or why wholesale capitalism will not save the world...







At a time when all of the world should be aware of, and trying to mimimise and reduce our global greenhouse gas emissions, it seems in fact, that the industrialised and westernised countries are actually increasing the load they are placing on our environment. The call for biofuels for example, which sounds so laudatory initially, is resulting in large tracts of forest being cut down to make room for the growing of more grain products. In a similar way the demand for soy based products has also resulted in wholesale slashing of indigenous forest in countries like Brazil and has been instrumental in destroying huge areas of Amazon rainforest and is encouraging still further deforestation.

Here in New Zealand the growth "industry" is dairying. Overseas prices for our milk and milk products doubled in the last year and our country's 11,000 dairy farmers are set to reap the riches. Fonterra, our country's biggest company collectively owned by 95% of dairy farmers estimated that each kilogram of milk solids (10 litres of milk produces about 1kg of milk solids) that farmers produced would be worth $6.40NZ for the year ending June 2008. Last year the farmers had got $4.46NZ a kg.  This means that an average Kiwi dairy farmer will get more than $200,000NZ extra this year and the country's economy an additional $2.4 billionNZ.

Needless to say farmers are tripping over themselves to convert to dairy farming. Sheep farming is out. $6.40 per kg for milk solids is a whole lot more attractive than $3.70 per kg for lamb. However the expansion into dairy will come and is coming with major detrimental effects and stresses for the environment and Fonterra is not picking up the tab. As the picture above shows, deforestation of native bush in order to create more pasture is one of the first effects, for example more than 60,000ha of forest is being converted to dairying just north of Lake Taupo - that's an area about the size of the lake itself.

Deforestation in itself causes a rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

Add to that, that 38% of all our greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand comes from the ever-increasing herds of dairy cows and you should see where I am coming from. Herds of dairy cows are New Zealand's biggest contributor to global warming. This is a a very different scenario to other western countries where industrial emissions are their largest contributors. If New Zealand only kept enough cows to supply meat, dairy products and leather goods to ourselves this would all be sustainable, but dairy has now become our biggest industry. It accounts for 20% of our exports, and injects $8 billionNZ into our economy.

The New Zealand Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard had this to say. "In large part, the recent gains in dairy prices can be traced back to a basic imbalance between global demand and supply. Global demand for protein has been on a structural uptrend for some time. Demand for protein is very income sensitive and rising income levels in emerging markets have led to improvements in diet, incorporating more meat, eggs and milk. In recent years, the strongest growth in consumption of dairy products has come from emerging Asian markets, particularly China."

Hayley Moynihan, Senior Analyst, Rabobank Food and Agribusiness Research, says the past ten years have been a "honeymoon" period for the New Zealand dairy industry – with dairy conversions, record production levels, the formation of Fonterra and the emergence of new processors, topped off more recently by stellar international commodity prices. Rising oil prices have also had a positive impact for New Zealand’s dairy exports. The resulting increase in wealth in the Middle East has seen this region grow to account for 18 per cent of total dairy exports. "As oil income drives wealth, people are consuming more dairy products. There appears to be a strong correlation between WMP imports to the Middle East and oil prices. Domestic production in the Middle East is increasing, but this is not expected to keep pace with demand growth. Rabobank expects demand for dairy products from this region and North Africa to grow at around five per cent per annum through to 2010," said Ms Moynihan.

However, none of this benefits the Kiwi consumer. A recent visit to the local supermarket saw me paying $4.99NZ for a pound of butter (it was $2.20ishNZ a couple of months ago). The prices of cheese, milk and any other associated product is rocketing skywards as well. The cheapest 1kg of cheese I can buy currently is $11.99NZ. Fonterra charges us the same prices as it can sell product for overseas - why should they sell for less, they say. Well I can think of a reason or two.

Water is a finite resource...

The district of Canterbury has the driest climate in New Zealand, uses 58% of our country's water and already has 70% of our irrigated land. Canterbury is not a suitable area for dairy farming (it takes 1000 litres of water to produce one litre of milk), but since 1991 cow numbers in Canterbury have quadrupled to more than 650,000 cows and there are projections that this could double within the next decade. Already many lowland rivers are reduced to thin threads and underground aquifers are being sucked dry as farmers demand more of the groundwater for irrigation and use in sheds. There is now strong criticism levelled at  the regional council, Environment Canterbury (Ecan) which, until recently, have allowed thousands of water permits to be taken out. In some places water is being taken out more quickly than the underground aquifers can recharge themselves.

My regular readers may remember my blog titled "Murky Waters"  about the commercialisation of some Canterbury water and realise more, why I was so annoyed.

