Same Old, Same Old

Once again, I find myself riding a crowded, very large beer can as it hurtles through the stratosphere. I am headed for Chicago. This particular can does not allow me to determine where I might be on the progress of my journey. All I know is that at about 4 pm I will open the window shade, respectfully closed now so that others may watch the small screens, and see before me the Second City, hog butcher of the world. Until then, some of the passengers will stare at the screens hanging from the baggage compartment. Others will sleep. And I, I will try to understand the ocean of my present negative judgments.

It’s all very simple. I went for a walk one morning. On my walk on the road that borders the mangrove of Bahia Soliman and the backs of the houses on the Bay, I pass some very elaborate, very luxurious vacation villas. I have discussed them and what I consider their ostentation before. Anyway, on my walk I saw, waiting to be picked up by the basureros, a very large, in tact carton from a 53” flat screen television. The television itself was probably at that moment in the house being comfortably cooled by the air conditioning. But the carton led me to a stream, no, not a stream, an avalanche of negative judgments. About the person who brought such a thing to Bahia Soliman. About the thing itself. About the state of affairs in Bahia Soliman. About the course of human destiny. About why our environment is in such terrible danger.

Was this person flaunting his monstrously large TV? Was this person trying to incite whatever burglars might be around? Was this merely thoughtless, a failure to think to break down the box? Was this the start of a test for the Security Service for which my neighbors and I all pay? Why am I paying the same security fee as somebody who has installed such a burglar magnet, something that clearly needs serious protection? I don’t have anything like that. And why does somebody want a ginormous television on Bahia Soliman anyway? On and on and on.

I’ve discussed before my love of Estilo Robinson Crusoe. Maybe my negative thoughts about this carton and, as important, its contents are an extension of that. Maybe it's the shadow of that. First, I wrote about my house, and what a marvel it is, with no glass and only wooden louvers, and how it invites the natural world of Bahia Soliman in and itself belongs to it. I love the house. Then, I wrote about the palaperos, those indigenous artisans who make millennia old roofs that withstand hurricanes and heat and last so very long. I love indigenous architecture. But I’ve also complained that my neighbors have left ERC far, far behind, and have instead embarked on what can only be called Akumalificacion: overbuilding their lots, tons of glass to shut out the breezes, lots of air conditioning, a plethora of distasteful homage to Spanish colonial architecture, including red tile roofs, faux mission motifs, and encircling walls and gates, and, of course, as if Bahia Soliman itself were not the reason for building a house there, lots of swimming pools, to be used instead of swimming in the very Bahia that brought all of these people. This is their taste. They are doubtless entitled to it. And I am entitled to react to it. And to my judgments about it. It saddens me. And it also angers me.

The carton for the 53” television, sitting shamelessly in front of the rest of the basura, signals the culmination of the change from ERC to overt Akumalificacion. Why else is there a 53” television in Bahia Soliman? Presumably, instead of sitting at the shore and watching the stars over the Bay, instead of listening to the glorious night sounds and the breeze and the rumble of the waves on the reef, instead of the hushed conversations and shooting stars and the playing of guitars and singing, instead of reading, instead of just going to bed early, instead of all of that, someone will shut all of that beautiful nature out. And watch television. Just as if he or she weren’t in Bahia Soliman. Just as if he were somewhere else in the world. In fact, anywhere else in the world. As if it does not matter where he is. I repeat: As if it doesn’t matter where he is.

And if the windows are open— an increasingly unlikely scenario given the unfortunate trend— you will hear above the hum of the air conditioners and mixed with the sounds of breeze and wave and wildlife and human voices, of all things, the horrible braying of television.

Tan vergonzoso! So shameful! What have we done?

I fear we have lost our way. Do people really want everything everywhere to be the same? Do we really want homogenization and standardization of everything everywhere? Blandness all the time everywhere? Complete, overwhelming, inescapable consistency? Do we really want television and music and ear buds and games all of the time no matter wherever we are? Is all of this “entertainment” (read: distraction) necessary to our being comfortable? Do we have to have all of this to transform new and different places and situations into the ones with which we are already so utterly, so boringly familiar?

And when we do this, isn’t it a fact that the importance of wherever we actually are on the planet is diminished? It becomes so unimportant. Wherever it is, is just like everywhere else. Everywhere is utterly the same and bathed in the same things that we use to make it all quite familiar. And ordinary. Your dwelling in magical, remarkable Bahia Soliman becomes the same as one in any standard, well equipped suburbia.

Well, I don’t want Bahia Soliman to be like everywhere else. It isn’t. I resent those who would attempt to make it so (their motivations in this don't matter). And I worry that this pervasive ignorance (read: ignoring) of where one is, is extremely dangerous to the environment. Not just to Bahia Soliman. But to the earth generally. Because the place in which we appear to live is no longer a specific place on the earth that needs and deserves specific kinds of our attention. No. Now we will live in the generalized, imagined space we have created with incessant media. And we will persistently shut out the real world and its murmuring what it needs out.

(Note: a special h/t to the woman from Belize who talked to me about her community there and inspired this essay.)

(Note: Your Bloguero is back in the states. He has brought some weather with him.)

Dear Pachamama: This Too Can Heal

The Despacho


Beyond the anger, frustration, sadness, depression and fear of the BP oil disaster there must be something else. The Gulf of Mexico is fast becoming a deadly petroleum gumbo garnished with oil coated pelicans, life in the sea is massing and trying to unsuccessfully to escape the pollution, and there may really be nothing on a practical level that can be done to staunch the hemorrhage of Pachamama's vital fluids. We watch in horror. And grief. Is our mother dying? I awoke in the middle of the night to write this haiku:

I watch you dying.
Pelican can't fly away.
Oceans fill my eyes.

Yesterday I had the thought that we are watching the death of the coral and multitudes of the finned and swimming creatures because they are offering themselves up, sacrificing themselves to give us a message we have willfully refused for decades to hear. I want us to hear and heed that message. And they are apparently ready to die to have us hear and understand it.

But there is more. If it is true that what we give our attention to grows, and I believe it is, it is time to shift some of our conscious attention from our pervasive thoughts of grief and anxiety to another thought. This thought: this too can heal. Even this unprecedented horrendous mess Pachamama can heal. Even this unmitigated disaster she can heal. How she can do this is not important. What is so very important is the thought, the belief that this too can heal. That thought needs to take hold. Without the thought that this too can be healed, there is only focused attention on the death of the Gulf, the death of all of its creatures, the eventual death of the oceans, and the death of the planet. And that focused attention will kill all of us.

The Dhammapada tells us this very same thing, that we are what we think:

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

Filled with anger, fear, sadness, grief, overcome with frustration, we are what we think. With only those intense thoughts there is no room for anything else. There is only death.

To mark the Solstice and to offer both our thanks and our deepest apologies to Mother Earth, Pachamama, Santa Madre Tierra, many friends gathered on Saturday. We made a despacho, an offering, the one pictured above.

