Managing our diminished biosphere

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing

from The Oven Bird by Robert Frost

by Stephen Mulkey, The Environmental Century, March 7, 2016

There can be no doubt that our earth has been diminished by our presence. For the last 100,000 years we have built civilization mostly from the resources provided by the living ecosystems of this planet. Within the last 300 years, the pace has quickened exponentially as our exploding population has exploited the energy embodied in the carbon bonds deposited by organisms of ecosystems that thrived tens to hundreds of millions of years ago. Our industrial emissions and extractive use of resources have transformed our planet. There are no evildoers or sociopathic villains in this story. We simply did what a very clever social species would do to maximize reproductive fitness and build a civilization.

Obviously, this way of life is no longer in our best interests. A child born today faces the prospect of living in a world that is not merely vastly diminished but incapable of supporting our civilization unless we are able to make dramatic adjustments in our use of natural and human resources and rapidly bring new sources of clean energy online. Developing a sustainable relationship with our planet in the face of rapid ecological and climate change is the greatest challenge in the history of our species. Proactive adaptation to these changes is far less disruptive and expensive than is reactive adaptation, yet we are lagging in efforts to address our plight. We have little time remaining to assess and begin to adapt our living systems.

The preservationist conservation ethic that prevailed during much of the twentieth century is inadequate for this task. My generation of well meaning practitioners has walked in the footsteps of conservationists such as John Muir and Aldo Leopold, and worked diligently to preserve and restore nature. Unfortunately, the goals of restoration have sometimes been poorly defined and the expected outcomes of our management efforts are constantly changing. This is an ongoing and likely never ending discussion in conservation biology. The uncritical heuristic view of conservation treated an intact ecosystem as one that is more or less unchanging within a human lifetime. Looking back at my career, it seems as though my desire for moral action was at times channeled into the conservation movement without clear understanding of the natural and human drivers of the shifting baselines that define an ecosystem.

The changes that we have wrought are so vast that in many cases pure species and habitat preservation is simply no longer an option. With climate zones in rapid transition, the base of the food chain for many ecosystems is in the process of being disrupted over a decadal timeframe, which is a heart beat in ecological time. Thus, the species composition of many ecosystems is now in dynamic transition. As species move seeking better habitat, the definition of an invasive species becomes moot in many cases. In the face of such rapid change, restoring an ecosystem to some specified prior natural state is a futile activity.

Instead of maintaining the species composition of an ecosystem, at minimum we must focus on maintaining ecosystem form and function. We must work to maintain ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling and watershed integrity, which are crucial for maintenance of biodiversity and human well being. Active ecosystem management includes consideration of assisted species colonization, a controversial practice that raises issues of ethics as well as the potential for ecosystem disruption if done inappropriately.

I should be clear that I do not advocate abandoning endangered species to likely extinction. Instead, I am arguing for sophisticated, comprehensive management of ecosystems that include preservation of species and their precious genomes, but not necessarily in the context of the milieu of organisms where they have been during recent times. This will require us to become far more engaged with the principles of ecosystems science than is the current practice.

The potential for mismanagement is very real as we attempt to save not only form and function but specific species. Many academic ecologists will see this as a rationale for inaction. For some there will never be a time when we know enough to safely manage such complex living systems. I believe that we must act even if it means that we may make some mistakes, perhaps even big mistakes. This adds urgency to the need for focused research in the ecological sciences, rather than the continued collection of more little bricks for the edifice of knowledge. I hope that my colleagues, our professional societies, and funding agencies will continue to rise to this urgent challenge. Time is short.

Sophisticated proactive adaptive management of ecosystem form and function is not only crucial for maintenance of biodiversity, it is indispensable if we are to keep climate change within limits consistent with civilization. The living portion of the planet is both a greenhouse gas source and sink, and maintaining net positive greenhouse gas uptake requires ongoing active management on a global scale. We have much of the data necessary to support this task, but few effective management programs are underway and widespread.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment (IPCC AR5) reports that agriculture, forestry, and other land uses (AFOLU) account for about a quarter of all anthropogenic emissions. Although most of this was estimated to be due to deforestation, a disturbing new report in the journal Nature indicates that agriculture has driven the terrestrial biosphere to become a net source of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Reforestation accounts for recent trends in reducing CO2 emissions from AFOLU and the UN program known as REDD+ provides guidance on preserving forests for carbon balance, primarily in tropical countries. However, these new findings show that mitigating agricultural sources of methane and nitrous oxide will be required to significantly reduce emissions from AFOLU. The AR5 suggests that managing living systems for a combination of mitigation and adaptation can yield the best outcome in reducing the impacts of climate change over this century.

We are doing a very poor job of managing the emissions from the earth’s diminished living systems as they respond to the effects of climate change. Beetle infestations in the American West driven by warming and exacerbated by drought have led to massive fires of historic proportions. According to the World Resources Institute, in September 2015 enormous peat fires in Indonesia exacerbated by a severe dry season produced carbon dioxide and methane pollution equivalent to that of the entire daily output of the U.S. for each of 26 days. Similarly, recent severe drought in the Amazon basin has recurred at higher frequency than in recorded history leading to widespread tree mortality and impaired carbon uptake of surviving forest. We can expect increasing emissions from ecosystems as they are damaged by extreme weather, extended drought, flooding, storm surge along the coasts and other forms of disturbance that come with climate change. Impaired CO2 uptake and associated increased emissions from the earth’s living systems means that mitigation of fossil emissions must be ever more strenuous to overcome these positive feedbacks.

