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SEI Reports
May, 2020, Vol 6, Number 2
SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT
INSTITUTE


What Caused Covid-19?

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Covid-19 Could Prompt Food Changes 

Has Peak Fossil Fuel Demand Passed?

Website Improves Blog, Adds Teaching Resources Page
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New Briefs
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A California meadow in spring.
A California meadow in spring.
​​Website Improves Blog, Adds Teaching Resources Page

The SEI website, now at www.seilaccd.net, has been considerably revised. It’s still largely a repository of environmental information (articles, videos, links to organizations), but it now offers a much more dynamic and easy-to-use blog feature. With so much time sequestered in our homes, all of us miss our conversations in cafes and on campus. For example, we have rich, ongoing discussions with colleagues from Valley and East and elsewhere. Now we can take these conversations to our blog and share opinions and insights that (we believe) many people will find interesting. We are starting small, but will initiate comments on new topics over time. We welcome your responses, and also those of your students. Everyone should feel free to jump in and offer an opinion. 

We’ve also added a Teaching Resources page to the site. With our courses now all online, many of us need more material to post and use during a lecture, as well as resources for students in the Canvas “modules”. You’ll find links to many organizations that provide didactic materials for free. We featured one superb resource from Carleton College in a previous newsletter, but there are many more. Please help us keep the page updated by sending us links to new sites, especially ones that include animations and short clips. 
Wind turbines near Palm Springs.
Wind turbines near Palm Springs.

​Has Peak Fossil Fuel Demand Passed?

The International Energy Agency projects there will be an enormous decline this year in fossil fuel usage (up to 9% for oil and 8% for coal), owing to the Covid-19 recession. In fact, Carbon Tracker, an influential energy think tank, argues that fossil fuel demand will never again reach the levels seen in 2019. As the global economy recovers next year (or later), solar and wind are expected to fill some of the demand once met by fossil fuels, and as the cost of renewables continues to drop, demand for them will increase still further. They are already the “cheapest source of bulk electricity generation in 85% of the world." (Recent bids for a large solar installation in Abu Dhabi were priced at an astounding one cent per killowatt-hour.) There would be no financial incentive for energy-consuming countries to return to fossil fuels. 

Demand growth for fossil fuels has been slowing in recent years, growing at under 1% in 2019, due not only to the declining price of renewables but to more governmental regulation of the industry (aside from the USA), this in response to activist pressure. The result has been a “humbled” Exxon, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, “a mediocre company.”

If the IEA figures are accurate, then last year was "peak year” for fossil fuel demand, “decades before that predicted by the oil companies,” and four to six years sooner than Carbon Tracker anticipated in 2018. As analyst Kingswell Bond put it, “If demand for fossil fuels bounces back in 2021 by half the amount it fell in 2020, and grows at 0.5% a year, it would take eight years to get back to where the industry started. And in the meantime, the renewable energy revolution has not stopped…The ability of the industry to dictate to governments will weaken, and its capacity to frustrate the growth of renewables will reduce.” 

Since peak demand also means peak fossil fuel emissions, Bond and colleagues see new hope that we can meet the targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement and keep global warming to 1.5°C. But fossil fuels still supply 80% of the world’s energy, and it’s unclear whether their market share decline will be fast enough to avoid our reaching that level. As the Brookings Institution put it, while arguing for a carbon tax to offset the attraction of cheaper gas, “Recovering from the pandemic-induced recession will require large new investments around the world. Whether these investments replicate the past in a rush to return to ‘normalcy’ or lay the foundation for sustainable and resilient growth will determine the planet’s future.”

Further Reading: 

The Oil Crash Could Be Geothermal’s Big Break, May 7, 2020,New Republic
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Is BlackRock Announcement "Beginning of the End for Fossil-fuel System?" 1/21/20

The Beginning of the End for Oil? Energy in a post-pandemic world.
Sows confined to gestation crates.
Sows confined to gestation crates.
Covid-19 Could Prompt Food Changes 

It might be a trite meme that the Chinese character for “crisis” is made up of two characters, “danger” and “opportunity,” but it’s still true sometimes. It certainly seems to be the case with Covid-19 and its disruption to the production, distribution, and consumption of food.

We have already seen the impact the virus is having on meat packing plants, which employ almost 150,000 workers. The federal government has declared the meat industry essential, thus forcing these vulnerable, low-paid workers to either quit their jobs or return to work in plants which are now “hot spots” of infection. Will they be provided with adequate protective gear? Will the plants be deep-cleaned enough? Will there be adequate space between them? If not, infection rates will remain high, endangering the workers and the larger community.