A despacho is a prayer bundle in the Q'ero tradition from the high Andes of Peru. It is made up of many symbolic elements: sugar for sweetness, lima beans for nutrition, raisins to honor the ancestors, alphabet noodles to honor learning, red wine to honor the feminine, white white to honor the masculine, and on and on and on. There are so many ingredients. There is a clam shell to symbolize the mamakocha, the oceans and waters of our planet. There are cotton strands to symbolize the clouds. And stars. And the sun. And Pachamama. The despacho in many ways is a complete, mythic universe of offering. To it, each participant in the ceremony adds personal and community prayers. In this case, the prayers were especially for the healing of Pachamama from the Gulf disaster.

Many of the prayers were like this one by Masaru Emoto:

Now let's give energy of love and gratitude to the waters and all the living creatures in Mexico Gulf by praying like this:

To the water, whales, dolphins, pelicans, fishes, shellfishes, planktons, corals, algae and all creatures in our Gulf of Mexico:

I apologize.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.

source.

Or like this one I wrote:

Dear Pachamama, Mother Earth, Santa Madre Tierra, Gaia, Sweet Mother, I am so sorry for what we have done and are doing to you and your creatures, our brothers and sisters, the creatures who live in and near the sea. We don't know how to stop the oil, and we don't know how to save all of these beings. Please understand our remorse, our regret, our shame and accept out deepest apologies for destroying this part of this wondrous, blue pearl planet. Please forgive us.

source.

After all of the many prayers are placed in the bundle, and the bundle is tied up, the despacho is burned in a ceremonial fire. This, the tradition says, releases the prayers to the heavens, but we all know that the prayers reach their destination as soon as they are thought. Whenever they are thought.

I know that I will not be able to keep my focus on the possible healing of the Gulf and our planet. I know that I will again become infuriated. At BP. At the government. At Obama. At the BP CEO. And Louisiana's politicians. At Missisisppi's governor. That's just human. My hope is that I will be able to turn away from strong negative feelings to hold gently in the palm of my hand the possibility of healing for the Gulf and our beautiful, blue planet. And for all of us.

Pachamama, I Beg You Please Forgive Us

This is deeply troubling. And beyond sickening. AP reports:

GULF SHORES, Ala. - Dolphins and sharks are showing up in surprisingly shallow water just off the Florida coast. Mullets, crabs, rays and small fish congregate by the thousands off an Alabama pier. Birds covered in oil are crawling deep into marshes, never to be seen again.

Marine scientists studying the effects of the BP disaster are seeing some strange — and troubling — phenomena.

Fish and other wildlife are fleeing the oil out in the Gulf and clustering in cleaner waters along the coast. But that is not the hopeful sign it might appear to be, researchers say.

The animals' presence close to shore means their usual habitat is badly polluted, and the crowding could result in mass die-offs as fish run out of oxygen. Also, the animals could easily get devoured by predators.

"A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying to get out of this water they detect is not suitable," said Larry Crowder, a Duke University marine biologist.

Dear Pachamama, Mother Earth, Santa Madre Tierra, Gaia, Sweet Mother, I am so sorry for what we have done and are doing to you and your creatures, our brothers and sisters, the creatures who live in and near the sea. We don't know how to stop the oil, and we don't know how to save all of these beings. Please understand our remorse, our regret, our shame and accept out deepest apologies for destroying this part of this wondrous, blue pearl planet. Please forgive us.

Day 47

Once again, my hair's on fire.

These are the salient facts. The BP oil leak continues unabated. Oil has transformed the Gulf Coast into the largest man made ecological disaster in history. It may be impossible to stop the leak. Even if it's possible to stop the leak, it may take months and luck to do so. Neither the Government nor BP apparently has the resources to stop the leak quickly. Flying over the leak and visiting the Gulf Coast and making repeated speeches about the leak and trying not to look completely helpless or to cry on camera is apparently all that Government can do for us. There has not been an all out, dramatic, gigantic mobilization of human and other resources to capture oil or to contain it. Oil has arrived and more is expected on beaches in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. There's no end in sight.

My hair's on fire. I'm not really able to be with the situation. The Gulf has turned into an oil gumbo with dead animal croutons, and my emotions are a boiling, raging, oil stew. There is no real relief, no real change in sight. There is no comfort. Even thinking about impermanence, which can be an ally at times like this, doesn't help. Because there's my ever present dread that while the current situation cannot continue forever, it just might become much, much worse. What would that look like? It would be the death of an ecosystem.

At the moment there seem to be only two real possibilities. These are not disjunctive. Choice one: pick up my shovels and drive to the coast. Do whatever I can to be of help there. Choice two: ceremony and prayer. Beg Santa Madre Tierra, Pachamama, Mother Earth for forgiveness and healing.

BP Now Admits It's A "Catastrophe"

Well, that sure didn't take long. We've had more than a month of watching oil gush from a broken pipe a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico. We've watched BP, which has Ken Salazar's foot on it's hydra-headed neck, take every possible step to save oil it could sell while it dithered about blocking the leak and invented sci-fi machines to capture oil. And we've watched in horror while enormous amounts of oil flow into the sea and onto beaches and through marshes, and we're seeing pelicans covered in oil and drowned turtles and fishing bans and devastation in the tourist industry. And now, after all of that, as if we don't already know that we're watching something that foreshadows the impending death of the Gulf of Mexico, BP has revised its characterization of the spill from having a "modest" environmental impact to being an "environmental catastrophe."

What a sickening development.

CNN has the story and video.

And the result is that while the Gulf of Mexico is being ruined everyone is now officially "frustrated." The President. You. Me. We're frustrated because all of the smart people in the world in convocation apparently cannot put this Humpty Dumpty together again. Or haven't. So at long last, according to TPM, DFA is now calling for a boycott of BP. What else, I ask, can we do to express ourselves?

There are really two issues. The first is the leak. But the second, and over time it might be the more important, is collecting, containing and then cleaning up the mess. That process is sadly long overdue and it does not depend on stemming the flow. It depends on the government mobilizing the resources necessary to contain and clean up the oil. And if you think that blocking the leak is/was a challenge, the clean up is a far larger one.

Can we please get going on that? Every day that we wait on this is a day of more suffering and death in the Gulf.

BP And Obama And The World's Largest Man Made Environmental Disaster

We've all had a month to stew about this. The Gulf of Mexico is slowly turning into a petroleum gumbo laced with oil coated pelicans and dead dolphins. We've been watching a slow motion train wreck. Except it's not just two colliding steam engines. No. No such luck. It's the Gulf of Mexico, teaming with life, and its currents are moving the spilled oil around. Eventually it will be everywhere. And while we're watching that unfold, and seeing clumps of tar and oil all over the beaches, we are beginning to suspect that, hard as it is to believe, maybe nobody, that's right nobody, knows how to plug the leak. And stop the spill. So we're going to have to watch a colossal ecological disaster we are utterly helpless to stop. Or mitigate. The signs are already everywhere, preparing us for a spectacle of wildlife and oceanic death, slowly breaking to us the very bad news we really don't want to hear.

