| Our Environment |
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“Everybody talks
about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” ---
Mark Twain
"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of
power! I hope we don't have to wait till oil and coal run out
before we tackle that." - Thomas Edison
“The scientific
understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to
justify nations taking prompt action.” ---Joint Science
Academies’ Statement: Global Response to Climate Change, 2005
A
mailbox chocked full of unsolicited paper material,
advertisements, catalogs, postcards, coupons and miscellaneous
mail, may not just intrude on your privacy, but it is also lends a
hand to severe and potentially permanent environmental damage. The
proliferation of unwanted junk mail produces millions of tons of
paper waste for yearly delivery to our brimming landfills, causes
significant losses to forests, soil and water, and contributes to
the current global warming crisis that affects us now and may harm
many generations to come. While junk mailers are driven by
short-term profit, the rest of us are left to pay for, clean up,
and suffer from this long term environmental disaster. Even beyond
the long term habitat damage, hundreds of millions of our
taxpayers’ dollars are spent each year cleaning up the enormous
waste left behind by junk mail. By joining USjunkmail and
reducing paper waste, you can make an individual contribution to
help preserve our precious home called Earth and send a message to
junk mailers that we respect our environment. It is a simple
action with tangible results, and you can show wasteful companies
that you are environmentally conscious.
- From junk to trash to garbage to waste to pollution to
global warming to climate change -
Global warming is real!
full details...
Credit: NOAA/NASA,
01/01/1990
01/01/1999
Global warming is
an increase in the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and
surface, especially a sustained increase causing climactic
changes. A consensus of the world’s scientific community has
firmly concluded that global warming is a clear and present danger
that, if left unchecked, will likely produce dire consequences for
the Earth for this and generations to follow. How does unwanted
junk mail contribute to this looming current and future crisis?
Junk mail’s primary contributions to global warming stem from:
(1) the hundreds of millions of tons of unwanted paper junk mail
which are disposed in landfills year after year, decade after
decade, which emit large quantities of dangerous greenhouse gases,
(2) pollutants from pulp and paper mills, including carbon dioxide
and nitrous oxide, which are emitted into the atmosphere and (3)
the deforestation conducted each year which is necessary to
produce the paper products used to manufacture unsolicited paper
junk mail. These junk mail related activities combine every year
to produce greenhouse gas emissions which accumulate in the
atmosphere causing increases in average world-wide land and sea
temperatures---a process known as “global warming.”
“Global
climate change needs global action now. The alarm bells ought to
be ringing in every capital of the world.” ---John Gummer,
British Environment Secretary
“Climate
change is no longer a doomsday prophecy, it's a reality.: ---Astrid
Heiberg, president of the International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies
Some solemn facts about the pulp/paper and junk mail
industries may provide a good starting point:
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The pulp and paper industry is the third largest polluting
industry in
North America
and a major contributor to global warming. |
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The pulp and paper industry is considered one of the top five
industrial sectors in terms of total greenhouse gas impact. |
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Each year, the pulp and paper industry is responsible for
over 200 million tons of greenhouse emissions annually. |
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The
destruction of approximately 24 trees is required to make a
single ton of paper. |
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One tree
alone absorbs one ton of carbon dioxide, ultimately preventing
its emission into the atmosphere. |
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More than 100 million trees’ worth of junk mail arrive in American mailboxes each year---the equivalent of deforesting the Rocky Mountain
National Forest 4 times per year. |
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A typical mailbox
receives over 40 pounds of junk mail every year. |
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Over 2/3 all of
junk mail is not even recycled, often because of the
composition of the junk mail inks and fibers. |
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Some 28 billion
gallons of fresh water are needed to produce the annual crop of
junk mail. |
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Paper and
paperboard products comprise by far the single largest
component of municipal solid waste (36%). |
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Paper materials
generate 81.9 million tons of solid waste annually. |
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One
