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  • Lies about Pirates

    Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century.” They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

    The words of one pirate from that lost age – a young British man called William Scott – should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live.” In 1991, the government of Somalia – in the Horn of Africa – collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

    Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.”

    At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia’s unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

    This is the context in which the men we are calling “pirates” have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a ‘tax’ on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and it’s not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters… We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.” William Scott would understand those words.

    No, this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the “pirates” have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking – and it found 70 percent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country’s territorial waters.” During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America’s founding fathers paid pirates to protect America’s territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

    Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn’t act on those crimes – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about “evil.” If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause – our crimes – before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia’s criminals.

    The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know “what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.” The pirate smiled, and responded: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.” Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today – but who is the robber?

    © 2009 Huffington Post

    Johann Hari is a columnist for the London Independent. He has reported from Iraq, Israel/Palestine, the Congo, the Central African Republic, Venezuela, Peru and the US, and his journalism has appeared in publications all over the world.

  • Watson discusses piracy

    Since then Canadian Paul Watson has captained his own ship the, Sea Shepherd, recently renamed the Steve Irwin, as part of the society he founded in 1977, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (S.S.C.S). An international non-profit marine wildlife conservation organization, the SSCS now owns a fleet of three ships and has sailed over 200 missions to fulfil its charter: “to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the world’s oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species.”

    Below is an edited interview with Captain Paul Watson conducted by Giovanni Ebono of The Generator for Bay FM, Byron Bay, Australia.

    GE: What is it particularly about whales that got you excited?

    PW: I have been involved with protecting a lot of different species throughout my life. I spent six months hunting elephant poachers in East Africa in 78- but I decided had to set up an organisation, not to protest, but to uphold international conservation law and I had to narrow that down and specialise as there was just too much to do.

    GE: What sort of criteria did you use to establish such an organisation?

    PW: I had been a co founder of Greenpeace and an expedition leader for Greenpeace. I got to a point where the protesting was getting frustrating for me because we were protesting, but nothing changes, it just sort of comes from a submissive position, [ie] ‘please please don’t do that’. And I said well  these guys are breaking the law so there is no reason  for us to be so submissive about it,  lets just simply enforce the law against them, and that is why I set up Sea Shepherd (SSCS), to enforce the law.

    And we are empowered to intervene by virtue of the UN World Charter for Nature that allows for non government organisations and individuals to uphold international conventions on law so that is why over the last 25 years I have been able to shut down illegal sealing, whaling and fishing operations, ramming, sinking vessels, confiscating millions of dollars of equipment, because all of these things have been utilised illegally. So, I have never been convicted of a crime for any of those interventions because we are not protesting something we disagree with, we are shutting down illegal activities that should be shutdown.

    GE: All of these international conventions exist because of the cooperation of governments. How are you able to exercise that authority?

    PW: Well the UN Charter for Nature allows for individual interventions and we just take it upon ourselves to do it so all we do is, we just do it. There is no reason why Australia and NZ can’t go down there and kick the Japanese out of the Antarctic whale sanctuaries, especially since it is Australia’s Antarctic territory. They have every legal right to do so.

    But the problem with governments is that they seem to be co-opted by trade agreements and considerations and that seems to be the bottom line so justice and legality take second place to deals that are being made.

    GE: Are there any governments anywhere who have come out and supported the kind of actions that you are taking?

    PW: We are working closely with the government of Ecuador to address illegal fishing and we have a boat full time in the Galapagos and our patrol boat is crewed by Sea Shepherd volunteers, naval personnel and Galapagonian park rangers.

    We are working with the government of Columbia to protect Malpelo Island off the coast of South America. So we try and work with governments when we are able to do so but very few governments are motivated to do anything to protect marine wild life.

    Even when you point out to so called sophisticated countries like Canada that [allow] bottom drag trawling, destroying habitats, and Canada is a good example where the northern cod population’s crashed and up to the day it crashed the Canadian government was insisting that it was a healthy population, well managed.

    So really, what we have are these ministries and departments of fisheries who are compromised by the fishing industries. They are calling the shots, not the scientists.

    GE: The history of humanity has been fairly destructive, what hope do you have for us being able to reverse that?

    PW: Well I believe in living my life with the three basic laws of ecology. The first is living with the strength of an ecosystem – it depends upon diversity. The second is the law of interdependence that all those species are dependent on each other. The third is the law of finite resources, there is a limit to growth, the carrying capacity.

    Right now our numbers are growing so fast we are literally stealing the carrying capacity for a species. They have to disappear for our numbers to increase, and we are taking up all the resources that they would otherwise use.