Just look at this from AP:

Oil spill frustration is rampant.

The White House is being pounded for not acting more aggressively in the month-old oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The administration is hitting back, mostly at BP. Louisiana is threatening to take matters into its own hands. The truth is, the government has little direct experience at either the national or state level at stopping deepwater oil leaks — and few realistic options.

With the oil flowing and spreading at a furious rate, President Barack Obama has accused BP of a "breakdown of responsibility." He named a special independent commission to review what happened.

But the administration seems to want to have it both ways — insisting it's in charge while also insisting that BP do the heavy lifting. The White House is arguing that government officials aren't just watching from the sidelines, but also acknowledging there's just so much the government can do directly.

"They are 5,000 feet down. BP or the private sector alone have the means to deal with that problem down there. It's not government equipment that is going to be used to do that," Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen told a White House briefing on Monday.

This is a recipe for a most horrible outcome. Our frustration today is absolutely nothing compared to what is coming. What is coming is the largest man made environmental disaster in history. This is going to make Chernobyl look like Three Mile Island. This is going to make Exxon Valdez and Santa Barbara look like a joke.

The administration has stated that it is going to have "a special independent commission" "review what happened." But I don't need no stinking commission to know what happened. We've been over it and over it and over it. That's all back story anyway. If the Gulf of Mexico dies, as surely it will from enough oil, "what happened" is going to be the least of anyone's concerns. It's going to be a footnote in a narration of the extensive misery and suffering that the spill has caused.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Interior supposedly has his foot on the throat of BP. And the government continues to rely on oil company "expertise" to deal with the spill. But the Interior Department was still apparently granting permits for underwater drilling even after he declared a moratorium on that. And we're already being told that the feds can supervise and direct BP, but that they aren't capable to doing anything on their own. Look at this. The Coast Guard's guy who's in charge of this federal emergency response is saying that it's BP or the private sector that has "the means to deal with that problem", not the government. If you kick them out of the way, who will take over? Nobody, he claims. I asked before and I ask again, whether this is the first time that a claimed foot on the throat has been confused with fellatio.

No, the administration isn't going to elbow sweet BP aside. Ever. Absolutely not. No matter what. We're already being told that BP, the fourth largest corporation in the world, has all the "means to deal with that problem," and that the rest of us can just sit here and watch the largest man made ecological disaster in history slowly, but inexorably unfold. And the expertise, we're being told, is all in the hands of the oil companies. They're doing, so we're told, all they can do.

There are some very, very smart people in the United States. I'd like to tell you that they can be quickly called together to solve this problem. That it's that big a disaster that unconventional approaches are required. But I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think the administration will take over the efforts to close the spill. I don't think anything will change in the way this disaster is being handled until much later. Until we've been made physically and emotionally sick by the condition of the Gulf of Mexico. Then maybe things will change. If it's not too late.

Is This Obama's Katrina? Nice Work, Kenny.

Exactly how far does BP have to go, how many times does it have to blunder and fail and make excuses while it tries to preserve its investment in the leaking well, before the US pushes BP out of the way and stops the leak that is now destroying the Gulf of Mexico? Apparently, pretty damn far. Long story short, the US isn't going to take over the problem at this point. You know we're in big, big trouble when the intervention of the US Army Corps of Engineers looks like an improvement in disaster management.

This from Reuters makes the US government's intentions less than perfectly clear:

The U.S. government will move aside BP (BP.L) from the operation to try to halt the Gulf of Mexico oil spill if it decides the company is not performing as required in its response to the well leak, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Sunday.

"I am angry and I am frustrated that BP has been unable to stop this oil from leaking and to stop the pollution from spreading," Salazar told reporters after visiting BP's U.S. headquarters in Houston.

"We are 33 days into this effort and deadline after deadline has been missed," Salazar added, referring to the failure of containment efforts attempted so far by London-based BP to control the gushing undersea well one mile (1.6 km) down on the ocean floor.

President Barack Obama's administration is facing growing public and political pressure to take full charge of the oil spill containment operation as criticism against BP grows.

Yeah, Ken, we're all angry and frustrated. But, guess what? We're not the Secretary of the Interior or of anything else. We're not in the cabinet. We're sitting here watching the Gulf of Mexico turn into a petrol gumbo laced with oil coated pelicans.

And what exactly do you mean when you say, "if" the company isn't performing as required? Performing as required means that the leak is stopped. Closed up. That there's no more oil. Running a straw into the leak so that BP can sell it and make money on it isn't exactly "performing as required."

"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Salazar said, but he did not specify at what point this would occur or what might be the trigger for it.

"This is an existential crisis for one of the world's largest companies," he said, in a reference to the billions of dollars of cleanup and damages costs that BP faces.

Give me a f*cking break. That last paragraph has to be some kind of sick joke. "An existential crisis for one of the world's largest companies?" Dude, it's an existential crisis for the Gulf of Mexico, its inhabitants, and its wild life if not the oceans generally and the planet. You think I or anybody else gives a rat's ass whether BP fails?

If you know how to stop the leak, it's really time to stop it. This sitting and watching as BP diddles and tries to harmonize stopping the leak with preserving its investment in the well is going to kill the Gulf, if it hasn't done so already. 33 days is more than enough time to stop the leak.

The federal response, described in your brilliant statements today, is what I call feckless. And that's the nicest term I can find to describe it. This is a disgrace. The only thing we're lacking at the moment is the icing. That would be Obama telling Ken Salazar what a great job he's doing. I wish I didn't think that was next up.

Saving The Tiger: First Steps

Tigers are on the brink of extinction. This fact brought me initially surprise, and then immediately grief, despair, rage, anger and sadness. So, I've written about it-- this is the fourth essay in a week -- in an effort to alert others to this catastrophe. I consider the extinction of tigers and other big cats an environmental emergency, an impending disaster.

The first big cat extinction since the saber tooth tiger became extinct 10,000 years ago is an extremely important event and a cause for great concern. Tigers are the top of the jungle food chain. They're "megafauna", the kind of big, well known animal that is an indicator of the jungle's health. When there are many, and they are healthy, the jungle, an interconnected web of life of many interdependent species of animals and plants, is healthy. And when there are few, in fact, so few that extinction of the largest animal in the ecosystem is a distinct possibility, it means the jungle is dying.

If tigers are on the brink of extinction, so too is the jungle, so too is the planet. Here are data:

More tigers are kept in captivity in the U.S. than are left in the wild -- and there are few regulations to keep these tigers from ending up on the black market. The largest numbers of captive tigers are in Texas (an estimated 3,000+), but they are also kept in other states.

