It’s possible that we may all be ready to talk about peak oil now—especially if we frame it in terms of public health.
A recently published study on the public’s perception of peak oil has turned up some very interesting data about how Americans view the impact of high oil prices on public health. What’s so fascinating about the data is this: it’s not just those on the left who are worried. In fact, those most concerned about the health consequences of rising oil prices seem to be, in equal numbers, those on both the far right and far left of the political spectrum. Read More >
Along the Keriya River, one of twelve waterways in western China where dam construction began last year, the mood is weary and palpably tense. For those on the bank, what the dams will bring remains uncertain; what they have taken away is already great.
Construction camp along the Keriya River
New York Times journalist Jim Yardley writes, “[Large dams] lie at the uncomfortable center of China’s energy conundrum.” The construction of dams reduces the nation’s reliance on coal-fired power plants, yet it creates enormous human and environmental upheaval. None know this discomfort more than the millions of riverside peoples displaced by dam construction.
“I am a farmer,” a wrinkled man says in Uygur, the local language, “But now I work construction.” Like many of the men sleeping in canvas tents, he once grew millet and herded sheep downstream. His grandfather settled alongside the Keriya, furrowed trenches for irrigation, and eventually passed on the right to water, as is traditional among the Uygur, as a form of property to his son. (He inherited the water from his father.) However, as the river’s conquest by the hydroelectric project began, the water supply downstream dwindled, and the trenches grew clogged. No longer able to sustain his fields, or himself, this man joined on, instead, as a construction laborer with the project. Read More >
In western China, massive dams are being built along 12 waterways. The dams are supposed to aid economic development—but experts are saying it’s likely that the dams will do more harm than good.
Reservoir created by dam, the Pamir Mountains
When China pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40-45 percent of the 2005 levels at the Copenhagen Summit, the latest in a series of UN Climate Change conferences held in 2009, its energy agenda rested on the construction of dams. These dams are emblems of economic development. They create hydropower and control floods. They spread irrigation and, according to their advocates, they increase the nation’s agricultural production via increased irrigation water supply. They are touted as technological marvels, a point of national pride.
Under the New Socialist Countryside program, the Chinese government has pledged $62 billion (U.S.) to construct 12 large dams on China’s western, alpine rivers. In a 2010 paper for the Chinese Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, government engineer Ming-Jiang Deng describes the construction as “an effective measure to control and regulate rational allocation of water resources.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry adds that China is “carrying out [all dam construction efforts] according to the principles of sustainable development.” Dams promise the export of food and power to the heavily populated eastern coast, and therefore the sustained maintenance of the nation. And while all China’s populations deserve food and power, the Ministry’s aerial view fails to acknowledge the ways in which dams degrade riverbeds. Read More >
Peak oil will challenge oil-dependent agriculture.
Peak oil is inevitable. At some point, global oil supplies will peak and then decline (it may be happening already), driving up the cost of oil and petroleum products.But what happens to our food systems, which rely heavily on oil, when oil becomes scarce? We can anticipate higher food prices, undernourishment, and hunger—unless we start preparing now.
Today the American Journal of Public Health has published online ahead of print “Peak Petroleum and Public Health,” as part of a special AJPH supplement, to be published in September, that will examine peak oil health threats.This paper, co-authored by CLF faculty Roni Neff, PhD, Robert Lawrence, MD, and colleagues, makes the case for pre-emptive changes that can help public health adapt—ahead of the curve—to the inevitable.“Certain social and policy changes could smooth adaptation. Public health has an essential role in promoting a proactive, smart, and equitable transition that increases resilience and enables adequate food for all,” write the authors. Read More >
New from EWG
You know what you ate this week—but do you know how it will affect climate change and the planet? As of today, you can use the Environmental Working Group (EWG)’s newly launched website to get information on food carbon footprints.The “Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change and Health” helps users quantify the impacts of their current diets.Try adding up your meals’ impacts—you may be shocked, especially if you ate beef or cheese.