tree alone absorbs one ton of carbon dioxide, preventing its
emission into the atmosphere |
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In
2005, the U.S. Postal Service delivered over 100 billion
(100,000,000,000) pieces of paper junk mail. |
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In
2005 alone, over 11 million pounds of paper junk mail was
delivered across America. |
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Paper materials generate 81.9 million tons of municipal solid
waste annually and that is rising with increased demand. |
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Only
45% of paper products are recycled. |
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Over
5.4 million tons of junk mail alone are generated to municipal
solid waste each year. |
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Junk
mail creates 2.1 million tons more solid waste yearly than all
bathroom tissue and paper products combined. |
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Assuming a typical 2% response rate to paper junk mail---the
remaining 98% of junk mail paper waste is dumped in our
crowded landfills. |
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An
average of 44% of paper bulk mail is discarded unopened. |
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Over
350,000 dump trucks and the necessary gas to fuel these
vehicles are needed to haul away the non recycled junk mail
each year. |
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Over
$320 million of taxpayer dollars are spent annually just to
dispose of junk mail. |
Global Warming Basics
Glossary
Greenhouse
gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human
activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean
temperatures to rise.”---Climate
Change
Science,
U.S. National
Academy of Sciences, 2001
"What
is now plain is that the emission of greenhouse gases . . . is
causing global warming at a rate that began as significant, has
become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long-term. And
by long-term I do not mean centuries ahead. I mean within the
lifetime of my children certainly; and possibly within my own. And
by unsustainable, I do not mean a phenomenon causing problems of
adjustment. I mean a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and
irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically
human existence." ---Tony Blair, Prime Minister of
Great
Britain
The earth is
becoming profoundly warmer. The evidence of global warming has
become overwhelming, and with each published study the need
becomes even more urgent to take prompt and meaningful action to
stave off further damage. The planet’s surface and ocean
subsurface temperatures have risen dramatically in the past
century with accelerated warming over the past few decades. For
example, the past decade was the warmest of the past 150 years,
with the year 2005 being the hottest year on record. The
scientific consensus is that this relatively recent significant
warming trend is largely the result of increased greenhouse gases,
notably carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, which are
emitted from human activities including industrial processes,
fossil fuel combustion, land use changes, deforestation and waste
landfills. Unaddressed, climate change will have long term
adverse impacts across the United States and around the world.
With unabated continued warming, we
can expect extreme heat and drought, a decrease in arctic ice
thickness and area, dangerous rising sea levels, limited water
supplies, and higher-intensity tropical storms. At risk are the
very habitability of our earth, the sustainability of our farms,
forests, and fisheries, and the continued existence of our vital
ecosystems.
Greenhouse Effect
To understand the
mechanisms of global warming, it is necessary to examine the
basics of what is known as the “greenhouse effect.” Solar
radiation from the sun passes through the earth’s atmosphere most
of which is absorbed by the earth’s surface and some of which
reflects off the surface back towards space. The atmosphere is
composed of several greenhouse gases (including water vapor,
carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide) which regulate the
planet’s climate by absorbing and trapping some of the sun’s
outgoing energy, retaining heat somewhat like the glass panels of
a greenhouse. Without this natural “greenhouse effect,”
temperatures would be much lower; instead, the earth’s average
temperature is 60 F higher than it would be without this
greenhouse effect and allows for the abundance of life as we know
it today.
Since
the beginning of the industrial revolution, atmospheric
concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased nearly 30%,
methane concentrations have more than doubled, and nitrous oxide
concentrations have risen by about 15%. Why are greenhouse gas
concentrations increasing? Scientists generally believe that the
combustion of fossil fuels and other human activities are the
primary reason for the increased concentration of carbon dioxide.
Plant respiration and the decomposition of organic matter release
more than 10 times the CO2 released by human activities; but these
releases have generally been in balance during the centuries
leading up to the industrial revolution with carbon dioxide
absorbed by terrestrial vegetation and the oceans.