With pelts selling for $20,000 and a single paw worth as much as $1,000, the value of a dead tiger has never been higher, say those who investigate the trade. Last month the Indian government announced a surge in killings of tigers by poachers, with 88 found dead in 2009, double the previous year. Because figures are based on carcasses found on reserves or tiger parts seized at border crossings, conservationists say the true number is far higher.

sources

What is causing the extinction? The threats to tiger survival are apparently quite clear. There don't seem to be any mysteries. The threats are mainly population growth, deforestation, hunting, poaching, and the illegal trade of tiger bones and other parts. Private, unregulated captivity of tigers in the US may contribute to illegal trade in their bones and other parts.

Permit me to cut to the chase. I am painfully aware that I have no idea what to do to halt the extinction of tigers. I personally have no plan. But others clearly do. As small, interim steps, I suggest your immediate support to the following:

Panthera. I discovered Panthera yesterday. I gave them a donation. Panthera uses 100% of donations for preservation projects. You can earmark your gift to a particular species.

Big Cat Rescue

World Wildlife Fund

This is the Internet. Small contributions by large numbers of people can make enormous changes possible. I am happy to have made a donation to Panthera. I hope you will join me.

I also suggest spreading the story of this extinction far and wide. Use the Internet to spread it. The situation merits serious attention. Yes, the tiger is not alone in facing extinction; there are many large cats across the world that also face extinction. These include the Iberian Lynx, the Florida Panther, and jaguars throughout Central America. But the tiger, because of the Chinese New Year and 2010 being the Year of the Tiger, is right now the most visible animal humans are driving into extinction. That is a story that needs to be told. It needs to be reflected upon. And it merits serious discussion about just what can be done to save the tiger and spare the planet. But before there can be a discussion, the news of this extinction needs to be spread. I am happy to do that. I hope you will join me.

Yesterday, as a comment to an essay, LaFeminista posted William Blake's famous poem:

Tiger Tiger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile His work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger Tiger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

She and I both sigh at this 1794 poem. And I ask, more than 2 centuries after Blake wrote it, "What mortal hands dare destroy thy fearful symmetry?" How dare we permit this devastation to occur.

Happy Year Of The (Almost Extinct) Tiger

Tiger In Captivity

The Tiger is almost extinct. This situation is beyond disquieting. It's a very scary, dire one for our small planet. As Meteor Blades wrote yesterday

"Sometimes fury and despair are the only responses that one can come up with. It seems as if nothing anybody does - laws, scoldings, appeals to people's better nature - will stop this needless, heedless destruction.

Tigers are the top of the jungle food chain. They're "megafauna", the kind of big, well known animal that is an indicator of the jungle's health. When there are many, and they are healthy, the jungle, an interconnected web of life of many interdependent species of animals and plants, is healthy. And when there are few, in fact, so few that extinction of the largest animal in the ecosystem is a distinct possibility, it means the jungle is dying, if not the planet. It means that the first, large feline extinction since the sabre toothed tiger is around the corner. And that is not a cause, but a symptom of the dying of Earth.

Today, February 14, is the New Year of the Year of the Tiger. Time reports:

The Year of the Tiger begins on Feb. 14, which should mean good things for the world. In Chinese astrology, tigers are known as bold and independent, good luck against fire and thieves.

But if the Year of the Tiger ends up being anything like every other year over the past few decades, it won't be very good for tigers themselves. The princely animals are among the most endangered species on the planet. In the wild, they number fewer than 3,000; their habitat, which once stretched in Asia from the Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea, has shrunk by more than 90% over the past century, and it's shrinking still. "We once had more than 100,000 of these animals," says Sybille Klenzendorf, the director of the World Wildlife Fund's U.S. Species Conservation Program. "There's a real chance that we will lose this animal in our own lifetime."

There are many threats to the tiger's survival. They are easily categorized:

[Tigers] face a battle on many fronts: tigers are threatened by deforestation, hunting and the illegal trade of their bones and other parts, which are used in some forms of traditional Chinese medicine, mostly for consumers in Asia.

But one of the most unexpected threats to the tiger comes here in the U.S., where there are more tigers kept in private captivity then there are surviving wild animals left in the world. ...conservationists worry that captive tigers could too easily end up fueling the illegal global wildlife trade.

This is a very ugly picture. And the bottom line is extinction. And death.

I've been obsessed with the loss of the tigers. It has filled me with grief, despair, anger, and rage. Why? A brief review might help to explain my feelings, if you've not been following this:

More tigers are kept in captivity in the U.S. than are left in the wild -- and there are few regulations to keep these tigers from ending up on the black market. The largest numbers of captive tigers are in Texas (an estimated 3,000+), but they are also kept in other states.

source

With pelts selling for $20,000 and a single paw worth as much as $1,000, the value of a dead tiger has never been higher, say those who investigate the trade. Last month the Indian government announced a surge in killings of tigers by poachers, with 88 found dead in 2009, double the previous year. Because figures are based on carcasses found on reserves or tiger parts seized at border crossings, conservationists say the true number is far higher.

source

It's disgraceful. I am worried that tigers might be becoming extinct. I have written some essays about that (this is the third). The idea that tigers are becoming extinct is making me ill: it brings on feelings of anger, sadness, despair, grief, longing, anger, rage, frustration. I find myself thinking about it. Constantly. I don't understand why humans allow this sort of depredation of the planet, and why in general they remain oblivious to it. So I write my essays. I would scream and yell, but I doubt anyone would hear me.

I am painfully aware that I have no idea what to do to prevent the extinction of tigers. I have no plan. As small, interim steps, I suggest support for the following:

Big Cat Rescue

World Wildlife Fund

Wildlife Conservation Society

I also suggest spreading the story of this extinction far and wide. The situation merits serious attention. Yes, the tiger is not alone in facing extinction; there are several large cats across the world that also face extinction. These include the Iberian Lynx, the Florida Panther, and jaguars throughout Central America. But the tiger, because of the Chinese Zodiac, is right now the most visible animal humans are driving into extinction. That is a story that needs to be told. It needs to be reflected upon. And it merits serious discussion about just what can be done to save the tiger and spare the planet.

Blue Tigers

Today WWF issued a report on tigers. Among other distressing items, there is this:

More tigers are kept in captivity in the U.S. than are left in the wild -- and there are few regulations to keep these tigers from ending up on the black market. The largest numbers of captive tigers are in Texas (an estimated 3,000+), but they are also kept in other states

Soon, if you go looking for tigers, there may not be any to find in the wild. Just in the zoo. You'll be able to watch them walk in circles and growl and snarl. You'll have to imagine, if you can, what it would be like to encounter one while you were walking in the brush:



But I digress. Jorge Luis Borges was really interested in, in fact obsessed with tigers. In his story Blue Tigers the narrator, a professor of logic, searches for a Blue Tiger that was reportedly found in the Ganges Delta. He doesn't find the tiger. Instead, the local villagers send him on a series of wild goose chases by telling him that the tiger has been sighted in various places in the area. He never finds the tiger. No blue tigers. No yellow tigers. No white tigers. Instead he finds something fantastic: "stones of the spawn," blue stones whose behavior defies logic, science and mathematics. But he never finds any tigers, blue or any other color.

