When I was growing up, my family lived in New Orleans for several years, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. One of my father’s friends had a boat, and he liked to take it out shrimping. My dad and I would often join him and his son.

I loved those early morning boat trips (except for the time that I got very seasick — probably my fault for snacking on Fritos — and the trip that I’m about to tell you about). The lake was so big that you could barely see the shoreline.

On one occasion, our nets were coming up empty, so my dad’s friend steered the boat toward the mouth of the lake where it meets the Gulf of Mexico and ventured into a cove where he hoped to find some shrimp. Soon, the boat started dragging. We feared that the net had gotten snagged on the bottom of the lake. But when they winched it in, the cause turned out to be quite a bit scarier for my 10-year-old self.

The boat had gone right over a school of stingrays, which had probably ventured into the lake from the Gulf, and our net was full of them. As the net came up, it looked like they were going to spill into the boat. My dad and his friend struggled to release them without damaging the boat or the fishing equipment, but eventually they had no choice but to cut the net away.

I watched from the prow as those ghostly stingrays spread out beneath us, silently gliding away from the hapless weekend fishermen who had inadvertently disturbed them.

Drawing food from the sea is one of the most fundamental interactions that we can have with the our oceans, and I’m glad that I have those early experiences in New Orleans to draw upon. The stingray incident taught me a respect for the ocean and its creatures — and a concern for how we interact with them — that sticks with me today.

The fish we choose to eat — and the way we fish for them — can have a tremendous impact on our oceans. As part of a personal goal to eat healthier, I’m trying to increase the amount of fish in my diet. It’s a lean protein with great health benefits. But there are risks, as well: Some types of fish can be contaminated with mercury and PCBs, and sometimes seafood is harvested in a way that’s bad for the oceans.

That’s why NRDC created a new Sustainable Seafood Guide for consumers. It provides seven basic guidelines that you can follow when shopping for seafood or ordering at a restaurant, to help make the choice of what’s healthy for you and the planet a little easier.

We also have specific advice about America’s favorite types of seafood, from shrimp to tuna to fish sticks, and a handy list that shows what’s OK to eat and what you should avoid. Once you’ve made your selection, we also have a collection of helpful recipes for serving healthy, feel-good seafood meals.

When working on the seafood guide with NRDC’s oceans experts, I was a little disheartened to see that many of my favorite types of fish — grouper, halibut, orange roughy, cod — had landed on the recommended “avoid” list. (Pacific cod and halibut are OK, but the Atlantic varieties are badly depleted.) I was aware of the overfishing problems that many species face, but this put it in pretty stark terms.

Today is the first-ever World Oceans Day, designated by the United Nations as an occasion to celebrate and protect the world’s oceans. And there are certainly a lot of problems facing our seas — overfishing, habitat destruction, acidification, water pollution, giant trash vortexes in the Pacific … the list goes on.

We might not be able to tackle all of those big problems all at once. But as my colleague Laura Pagano suggests, one way that each of us can make a difference right now is to make smarter choices about the seafood we eat and understand its impact on the oceans. We hope that NRDC’s Sustainable Seafood Guide will help. Please share it with other seafood lovers!

To learn more about the threats facing our oceans and other ways that you can help on World Oceans Day, visit nrdc.org/oceans.

I’ve had the privilege over the last several months to write, co-direct and executive produce a startling half-hour documentary featuring Sigourney Weaver. ACID TEST explores the impending catastrophe of ocean acidification — which scientists call the OTHER carbon problem.  (The first being global warming.)

ACID TEST will premiere this August on Discovery Planet Green.  Watch the trailer.

The word “startling” above is not hype.  Ocean acidification seems to be the best kept secret in environmental science despite that it may, in a matter of a few decades, devastate our oceans.  Although I’ve worked at NRDC for six years (and covered environmental issues as a reporter for years before that) I knew virtually nothing about ocean acidification before NRDC Films began making the movie in conjunction with Lisa Suatoni, a scientist in NRDC’s ocean’s program. 

That goes for most of the people I know: the organic food eating, Prius driving, urban professionals whom one expects to be well aware of every looming environmental crisis.

That knowledge gap seems particularly weird once you start talking to the scientists who work on this issue.  They are FREAKED OUT.   They are so alarmed about what the future holds for the oceans (if we don’t change our carbon emitting ways) that they seem to be losing a battle against despair.

There ARE solutions, of course, but first, here’s a basic explanation of ocean acidification: The atmosphere touches the ocean over about 70% of Earth’s surface, so a significant percentage of the carbon dioxide we emit by burning fossil fuels ultimately mixes with ocean water.  That interaction produces carbonic acid.  The more CO2 we put into the atmosphere, the more CO2 ends up in the ocean and the higher ocean acidity goes.