Within the recent decade we have become an urban species and generations of humans are living ecologically illiterate lives. Corporate and government decision making reflects a profound ignorance of the principles of ecology and sustainability. The role of ecosystems in supporting life is rarely appreciated and there is even less awareness of their role in regulating the temperature of our planet. Wholesale management of the earth’s ecosystems is necessary and urgent if we are to have a fighting chance at salvaging a livable climate through the end of this century. This will require federal, state, county, and municipal agencies to coordinate their activities and land use over at least a 50 year horizon. As the Paris climate accord has shown, international cooperation on such an unprecedented scale is challenging but not impossible.

Though diminished, the earth’s ecosystems remain utterly critical to our survival. We must actively assume the role of gardener in the garden, and like the gardener who plants perennials, we may not see the results of our efforts within our lifetimes. Never before in the history of our species has cooperation on such a grand scale been necessary. It is perhaps heartening to note that never before has such cooperation been as possible as it is in the present era. I have often thought it astonishing that our plight has arrived at a time when we not only understand the science of our planetary dysfunction, but we also have the solution within our grasp.

We are now asked to test the hypothesis inherent in our Latin binomial, Homo sapiens. Are we indeed wise humans? Has our cultural evolution allowed us to mature beyond our organic programming? In this long planetary emergency can we overcome our tribalism to extend our obligate sociality to include everyone on earth?

http://environmentalcentury.net/2016/03/07/managing-of-our-diminished-biosphere/

Facing the rising tide in Florida

by Stephen Mulkey, The Environmental Century, February 23, 2016

The sobering science

Yesterday’s stunning news about sea level rise means that Florida can no longer enjoy the beach with its head in the sand. Two papers in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Science showed with sobering clarity that the acceleration of global sea level rise over the 20th and 21st centuries has vastly outpaced the rate of rise in the previous 27 centuries. The rate of rise will continue to increase rapidly unless aggressive mitigation of climate change is implemented in the near term.  We can slow the rate, but not stop it. Sea level will likely continue to rise for several centuries.

The first paper shows that if humans had not been warming the planet, the rate of rise would have been less than half of the observed rate. There is little doubt that the last 100 years, and especially the first part of the this century, are radically out of line with the rate of sea level rise since the great ice sheets began to recede and human agriculture was invented. A second study published in the same issue of PNAS confirmed these projections. Most alarming about these new estimates is that they are calibrated against historical rates that were driven by the melting of glaciers and thermal expansion of the oceans. The new wildcard that has not been fully considered is the rapid melting of the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.

Taken together, these studies and several others indicate that it is reasonable to expect between 3 and 4 feet of sea level rise by 2100 relative to the year 2000, assuming there is no successful mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. It should be noted that there is no wholesale infrastructure fix for Florida that could address such an extreme increase in sea level.

The implications for Florida are profound, if not outright catastrophic. The respected climate news organization Climate Central (the source of these figures) published an analysis showing that most of coastal flooding of the last fifteen years can be attributed to human caused climate change. Moreover, it has long been known that sea level rise amplifies hurricane storm surge. Work by Dr. Tim Frazier, who completed his doctoral studies at Florida State University, showed that Sarasota County is likely to be increasingly in harm’s way as the waters of Sarasota Bay continue to rise. It is not a question of if, but rather when. The odds will worsen quickly if we don’t act to slow the rate of sea level rise. It should be obvious at this point that coastal Florida can expect some tough years ahead.

Why this is an urgent matter for Florida

In March 2007 I was silenced and dismissed giving an invited talk on climate change and energy alternatives to a joint committee of the Florida legislature. Senator Cary Baker from Eustis considered me to be giving false information about climate change because I had shown the infamous hockey stick, which by then had been validated by the National Research Council. When I approached Mr. Baker after I had been dismissed, I found that he was not particularly interested in the opinions of the National Research Council. In another incident, while presenting at a conference at the UF School of Law in 2006, the former Speaker of the House lambasted me for defending science, which he felt had misled politicians. In the years since, the politics related to climate change in Florida have not improved.

The reality of sea level rise and its stunning acceleration means that our elected officials must now take action to fulfill their duty to serve the people. The science can no longer be ignored, even if it is politically inconvenient. The sooner that policy makers embrace this obligation, the less harm will be suffered by Floridians, irrespective of their proximity to the coast. The resulting economic and demographic shifts over the course of this century will affect every county in the state.

There are three primary areas of concern that need to be addressed in the near term:

(1) The frequency of coastal flooding is increasing and the economic damage from this can be expected to multiply rapidly. Efforts to control coastal flooding should not attempt to permanently forestall flooding or provide a long term infrastructure fix. Such efforts are futile in the face of such accelerating sea level rise. Instead we should begin the first stages of strategic retreat from the shoreline, moving those homes and businesses that are most vulnerable to coastal flooding first.