When I first read the story, I thought the unsuccessful search for the Blue Tiger was not a big problem. There were, I thought, other tigers to be found. If a Blue Tiger weren't found, that was fine. You could go into the jungle and find other tigers. Thousands of them. Maybe they wouldn't be blue, but at least you could find a tiger if you wanted to.

But now the missing Blue Tiger, the one not found in the story, has become a bigger problem. A far bigger, more worrisome one. Soon, humans will have made common tigers as rare as blue ones in Borges stories. And we will be devastatingly poorer for our reckless and stupid conduct that killed them off. When we act like that, we humans don't deserve anything as wonderful, as fierce, as wild, as beautiful as a tiger.

Dying Bats: More Bad, Frightening News

When I first moved to Columbia County, New York, about 25 miles southeast of Albany, in the foothills of the Berkshires, evening sunsets were spectacular. And there were dozens of bats zooming through the dim light feasting on insects. There were two primary kinds of bats: big brown bats ones and little brown bats. I considered putting up a bat house, but never did. The bats seemed to be thriving quite well without one, thank you. But in the summer of 2007 I began to notice that there were fewer bats. And in summer, 2008 even fewer. And this past summer hardly any. What I was witnessing was the bat population dying out. It was being ravaged by disease.

Today, the Times Union brought the details of this bad news about the bats:

Since the appearance of a mysterious malady more than two years ago in Albany County caves, bat populations have been reduced by more than 90 percent in caves across three states, according to counts released Wednesday by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The decline has been linked to a fungal condition called white nose syndrome, named for the white, fuzzy fungus found on the faces of afflicted bats. So far, there is no way to stop the spread of the illness, which leaves bats with too little body fat to survive winter hibernation.

In 23 caves surveyed -- four in Vermont and Massachusetts, the rest in Albany and Schoharie counties -- about 4,800 bats were found last winter. That is down from more than 55,000 bats in those same caves before the disease outbreak.

The figures include little brown bats, big brown bats and Indiana bats -- the last an endangered species.

According to Al Hicks, a Department of Environmental Conservation wildlife biologist, "These numbers are about as bad as anyone could imagine. It injects a sense of urgency to the matter. We don't have a lot of years to figure this out. If things continue at this rate, we will be in trouble."

Nobody, it seems, knows what is causing the problem. There are theories, of course:

"Right now, this fungus looks like an invasive (species) that was introduced. It was not found previously anywhere in North America, and was somehow introduced here from another location. It is something that our bats never had to deal with before."

And it's killing them. Almost all of them.

I wrote about this pandemic about 2 years ago. In February, 2008, I wrote:

Bloomberg reported yesterday that bats in New York and Vermont are dying:

Thousands of bats are dying from an unknown illness in the northeastern U.S. at a rate that could cause extinction, New York state wildlife officials said.

At eight caves in New York and one in Vermont, scientists have seen bat populations plummet over two years. Most bats hibernate in the same cave every winter, keeping annual counts consistent. A cave that had 1,300 bats in January 2006 had 470 bats last year. It recently sheltered just 38.

At another cave, more than 90 percent of about 15,500 bats have died since 2005, and two-thirds that remain now sleep near the cave's entrance, where conditions are less hospitable. Scientists don't know what's causing the deaths, and biologists wearing sanitary clothing and respirators to prevent the spread of disease are collecting the dead for testing as part of a state and U.S. effort.

Apparently, nobody knows what's killing the bats.

Some bats in the die-off have a white fungus encircling their noses. Most living bats now are underweight, too thin to make it through the winter, Hicks said. They choose their hibernating spots based on weight. Colder resting spots, like the ones near the entrance help energy reserves last longer.

``These guys are hibernating in places you never see healthy bats hibernating,'' Hicks said.

When they're not hibernating, healthy bats eat about half their weight in bugs every night, including mosquitoes, grasshoppers, locusts and moths that can spread disease among humans and devastate crops.

Bat populations are vulnerable to disease during hibernation as they congregate in large numbers in caves, sometimes packed so densely that it's difficult to see the cavern wall behind them. In warmer months, bats migrate hundreds of miles to their summer homes, so a new disease could rapidly spread across the region, Hicks said.

Whatever it is that is killing these bats, it hasn't been remedied. And the loss of these bats is devastating not only for the bats themselves but also for the rest of the ecological fabric that depends on the bats. This is indeed frightening news. One can only hope that a solution is found before much longer.

Venice Is Flooded

How sad. The New York Times reports that Venice is flooding:

Residents and tourists waded through knee-deep water Monday as they navigated the city's narrow streets and alleys, and its historic St. Mark's Square was inundated. Boxes of tourist merchandise floated inside the flooded shops around the square and even the city's famed pigeons sought refuge on rooftops and windowsills.

One of the highest tides in its history brought Venice to a virtual halt, rekindling a debate over a plan to build moveable flood barriers in an effort to save the lagoon city from high tides.

City officials said the tide peaked at 61 inches (156 centimeters), well past the 40-inch (110-centimeter) flood mark, as strong winds pushed the sea into the city.

Alarms went off at 6:37 a.m. to alert citizens, but many residents were taken by surprise because authorities had initially not forecast such a high water level.

In St. Mark's Square, one of the city's lowest points, tourists tried to stay dry by hopping on cafe tables and chairs sticking out of the water. The water was so high that someone rowed a small speedboat across the wide square.

Tell me again about global warming and climate change and the rising level of the seas. I only remember these things when I'm standing on a cafe table with an espresso in one hand and an umbrella in the other.

Clean Coal?

h/t to the Rude Pundit and Shoot The Messnger

Salicornia

Salicornia

Salicornia, believe it or not, is a plant that can grow in in hospitable, desert soils and can be watered with, of all things, ocean salt water. Never heard of this? Neither have I. I've sat on the beach and wondered what it would take to remove the salt from sea water to grow things in sand, but I never thought about reversing the process, leaving the salt in the water and finding something that would grow in it. In today's LA Times I found this "ah hah" moment:

A few miles inland from the Sea of Cortez, amid cracked earth and mesquite and sun-bleached cactus, neat rows of emerald plants are sprouting from the desert floor.

The crop is salicornia. It is nourished by seawater flowing from a man-made canal. And if you believe the American who is farming it, this incongruous swath of green has the potential to feed the world, fuel our vehicles and slow global warming. /snip

That's where salicornia comes in.

A so-called halophyte, or salt-loving plant, the briny succulent thrives in hellish heat and pitiful soil on little more than a regular dousing of ocean water. Several countries are experimenting with salicornia and other saltwater-tolerant species as sources of food. Known in some restaurants as sea asparagus, salicornia can be eaten fresh or steamed, squeezed into cooking oil or ground into high-protein meal.

