from the protected places she wants politicians to be much more aware of. Without fish, for example, much of the coastal population will starve. Yet only 3% of marine life is protected, compared to 15% of land species. We would question whether diplomacy or straightforward logic would suit a world in which we need much more conservation, both nationally and on an international and cooperative basis. You can read much more on the current publications and conferences with which this ageing professor and this vigorous, somewhat-younger lady are involved. Julia, if she will forgive us using her name, can be found in the Guardian and elsewhere, representing the IUCN at the decadal World Parks Conference in Sydney. Edward (the prof) officially retired in 1996, so he has a more relaxed tour of what he mistakenly calls the mother country, selling yet another book he’s written, The Meaning of Human Existence, but also promoting a Dorset Memo (Mass Extinction Monitoring 62 november-december, green+.2014
GOING GREEN The Global Green Economy Index 2014 Credit: © Shutterstock The Global Green Economy Index is now onto its 4th biennial edition of separating the cabbages from the clowns. Green performance entails an awful lot of renewable energy or eating cabbage, while the clowns think they can still get away with uneconomical cars and coal-fired power stations. Top of course are the Scandinavians, whose policies have been green for generations, although an awful lot of oil and gas have powered Norway’s expensive conversion to the green side. Germany naturally gets the perception award for being so much in the forefront of renewable energy and showing European leadership in the necessary economic and environmental change. Behind Sweden and Norway, the 3rd spot for performance goes for first time entrants, Costa Rica, whose efforts, especially in sustainable building, are only helped a little by their small size. Large nations do have a problem with the absolute expense of change. Of the 60 countries and 70 cities surveyed, larger nations such as China, Poland and lastly, Mongolia bring up the rear. Many countries are not perceived as being green enough or they appear much more green than they really are. The African countries of Ethiopia, Mauritius, Rwanda and Zambia deserve credit for becoming very environmentally friendly. Cities that have been poor performers long ago, now rank highly. Being rich enough to alter your infrastructure is also a help. With London and its eco-buildings 5th and New York 7th, only the obvious ones such as Copenhagen and Amsterdam beat them. The nicest cities seem to be all green, such as, in order, Stockholm, Vancouver, Berlin and Singapore, not forgetting Oslo in 10th. Concern has to be expressed about developed countries that have fallen behind. Australia, Japan, the Netherlands and the US perform poorly compared to other similar countries. This group seem to class themselves as fairly green, but this just doesn’t add up in reality Likewise, the UK is inconsistent and therefore In Paris, they have their own ideas about how green a building or a city should be. France performs very well compared to some neighbours in this survey, but its perceptions of itself are less good! never excels in the survey, unlike many other European countries that exceed even their own green perception of themselves. Opposite to the UK, France outranks it on performance but sees itself as much less green than the UK! In similar fashion, Colombia, Chile and Peru are imperceptibly green on the outside, but are blossoming on the inside! Buildings are often the key to “green-ness”, as their emissions are prominent among polluting sources. So we can judge a nation’s performance on climate, energy and their environment almost with only a sustainability of building report. The Dual Citizen LLC consultancy produce the GGEI report from the US. – www. earthtimes.org Observatory) to 860 extinct species since the dodo in 1662. The newspaper covering this epic event is The Times with King of the Ants. The Director General is more diplomatic when she states that the Aichi Biodiversity Targets are unlikely to be attained in 2020. She is simply not optimistic that commitments can be met. She herself is stepping down this year - hopefully not retiring yet, either! Her organisation is fighting poachers in particular but politicians too. Her agreement with the professor is reasonable to assume. It isn’t about the love of birds and butterflies; it’s about our survival. We need to behave better towards our planet and behave better towards each other. In other words, economic growth is useless if all the forests are gone. They are needed alive and still standing, as habitats and food sources, just as the marine forests are! With only 25% of protected areas managed at all well and half of our most biodiverse sites totally unprotected, the pessimism she feels is reasonable. Between $45bn and $76bn will be needed just to manage the poachers (and the politicians), but this is only 2.5% of global military spending. It is an old argument that never worked, but it’s always worth mentioning. Of the IUCN Red List’s 73,686 species, 22,103 are classed as threatened. With EO. Wilson adding the extinct 860, that leaves a “helluvalot” more work to do for those of us remaining. His 50 years of earnest and thoughtful work have left him believing technology will not rescue us from the mess we have created. Our emotions and our institutions are ill-fitted to the task of changing the world around. We must save the environment but new technologies are the only route by which the organisms and their habitats can provide us with a healthy biosphere. Whoever has the better argument, we certainly need them both. The people who make up this world are unfortunately responsible for the other species and the whole biosphere. It is up to those with this knowledge and this experience to lead us to new conclusions about action. And I am sorry, time is up for us all, given the warmings, the droughts, the floods and the tears. – www.earthtimes.org green+.2014, november-december 63
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in this issue Ü Tea Team produces
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