Not So Warming Quotes
“We are about
half a century away from being ecologically and economically
bankrupt because of global warming.” ---Andrew Simms, Policy
Director of the Climate Change Programme of the New Economics
Foundation
“As you get more
global warming, you should see an increase in the extremes of the
hydrological cycle -- droughts and floods and heavy
precipitation.” ---James E. Hansen, director of NASA's
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
"We won't have a society if we destroy
the environment."
- Margaret Mead,
distinguished anthropologist, an intellectual
and a scientist.
“The climate
system is being pushed hard enough that change will become obvious
to the man in the street in the next decade.” ---James E.
Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies,
quoted in Newsweek,
22 Jan 96
“It has become
very difficult for anyone to argue that observed global warming is
natural variability. We have good reason for being able to say
that the world will be warmer by about a quarter of a degree in
the next decade. It's the same reason we had 10 years ago when we
said that the 1990s would be warmer than the 1980s: The planet is
out of equilibrium.” ---James E. Hansen, chief of NASA's
Goddard Institute for Space Studies quoted in Audubon, Nov-Dec,
'99
“It is the sense of the scientific community that carbon
dioxide from unrestrained combustion of fossil fuels potentially
is the most important environmental issue facing mankind.”---
U.S. Department
of Energy
“There is no
debate among any statured scientists of what is happening. The
only debate is the rate at which it is happening.” ---James
McCarthy, Chair of the Advisory Committee on the Environment of
the International Committee of Scientific Unions
“The United
States, which has contributed most to creating the problem, has
not set the example it ought in adopting the protocol or changing
its behavior. It is past time for Washington's delegates to lead
the world in saying that humankind cannot wait for certainty on
every nuance of global warming before taking bold steps to reverse
its all-too-evident course.” ---Editorial,
Minneapolis Star Tribune
“The
greenhouse crisis is the bill coming due for the Industrial
Revolution. It's not an accident. It's the logical outcome of our
world view - the idea that we can control the forces of nature,
that we can have short-term expedient gains without paying for
them, that there are no limits to exploitation of the environment,
that we can produce and consume faster than nature's ability to
replenish.” ---Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on
Economic Trends
“The world's got a pretty simple choice here. It's between
President Bush and our grandchildren.” ---Australian Senator
Bob Brown
“We really
don't have a policy [on climate change]. There's a lot of rhetoric
and not a lot of action.” ---U.S.
Colorado Representative Mark Udall
“Global
temperatures in 2001 are expected to be 0.52°C (0.94°F) above the
long-term (1880-2000) average, which places 2001 as the second
warmest year on record. The only warmer year was 1998 in which a
strong El Niño contributed to higher global temperatures. Land
temperatures are projected to be 0.77°C (1.39°F) above average and
ocean temperatures 0.41°C (0.74°F) above the 1880-2000 mean. This
ranks them as 2nd and 3rd warmest on record respectively.”
---National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
The perennial sea ice in the
Arctic is melting faster than previously thought -- at
a rate of 9 percent per decade. If these melting rates continue
for a few more decades, the perennial sea ice will likely
disappear entirely within this century, due to rising temperatures
and interactions between ice, ocean and the atmosphere that
accelerate the melting process.---NASA
“Perennial sea
ice - the floating ice that remains year round near the Arctic
Circle - could vanish entirely by the end of this century, warns a
new study by researchers at the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. The NASA study concludes that sea ice is now
melting about nine percent faster than prior research had
indicated, due to rising temperatures and interactions between
ice, ocean and the atmosphere.” ---Cat Lazaroff, Arctic
Sea Ice May Vanish This Century
Environment News Service
“In Alaska,
year-round average temperatures have risen by 5 degrees Fahrenheit
since the 1960s, and average winter temperatures soared 8 degrees
in that period, according to the federal government. The entire
world is expected to warm by 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100,
predict scientists at the International Panel on Climate Change.