The models show that unless we significantly cut CO2 emissions, ocean acidity will double compared to pre-industrial times by the end of the century.  As NRDC’s Lisa Suatoni says in the film with characteristic understatement: “That is a big problem.”

It’s a big problem because it will mean that water in large parts of the ocean will be so acidic as to be corrosive to shells.   That includes the “shellfish,” which probably first come to mind (lobsters, shrimp, crabs, etc.), but perhaps more significant, the small, shelled creatures such as plankton and corals that help form the foundation of the ocean food web.

What happens if thousands of shelled species can’t build their shells?  Scientists aren’t entirely sure, but the likely scenario isn’t pretty. (To learn more about acidification, check out this NRDC fact sheet.)

So if ocean acidification is about to kill off our coral reefs and contribute significantly to an unraveling of the ocean food web (an unraveling that could have huge implications for how the human race feeds itself), how come you’ve never heard of it before? What explains that knowledge gap between the scientific community and the light green world of average environmentally conscious citizens?

Part of the answer seems to be that there was a peculiar, collective lapse on the part of the scientific community.  Although the chemistry of ocean acidification is quite straightforward and has been understood for many decades, it was only about five years ago that scientists started to think rigorously about the biology. Until then, they hadn’t considered what rapidly rising acidity would mean for life in the ocean.

One theory I’ve heard to explain that lapse is that scientists have been preoccupied with global warming, and since the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide actually slows the pace of global warming, the fact that large amounts of CO2 were going into the ocean was considered (at least in a superficial way) a GOOD thing.  Were it not for the ocean absorbing about a quarter of the CO2 we’ve emitted since the industrial revolution, Earth would already have the climate now predicted for 2050.

Add to the mix the fact that ocean issues are generally out of sight and therefore out of mind, and you see how we got to this weird point at which even opinion leaders are almost totally unaware of one of the most grave and immediate environmental threats we face.

My hope is that our new film, ACID TEST, will help get us out of that situation; that it will help to put ocean acidification at the top of the agenda. Not just the agenda at ocean policy conferences, but at the dinner tables of all those Whole Food shopping, bike commuting urban professionals I know whose engagement is vital if we’re to have any hope of getting out of this mess.

And there IS a way out of this mess if we act quickly.  The most important step is to accelerate our transition to a new energy economy.  We simply need to power our lives without emitting huge quantities of CO2.  But we can also help the ocean defend itself against the twin attacks of global warming and ocean acidification by making sure its systems are as healthy as possible.  That’s why marine protected areas (like national parks in the ocean) and sustainable fishing practices are so important.

So is there hope?

Well, as Bruce Steele, a fisherman we interviewed for ACID TEST says wisely at the end of the film: “I have hope.  You can’t fish and not have hope.”

In the climate negotiations occurring in Bonn, Germany there is an emerging debate on the form of “commitment or action” developing countries will undertake (as the Economic Times in India points out).  This has been a long running debate in the international global warming negotiations, but it has gained more focus as the negotiating text (that I discussed in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) has included proposals where all countries undertake binding international actions.

As countries were doing the “first reading” — going through the text to flag areas of disagreement or where they wanted to add text — a number of developing countries raised serious concerns with these proposals for international “binding” commitments (I put “binding” in quotes as I’ll discuss later how what this means in practice is complicated).

The proposals in the text are based upon the US and the Australian submissions (as I discussed in Part 2), which proposed slightly different ways to incorporate “binding” commitments. 

The US proposed that all countries (including developing ones) undertake emissions reduction actions and those actions are established in an Annex to the new international agreement reached in Copenhagen.  In addition, the US proposed that developing countries whose “national circumstances reflect greater responsibility or capability” would outline the date when a country would undertake an economy-wide absolute emission limit.  The actions in the Annex would then become internationally binding in some manner. 

Australia proposed that all countries would commit their actions to a Schedule (New Zealand is also intrigued by this approach).  This schedule would contain either a single set of actions at the time they were committed with the idea that more would be added over time or, when they were entered, countries would outline a series of actions that they would take over the near- to medium-term (e.g., sectoral intensity target in the near-term phasing into a an absolute sectoral limit and then an economy-wide limit).  The actions in the schedule would be internationally binding in some way.  This is similar to how the World Trade Organization actions are included.