Carl Hodges, who's featured in the article, has far, far bigger plans than just growing salicornia. The project is ingenious and it wastes nothing. The plan is breathtaking:

The enterprise recently planted 1,000 acres of salicornia here in rural Sonora, where Hodges has been doing preparatory research for decades. That crop will provide seed for a major venture planned 50 miles north in the coastal city of Bahia de Kino. Global Seawater is attempting to lease or buy 12,000 acres there for what it envisions will be the world's largest seawater farm.

The plan is to cut an ocean canal into the desert to nourish commercial ponds of shrimp and fish. Instead of dumping the effluent back into the ocean, the company would channel it further inland to fertilize fields of salicornia for biofuel. The seawater's next stop would be man-made wetlands. These mangrove forests could be "sold" to polluters to meet emissions cuts mandated by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

"Nothing is wasted," Hodges said.

This is such an ingenious idea. And thinking about it is such utter delight. If this were still the '60's, you'd say, "Wow. Far out."

There's a story-- I don't know if it's apocryphal or not-- that until the 16th Century, people in Europe were unable to see the color blue. Then something happened in the Renaissance and then (I don't know if it was gradual or all of a sudden) they were all able to perceive it. I don't remember supposed reason for the shift. The reason in retrospect doesn't seem as important as the occurrence of the change in perception itself.

And now Salicornia. The Salicornia story has the same, huge, surprising quality of discovery. The cliche for this might be a "quantum shift of consciousness." It's that good.

Which brings me back to the mundane. This whole idea would be less wonderful if Salicornia didn't taste good. Apparently, salicornia is quite salty tasting, but there are favorable reviews of people who have enjoyed eating it. It also has it's own Wiki with this about eating it:

Salicornia europaea is highly edible, either cooked or raw.[4] In England it is one of several plants known as samphire (see also Rock samphire); the term samphire is believed to be a corruption of the French name, herbe de Saint-Pierre, which means "St. Peter's Herb."[5] In the United States the edible species are known as sea beans.[6]

Samphire is usually cooked, either steamed or microwaved, and then coated in butter. After cooking, it resembles seaweed in colour, and the flavour and texture are like young spinach stems or asparagus, and despite its texture when raw, after cooking is not at all stringy or tough. Samphire is very often used as a suitably maritime accompaniment to fish or seafood.

And, of course, there are many, many recipes. Thank goodness. The whole idea wouldn't be as promising if people generally didn't like to eat it. Then it would be relegated to being like sawgrass, another animal feed and source of biofuel.

Let's Go Dark For Earth Hour, 8-9 pm

Here are the details. Let's turn off the lights, turn off the TV, turn off the computers for an hour.

I'm putting Spencertown, NY, USA and Bahia Soliman, Tulum, QR, Mexico on the map of places turning off the power for an hour. Wherever you are, please join me.

Consider it a moment of peace, a moment to look at the stars, a moment to light a candle, a moment of vacation, a moment of Sabbath, a political gesture, a chance to join a worldwide awareness.

Plastic People, Oh Baby, You're Such A Drag

The Midway Islands

Recently, I wrote about Si'an Kaan in Mexico and the utter disgrace that its beaches were full of plastic. Today, it's the Midway Islands and a BBC story that plastic in these islands in the very middle of the Pacific Ocean is killing birds. That's right. In the middle of nowhere, plastic is killing the birds. And turtles. And fish. Plastic is everywhere. It's destroying wildlife. It's destroying the planet.

The BBC article is stark:

On the coral atoll of Midway in the central Pacific - famous for America's first victory over the Japanese fleet in World War Two - wildlife experts are facing a new battle against a rising tide of plastic waste.

The Midway Islands are home to some of the world's most valuable and endangered species and they all are at risk from choking, starving or drowning in the plastic drifting in the ocean.

Nearly two million Laysan albatrosses live here and researchers have come to the staggering conclusion that every single one contains some quantity of plastic.

About one-third of all albatross chicks die on Midway, many as the result of being mistakenly fed plastic by their parents.

It seems that some chicks never can fly because they have so much plastic in their stomachs. "The deputy manager of the wildlife refuge ... opened the corpse of one albatross and found inside it the handle of a toothbrush, a bottle top and a piece of fishing net." And then there's this:

Many albatrosses are found to have swallowed disposable cigarette lighters - which look remarkably similar to their staple food of squid.

Others become ensnared in plastic. We were alerted to one albatross chick with a large green hook fixed inside its beak. The beak itself had become deformed.

The particular chick grew up with this plastic hook in its mouth:



The point is remarkably simple. Plastic must be kept out of the oceans. Period. Failure to do so endangers wildlife and destroys this planet. Do we understand that plastic is befouling and destroying our planet?

I would like something to be done about this. Can we make the destruction of our planet an important topic in our political dialog? Can we solicit effective proposals designed not only to prevent plastic from being discharged into the oceans, but also to remove existing plastic from our oceans? Can we start to have a politics that takes our stewardship of this planet seriously?

A Tear For Si'an Kaan

The Si'an Kaan Bio-reserve is 1.3 million acres of protected land in the State of Quintana Roo, Mexico, about 2 hours south of Cancun, near Tulum. "Sian Ka’an" is translated from Mayan as "where the sky is born" or "gift from the sky". I was there just a few days ago.

Please join me in paradise.

Si'an Kaan is here:



Facts about the Reserve give an idea of how large and important it is to preservation:

* Largest protected area in the Mexican Caribbean (approximately 1.3 million acres)
* Established January 20th 1986 as part of UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Program
* UNESCO World Heritage Site
* Unique for its geography and wetlands
* 23 known archeological sites (with relics dating up to 2,300 years old)
* 103 known mammal species
* 336 known bird species
* Nesting ground for many species of wading birds
* Annual rainfall between 44 and 48 inches
* Important nesting site for two endangered sea turtle species
* Believed to be inhabited in the Pre-Classic and Classic Periods in the chieftanships of Cohuah and Uaymil
* Currently home to over 2,000 inhabitants

But even more stunning is how very beautiful and how very wild the reserve is. Just look at these photos:







I was at the reserve just a few days ago. I drove from Tulum down the Tulum-Boca Paila Beach Road all the way to Punta Allen, a small lobster and fishing village on a spit of land where the reserve ends and Asuncion Bay begins. Punta Allen is famous for sport fishing for permit, tarpon and bone fish.

All the way down the difficult, bumpy road, there are beautiful white sand, palm tree lined beaches. All the way down the coral reef shelters the land from direct contact with the ocean. All the way down there is spotless turquoise water reflecting a blue sky. The air is filled with birdsong. The water is filled with creatures.

Except one thing. The water isn't really spotless. And that's why I have a tear. I have a tear because there is too much plastic in paradise. And I cannot help but see it.