Last year was the hottest in Alaska history, and this past winter
was the second warmest on record, according to the National
Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which has found that
Alaskan temperatures began to rise dramatically in 1976. This
July, Anchorage recorded its second-highest temperature ever as
tourists got suntans.”---Seth Borenstein, Washington Bureau, “The
melting tip of the iceberg,” ---St.
Paul Pioneer Press,
3 Aug 03
“Inuit elders
and hunters who depend on the land say they are disturbed by what
they are seeing swept in by the changes: deformed fish, caribou
with bad livers, baby seals left by their mothers to starve. Just
the other year, a robin appeared where no robin had been seen
before. There is no word for robin in Inuktitut, the Inuit
language… There is increasing evidence that the Arctic, this
desert of snow, ice and killing cold wind, one of the most hostile
and fragile places on Earth, is thawing. Glaciers are receding.
Coastlines are eroding. Lakes are disappearing. Fall freezes are
coming later. The winters are not as cold. Mosquitoes and beetles
never seen before are appearing. The sky seems to be clapping as
thunderstorms roll where it was once too cold for them.” ---DeNeen
L. Brown, Signs
of Thaw in a Desert of Snow, The
Washington Post
Around the
world, many penguin populations are declining, researchers say,
and evidence is mounting that global warming, whether natural or
human-induced, is a prime cause. Unless things change, they say,
the outlook for some of these penguin species will be grim. Ten of
the world's 17 penguin species are already listed as threatened or
endangered. ---Carol Kaesuk Yoon, "Penguins
in Trouble Worldwide," New York Times
"For anyone
who has wondered how global warming and reduced sea ice will
affect polar bears, the answer is simple -- they die.” ---
Richard Steiner, a marine-biology professor at the
University
of Alaska.
“The icecap
atop Mount Kilimanjaro, which for thousands of years has floated
like a cool beacon over the shimmering plain of Tanzania, is
retreating at such a pace that it will disappear in less than 15
years, according to new studies. The vanishing of the seemingly
perpetual snows of Kilimanjaro that inspired Ernest Hemingway,
echoed by similar trends on ice-capped peaks from Peru to Tibet,
is one of the clearest signs that a global warming trend in the
last 50 years may have exceeded typical climate shifts and is at
least partly caused by gases released by human activities, a
variety of scientists say. Measurements taken over the last year
on Kilimanjaro show that its glaciers are not only retreating but
also rapidly thinning, with one spot having lost a yard of
thickness since last February,” said Dr. Lonnie G. Thompson, a
senior research scientist at the Byrd Polar Research Center of
Ohio State University. “Altogether, the mountain has lost 82
percent of the icecap it had when it was first carefully surveyed,
in 1912.” ---The New York Times
“The snow atop Pastoruri, one of the most beautiful peaks in the
Andes and a big
draw for mountaineers and skiers, could disappear along with many
of Peru's glaciers in the next few years because of global
warming, experts say. At 17,000 feet in the northern Andes, the
glacier which covers famed Pastoruri has shrunk at a rate of 62
feet every year since 1980. Today it covers a surface area of 0.7
square miles, about 25 percent less than a quarter of a century
ago.” Pastoruri is one of 18 glacier-capped mountains in Peru
suffering the effects of climate change, according
Peru's
National Environment Council, CONAM.
“The glaciers of
Glacier National Park, like glaciers all over the world, are
shrinking. Slowly, inch by inch, warming temperatures are melting
them away. On any given day, or any given year, the changes are
not dramatic. But over decades, the impact rising temperatures
have had upon the park is truly awesome. If nothing is done to
curb global warming, by the year 2030 Park scientists predict
there may not be a single glacier left in Glacier National Park.”
Sierra Club
“According to
scientists, surface melt on
Greenland was the highest in recorded history - and extended to
elevations previously untouched by melt - while the amount of
Arctic sea ice also reached a record low. While some of the
accelerated melting appears to be linked to natural atmospheric
oscillations, human influence could not be ruled out, said the
scientists… Greenland glacier and sea ice melt, combined with
disappearing permafrost, the northern expansion of vegetation, and
increased fresh water run-off present a "compelling case that
something is going on," said Larry Hinzman, of the University of
Alaska, Fairbanks. Measurements of the
Greenland ice sheet taken from passive microwave satellite sensors show 685,000
square kilometres of melt, an area more than double that of 1992.