(2) Because of rapidly rising seas, amplification of storm surge is more of a looming threat from hurricanes. Hurricanes are generally projected to be stronger, but perhaps less frequent under the influence of warming seas and shifting trade winds. Regardless, we can expect a few very big Atlantic storms to hit Florida this century. Again, we should formally assess the engineering aspects of coastal infrastructure for resistance to amplified storm surge, and begin strategic retreat as soon as possible. Potential loss of life should be a serious consideration in such planning. Many coastal areas of Florida are occupied by aging populations that are largely dependent on public transportation. This is an emergency planner’s bad dream, and we should consider moving these folks in advance of catastrophe.

(3) Coastal property values will tank in the relatively near term. Although it is impossible to know precisely when this will occur, because of this new science, it will almost certainly happen sooner than previously anticipated. Certain properties will be more likely to drop in value sooner than others depending on exposure to coastal flooding. Reclassification of properties by FEMA, which is likely, could have a profound impact on property values throughout coastal Florida. My estimate is that property values will begin to selectively change within five years, and large scale changes will follow once the details of strategic planning become public knowledge. Failure to make such planning public is reprehensible, and failure to plan is immoral.

In light of this reality, Florida’s entire coastline should be strategically managed for competing uses through 2100. Indeed, Florida beaches are a clear example of the public domain. Certain activities such as beach nourishment should be phased out in certain vulnerable areas as strategic retreat is implemented. Recreational beach use can be allocated according to priorities that should include maintenance of mangroves and wetlands, which act as natural buffers against coastal flooding. Habitat restoration can be a valuable asset to protect human and natural communities on the coast.

In the longer term, all of Florida should become ready for large scale demographic and economic shifts that will unfold toward the middle of this century. Centers of population will shift inland, and the Everglades and existing agricultural lands and ranches will be radically affected. Agencies responsible for restoration of the Everglades and southwest Florida should carefully review the impacts of accelerating sea level rise on existing plans for adaptive management of water, wildlife, and ecosystems.

All county governments should be developing sustainability plans that include management of people, lands, public health, food, agriculture, transportation, and finance as these profound shifts unfold over the coming decades. Comprehensive planning should focus on nothing shorter than a 50-year horizon. Planners must make no assumptions that basic physical and economic factors will remain constant. A powerful tool to address such uncertainty is formal scenario analysis. Presently, only a few counties in Florida are having these discussions.

It is deeply concerning to me that developers and our political leadership continue with business as usual as if the Florida of the 20th century will always be. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

http://environmentalcentury.net/2016/02/23/decision-time-for-florida/

Stephen Mulkey: The Paris accord marks the beginning of a new era of sustainability

“By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle.
By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster.”
George Monbiot writing in The Guardian, 12 December 2015

“It’s a fraud really, a fake,… just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises.”
James Hansen, PhD, after the Paris accord, 12 December 2015

——————————————–

by Stephen Mulkey, Environmental Century, December 13, 2015

Now that the Paris accord has been finalized and agreed to by 196 nations, I am struck that for the first time in the series of now 21 Conferences of the Parties there is genuine clarity among a strong majority of participating countries about the the perceived gravity of this crisis. The recently announced “high ambition coalition” includes the US as part of more than 100 countries who have agreed that more strenuous efforts are in order. Even Australia has joined. This group is calling for a 1.5 C guardrail rather than the arbitrary and clearly dangerous 2.0 C limit to mean global warming. In addition to identifying a more appropriate target, the group wants future agreements to be legally binding and that global climate policy be based on science.

Why we should be encouraged

It is clear that the Paris talks are a watershed event for humanity and our children’s future. Given that Copenhagen was such a dismal failure, it is appropriate to be joyous about this degree of clarity among the participants. Any accurate interpretation of history will mark the Paris summit as the most important world event in early December 2015. The summit conveners seem to understand that the science is crystal clear and that we must act. Either we drastically reduce emissions by the middle of this century or face catastrophic consequences over a millennial time scale. It is now clear to these negotiators that the damages to our biosphere are effectively permanent on any meaningful human time scale. You can’t negotiate with this reality.

Every day that we delay large scale climate mitigation we impose a penalty on future generations. There is no safe amount of additional greenhouse gas that can be added to the already huge burden of the atmospheric commons. Negotiators are assuming that the increase in emissions will slow and stabilize by the year 2030, but this means that an enormous amount of carbon will be emitted before we begin to decrease emissions.

There is evidence that worldwide emissions may have decreased in 2015, but this is surely a momentary dip. Secretary of State John Kerry has claimed that the US was an important contributor to this apparent decrease, but there can be no doubt that China’s increase in clean energy production and implementation of efficiency is largely responsible. We can be certain that this year is not the year that emissions will peak. Indeed, under the current commitments we are on a trajectory to warm between 3 and 4 C, which will have consequences over ensuing millennia and result in manifold challenges to civilization.

Implications for sustainability

One missing part of the discussion in Paris was the impact of climate change on earth’s ecosystems. I have been an ecologist for over 30 years, conducting my research on tropical systems in Central and South America.  I have also worked in forests in North America and in parts of Asia and Europe. During that time I have witnessed manifold changes to the earth’s natural systems and it is clear to me that climate change is increasingly overtaking human use of natural resources as the dominant factor affecting ecosystem form and function.

The wholesale restructuring of the marine ecosystem of the Gulf of Maine is a prime example of how rapid warming is amplifying the effects of overfishing to produce what is effectively becoming a novel, albeit rapidly changing ecosystem. There are numerous other examples of this dynamic process playing out in sensitive ecosystems around the world. Much of what we have considered to be natural, no longer is, and most of what we hope to preserve will need to be adaptively managed as it transitions to something new.