Some of the beaches that face the wind and the open sea are littered with plastic. All of the usual civilized species are there: blue plastic jugs, old shoes, plastic bags, bottles, packaging, plastic coke bottles, old nylon ropes, auto parts, light bulbs, sunscreen tubes. How so? Because nobody lives on a particular beach, nobody picks up the plastic on that beach. It's unlike the beach near my home, which gets a plastic pick up every Sunday from residents. It's unlike my beach because nobody takes responsibility for removing the plastic, for picking it up, for returning it to the appropriate stream for garbage. My home beach in Bahia Soliman is spotless. And it's spotless solely because my neighbors make sure it stays plastic free. This has been a decade long preoccupation for us.

In the Reserve, I think a windward beach will be pristine. I get out of the car. It is littered with plastic. Not all beaches are littered, but some are. Some are quite littered. Some have debris deposited by Hurricane Wilma and after that Hurricane Dean in addition to the usual plastic debris.

This means, as well, that the sea just off shore is also littered with floating and sinking plastic. This means that endangered sea turtles are imperiled by the plastic. That the birds and fish are imperiled by plastic. That instead of being pure sea water, the ocean is a really a man made plastic gumbo.

This is not real news. We have befouled our ocean. We continue to soil it. We all know that, right?

I'm reminded that when Oscar Wilde saw the convicts at Redding from a train, he was reported to remark, "Well, if that's how the queen treats her convicts, she doesn't deserve to have any." And so with us and our oceans. And our beaches.

I would like to clean the beaches in the paradise of Si'an Kaan, but I don't have the financial resources or the time to do it or a plan or organization to carry it out. Even if I did find a way to clean these beaches, just once, that wouldn't really be enough. There is still tons of plastic in the sea, and every day, every single day that goes by, even more plastic is deposited in the sea. And every day the sea deposits the plastic it is choking on on the beach. Every day the sea says, "This plastic is making me sick. I vomit it on you. You must remove it. You must look at it on this beach until you remove it."

Of course, we don't all see it. Few of us do. Relatively few of us walk on beaches on a regular basis. And even fewer of us have had a chance to pick up plastic on a regular, weekly basis. Maybe if we did that, just maybe, we'd begin thinking about cleaning our ocean and what that would take. And we'd be thinking about how we use plastic.

That's why I urge everyone who walk on a beach to carry a bag and to pick up some plastic and throw it in the garbage. Yes, I know this doesn't really solve anything permanently. It's just a start and a gesture in the right direction.

Until we begin to think about how we use plastic, we don't really deserve paradise as perfect, as abundant, as wild as Sian Ka'an.

Dying Bats, Dying Bees

Little Brown Bat

Bloomberg reported yesterday that bats in New York and Vermont are dying:

Thousands of bats are dying from an unknown illness in the northeastern U.S. at a rate that could cause extinction, New York state wildlife officials said.

At eight caves in New York and one in Vermont, scientists have seen bat populations plummet over two years. Most bats hibernate in the same cave every winter, keeping annual counts consistent. A cave that had 1,300 bats in January 2006 had 470 bats last year. It recently sheltered just 38.

At another cave, more than 90 percent of about 15,500 bats have died since 2005, and two-thirds that remain now sleep near the cave's entrance, where conditions are less hospitable. Scientists don't know what's causing the deaths, and biologists wearing sanitary clothing and respirators to prevent the spread of disease are collecting the dead for testing as part of a state and U.S. effort.

Eastern Pipistrelle

Apparently, nobody knows what's killing the bats.

Some bats in the die-off have a white fungus encircling their noses. Most living bats now are underweight, too thin to make it through the winter, Hicks said. They choose their hibernating spots based on weight. Colder resting spots, like the ones near the entrance help energy reserves last longer.

``These guys are hibernating in places you never see healthy bats hibernating,'' Hicks said.

When they're not hibernating, healthy bats eat about half their weight in bugs every night, including mosquitoes, grasshoppers, locusts and moths that can spread disease among humans and devastate crops.

Bat populations are vulnerable to disease during hibernation as they congregate in large numbers in caves, sometimes packed so densely that it's difficult to see the cavern wall behind them. In warmer months, bats migrate hundreds of miles to their summer homes, so a new disease could rapidly spread across the region, Hicks said.

And as if that weren't bad enough news, the bees are dying as well:

A separate malady known as Colony Collapse Disorder has killed millions of bees in the U.S. and threatens $14.6 billion of U.S. crops, including almonds, apples, oranges and blueberries, which rely on bees for pollination, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. It may cause $75 billion of economic damage if left unchecked, the agency said.

The illness was identified after thousands of U.S. beekeepers found unusually large losses -- 90 percent or more in some cases -- beginning in 2006. Colony Collapse has been found in 35 U.S. states, one Canadian province, and parts of Asia, Europe and South America. Scientists haven't identified the cause and believe it may be the result of several things in combination.

``You have a strong parallel with the bees in that we just don't know what's going on,'' Hicks said.

I'm no expert. But it sounds to me like something is wrong with the bats' and the bees' immune systems. The bats aren't resisting fungus (or some other invader). The bees aren't resisting a virus (or some other invader). It's as if we had released some kind of contagion in the atmosphere but don't know what it was. Or we released something that's drastically weakening immune functioning and we don't know what that is. Either way, the news is awful. It looks a lot like we're killing the planet.

Mexican Farmers Protest NAFTA

The Megamarch Yesterday In Mexico City

Chanting "Sin maiz, No hay pais" (Without Corn, the country doesn't exist), Mexican farmers by the tens of thousands demonstrated in Mexico City against NAFTA.

AP reports:

Led by a column of tractors, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through downtown Mexico City on Thursday to protest recent trade openings that removed the last tariff protections for ancestral Mexican crops like corn and beans.

Chanting "Without corn, the country doesn't exist!" farmers and farm activists from across the nation demanded the Mexican government renegotiate the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, to reinstate protection for basic crops.

Farmers here say they can't compete with bigger U.S. farms which receive more government support. Under the terms of NAFTA, Mexico got a 15-year protection period to improve its farms, but that phase-in period ended Jan. 1, and Mexican farms — mostly tiny plots of 12 acres or less — still lag behind.

"The truth is, we can't compete, that is why we're demonstrating ... because we're really getting hit hard," said Telespor Andrade, 44, a weather-beaten farmer from central Mexico who grows corn and beans on about 7 acres of land.

Andrade is typical of Mexican farmers who grow corn for subsistence. I've written about this extensively here and the inescapable conclusion is that NAFTA is making Mexican farmers leave their homes and emigrate the the US. That's right. US economic policy is directly forcing farmers to leave their homes and migrate to the US, with or without documents.

The demonstrations, about which you will probably not read in your local newspaper, are reported all over the Mexican press. Here's Proceso and El Universal, for example. And for good reason:

Protesters pastured their cows outside the Mexican Stock Exchange on the city's main boulevard, and burned a tractor at a nearby monument to the 1910 Mexican Revolution.

Mexican officials say farmers are getting help, and that Mexico's corn production is rising. But activists say farm policies have benefited mainly big producers, not small producers who make up the vast majority of farmers here. U.S. farmers, they say, have much better transport and distribution systems, lower costs and bigger subsidies.

