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The ethical and environmental dilemma of coffee

On a baking hot summer night a few years ago, some friends and I took a walk through our Somerville neighborhood. The day had been so warm that heat was still rising from the pavement even at 10 pm. A man from Central America was out tending his garden under the pale light of the street lamp. As my friends asked him about his plants, I thought I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a coffee bush. I had never seen one in real life, only in photographs, but I knew right away what it was.

"Is that coffee?" I asked incredulously. "Yes," he said with a grin, and then showed me that he grows it in a huge tub. He takes the coffee bush indoors during the winter and devotes an entire room of his house to caring for his tropical plants. He controls the heat and humidity and runs a sun lamp all winter long. He said he picks and roasts all his own coffee, just as he had before coming to the U.S.

For most of us, however, coffee is a tropical product imported from far away -- and therein lies a dilemma. Since October was Fair Trade month, I decided to check out some of the local Fair Trade businesses to see what their take is on importing tropical products.

A month’s worth of beautiful and/or fascinating astronomy photos from NASA

For your Sunday time-wasting pleasure, last month's selections from Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Sobering lessons from 250 million years ago

One of the very few reasonable points made by climate skeptics is that it's hard to have a great deal of confidence in computer-model predictions of a system as complex and varied as the global climate system. It is comprised of several subsystems -- the ocean, the atmosphere, the cryosphere, and the biosphere -- each extremely complex in its own right. There is some reassurance to be had in hindcasts and other modeling successes, not the least being the triumph of model predictions over the contradictory satellite records.

But there are really so many unknowns, both the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns, that it is reasonable to cast a suspicious eye on a forecast of global mean temperature in the year 2100. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a climate scientist who would not admit it.

But the obfuscators and denialists fail to realize something critical: in decision-making, especially when potential futures are extremely bad, uncertainty is not your friend.

Why only takings?

I have a question about these "regulatory takings" measures (which Eric is ably blogging about here, here, and here). Maybe Eric can answer it, or one of you can.

The basic idea behind these things is as follows: the government passes some new regulation that restricts land use; a landowner thereby loses some of the value of his land (e.g., he can no longer sell it to a strip mall developer); the government is obligated to compensate that owner for the lost value. Only fair, right?

Put aside the practical consequences for a moment. Instead, answer me this:

California’s per capita GHG emissions are falling

According to this, California's total greenhouse gas emissions rose by about 14 percent from 1990 through 2004.

OK, so that's not exactly good news.

But it's not the worst news in the world either, really. Over the same period, California's population grew by about 20 percent; so, running the numbers, it looks as if per person emissions fell by about, oh, 5 percent. That is, at the same time California's cars and homes got bigger and its economy boomed, the state managed a 5 percent reduction in per-capita GHG emissions.

Stories of how Measure 37 has affected Oregon landowners

For two days now, I've been blathering on about the unholy "property rights" ballot measures in 2006 -- see here and here. But if you really want to understand the potential impacts of these takings initiatives, there's one real-world example: Oregon.

For two years, Oregon has been the only state in the nation with a pay-or-waive law on the books: Measure 37. The results clearly illustrate the dangers facing other Western states. So as a way to warn other places of what can happen, Sightline Institute (where I work) recently compiled a batch of real-life stories from neighbors and communities in Oregon.

You can read the full stories, along with some additional context, in our report, Property Wrongs (PDF). If you don't have time for that, here's the bite-sized version:

The truth about ethanol

Harvard environmental science professor Michael B. McElroy takes a sober look at ethanol:

The balance in terms of emission of greenhouse gases is close to a wash for the United States: the reduction in net emissions of carbon dioxide obtained by using corn rather than petroleum as a "feedstock" for motor fuel is largely offset by additional emissions of the several hundredfold more potent greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, formed as a byproduct of the nitrogen fertilizer used to grow the corn.

I don't know anything about McElroy's potential biases, but he certainly comes off as a serious-minded critic rather than a hit man. So if you're interested in a hype-free view of ethanol production in the U.S., this seems like a good place to start.

Standing on Protocol

U.S. requests exemption from ban on ozone-depleting pesticide, again At a meeting in New Delhi this week, thumb firmly attached to nose, the U.S. is seeking to convince fellow signers […]

Teach a Man to Fish, and … Oh, Never Mind

Populations of edible marine species may collapse entirely by mid-century, says study Thank god it’s Friday, but thank god even more it’s not 2048, when all edible ocean life may […]

A melange of tasty treats

The week's almost over, and you know what that means: time to clear out the Firefox tabs.

Thanks, Al Gore!

According to a recent MIT survey, Americans now rank climate change as the country's most pressing environmental problem--a dramatic shift from three years ago, when they ranked climate change sixth out of 10 environmental concerns.

Almost three-quarters of the respondents felt the government should do more to deal with global warming, and individuals were willing to spend their own money to help.

In other news, stay tuned for a global collapse of all species currently fished, possibly by mid-century.