The good news from Paris for ecosystems is that the accord explicitly endorses the UNFCCC program for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Destruction (REDD). Any expert who has attempted to quantify the carbon balance of forests will agree that implementing REDD will require broad scale proactive adaptive management. This simply means  that for the first time in history we will be required to tend our garden with the intention of sustainability.

If we are willing to seriously engage in sustainable management of forest resources to achieve “negative emissions” the profession of forest ecologist will take on a powerful new mission. In addition to implementing adaptive forest management, measuring, verifying, and certifying REDD activities will be a central skill of these professionals. The same logic can be applied to management of agricultural lands for enhanced carbon sequestration (e.g., Mulkey et al. 2008). Sustainability science is the field of research and teaching that provides such a comprehensive approach. Obviously higher education, and especially community colleges, will need to build new programs to train these professionals.

Additional good news comes in the form of recurring mandatory reporting of emissions reductions and efforts to achieve and improve on 2 C. The agreement targets 1.5 C as desirable. Each country agreeing to the accord is required to participate in reporting and review at five-year intervals. The US Congress cannot derail this, although presumably a president could ignore the requirement.

Avoiding mandatory reductions and including mandatory reporting in the agreement was Obama’s primary strategy for achieving success in Paris. Mandatory reductions would require action by a hostile US Congress. Apparently Obama spent considerable time and political capital to achieve consensus among the parties.

The reporting requirement also means that renewed efforts at energy efficiency will become important in order to achieve what the accord calls “a balance” to reduce overall emissions. If we fully examine the implications of developing broad scale energy efficiency, we are quickly led to the conclusion that sustainable adaptive management of energy and material processes is foundational to any such effort. The embodied carbon emissions in manufacturing, all aspects of the built environment, sales of goods and services, and transportation can be managed for efficiency through application of the principles of sustainability science. Again, higher education will have a clear mandate to supply these professionals as the market for energy management services grows.

Not enough soon enough

The bad news, as Monbiot and Hansen indicated in their statements above, is that the tenets of the Paris accord are much too weak to avoid catastrophe. Prior to the summit in Paris, 185 nations declared their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs in the figure above) to emissions reduction by 2030. If no other reductions are achieved, these commitments would result in a 3.5 C global mean temperature increase relative to preindustrial. Much more is needed.

There can be little doubt that we have passed a tipping point in the production of greenhouse gases from the earth’s biological systems. As warming accelerates ecosystem production of CO2, we will need to redouble our efforts to reduce human sources of emissions. Responding to these natural sources of positive feedback will require us to measure them so that efforts at emissions reductions are appropriate to the scale of the problem. Quantitative data are only now beginning to show trends, but it is clear that essentially all sources of natural emissions are increasing.

The most alarming evidence of such positive feedbacks comes from studies of forests and tundra. As ecologists have long suspected, recent data show that as forest respiration increases under increased nighttime temperatures, the Earth’s immense tropical forests will progressively lose their ability to store carbon. The data from the Arctic leave little room for doubt that the enormous stores of carbon in permafrost are increasingly being lost to the atmosphere. Modeling indicates that these emissions are accelerating. Similarly, it has recently been noted in the journal Science that there has been an alarming increase in the death of large trees worldwide. Some of this mortality is clearly related to climate change.

The Paris accord means that we have now entered the era of the end of fossil fuels. To be effective, I believe that we must also embark on an era of sustainable management of energy and resources. Whether or not energy companies acknowledge this reality is problematic. I predict that some companies will embrace the opportunity for transformation, while others will retrench in the mistaken belief that the world will not be able to shake its addiction to fossil fuels. 350.org and other environmental groups are now calling for redoubled efforts to stop exploration and mining of fossil fuels. Never again will any country or company be able to say that burning fossil fuels is consistent with a thriving future. The social license for business as usual by the fossil fuel industry has been revoked.

http://environmentalcentury.net/2015/12/13/the-paris-accord-marks-the-beginning-of-a-new-era-of-sustainability/

Stephen Mulkey: Divestment from fossil fuels: An ethical imperative for higher education

by Stephen Mulkey, Environmental Century, April 10, 2015

On November 5, 2012, the Unity College Board of Trustees voted unanimously to divest our $15 million endowment from the top 200 fossil fuel companies, making Unity the world’s first institution of higher learning to explicitly target – using Carbon Tracker, a financial think tank – companies that produce these carbon-based fuels. Since our action, hundreds of campuses have started divestment movements. An increasing number, including Pitzer, Stanford and Syracuse, have voted to divest billions from fossil fuels.

Arguably, our small endowment is considerably more sensitive to bad investment choices than those of elite institutions such as Harvard, Princeton, and others. To date, our investments have thrived. But, as I will explain, divestment is largely immaterial to returns and fees.

With so much at stake for our financial well-being, why would Unity take such bold action? I believe the answer is that our Board viewed divestment as obligatory if the College is to honor the overarching mission of higher education. To be sure, the fiduciary responsibility of boards of trustees extends well beyond financial considerations, and legally requires them to act in the ethical interests of their institution. You might think the ethical imperative derives from the fact that we are an institution informed by the U.S. National Academy concept of sustainability science. But, this aspect of our academic mission is largely irrelevant to this decision; we believe divestment is obligatory, as both an ethical imperative and a fiduciary responsibility for all institutions of higher learning.