"We're up against all the might of the developed countries," said Martin Perez Santiago, 60, a farmer from the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. "We can't compete because of a lack of support, a lack of subsides, technology, better seed varieties."

When Santiago mentions "better seed varieties," the sound you hear is the door in Mexico opening for genetically modified seed from the US rather than the indigenous species that have been doing quite well for centuries. In other words, not only is NAFTA a disaster in terms of immigration from Mexican family farms, it's an ecological disaster in the making.

This is an extremely important story. NAFTA has created consequences that are disastrous for Mexico. It's forcing subsistence farmers to flee to the US. It's pressuring them to introduce GMA corn. It's already requiring Mexico, the birthplace of corn, to purchase animal corn from the US. It's creating an ecological disaster.

This is an important story, but I don't expect it to be discussed in the presidential race in the US, and I don't expect it to have much of a life in the traditional US press.

NAFTA and Corn: Destroying Mexico

\
Mexican Corn Field

Yesterday, both the US and Mexico publicly praised NAFTA while Mexican farmers begged for help.

According to Reuters:

U.S. officials trumpeted an end to farm trade restrictions under NAFTA, the controversial North American trade deal, on Friday, while Mexican farmers vowed to take to the streets to protest liberalization they fear will run them into the ground. /snip

Mark Keenum, U.S. undersecretary for farm and foreign agriculture, said the agreement had been a win for farmers in both countries, "creating not only dramatic growth in two-way agricultural trade, but providing our farmers, ranchers and processors with the potential (for) new export opportunities."

This is some kind of a malicious joke. NAFTA is no "win win". It's really a disaster for Mexican subsistence farmers, US immigration policy, and bio diversity. The only winner is US agribusiness.

Mexican Farmers And Immigration
Mexican farmers cannot see NAFTA as a win. Not by a long shot. They recognize it as a disaster.

[T]he changes [brought by NAFTA] are deeply unpopular in Mexico, where farmers fear unrestricted imports will depress prices and stir competition in producing white corn, which has been grown since the Aztec times.

Most of Mexico's three million corn producers and half a million bean producers make a living on small farms that are a far cry from the sweeping, industrialized operations that characterize U.S. agriculture.

Corn tariffs have gradually been phased out since the trade deal was implemented, and imports of U.S. yellow corn to Mexico, mostly used in animal feed, have skyrocketed. They now account for close to 35 percent of Mexican consumption.

Some background:

*At the start of the year Mexico lifted 14 years of protection for corn, beans, milk and sugar under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that took effect in 1994. The regional trade pact groups Mexico, the United States and Canada.

*Mexican lawmakers demanded [on 1/4/08 that] President Felipe Calderon consider renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement and meet with farmers, who fear a flood of cheap U.S. imports.

*``This is a national security issue,'' said Samuel Aguilar, of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, in a speech before the Congress. ``The agricultural chapter of NAFTA could generate a social conflict.'' /snip

Mexico may lose as many as 350,000 farm jobs this year because of competition from the U.S.

*Some Mexican farmers say competing against highly subsidized U.S. goods could put thousands out of work on top of about 2 million Mexican farm jobs lost over the last decade.

NAFTA is a recipe for complete disaster in Mexico:

Timothy Wise, a professor at Tufts University in Massachusetts, calls unblunted liberalization in those sensitive goods a "recipe for disaster" for those who depend on Mexico's vulnerable farm sector.

"Just as the U.S. became the largest supplier of animal feed, it has the capacity to become a dominant supplier of dry beans and white corn, undermining markets in Mexico and creating a dependence on external sources for the two very clear main staple foods," he said.

Of course, this economic disaster will lead directly to the displacement of small, Mexican farmers, and act as an incentive to those farmers' forced migration to the US. In short: NAFTA's destroying Mexican subsistence farmers and forcing them through economic pressure to leave failing, subsistence farms and enter the US. I've discussed this before here and here.

A Bio-diversity Disaster
But there are additional, heavy costs. NAFTA will have a gigantic, negative biodiversity impact. There are two primary kinds of corn grown in the US, white and yellow. Yellow is mostly animal food. And in the US, unlike Mexico, corn is a genetically modified crop. "In the US, by 2006 89% of the planted area of soybeans, 83 percent of cotton, and 61 percent maize was genetically modified varieties." source. Even before the end of NAFTA, genetically modified corn presented a problem in Mexico:

Rural and urban activists throughout the Americas are calling on grain exporters, the biotech industry, and the US and Canadian governments to stop dumping untested and unlabeled genetically engineered corn on Mexico and other nations, where irreplaceable corn varieties are being damaged by "genetic pollution." In Mexico researchers have detected widespread contamination of traditional varieties of corn, caused by surreptitious imports of genetically engineered corn into Mexico by grain export giants such as Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill

source

And now, there is even greater reason to be concerned:

Those who want to introduce bioengineered corn in Mexico appear to be gaining an upper hand.

A law to allow experimental planting of GMO strains in northern Mexico was passed two years ago but was never signed. Agriculture Minister Alberto Cardenas said this week the law could go into effect in a matter of weeks.

"We don’t want to be behind. We have to start testing now," said Catalino Flores, a geneticist working with Salazar’s organization in San Salvador El Seco.

Corn yields in the United States can be more than three times those in Mexico, according to Mexican growers.

"There will be drought resistant corn in 5 to 10 years. If you don’t plant something like that when everyone else is, you’ll be down the drain," Flores said.

About half of U.S. yellow corn sent to Mexico comes from genetically modified seeds. Mexico’s agriculture minister reckons GMO seeds smuggled in from the United States are already being planted in northern Mexican states.

So what's the big deal? It's fairly simple: GMO corn threatens non-GMO corn species, undermining bio-diversity.

[S]some farmers worry that introducing GMO seeds could contaminate hundreds of wild blue, red and multicolored corn varieties planted for centuries in Mexico.

"The farmers who want to plant transgenic corn are irresponsible, they don’t care if the are putting the genetic heritage of Mexico at risk," said Victor Suarez head of a small farmers’ group that wants keep trade protections for corn and beans.

The ancient Maya, who lived in southern Mexico over 1,000 years ago, believed the gods made men from maize. The plant was adopted over 500 years ago by Spanish conquerors and spread to the rest of the world.

source.

So to make a long story short, not only will NAFTA destroy Mexican subsistence farming and contribute to migration from Mexico to the US for former subsistence farmers, it also will endanger the bio diversity of corn in Mexico (if not the entire hemisphere).

NAFTA is an unmitigated disaster for Mexico. In the US, we don't discuss its impact on Mexico, we only discuss how it opened the market in Mexico for US corn and other products. There will be huge profits to agribusiness in the US from new markets. But hidden from view in the traditional media, there will be economic devastation for small farmers in Mexico, displacement of families from their farms, and ecological destruction.