Industrial meat production also represents a real threat to natural systems. Factory farms require the crowding of thousands of animals inches from each other “in gruesome conditions that are almost designed to incubate viruses and encourage them to spread.” The biologist Rob Wallace says, “Factory farms are the best way to select for the most dangerous pathogens possible.” In addition, enormous quantities of antibiotics and steroids, required to achieve optimal feed-to-meat ratios, make their way into waterways. Biowaste from hog farms, chicken houses, and dairy farms are perfect culture plates for animal and human diseases, and they’ve caused repeated outbreaks of salmonella and e-coli. In addition, they emit over 168 gases, which are formed in the process of breaking down the waste, including hazardous chemicals such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and methane. People living near the farms are placed at risk, as the gases can be toxic, and they have reported respiratory problems, nausea, and other problems. Water contaminated by animal manure can cause diseases, including gastroenteritis and kidney failure. Feeding animals with large doses of antibiotics has also contribuuted to the rise of bacteria resistant antibiotics.

Meanwhile, plummeting demand from restaurants, hotels, and schools has forced farmers to leave fruit and vegetables rotting in the field, and corn is getting ploughed under instead of harvested. We are now seeing disruptions in the long-distance supply chain, and prices may very well go up, with the disruptions likely to continue in the months ahead. This makes it an excellent time to think more about Community Supported Agriculture and to support regional food farms. What might have seemed a craze not long ago to “buy local” is now a smart economic plan. Fortunately, in California, with our abundant agriculture, we are uniquely situated to develop a more regional and resilient food system. 

Agriculture makes up 15-20% of total world greenhouse gas emissions by some estimates, so significant changes in our agri-food systems would not just help families make ends meet, but also reduce global heating. However, given that beef production uses up almost 60% of the world’s total agricultural land, reductions are not likely to be adequate unless beef consumption drops considerably. The average American ate 57 pounds of beef in 2017, up slightly from 2016, after dropping 15% over the preceding ten years
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Further Reading: 
WaPo: 
Meat is not essential. Why are we killing for it?

​WaPo: Wisconsin chief justice sparks backlash by saying covid-19 outbreak is among meatpacking workers, not ‘the regular folks’

Vox: "Coronavirus is exacerbating America’s hunger crisis: Food banks and SNAP are completely overwhelmed right now." 
Funeral of Sergio Ramirez, Covid-19 victim, meat-packing plant worker.
Funeral of Sergio Ramirez, Covid-19 victim, meat-packing plant worker.
Deforestation in rainforest.Deforestation in rainforest.

​What Caused Covid-19?
We are almost three months into Covid-19 lockdown. The US death total stands at over 75,000 and will almost surely pass 100,000 by the end of the month. Unemployment is higher than at any time since the Great Depression. Understandably, the media’s primary focus has been on these twin catastrophes. Still, it’s disappointing there hasn’t been more discussion about the causation of this pandemic. What exactly happened in Wuhan? How is Covid-19 similar to other recent epidemics/pandemics? What does it say about the possibility of more in the future? While there were articles in January about China’s “wet markets,” they hardly broached these larger issues. The average reader could well have thought the problem was just Chinese eating habits, and let it go at that. (I leave aside the accusations of negligence or the intentional creation of a virus in a Chinese lab, as there is no evidence to support either charge.)

Some journalists have gone further, however. There have been a few articles in the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, as well as some reporting on MSNBC, that look more deeply into the origins of Covid-19. Not surprisingly, the European press, especially The Guardian, have had numerous reports on its etiology. And when you read what the environmental scientists, especially the bio-diversity experts, are saying, a fairly clear picture emerges.

For starters, they seem to agree about the fundamental problem: human beings have encroached too far and too fast into wild areas, regions populated by animals with which we have had little contact historically. There are some 600,000 viruses with the potential to jump from animals to humans, and mammals, especially rodents and bats, are hosts to an enormous number of them. The chances of a “spillover,” either directly or indirectly, are considerable. Leading American biologist Thomas Lovejoy says, “The pandemic is the consequence of our persistent and excessive intrusion in nature and the vast illegal wildlife trade, and in particular, the wildlife markets, the wet markets…It’s pretty obvious, it was just a matter of time before something like this was going to happen.”

Troubling as the Asian and African “wet markets” are, they are not the only form of our intrusion. “Rampant deforestation, uncontrolled expansion of agriculture, intensive farming, mining, and infrastructure development,” are also causes, according to Peter Daszak, director of the EcoHealth Alliance, who says they, along with species exploitation, “have created a ‘perfect storm’ for the spillover of diseases.” Agriculture and mining, for example, force species to crowd into smaller and smaller areas, compounding the chances of inter-species disease transmission.