The overarching mission of higher education is the maintenance and renewal of civilization. By contrast, the continued business of fossil fuel extraction will, with high certainty, result in significant decline of civilization in the latter half of this century. This derives from the fact that climate change, driven by emissions from these fuels, is an extreme and unique category of threat to our children and all future generations. Although there are compelling arguments to divest from tobacco stocks or companies that did business with apartheid dominated South Africa, the costs of inaction on climate change are staggeringly high. Continued business as usual will result in irrevocable consequences on a millennial time scale.

Put simply, we must leave the carbon in the ground. Generous estimates suggest we can burn only about 20% of conventional reserves without pushing atmospheric warming beyond the putative 2-degree-Celsius guardrail the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change determined as the threshold for “dangerous” climate change. As climate science has advanced, we now know that this rather arbitrary limit is not safe for the maintenance and renewal of civilization in its current form because of the enhanced biogenic sources of emissions that will ensue as the atmosphere warms. Presently, we are on a trajectory that will warm the planet between 4 and 6 degrees C by 2100, a condition that would be catastrophic for humanity and many of the Earth’s living systems.

As the consequences of climate change continue to unfold, governing boards will want to be in the strongest ethical position to preserve the relevance and value propositions of their institutions. Accordingly, the first step in deciding divestment is for stakeholders, leadership, and governance to reach a consensus about the ethical imperative of divestment and its relation to the values of the institution.  It is my experience that financial experts should not be engaged until the ethical imperative has been accepted or rejected by the institution’s governing body.

In the near to intermediate term, there is a very pragmatic reason for divestment. If we assume that humanity will wake up in time to avoid catastrophic climate change, most of the carbon reserves of these companies will become stranded assets and this will significantly diminish their assessed value. If mitigation of climate change is to be effective, these assets must become stranded within no more than 15 years. Once regulation of carbon emissions begins in earnest, the perception that these assets are of dubious value will occur long before they are likely to be mined. This drop in value will be a direct threat to the value of the institution’s portfolio.

Most portfolios have holdings that commingle desirable and undesirable assets, so it is necessary that divestment be executed over a considerable period. The approach that works best is to progressively reduce exposure to the top 200 fossil fuel companies over a period as long as five years. This should not require additional fees, because it does not involve extraordinary trading or management. Divestment simply adds a new criterion to routine portfolio management.

One way to accomplish divestment is to avoid the energy sector entirely. This approach, taken by Unity College, cut exposure to the 200 targeted companies to less than 1 percent of overall returns in less than two years. There has been no apparent opportunity cost with respect to returns because there are thousands of financial products that can replace, replicate, and sometimes even outperform the energy sector. Moreover this process is becoming easier as institutional clients continuously push the financial industry to create new fossil fuel free products.

When such a direct approach is not possible for large endowments, slow and steady reduction of exposure over longer horizons achieves the same result, realizing that, because of derivatives trading and the interdependence of holdings within equities, “absolute zero” exposure will be elusive – even unlikely – in most scenarios.

It is important to understand that returns on a divested portfolio are largely unrelated to the act of divestment. Returns are primarily determined by the overall performance of the market and asset selection by savvy management. Studies have shown a small tracking error in returns of a divested portfolio relative to major market indices primarily because, periodically, the energy sector can drive overall market performance.

As higher education faces extreme disruption during the coming years, risk – particularly fiduciary risk — will manifest in many forms. Remember that divestment and returns are not automatically correlated, and higher education must meanwhile make clear statements and be public about ethical values. Unity views this articulation of values as an essential market position, and views the downside fiduciary risk of divesting as less challenging than the risk of not upholding its unimpeachable moral imperative to distinguish itself as an ethical bulwark for higher education in the marketplace of this, the Environmental Century.

As president of the first college to divest, I am enormously proud of our visionary board, faculty, and students. Unity College has entered a new era in which our brand and ethos are a national province. Parents and students look to us an example of what higher education can be. We are all in this together to develop a model in which financial risk is mitigated by investing choices that are ethically and financially sound while – most importantly – nurturing a civilization on which all our endeavors depend.

http://environmentalcentury.net/2015/04/10/divestment-from-fossil-fuels-an-ethical-imperative-for-higher-education/

Stephen Mulkey: Sleepwalking toward a new ecology

by Stephen Mulkey, The Environmental Century, March 29, 2015

The pace of ecological change is quickening and I see little sense of urgency to address the negative consequences that are unfolding. The increasing speed of change is a direct consequence of two interacting drivers – resource use and climate change. The long standing processes of human use of natural resources and resulting habitat degradation have increased in scale and impact as our population has continued to explode. Adding to this, as defense analysts have argued, climate change is both a primary driver and amplifier of change. Collectively these factors are driving worldwide ecosystem change at a pace and scale far exceeding any previous period of change in the history of our planet.

Will Steffen and colleagues recently published updates of the famous “Great Acceleration” graphs, which showed major socio-economic trends in resource use from 1750 to 2000. It is no surprise that none of these crucial trends shows any evidence of slowing over the last decade (Steffen et al., 2015, Anthropocene Review 1-18). Although the starting point remains an issue for academic debate (Zalasiewicz et al., 2014, Quaternary International 1-8), there is little doubt that we have entered a new geological epoch whose hallmark characteristic is the impact of humans. The scientific community has declared this to be the Anthropocene epoch (my personal preference was for the term Homogeocene, but this never gained traction).