In Conclusion

The environment and health costs are not transmitted through markets for the goods produced. Runoff containing effluent and fertiliser contaminates water resources. Methane and nitrous oxide emissions damage the air we breathe, the land we walk on, the water supply that we drink from. The costs of environmental degradation and human health effects are borne by society at large - the consumers and the tax payers and the future generations who get to pay for the cleanup, perhaps not only by money alone, and on the global scale all of us.

The bottom line here is that we human beings no longer have the luxury of the people in the past who for their immediate benefit cleared forests and killed whales. We cannot continue to just exploit all our resources as though there is no tomorrow - or it may well happen that there will indeed be no tomorrow. We need to be running our world with the primary goal of the common good for all to the forefront of our minds and not to be only concerned with the individualistic profits of the corporate sectors which benefit so few of us.

(because sometimes things can have simple solutions)

The Institute of Rural Sciences at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth has begun a three-year study into the effectiveness of various plant compounds in reducing methane gas emissions from livestock.

Initial results from this study shows cows fed on the pungent cloves produce only half as much greenhouse gas as they normally do.

If these claims prove to be true, garlic could have a massive effect on New Zealand's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Livestock on New Zealand farms, especially dairy, accounts for a massive 55 per cent of the total greenhouse gas emissions from New Zealand, which incidentally, is a totally different scenario from most other western countries where more usually, industrial emissions are the biggest contributors to global warming there.

For example in Wales, where this research is being done, agricultural methane emissions account for just 5 per cent of the total in Wales, but any reduction in New Zealand would go a long way towards meeting Kyoto Protocol targets.

So you can see why this is really flash news for Kiwis!

The manager of New Zealand's Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium,Mark Aspin, said the news had grabbed everyone's attention.

"If it," (feeding cows with garlic), "reduces methane by 50 per cent, then that is quite an astounding result," he said.

The research team at Aberystwyth are also testing whether garlic tainted the milk or the meat from dairy cows and cattle.

The amount of methane being emitted was measured by keeping animals in plastic tents.

Aspin said if garlic proved to be an effective way of reducing methane emissions, the next question would be how to administer it to cows efficiently.

Ben Abernethy, the farm manager for Lyn-Lea Farm near Rangiora, said he would give garlic a go if there was an easy way of feeding it to the cows.

"That is what people are bagging dairy farmers for, so if there was some way of fixing it, then I would give it a go," said Ben.

Each New Zealand dairy cow produces a whopping 82 kg of methane gas each year, and beef cattle 55.7 kg.

I live right next door to cows, (thats some of my cow neighbours in the above pic) and trust me, you can smell the methane.

I may start feeding them garlic surreptitiously over the fence.

(this blog was first posted on the 17th November 2006)  - pictured is the dairy farm behind my house.

Emissions in Aotearoa

In Aotearoa/New Zealand cows apparently account for about 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. Which would explain why a couple of years ago our New Zealand government as a part of implementing the Kyoto Protocol wanted to impose a per head of cow tax on farmers to pay for research on how to reduce these bovine emissions. It seems typical of human endeavour when confronted with a problem to try to change nature to suit rather than altering our own behaviour.

We could instead look at the causes which underlie the behaviour.

We keep these large herds of cows because they provide us with milk, cream, butter, cheese, and other dairy-based products and they also provide us with meat, and with leather for shoes, lounge suites etc. However, New Zealand’s quite small population of currently approx. four million people doesn’t require us to own so many cows. We could sustain our own population on far less cows which would reduce those greenhouse gas emissions immediately.

Historically however, (and into current times, despite some diversifying), New Zealand’s economy and its wealth have been built upon our exports of frozen beef and lamb and then dairy products ever since the advent of reliable refrigeration, allowing the first refrigerated ship with a frozen meat cargo to depart from our shores on the 15th February 1882, arriving in London after a voyage of ninety days.

But long before Aotearoa/New Zealand existed in the globalised world of commerce, the stage was already set. Trading ships of sail and steam, aided and abetted by the militaristic might of European and Western Imperialism, traversed the globe. Whole community groups were enslaved and exploited, even made extinct, lands were confiscated, colonised, and deforested, their minerals extracted, their cultures reduced to commodities in the name of capitalism and even democracy.

Globalisation

Globalisation today is most often just a proxy colonialism where the forces of Imperialism, otherwise known to us in their guises of trans-national corporations including all oil companies, and companies like Monsanto which now own or control at least 40% of the world‘s food supply, the World Bank, the World Trading Organisation (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) etc, undermine the sovereignties of our individual countries and cultures.