A third, sort of a “middle-ground” approach, has been floated by South Korea (as articulated in this Associated Press story).  In this proposal, developing countries would:

1. Undertake nationally binding actions to reduce their emissions (e.g., enforce sectoral intensity targets through their domestic law);
2. Report those actions into an internationally approved registry that would be endorsed by the new international agreement; and
3. Subject the reported actions to international verification (e.g., third party teams review them against reported information to see if they were achieved).

So you can see why this has some developing countries ruffled.  Binding commitments for developing countries has been an issue that has been pushed for a while, but has received strong resistance from the developing countries. 

But do these proposals offer some promise to finally “crack this nut”?  I think yes (although I’m getting mixed reactions from developing country negotiators that I’m speaking with) and here is why.

All three of the approaches don’t envision international compliance penalties for not living up to the commitment.  Penalties for non-compliance have been a complicated issue internationally as it often boils down to “name and shame” — that is publicly calling out the laggards and make them come into compliance because the world considers them a rogue (and most countries don’t want to be rogues).  With a few exceptions, this is the framework that is used in the vast majority of international agreements as most don’t have strong international sanction mechanisms.  See for example, the efforts to impose international sanctions on countries that don’t live up to the requirements on nuclear weapons.  The trade agreements are one of the rare international agreements that have a strong international compliance mechanism that is automatic — that doesn’t require a group of countries to approve its use.

National sanction mechanisms are often used — where one country imposes the sanction unilaterally on the other — but these only work if either a large group of countries does the sanctions or if the country imposing the sanction has large influence in some manner over the other.

Most countries need “international recognition” for their actions.  While this didn’t used to be true, I believe that most countries want the world to recognize that they are taking serious steps to address global warming.  With the attention on global warming and with world leaders now focused on it at almost every high-level engagement with each other, nobody wants to be the leader that says: “my country isn’t doing anything to address our pollution”.  There are still leaders and countries like that, but they are a shrinking bunch.

And with the growing political focus in countries, the fear of some sort of ramification for not taking action lingers over many world leaders.  If a country doesn’t take action, what impact will that have on other issues that they want to pursue (e.g., trade)?

Financing support for developing countries will be tied to how much action is undertaken.  While some developing countries are asking for incentives that are provided no matter what they do to reduce emissions, I highly doubt any country will provide incentives that aren’t somehow related to the actions that are taken.  “Payment for performance” — i.e., your incentive is dependent on actually meeting your stated aim — is an often discussed framework in the international negotiations these days.

And this is the framework that is included in the US climate bill that just passed out of the House Energy and Commerce committee.  Countries receiving incentives have to be undertaking national actions that seek to achieve “substantial” reductions.

———

So it will be essential to resolve whether developing countries have to undertake “binding commitments” (as the US and Australia have proposed) in the Copenhagen agreement or whether they undertake some other form of commitment that has a strong international verification system (as in the South Korean proposal).

As the Bruce Springsteen song says:

“The ties that bind.  Now you can’t break the ties that bind”

Whether or not the world commits to a strong set of actions to start to solve global warming in Copenhagen will somewhat depend on how those “binding” differences are resolved.

The planet (and our future) doesn’t care as long as countries are taking and living up to their commitments to solve global warming.

 On Monday, June 1st, the Billings Gazette published a piece I wrote on the problems of prematurely removing endangered species protections from Northern Rockies gray wolves.  I shouldn’t have been surprised at the number of comments (28 total) posted in response, but I was, I admit, taken aback at the hateful, even threatening, nature of many of them.  Here are some of the choicest:

James June 1, 2009 7:46AM MT

Louisa, you have the mistaken impression we want a wolf recovery program, we will continue to shoot these varmints at every opportunity and we don’t care what you think about it.

River Rat June 1, 2009 9:14AM MT

Tough. Let ‘em die off if there aren’t enough. We already have too many…

DamSkippy June 1, 2009 2:09PM MT

SSS, Shoot, Shovel, and Shutup. This is the farmers and ranchers plans for control if government fails to do it for them. Trust me, Montana is vast and game wardens are few and they do not patrol private property. A rancher seeing a wolf crossing his property will not hesitate for a second to administer an anesthetic in the form of a 30-06 pill. Just something for you foam at the mouth enviro’s to chew on.

Dave Skinner June 1, 2009 3:07PM MT

…As for concrete actions, the best would be to implement shoot on sight. Trust me, the survivors would be healthy.

River Rat June 1, 2009 4:05PM MT

After reading these posts, I want to take a minute to thank Defenders of Wildlife for making me proud of America again! All the SS&Sers are coming out of the woodwork! It’s the Boston Tea Party all over again! The Founding Fathers would be proud to know we’re tellin’ the gummint to put it “where the monkey put the peanut.” God bless America!