Steffen et al. 2015.

All ecologists and natural historians who have lived more than a few decades are painfully aware of numerous local habitats that have degraded beyond recognition in our lifetimes. Quite independent of the effects of climate change, we are watching these changes unfold so quickly that destruction can essentially be overnight. The legendary botanist, Alwyn Gentry, witnessed the now classic example of the loss of dozens of endemic species as a consequence of a single episode of logging at Centinela Ridge in Ecuador in 1978. This scenario is being played out with increasing speed on land and in marine habitats all over the globe as the Sixth Extinction ensues. Climate change significantly amplifies this steadily increasing loss.

Although ecologists and conservationists have long understood these trends, it is disturbing to me that our institutions and government agencies seem to be clueless about how to manage such change. Simply put, we should be vigorously engaged in proactive adaptation. It seems logically axiomatic that proactive adaptation is far less disruptive and costly than is reactive adaptation. The water crisis in California is a case in point. For well over a decade, general circulation climate models have projected prolonged decadal drought for California and the American Southwest. For many years, the booming agriculture and population growth of the state have been on a collision course with dwindling water resources. Recently, NASA data have shown that California has one year of water reserves above ground. The implications of this for human and natural systems are extreme. Had proactive adaptation been implemented a decade ago, this situation would be much more manageable and much of the pain of conservation and likely rationing could have been avoided.

Most alarming to many ecologists is the speed at which climate change is impacting species and habitats. Evidence has been accumulating for over two decades that species are responding to climate change and  shifts in growing zones (e.g., Walther et al. 2002, Nature 389-385). The implications of these studies are profound for the stability and predictability of ecosystems. Proactive management of forest, prairie, freshwater, wildlife, and marine habitats must begin now if we are to hope of having viable resources in the second half of this century. Forests are an example of change that influences survival and reproduction of tree species within the lifetime of individual trees.

The management challenges posed by this speed and degree of change are manifold. When I was a wildlife student at a big university in the Midwest, I was taught that construction of nature preserves was the best approach to ensure the longevity of species. Now we see that the growing zones are on the move and are increasingly decoupled from the species at the base of the food chain. As this decoupling progresses we can expect many preserves to be located in climate regions that are inappropriate for their various conservation functions. Without aggressive intervention, we can expect widespread transformation and even outright failure of species interactions and functional processes within ecosystems. Clearly, we need a much more dynamic and proactive approach to conservation than was typically assumed in the 20th century.

The specific tools and approaches for such dynamic conservation remain nascent in their development at our major research institutions. To respond to the need for proactive management we must refocus public funding to provide strong incentive for research and implementation of adaptive management specific to this new paradigm of change. For example, habitat corridors connecting protected areas will become an increasingly important conservation tool as climate change ensues. The theory and practice of habitat corridor establishment and development are only superficially understood. Similarly, we must more fully understand the complex process of assisted colonization so that we can move species as their preferred habitat changes or degrades. Indeed, it would seem that we must re-examine our understanding of invasive species in this brave new ecology. Unless we make the development of such tools for proactive adaptation a top priority, we will certainly lose much of our natural heritage. Indeed, our children and their descendants will live on a depauperate and diminished planet.

My recommendations and concerns are only relevant if we can mitigate the causes of climate change before midcentury. Although management of human use of natural resources has always been an urgent need, climate change has increased the stakes and made the costs of inaction staggeringly high. An increase of more than 3-4 ˚C above the preindustrial global average is unthinkable. If we don’t manage and effectively halt emissions of greenhouse gases, there is little that sophisticated management can do to stem the impending losses.

I am struck that many of those working hard to move governments and corporations to address climate change are simply unfamiliar with the concept of ecological change.  It has not been part of their training or thinking, and thus they focus on the impacts of climate change on human engineered systems. This is extremely short sighted given that all human systems are ultimately tied to our planetary ecology. As pointed out by Sir Nicholas Stern, climate change is the greatest market failure in history because there is no legitimate way to externalize this cost.

We stand at a crossroads for human civilization. It remains to be seen if we can accept the reality that we are of, and not separate from, the Earth. As Bill McKibben pointed out in his landmark The End of Nature, there remains no place on our planet that has not been touched by the hand of humanity, often with devastating consequences for living systems. Despite this widely understood reality, we continue to act as if we can, with impunity, irrevocably alter the fundamental life support systems of our home. David Orr pointed out in his indictment of politics in the US, The Last Refuge, that contrary to conservative claims, most of the major predictions of ecologists have turned out to be fundamentally correct. Today the warning signs could not be more clear and the outcome more crucial. We can continue our zombie walk into the future, ignoring the data from well established science, but this time the consequences will be irrevocable on a millennial timescale.

http://environmentalcentury.net/2015/03/29/sleepwalking-toward-a-new-ecology/

What’s in a name: Willie Soon and the public perception of credibility

by Stephen Mulkey, EnvironmentalCentury.net, March 4, 2015

Update:  Inside Climate News has profiled my experience with Soon here.