    We are going to reach a point where we are going to go too far and the law of interdependence will kick in. Then we will find that we simply can’t survive on this planet alone and that we depend on all these other species to do so. If we can’t learn as a species to live with in harmony with all the other species then we will be doomed to extinction.

    For the full transcript of this interview visit http://www.ebono.com.au .

  • Growth in organic sales nutures sustainable UK hopes

    No sector of industry has been immune, however, to the chill wind of recession blowing since October 2008. Organic shoppers, like all consumers, have clearly been tightening their belts – by shopping less often, buying fewer premium products and prepared foods, and switching to lower-cost retailers. The overall growth in organic sales by value masks a net decline in the sales volume of a fair few categories of organic food products during the year. The picture is mixed, with dynamic growth in sales of organic food through farmers’ markets and at Asda, as well as in some new, and still small, areas of organic sales such as textiles and health and beauty products.

    In the UK, economic conditions are particularly tough because of the significant burden of mortgage and consumer debt, and the pivotal role played in the economy by the beleaguered financial services industry. In some other European countries the credit crunch appears to have hit less hard so far, and demand for organic products has held up better than in the UK. It is difficult to predict how the global organic market will fare in 2009, however. Global sales of organic food and drink exceed £23 billion and grew by £2.5 billion in 2007, but we do not yet have the kind of clear picture on European and global sales in 2008 and early 2009 that this report provides for the UK.

    Importantly for the UK market, this report does show that there is a core of consumers who are in no mood to ditch their commitment to organic products. They are far more likely to cut their spending on eating out, leisure activities and holidays than to reduce what they spend on organic food. They would rather economise by buying cheaper cuts of organic meat or by buying frozen organic vegetables than by compromising their organic principles. 36% of these committed organic consumers expect to spend more on organic food in 2009, and only 15% expect to spend less.

    Some organic enthusiasts who are finding it tough to make ends meet may turn to the UK’s rich variety of independent outlets such as farm shops, farmers’ markets and box schemes. Price comparisons over the past year have shown organic fruit and vegetables to be consistently cheaper through box schemes than through the leading supermarkets, with the bonus that producers receive a bigger share of the price paid by the consumer.

    Whatever happens to organic sales in 2009, there are huge changes ahead in farming which are sure to favour organic production. The government has agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. Such cuts can only be achieved in agriculture by deriving fertility from sunshine and organic matter – as organic farmers do – rather than from fossil fuel-based chemical fertilisers. It is ironic that the recession has triggered a slowdown in sales at the very point when policy makers are expressing unprecedented interest in sustainable food systems.

    It is clear from this report that much more work needs to be done to communicate the wider benefits of organic production to the public, especially in relation to health, animal welfare, climate change and the environment. The economic downturn has given increasing profile to ‘single issue’ market alternatives such as free-range, local, pesticide-free, fair trade, seasonal and ‘natural’ foods. Consumers have plenty of different ethical options – so many, in fact, that the choice can be bewildering.

    To cut through the confusion the organic movement needs to demonstrate more forcefully than ever that organic principles encompass all these single issues and deliver a set of interlocking benefits that can and will still motivate consumers.

    Where understanding of these interlocking benefits is limited, consumer commitment may be limited too – particularly in tough times. As we hear from a succession of voices in this report, however, those with a sophisticated understanding of all the benefits are the ones most likely to become or remain committed buyers – they know too much to turn back.

    » Read the full report [PDF, 756 KB]

  • Forests pump water as well as oxygen

    From New Scientist

    THE acres upon acres of lush tropical forest in the Amazon and tropical Africa are often referred to as the planet’s lungs. But what if they are also its heart? This is exactly what a couple of meteorologists claim in a controversial new theory that questions our fundamental understanding of what drives the weather. They believe vast forests generate winds that help pump water around the planet.

    If correct, the theory would explain how the deep interiors of forested continents get as much rain as the coast, and how most of Australia turned from forest to desert. It suggests that much of North America could become desert – even without global warming. The idea makes it even more vital that we recognise the crucial role forests play in the well-being of the planet.

    Scientists have known for some time that forests recycle rain. Up to half the precipitation falling on a typical tropical rainforest evaporates or transpires from trees. This keeps the air above moist. Ocean winds can spread the moisture to create more rain. But now Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva of the St Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute in Russia say that forests also create winds that pump moisture across continents.

    How can forests create wind? Water vapour from coastal forests and oceans quickly condenses to form droplets and clouds. The Russians point out that the gas takes up less space as it turns to liquid, lowering local air pressure. Because evaporation is stronger over the forest than over the ocean, the pressure is lower over coastal forests, which suck in moist air from the ocean. This generates wind that drives moisture further inland. The process repeats itself as the moisture is recycled in stages, moving towards the continent’s heart (see diagram). As a result, giant winds transport moisture thousands of kilometres into the interior of a continent.