The carbon footprint of beef, for example, is 24.5 times higher than that for tomatoes. A 2008 study found that red meat and dairy comprise 48 percent of U.S. food-related greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).EWG’s analysis suggests that if the whole U.S. population committed to Meatless and cheeseless Monday (or otherwise gave up meat and cheese one day a week), the reduction in GHGs would be the same as that for driving 91 billion fewer miles, or taking 7.6 million cars off the road.Meatless Monday sounds to me like an easier goal, and I say that not only because CLF is affiliated with the program.Of course it is not either/or, and we need to cut all forms of GHGs. Read More >
The FY 2012 Agriculture appropriations bill, voted out of the House Appropriations Committee last week, includes an amendment that would severely limit the authority of FDA to regulate the use of antimicrobials, including antibiotics, in food animal production-a key concern of public health researchers. Sponsored by Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), the amendment would prohibit the agency from spending any money appropriated by the bill on actions “intended to restrict the use of a substance or a compound” unless certain conditions are met. Although the amendment is broad-affecting any “substance or compound,” notably including tobacco-Rep. Rehberg has told The Washington Post that his goal was to block FDA action on the use of antimicrobials by food animal producers. Indeed, the amendment would, among other things, preempt upcoming FDA restrictions on the misuse use of cephalosporin-the antibiotic of choice for serious Salmonella infections in children. (Researchers have reported increased incidence of cephalosporin-resistant Salmonella infections [Foley and Lynne, 2008].) Joining many others in the public health community, researchers at the Center for a Livable Future recently sent a letter to Congress , urging members to strike the amendment from the legislation before final passage.
The Rehberg amendment reads as follows (we have broken it into numbered and lettered points to make the language easier to follow):
None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Food and Drug Administration to write, prepare, develop or publish a proposed, interim, or final rule, regulation or guidance that is intended to restrict the use of a substance or a compound unless the Secretary
- bases such rule, regulation or guidance on hard science (and not on such factors as cost and consumer behavior), and
- determines that the weight of toxicological evidence, epidemiological evidence, and risk assessments clearly justifies such action,
- including a demonstration that a product containing such substance or compound
a. is more harmful to users than a product that does not contain such substance or compound, or
b. in the case of pharmaceuticals, has been demonstrated by scientific study to have none of the purported benefits. Read More >
I recently was asked in an interview to name the one thing I would change in the world if I had the power to do so. Surprising even myself, I replied quickly “the Haber-Bosch (H-B) process for industrial nitrogen fixation. Imagine – a world without synthetic N! One can imagine the blank look I got when I pulled that one out of the blue.
My response came from a professional lifetime studying the good and bad of fertilizers, especially nitrogen. And it comes from much reading of the literature on food production and the ills of our advanced society. So, bear with me as I look into a reverse crystal ball for what-if, realizing all the while that there is no way of going back, but examining whether the reverse crystal ball could help us move forward.
Carl Bosch
Much of my background material comes from Vaclav Smil’s book, Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and The Transformation of World Food Production (2001), sprinkled in with Smil’s Feeding the World: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century (2000) and L.T. Evans’s Feeding the Ten Billion: Plants and Population Growth (1998). There are many other books and papers I could cite, but most are repeating much of the same material.
So, what is the H-B process anyway, and how did it come about? A bit of history:
The world, especially Europe and China, had gained population in bursts, but around 1500 farming moved from subsistence to commercial. Farmers owned their land and developed cropping rotations centered on increasing carrying capacity for animals with fertility supplied through manures and nitrogen coming from clover. Soon, high-yielding cereals were introduced and population headed toward the first billion. Read More >
India is the most recent country to address the public health concerns associated with the use of non-therapeutic antimicrobials in food animal production, and in doing so, may just leap-frog the United States.
India’s Directorate General of Health Services recently released a policy document entitled “The National Policy for Containment of Antimicrobial Resistance (NPCAR)”, which outlines approaches for targeting both human and animal antimicrobial usage, infection prevention and control, education and training on administration of antimicrobials, antimicrobial resistance surveillance systems, and enforcement.
