Blog Action Day

Yes, today is Blog Action Day, when all bloggers are encouraged to write about environmental issues.



You already know that I’m committed to ending poverty by supporting the Millennium Development Goals. And you know that my focus is on giving the poorest kids an education that will break the cycle of poverty in their family, community and country. That’s why I support the fantastic work being done by the School of St Jude in Arusha, Tanzania.

I am also strongly committed to environmental sustainability. So I want to support Blog Action Day by listing the various things I am doing to lower my environmental footprint.

• I drive a Prius.
• At home we recycle paper, plastics and metals; and we run a compost heap.
• We eat vegetables (five serves a day!) and fish and chicken, in preference to beef, lamb and pork.
• We think twice before buying ANYTHING.
• We use gas instead of electricity for hot water and heating.
• My business aims to be carbon neutral in the next twelve months.

What can you do to lower your carbon footprint? Here's a totally funky calculator where you can measure your carbon footprint and see where to start to make the biggest cuts.

I keep thinking about the possibility of introducing solar power to the School of St Jude. It would be a very sustainable alternative to the reliance on diesel generators for electricity at the school. This is one of the things that I want to explore when I visit the School – maybe next year.

Two blogs that I like for information about environmental issues are:

New Scientist Blog
and
RealClimate

So, how many Environment-related blog posts have you read today? I haven't seen as many as I thought I would. But maybe that because I'm in Australia, and the rest of the world hasn't arrived in Monday as yet.

Read a bit, do a bit. If you're not on a learning curve, you're going nowhere.

The woes of Kilimanjaro

The fabled glaciers on Tanzania's majestic mountain will soon be gone. Its forests are disappearing, too. For local farmers, this could mean disaster. For the rest of us, it's another permanent loss on an overheating planet.



Here is an insightful news item about the impact of global warming on Kilimanjaro and surrounding districts.

Mt Kilimanjaro is famous for the beauty of its glaciers and snowy cap which is especially remarkable as the mountain is right at the equator.

The article says,

Within the next 15 years, the glaciers atop Kilimanjaro are expected to disappear completely, and with them, some climate experts and government officials fear, a crucial portion of the region's water supply. Over 1 million people who inhabit the lower reaches of Kilimanjaro depend on this water for their crops, livestock and domestic purposes. Conflicts over water shortages have already broken out between water users on the mountain, and some villages have been nearly cut off by their upstream neighbors.

With declining precipitation levels driving glaciers toward extinction and threatening the area's forests, scientists, environmental organizations and even the Tanzanian government are turning their attention to a complex set of questions: How will water resources, and the humans who depend on them, respond if the ice and trees disappear? What will happen as the world's carbon levels continue to rise? For researchers and policymakers, the answers to these questions may be of academic interest or political concern, but for local people they are a matter of survival.

The School of St Jude is in the village of Moshono in Northern Tanzania, near Mt Kilimanjaro. The impact of climate change will affect the whole region.

Your contribution to quality education for bright children from poor families will help to give them a brighter future in these uncertain times.

No water, no power

Last year the Tanzanian electricity supply was wrecked due to the drought that knocked out the hydro generating plants. Today we hear that Australian electricity is threatened by our current drought. The National Electricity Marketing Management Corporation forecasts that the water crisis could cause power shortages next year unless action is taken. Water is needed for the Snowy hydro power, and also for cooling towers of coal powered generators.

Premier Iemma has responded immediately by allocating water reserves in the Hunter Valley for use by the big power stations in their cooling towers.

Bayswater Power Station, Hunter Valley, NSW

Also in the news today is the Australian government plan to spend $23 million telling us about its ‘leadership role’ and ‘balanced voice’ on global warming. No wonder voters are cynical about politicians! After years as a climate skeptic, Prime Minister Howard now wants us to see him as having shown leadership in this area. Leaders are supposed to drive the machine and steer it, not just apply the hand brake. Still, it's an election year, so what can we expect?

I wonder how far $23 million would go in Tanzania if it was invested in projects to produce electricity from renewable resources? Water used to be a renewable resource, but with global warming, that isn’t necessarily so any more. As most of their electricity is hydro, they have an urgent problem.

Climate skeptics are a dying breed. The evidence for global warming has become widely accepted on the basis of scientific concensus. Here’s an excellent resource, accessible and authoritive, for key information about global warming. The helpful guys at RealClimate say,

We've often been asked to provide a one stop link for resources that people can use to get up to speed on the issue of climate change, and so here is a first cut.

They point towards info at different levels – beginners to advanced – and have a handy set of links to answers for specific contrarian myths.

Our fearless leader

Like extreme poverty, climate change is one of the big issues that we need to know about if we are to live our lives responsibly and leave the world a little better for having been here.

So, keep learning, keep giving!

Another great map!

The World Resources Institute report, World Resources 2005 -- The Wealth of the Poor: Managing ecosystems to fight poverty, details the steps necessary to empower the poor to use ecosystems both wisely and for wealth. The book presents lots of current information on environmental, social, and economic trends in more than 150 countries. The full World Resources database is accessible and searchable online at EarthTrends.

Here is one of the maps from the book. It shows how climate change will affect growing seasons in Africa in 2000-2050. The brown areas show which areas will be under greater stress through reduced agricultural production.



As I am deeply interested Tanzania, I peer closely at the map to see how it will be affected. I see that most of Tanzania is brown, meaning shorter growing seasons and lower food production. This means more malnourished children who will die young of preventable diseases.

The following map shows that in 1996 ALL districts of Tanzania had more than 14% of children underweight. In some districts, this was up to 48%. These figures can only get worse when climate change reduces the length of growing seasons.



I feel some relief to see that the northern edge of Tanzania, where the School of St Jude is in Arusha, will have longer growing seasons. Still, the country as a whole is facing the prospect of greater stress on food production.

When we care about an issue, we seek information so we are informed. We want to know what happens at the local level and also at the larger, national level. We want to know what is happening right now, and what the longer term holds. With good information, we have a clearer view and can make informed choices.

I believe that education is an investment in the future. For a relatively small donation to the School of St Jude, you can equip a bright child from the poorest family to be a teacher, doctor, nurse, engineer, a leader of the future. Desperately poor countries like Tanzania CANNOT advance without these professional skills. What a huge gift you will give – to the individual child, their family, their community and their country.



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