    Coastal forests create giant winds that push water thousands of kilometres inland

    The volumes of water involved in this process can be huge. More moisture typically evaporates from rainforests than from the ocean. The Amazon rainforest, for example, releases 20 trillion litres of moisture every day.

    “In conventional meteorology the only driver of atmospheric motion is the differential heating of the atmosphere. That is, warm air rises,” Makarieva and Gorshkov told New Scientist. But, they say, “Nobody has looked at the pressure drop caused by water vapour turning to water.” The scientists, whose theory is based on the basic physics that governs air movement have dubbed this the “biotic pump” and claim it could be “the major driver of atmospheric circulation on Earth”. This is a dramatic claim. The two Russians argue that their biotic pump underlies many pressure-driven features of the tropical climate system, such as trade winds, and helps create intense local features like hurricanes.

    To back up their hypothesis they show how regions without coastal forests, such as west Africa, become exponentially drier inland. Likewise, in northern Australia, rainfall drops from 1600 millimetres a year on the coast to 200 mm some 1500 kilometres inland. In contrast, on continents with large forests from the coast to interior, rainfall is as strong inland as on the coast, suggesting the trees help shuttle moisture inland (Ecological Complexity, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2008.11.004, in press). In the Congo, for instance, around 2000 mm of rain falls each year at the coast and the same amount falls inland. The same is true in the Amazon, the Siberian Arctic and the Mackenzie river basin in northern Canada. But the US, largely forested until recently, now seems be headed for desert. Makarieva and Gorshkov told New Scientist that without rapid reforestation “the degrading temperate forests of North America are on their way to desertification”.

    The Russians’ ideas have languished since they were published in a small journal in 2007. “We are facing enormous difficulties in overcoming the initial resistance of the scientific community,” they say. Antoon Meesters of the Free University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, recently described it as “an untenable result of confused principles”. Meesters does not dispute the physics behind the Russians’ theory but claims the effect is negligible.

    This week, a leading British forest scientist based at the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation in Kabale, Uganda, came to the Russians’ aid. In a review of the work in the journal Bioscience (DOI: 10.1525/bio.2009.59.4.12), Doug Sheil and his co-author Daniel Murdiyarso underline the importance of the idea. “Conventional models typically predict a 20 to 30 per cent decline in rainfall after deforestation,” Sheil says. “Makarieva and Gorshkov suggest even localised clearing might ultimately switch entire continental climates from wet to arid, with rainfall declining by more than 95 per cent.”

    Sheil explains that current theory doesn’t explain clearly how the lowlands in continental interiors maintain wet climates. “There is a missing element,” Sheil says. The biotic pump “may be the answer”. He calls the Russians’ findings “a most profound insight into the impact of forest loss on climate. They will transform how we view forest loss, climate change and hydrology.”

    Many forest scientists are intrigued by the idea. “It makes perfect sense,” says Andrew Mitchell, director of the Global Canopy Programme, Oxford, UK. “We know that coastal rainforests are critical to maintaining rainfall deep inland.” He says it could offer a more convincing explanation for how Amazon rainfall is typically recycled six times.

    The implications are global, he adds. “We think some of the recycled Amazon moisture is taken on a jet stream to South Africa, and more maybe to the American Midwest. Gorshkov and Makarieva are looking at the front end of an absolutely critical process for the world’s climate.” If their theory is correct, it means that large forests help kick-start the global water cycle. However, because forest models do not include the biotic pump, it is impossible to say what wiping the Amazon off the map would mean for rainfall worldwide.

    The theory suggests that past civilisations could have had a much greater impact on global climate than we thought. Australia once had forests but is now largely desert. Gorshkov and Makarieva argue that Aborigines burning coastal forests may have switched the continent from wet to dry by shutting down its biotic pump.

    Climatologists are already worried about the state of the Amazon rainforest. Last month, the UK’s Met Office warned that if the planet warms by 4 degrees, 85 per cent of the forest could dry out and die. If Gorshkov and Makarieva are right, the Amazon will be gone before warming kicks in. They predict that even modest deforestation could shut down the pump and reduce rainfall in central Amazonia by 95 per cent.The same could happen in the world’s other large rainforest regions, such as central Africa.

    According to Richard Betts, head of climate impacts at the Met Office, “The jury is still out on whether the mechanism is significant or not. But the role of tropical forests in protecting us against climate change is severely underrated.”

    It’s not all bad news. If natural forests can create rain, then planting forests can, too. Sheil says, if forests attract rain, then replanting deforested coastal regions could re-establish a biotic pump and bring back the rains. “Once forests are established, the pump would be powerful enough to water them. Could we one day afforest the world’s deserts? Makarieva and Gorshkov’s hypothesis suggests we might.”