Global Warming

Moreover, differential use of resources by nations, regions, and social classes leads to uneven and unequal contributions to problems such as ozone depletion, global warming, and attendant environmental destruction. The industrialised nations have less than 25% of the global population, but account for about 75% of the world’s energy use, two-thirds of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane and over 90% of chlorofluorocarbons which damage the ozone layer protecting the earth. The effects are global in impact however as is demonstrable in the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica created by the aforementioned chlorofluorocarbons mostly from the Northern Hemisphere, (which has the largest westernised population base). The hole in the ozone layer is now 3 times the size of the USA.

And we do nothing. Or virtually nothing. Some of our governments have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, (still only a first step in dealing with the problem), and are working to implement the necessary changes while other governments still refuse to read or understand the science behind global warming and the absolute necessity to make changes to save our own human lives from extinction.

In fact, whole groups of concerned people, such as the Greens Party in New Zealand for example, have more often been maligned, written off as tree -huggers, and even abused, especially when long-seeing environmental concerns clash with short-term economic prospects as most often they seem to do. Companies have the language all their own way, the language of money and commercial gain, they can cite job creation, economic growth, increased GDP’s etc. Its much harder to argue the value of trees left standing in the ground when they could be cut down to manufacture pencils thereby contributing to the capitalist pedestals of Growth and Economic Benefit even.

The Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change

On the 30th October this year the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change was released. This document has importance because for the first time it is written by an economist with credibility in the mainstreamed world of capitalist democracies and trans-national corporations. Sir Nicholas Stern is Head of the UK Government Economic Service and Head of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. He was knighted for 'services to economics' in June 2004. Previously, he was Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at the World Bank, Washington D.C. 2000-03 as well as Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 1994-99. The Review, which reports to the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the UK, was commissioned by the Chancellor in July last year.
 
Sir Nicholas said: “There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, if we act now and act internationally. Governments, businesses and individuals all need to work together to respond to the challenge. Strong, deliberate policy choices by governments are essential to motivate change. But the task is urgent. Delaying action, even by a decade or two, will take us into dangerous territory. We must not let this window of opportunity close.”

The first half of the Review focuses on the impacts and risks arising from uncontrolled climate change, and on the costs and opportunities associated with action to tackle it. The Review emphasises that economic models over timescales of centuries do not offer precise forecasts – but they are an important way to illustrate the scale of effects we might see.

And the effects thus illustrated are (as quoted from the report):

“Most climate models show that a doubling of pre-industrial levels of greenhouse gases is very likely to commit the Earth to a rise of between 2 – 5°C in global mean temperatures.

This level of greenhouse gases will probably be reached between 2030 and 2060. A warming of 5°C on a global scale would be far outside the experience of human civilisation and comparable to the difference between temperatures during the last ice age and today. Several new studies suggest up to a 20% chance that warming could be greater than 5°C.
If annual greenhouse gas emissions remained at the current level, concentrations would be more than treble pre-industrial levels by 2100, committing the world to 3 – 10°C warming, based on the latest climate projections.

Some impacts of climate change itself may amplify warming further by triggering the release of additional greenhouse gases. This creates a real risk of even higher temperature changes.

Higher temperatures cause plants and soils to soak up less carbon from the atmosphere and cause permafrost to thaw, potentially releasing large quantities of methane. Analysis of warming events in the distant past indicates that such feedbacks could amplify warming by an additional 1 – 2°C by the end of the century.

Warming is very likely to intensify the water cycle, reinforcing existing patterns of water scarcity and abundance and increasing the risk of droughts and floods.

Rainfall is likely to increase at high latitudes, while regions with Mediterranean-like climates in both hemispheres will experience significant reductions in rainfall. Preliminary estimates suggest that the fraction of land area in extreme drought at any one time will increase from 1% to 30% by the end of this century. In other regions, warmer air and warmer oceans are likely to drive more intense storms, particularly hurricanes and typhoons.

(what we would experience in real terms is increased events such as Hurricane Katrina because of more moisture evaporating into the rain clouds, and in drier areas we would experience more extreme drought such as that being taking place in south-east Australia right now- my insert)

As the world warms, the risk of abrupt and large-scale changes in the climate system will rise.

Changes in the distribution of heat around the world are likely to disrupt ocean and atmospheric circulations, leading to large and possibly abrupt shifts in regional weather patterns.

If the Greenland or West Antarctic Ice Sheets began to melt irreversibly, the rate of sea level rise could more than double, committing the world to an eventual sea level rise of 5 – 12 m over several centuries.

(this would mean we would have to move all our coastal cities and populations and some of the smaller islands would simply be engulfed by ocean, creating urgent refugee crisies’ - my insert again)

The body of evidence and the growing quantitative assessment of risks are now sufficient to give clear and strong guidance to economists and policy-makers in shaping a response.”

Well I surely hope they do respond.

The Stern Review on Climate Change