“It is a move that should be viewed as very positive, if significantly overdue” says Ed Broughton, Research and Evaluation Director of the USAID Health Care Improvement Project at University Research Company and former doctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.
Among the proposed policies specific to food animal production, the NPCAR recommends banning non-therapeutic usage of antimicrobials in food animals, labeling requirements in food exposed to antimicrobials, and banning over-the-counter (OTC) sale of antimicrobials. It is not clear whether the OTC sales ban would also apply to purchases of antimicrobials in feed (i.e. medicated feed) for food animals. Read More >
The Meatless Monday campaign just gained America’s protector of natural resources and heritage as one of its latest supporters. The U.S. Department of the Interior is one of Sodexo’s more than 2,000 corporate and government clients, which the food service giant encouraged to adopt its Meatless Monday initiative.
Sodexo announced today that it is all part of the company’s ongoing efforts to boost health and wellness and promote sustainability in the North American communities where it serves as many as 10 million meals a day. The Department of Interior joins several of Sodexo’s well-known clients, such as Toyota and Northern Trust Bank in adopting Meatless Monday.
The non-profit Meatless Monday campaign, which is operated out of New York City, was launched in 2003 with the help of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Center for a Livable Future. The public health campaign was first started simply to reduce America’s saturated fat consumption by 15%, following the recommendations of the Healthy People 2010 report issued by then U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher in 2000.
While reducing potential negative health effects, such as cardiovascular disease, remains a key goal, a few years ago the initiative expanded its focus to environmental impacts of intensive meat production. Those impacts can be quite substantial. Research suggests that it takes 20 times the amount of fossil-fuel energy to produce conventional beef protein than plant-based protein. According to a study out of California, it takes about 2,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. That’s almost ten times more than the 220 gallons water needed to produce a pound of tofu.
A Sodexo spokesperson says the Department of Interior reports that, “the population of customers at DOI is very health and environmentally conscience, so that Meatless Monday is a welcome addition to our program.” In a Sodexo news release, Toyota executive Will Nicklas was quoted as saying, “Meatless Monday has been successful here primarily because Sodexo helps our customers understand that it is not at all about becoming vegetarians or even weight loss, it’s about taking easy steps to guard our health and be good stewards of our environment.” Read More >
By Dr. Dennis Keeney, Visiting Scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future
The USDA 2011 Prospective Plantings Report was one of the most anticipated planting reports in several years. It came on the heels of a shocking Grain Stocks Report issued last month, which showed that corn stocks have come down 15% since March 2010. Ending stocks are projected to be only 675 million bushels, about 5% of the projected marketing year consumption, while consumption of the current marketing year corn was higher than in 2009 and well above projected consumption. Lowered stocks were also caused by a smaller than expected corn crop due to cold and rainy weather in the Corn Belt in 2010. Corn prices almost immediately increased by another $1 per bushel on the heels of a doubling of price during the past year. This dramatic price jump portends another round of world-wide food price increases, similar to those in 2008-2009. Already, some political uprisings in the Middle East have been blamed to some extent on rapid food price increases. In 2008-2009, yields bounced back to normal and the ethanol demand was much lower.
Why has this happened? Will it be alleviated by a bumper crop on more acres in 2011? Or has the grain commodity price structure started a trend towards a “new normal” of steadily increasing prices and more shortages?
The March 31 crop report indicated that farmers “intend” to plant 5% more acreage in corn, 8% more in wheat and 15% more in cotton while cutting soybean planting by only 1%. This adds up to 4 million more acres of cropland than there were in 2010. One wonders where that extra land is coming from. Most likely, it is land being retired from the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), and includes more fragile meadow and grassland. That is not good news for the environment. Just recently, a number of congressional members called for the immediate release of some of the 31.2 million acres of CRP for cropland.
I would like to explore what corn is used for and why the sudden drop in ending stocks surprised so many people, before presenting some scenarios that may play out in the near future. Read More >
It’s possible that we may all be ready to talk about peak oil now—especially if we frame it in terms of public health.