  • James Lovelock

    Other articles on James Lovelock in the Generator.

    Background on James Lovelock

    James Lovelock is a scientist who invented a device in 1958 to detect minute concentrations of chemicals. It was used to show that pesticides like DDT accumulate in animals a long way from where they are used. He used it himself a decade later to show that ChloroFlouroCarbons (CFCs) were present in large concentrations in the Antarctic.

    Lovelock was hired by NASA to design instruments that could find life on Mars if it existed. Lovelock started designing very sensitive instruments. Then he realised that they would be unable to differentiate between the contamination brought to Mars on the space ship and any life already there on the red planet.

    He started to focus on ways to tell from the outside if life existed. He reached the remarkable conclusion that there is a very simple indicator of life and that is activity, or more accurately, instability.

    Life consumes nutrients, extracts what it needs and exhales what it does not. It reorganises the world around it. There is one very significant thing about that reorganisation. It is more complex as a result of life than it would be without it. Plants consume sunlight, dirt and water and create forests. Animals eat plants and drink water and create societies.

    When you look at a living thing from the outside you see change happening that cannot be explained by simple chemical processes. We see the seething compost and we know the worms are well.

    Lovelock reported to NASA that he had completed his experiments and had proven that there was no life on Mars. They sacked him and insisted that he did not report his findings.

    He went one step further. He founded a movement, named after the Greek goddess of the Earth, Gaia, based on the principle that the planet is alive. It is not just covered in life, it is, itself, a living organism.

    There is no doubt in my mind that it is a very useful way to understand the systems which operate on a global scale.

    When we describe the rainforest as the lungs of the planet we are using exactly such an analogy. When we look at the ocean currents and their interaction with the life that depends on them, it is a circulatory system we describe. David Suzuki reports that the Nitrogen in the temperate rainforests that blanket the west coast of the USA and Canada has all come from the sea in the bodies of salmon. On a planetary scale, I see small, salmon-shaped cells carrying nutrients through that circulatory system to an organ that helps the planet breathe.

    This is not a far-fetched notion, it is a practical tool.

    James Lovelock in the news

    He’s opposed to renewable energy, and recently opposed the construction of windfarms in the UK http://www.thisiswesternmorningnews.co.uk/news/Expert-launches-tirade-wind-farm-fascism/article-869981-detail/article.html

    He’s been called the ultimate pessimist http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sanjay-khanna/pessimists-die-quickly-gu_b_177808.html

    He’s a biochar enthusiast! But he does not support the planting of trees for the sole purpose of creating biochar.

    In a January interview James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia theory, stated “There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste… into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil.” http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=436833&no=385028&rel_no=1

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/24/biochar-earth-c02

    He’s accused of being extreme in his beliefs. e.g.

    “He believes the hotter new world we are bringing into being could support, at best, a billion people. That would require 84 percent of the world’s population to die off.” http://www.alternet.org/environment/135201/why_the_london_protesters_are_on_the_right_side_of_history/

    Probably the most controversial thing about Lovelock is that he goes against the tide of green sentiment by proclaiming only nuclear power can halt global warming

    http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/only-nuclear-power-can-now-halt-global-warming-564519.html

  • Is the cure worse than the disease?

    Historically, these approaches have resolved massive health problems that killed or maimed large numbers of people. Medical workers delivering health services in poor countries point out that opposition to these programs is only present in countries where those programs have been successful. “These are middle class affectations,” wrote Lindsay Rae of World Vision in response to an anti-vaccination campaign.

    The problem is, governments have lost the trust of the people because of decisions that benefit major corporations, sometimes at the expense of the general population. When the pharmaceutical company Baxter, which has the contract to produce vaccines for the avian flu, accidentally released the live avian flu virus in Europe last month, it unleashed widespread fear of a deliberate campaign to harm people in the quest for profit.

    The enforced delivery of medical services plays into the conflict between holistic and chemical medicine. Concerted campaigns by the medical profession have persecuted women, pagans and traditional healers across four centuries. These campaigns have often been brutal and overtly paternalistic attempts to centralise authority, knowledge and access to important substances.

    At the same time, the disappearance of diseases such as polio and the reduction in fatalities from general infections and common diseases is directly attributable to modern, industrial medicine.

    How then do you, Dear Reader, come to a well informed decision on something like flouridation?

    My view, based on the research of many others is that we need to apply the precautionary principle. If we don’t know the consequences we should not pop the pill. We certainly should not compell the entire population to swallow it. Flouridation may well improve dental health, but the costs to mental health and the general well being of the population will not be known for another century or so.

    This article appeared first in the Northern Star.