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I attended a conference billed as a forum for scientists in Boise in 2010, in which the panelists – and one in particular – delivered angry, polemic, nonscientific arguments against climate change. It was nauseating to watch one notable scientist cherry-pick data from short time frames and small geographic areas to try and debunk centuries of global data showing a rise in global temperatures.

At one point, the scientist, Dr. Wei ­Hock “Willie” Soon, claimed rising acidification of ocean water would lead to larger shells and bulkier weights for lobster and crab populations.

Not many in the crowd would have known that lobsters and crabs have chitinous exoskeletons, not calcium carbonate shells. The carbonate chemistry of the ocean has been massively altered by CO2-induced acidification, as demonstrated by numerous experiments and observation of imperiled shellfish populations. His conclusion about lobster and crabs was not only irrelevant; it was false. Nevertheless, the audience nodded their approval. I sat there stunned.

Quoted in a National Public Radio story on Soon, University of Rochester professor Adam Frank gave a similar reaction to the flimsy nature of one of his talks. “If Soon had been giving a Ph.D. defense,” Frank reported, “he would have been skewered.”

For many citizens, when a “Harvard climate scientist” says global warming doesn’t exist and thus presents no threat to civilization, the argument stops there.

But what if such a conclusion didn’t come from Harvard, wasn’t done by a climate scientist, and was funded by corporations vested in the outcome?

The motivations of scientifically corrupt climate change deniers were laid bare last week with reports in The New York Times, Washington Post and The Guardian that Soon – a scientist at the Harvard­ Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics – accepted more than $1.2 million from the petroleum industry over the last decade to write papers – “deliverables,” he called them – attempting to debunk the scientific fact of rapidly increasing global temperatures.

Worse, he failed to disclose those payments. The New York Times reported at least 11 papers he published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure. “In at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work,” the Times reported.

As is common among Harvard-Smithsonian scientists, Soon — who claims variations in the sun’s energy explain global warming – is expected to bring in external funds to support the Center. He relies on outside grant money, which the Center for Astrophysics doesn’t require its scientists to disclose.

Soon is often described as a “Harvard astrophysicist,” but he is neither. A Harvard spokesperson told the Times that Soon has never been employed by the university … even though he carries a Harvard ID and uses a Harvard email address. And he is not an astrophysicist; he is a part-­time employee of the Smithsonian Institution with a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering. There’s a difference, but one that is easily lost on many audiences.

There should be no confusion. The vast majority of experts – real climatologists with no vested interest except scientific truth – have concluded climate change is real, and that human-caused emissions pose long-­term risks to civilization.

This controversy reveals an inherent tension between academic freedom and the role of the scientific establishment in verifying the integrity of its participants. Should we look the other way when science is compromised by outside interests simply to respect the freedom of scholarship?

For the world of higher education, the problem is less with the industry-funded research that attempts to debunk scientifically undeniable underpinnings of global warming than with the cloak of academic legitimacy beneath which such efforts are hidden.

For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments with industry-funded people like Soon. Soon testified before Congress and infected the debate in state capitals, damaging our ability to shield civilization from further harm.

But Dr. Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard, said academic institutions and scientific journals have been too lax in vetting dubious research created to serve a corporate agenda, and she called on the journals that published Soon’s work to disclose the corporate funding behind it. I concur but, sadly, much irreparable damage has been done when the world of higher education is associated with junk science like Soon’s.

Just as the fight against global climate change is an ethical call to do the right thing by our planet and for the generations of our children and grandchildren who hope to inherit it; the academic community needs to look deeply at itself and start implementing ethical reforms that protect the integrity of academia. That means full disclosure of funding sources and a new look at whether public funding of scientific research is sufficient, and whether privately funded research is sufficiently tracked.

Meanwhile, for the sake of the preservation of critical thinking and the restoration of higher education to its place at the pinnacle of our civilization, we join the call of Dr. Oreskes – and scores of other legitimate, peer-reviewed scientists – that Soon’s papers be consigned to the trash heap, and that any legislation or policy debates arising from his work be revisited and rescinded — and soon.

Dr. Stephen Mulkey, president of Unity College, holds a Ph.D. in biology and ecology from The University of Pennsylvania and served as director of the environmental science program at the University of Idaho and science adviser to the Century Commission for a Sustainable Florida.

About Stephen Mulkey

Stephen Mulkey has recently served as Director of Research and Outreach/Extension for the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Florida, and as science advisor to the Century Commission for a Sustainable Florida. During this period, he was tenured faculty in the Department of Botany, and a research associate with the School of Forest Resources and Conservation at the University of Florida. He received a PhD in ecology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986. Prior to coming to the University of Florida in 1996, Mulkey co-founded and later directed the International Center for Tropical Ecology, a nationally ranked graduate training and conservation program at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. Mulkey's research was focused on tropical forest form and function, and he was affiliated for over 20 years as a research associate with the Smithsonian Institution, Tropical Research Institute. He is a scholar of the interdisciplinary literature in climate change and sustainability. Mulkey is active as a public interpreter of climate change science. His recent research focuses on the role of landscape carbon stocks in climate mitigation. Beginning in August 2008, he joined the faculty at the University of Idaho as director of the program in Environmental Science. He has been the lead in obtaining National Science Foundation funding for the creation of the new Professional Science Master’s degree at the University of Idaho. Supported by major funding from NASA, he is presently directing a project focused on climate change education. Stephen Mulkey is the current president of Unity College in Unity, Maine. Efforts led by Mulkey have resulted in Unity College being the first college in the US to divest its endowment from the top 200 fossil fuel companies, and the first college in the US to adopt sustainability science as the framework for all academic programming.