 So here we go again-these irrational, even pathological, eruptions about wolves are as far removed from a civil discourse as you can get.  It would be easy to dismiss the rantings of a few vocal ruffians who advocate for nothing short of the elimination of wolves from the landscape altogether.  But in this case, these angry people are organized, armed and hell-bent on expressing their misplaced anger with bullets. 

 Last year, some of them stalked wolves on the elk feedgrounds in Wyoming and gunned down, among others, the famous Druid wolf Limpy.  And, in Idaho, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s annual wolf report, 100 wolves were killed illegally.  Those are the ones the government knew about.  But given the nature of the “shoot, shovel and shut up” culture, how many wolves were really killed?  The number could be far greater, potentially explaining in part why, last year, the wolf population grew at the slowest rate in the history of Northern Rockies wolf recovery.  (Another reason could be that disease wiped out a number of the pups.)

 Adding fuel to the fire is a recently passed law allowing people to carry guns in national parks.  This law was attached to the credit relief bill, by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK).  It could result in more poaching of wolves, grizzly bears and other wildlife in a huge landscape (Yellowstone, for example, is 2.1 million acres), and where law enforcement in the backcountry is sparse.

 There is still enough deep-seated hatred of wolves (and the federal government and conservationists) among well-armed people to make this a truly dangerous situation.  In a democracy, laws matter, and, in this case, they are necessary to protect wolves against excessive killing.  That’s why we are back in court challenging the delisting decision. 

 In the West, the “shoot, shovel and shut up” mentality is never far away.  Veiled or direct threats of violence permeate the policy processes.  Go to some of the state game commission meetings or hearings on the proposed hunts, and you can feel the daggers in some of the bullies’ eyes.  It can be downright intimidating.  It is also the antithesis of a fair and democratic process.  Wolf management continues to reflect the tyranny of a well-armed minority that reflect the values of yesteryear.

 What we have in the West with wolves today is mounting frustration on all sides, exacerbated by the anonymity provided by the Internet, which is further inflaming the debate.  Another contributing factor to this growing frustration over wolves is the complete failure of the government to provide for a constructive dialogue among diverse parties in the hopes of resolving conflicts.  Instead, key government officials fan the flames with wisecracks in the press. 

 Government leadership is sorely needed to bring all parties to the table in some new creative ways to help us honestly discuss our differences, and explore new solutions based on areas of common interest. For this to work, curse words and disrespectful behavior need to be left at the door.

 Until then, we will be in court, and wolves will be in the crossfire, again.

They are the literal workhorses of the internet - the IT (”Information Technology”) enterprise server - requiring ever larger amounts of electricity to provide us with the webpages, video viewing, song downloads, internet searches, email storage, online shopping, and yes, even to help you view my blog post.  And just how much electricity might we be talking about?

Some enterprise server units today consume as much power as an average household, which means electric bills nearly $1,000 per year!

In 2007, Congress authorized the EPA to study the rapid growth of energy use resulting from the rapid growth of IT infrastructure (here is the report’s executive summary).  The study showed that in 2006, IT infrastructure accounted for 1.5% of all the electricity used in the U.S.  By 2011 this is expected to rise to 3% and with electricity costs soaring to over $7.4 billion annually.

Although not all is bad when you consider from my earlier blog post (here) that the essential building block of IT, the semiconductor, has seen a 2.8 million percent increase in its energy efficiency, and may in fact be the single most important technology to enable a more profitable, efficient, and cleaner energy future for America. (For you fellow nerds out there, this efficiency gain directly stems from Moore’s Law -or the to doubling, roughly every 2 years or less, of the number of transistors (semiconductors) that can fit into an integrated circuit - a pace that the IT industry has been able to achieve for the past half-century).

Just a few short weeks ago, EPA’s ENERGY STAR products program took a big leap forward in finalizing an energy efficiency specification for IT enterprise servers. It is a commendable achievement by the ENERGY STAR enterprise servers specification development team to not only identify the numerous input-output criteria that go into the functioning of a computer server, but to prioritize and weight the various energy-saving functionalities that will drive efficiency innovation for future enterprise server design and functions.  There’s a caveat however to this initial success.  Taking what we know about the super rapid pace of technology innovation (Moore’s Law, etc.) within the IT industry, the ENERGY STAR server development team will need to keep on their toes to update the specification at regular intervals that will drive enterprise server energy efficiency innovation.  We’ll be sure to keep an eye out for new energy efficient developments in the IT industry and hope that all those who contribute to the ENERGY STAR specification will continue to work together to drive the IT industry toward greater strides in energy efficiency innovation.