“Never before have so many opportunities existed for pathogens to pass from wild and domestic animals to people,” says Inger Anderson, the executive director of the UN Environment Program. “Our continued erosion of wild spaces has brought us uncomfortably close to animals and plants that harbor diseases that can jump to humans.”

What drives our unceasing push into the wilds? Certainly population expansion is one large factor, but capitalism, the world’s main economic system, predicated as it is on growth and increasing consumption, is also a dominant cause. “Recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity—particularly our global financial and economic systems, based on a limited paradigm that prizes economic growth at any cost,” according to the the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

And the threat of pandemics is steadily increasing. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists thought that they could be conquered, due to increased sanitation, vaccines, and coordinated government efforts. The official eradication of small pox in 1979 was a milestone in improving global public health. But in just two years, HIV emerged, and the 1990’s saw three times as many infectious disease events as in the 1940’s. Over the last twenty-five years, we have seen a steady increase in viral diseases, some of which have led to pandemics: Nipah, avian flu, SARS, MERS, H1N1, Zika, Marburg, Ebola, and now Covid-19. 

Animal-to-human diseases currently kill an estimated 700,000 people each year, according to IPBES, though 200 world wildlife groups, in a recent letter to the WHO, claim a much higher total, arguing that zoonotic diseases are responsible for two million deaths annually (and two billion cases of illness). HIV has caused the death of 35 million.

The explosive growth in air travel in recent decades and increasing urban density hasten considerably the spread of viruses, as we’ve seen with Covid-19. Climate change is also a factor, as it forces species to migrate away from the equator, bringing disease carriers such as ticks and mosquitos to people that have not encountered them before.

If we’re going to avoid a repeated onslaught of epidemics and pandemics, we need to change our behavior in fundamental ways. The IPBES says we must “properly fund health systems and incentivize behavior change on the frontline of pandemic risk.” This would involve focusing on “hot spots,” those places where “lots of people, diverse plants and animals, and rapid environmental changes” come together. It must include offering viable alternatives to wet markets for the huge number of people who rely on them for subsistence. Otherwise, a shutdown of the markets will just force the trade underground.
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Beyond that, IPBES calls for a “One Health” approach for all of our economic and governmental decisions, whether local, national, or international, private or public. Such an approach would recognize “the 
complex interconnections among the health of people, animals, plants, and our shared environment.” Decisions would take into account long-term consequences to public health and the environment. 

In other words, if we just bail out the fossil fuel industry, intensive agriculture, and logging companies, without insisting on major changes, we are essentially subsidizing the emergence of new pandemics.

IPBES’ call for a “One Health” approach is really a very idealistic political statement, and it can only be achieved with political action. It remains to be seen how profoundly the Covid-19 crisis will alter American and global attitudes.


Further Reading:
Coronavirus: ‘Nature is sending us a message,” says UN environment chief

Coronavirus came from bats or possibly pangolins amid ‘acceleration’ of new zoonotic infections

Environmental Destruction Brought Us Covid-19…
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Brazilian coastal city.
Brazilian coastal city.

News Briefs
  • The LACCD Board of Trustees’ Facilities Master Planning Oversight Committee discussed a Clean Energy and Sustainability Resolution at its April 22 meeting. It is expected to vote on the resolution later this month, with a final version likely to be submitted to the full Board in June. It’s an ambitious, multi-faceted resolution, including a goal to convert a large percentage of district energy use to renewables by 2030. Last May the CCC Board of Governors encouraged all local districts to develop climate change and sustainability resolutions, but LACCD’s would be more aggressive than the BOG's guideline proposals. We will report further on this in our next issue.

  • Under sustained pressure from activists and acutely aware of changing energy economics, two more major banks have announced they will no longer finance Arctic Refuge oil and gas exploration, development, and production. Citibank and Morgan Stanley join Chase, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs in pulling out of Arctic drilling, leaving only Bank of America. Activists claim the projects would cause harm to Indigenous communities, besides exacerbating global heating. They intend to renew their efforts to force Bank of America to withdraw.

  • Trump administration efforts to weaken the 1972 Clean Water Act were rejected by the Supreme Court. The April ruling focused on whether the Act applied to discharges that travel through groundwater before reaching protected waters. By a surprising 6-3 margin, the court ruled that they do. “This decision is a huge victory for clean water,” said David L. Henkin, the attorney who argued the case on behalf of environmental groups. “The Court has rejected the Trump administration’s effort to blow a big hole in the Clean Water Act’s protections for rivers, lakes and oceans.” The vote may also be an encouraging sign for the future, as the Court has a number of other environmental cases in its docket.
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