http://environmentalcentury.net/2015/03/02/whats-in-a-name-willie-soon-and-the-public-perception-of-credibility/

So now what? An open letter to the environmental community after the midterm elections

by Stephen Mulkey, Unity College Sustainability Monitor, November 5, 2014

To my environmentally minded friends: Clearly we are in deep trouble and truly meaningful legislative progress in the near term is no longer a reasonable expectation. Expecting progress on climate change and sustainability from Congress is off the table, now and possibly for the extended future. Compromise and wonky engagement continue to fail. With Obama we elected Miles Davis, but we got Kenny G.

When I arrived at Unity College in July of 2011, I found an institution in financial trouble and inwardly focused. Cost cutting was the only financial strategy, and this is a formula for extinction. The College had experienced two years of significant declines in enrollment and went on to experience a third. Faculty and staff salaries were in the basement and the physical plant was far from adequate for an institution of higher learning.

We have turned the corner on all of these shortcomings and our enrollment is surging. Why? I believe that it is because we embraced extreme change and chose to speak with integrity, honesty, and courage. These fundamental spiritual principles, most importantly honesty, have carried us to a new future. Put simply, the College had everything to gain and little to lose by facing our situation honestly and acting decisively.

Standing on the ethical high ground has served us well. We have not sugar coated our message and we have not flinched in the face of withering criticism. We are not wonky. We speak with conviction and clarity, and we now stride the national stage. We are the first college in the nation to divest from fossil fuels and we are the first to adopt sustainability science as a framework for all of our academic programming. This is built on transdisciplinary programming, a powerful new pedagogy that is necessary to train the next generation of sustainability leaders.  Our national brand is growing and we are making our message felt by institutions and constituents far beyond Maine.

From this experience, I recommend ten things for the activist community:

(1) Base everything we do on the ethical imperative of sustainability. Occupy the ethical high ground.  Stop compromising and seeking the middle ground on the foundational issues related to sustainability. These are extreme times and we need strong, courageous, decisive action that will be viewed as extreme by those supporting the status quo. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than establishing a sustainable future for our children. The status quo of business as usual is simply unacceptable. We have everything to gain, and little to lose.

(2) Go on the offensive and adopt a compelling and positive vision that extends well beyond five years and the election and funding cycle. Become strategic rather than disorganized and tactical. Stop seeing our mission as holding the line, or preventing more damage by the opposition. Instead, leapfrog the minor environmental arguments and aggressively propose explicit, major, positive change.  Give people a hopeful, positive vision.  Integrate environmental goals with economic populism that serves the working class and poor.  Do not waste your time with organizations that support the status quo. Any institutional strategic plan should lay the groundwork for radical change beyond its five year lifespan, and should not be viewed as an end in itself.  Demand change that will serve our children and our grandchildren. Policy and conservation initiatives must have 2100 as their target.

(3) Merge financially and politically with your allies and don’t sweat the small stuff. Adopt the 80% rule. If you agree with 80% of your allies’ message and mission, then ignore the remainder and join them. Progressives must stop the tyranny of democracy and agree to disagree while taking action. In Maine and in much of the environmental community there are far too many NGOs with overlapping missions and philanthropic needs. This is simply ridiculous. Executive directors need to share authority or step down.

(4) Understand and embrace cultural cognition. Get expert marketing and messaging management from professionals who passionately share our vision of the future. The messenger matters as much as the message.  If you haven’t noticed, the Republican party does this very well.

(5) Focus on adaptation as well as mitigation, and quit having the absurd academic argument about one diluting the other. We need both. Now. Proactive adaptation is far less expensive than reactive adaptation. Mitigation is usually less expensive than any form of adaptation.

(6) Become aggressive and direct about seeking funds from the 1%. Organize and seek them out, and do not compromise your message. Educate them. Become insistent and persistent about seeking resources from those with the means to truly make a difference. Most will reject us. All we need is a few with significant wealth who are willing to contribute to a sustainable future.

(7) Focus on sophisticated resource management rather than pure conservation and preservation. Preserving nature as it is, or was, is increasingly not a realistic goal. We should seek to manage ecosystems for form and function, while restoring nature when possible and appropriate. Learn when it is time to give up your sacred cows in the conservation movement. Shed a tear and move on.

(8) Take direction from those who can lead. Your voice is important and you can make it heard. Then step off your soapbox and become a worker among workers. We need your hands, as well as your passions.  None of us have the truth in a corner, but some are able to lead.  Follow them.

(9) Long term extreme change must include a new economy that is not diversified on fossil fuels and is not driven by a mandate for continuous growth. Many in the opposition will interpret this as an assault on the primacy of capitalism. They are correct. Unregulated and unrestrained capitalism is not consistent with the future of civilization. Have the courage to say so and demand a better way.

(10) Have faith and take care of yourself and those that you love. Whenever I am asked where one should go to escape climate change, I give the same answer that Bill McKibben does: Anyplace there is a strong community. Build strong communities.

http://sustainabilitymonitor.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/so-now-what-an-open-letter-to-the-environmental-community-after-the-midterm-elections-2014/