---Molly Bentley, “Record
Ice Loss in Arctic,”
BBC
News
Carbon dioxide
emissions from energy use are projected to increase at an average
rate of 1.4 percent per year from 1,511 to 2,041 million metric
tons carbon equivalent between 1999 and 2020. Projected emissions
in 2020 are higher by 62 million metric tons carbon equivalent
than in AEO2000, due mainly to higher projected economic growth.
Higher projected growth in households, commercial floorspace,
industrial output, and disposable income leads to higher forecasts
for end-use demand and electricity generation. ---U.S.
Department of Energy,
Annual Energy Outlook 2001 With Projections to 2020
"Twenty
percent of the earth's coral reefs, arguably the richest of all
marine ecosystems, have been effectively destroyed today,"…..
another 30 percent will become seriously depleted if no action is
taken within the next 20-40 years, with climate change being a
major factor for their loss," ---Carl Gustaf Lundin, World
Conservation Union
"We recognize
that climate change is a serious issue, … (w)e recognize that
greenhouse gas emissions are one of the factors affecting climate
change." ---Rex Tillerson, Chairman of Exxon Mobil
“Despite the
many remaining uncertainties about the nature and the risks of the
process (climate change), I believe that there is now sufficient
evidence to support prudent precautionary action.” ---Cor
Herkströter, Senior Managing Director, Shell Oil
“The first
temperature increases are expected to be confirmable beyond
dispute in the 1990s, but there are some who believe that the
signals of global warming and climate destruction are already
manifesting themselves. They cite the fact that four of the last
seven years are the hottest on record, that global average
temperatures have increased by at least one-half a degree in the
last half century, that a wide variety of circumstantial evidence
- for example, summer and winter droughts, mid-ocean blooms of
algae, death of Caribbean coral - is consistent with the trend of
rising temperatures.” ---Senator Robert Stafford, Republican
from
Vermont, from a
speech to the U.S. Senate, spring '88
“Both rich and
poor nations have a common stake in policies that put the globe on
a sustainable development path. The conflict is less between poor
and rich countries than between the broad interests of people and
the narrow interests of extractive industries. We need to find our
way towards some kind of global regime that reduces emissions of
the greenhouse gases, but well-off nations need to transfer the
technology to make this possible, rather than viewing this shift
as one more opportunity for private industry to profit.”
---Robert Kuttner in report to the United Nations
“At its core,
global climate change is not about economic theory or political
platforms, nor about partisan advantage or interest group
pressures. It is about the future of God's creation and the one
human family. It is about protecting both "the human environment"
and the natural environment. It is about our human stewardship of
God's creation and our responsibility to those who come after us.”
---U.S.
Catholic Bishops, Global Climate Change: A Plea for Dialogue,
Prudence, and the Common Good, July 2001
"We
are proud of the evangelical community's long-standing commitment
to the sanctity of human life....Since 1995, there has been
general agreement among those in the scientific community most
seriously engaged with this issue that climate change is happening
and is being caused mainly by human activities, especially the
burning of fossil fuels. Evidence gathered since 1995 has only
strengthened this conclusion…. Because all religious/moral claims
about climate change are relevant only if climate change is real
and is mainly human-induced, everything hinges on the scientific
data. As evangelicals we have hesitated to speak on this issue
until we could be more certain of the science of climate change,
but the signatories now believe that the evidence demands
action..." ---Climate
Change: An Evangelical Call to Action, 2006
"(Due to
global warming) rivers like the Indus and Ganges could see reduced
flow……At the moment, they have a steady base flow from melting
glaciers, but when those glacier flows are reduced, the rivers
will become more flashy, with greater flows in the wet season and
lower flows in the dry season. That will be devastating, not
only for people, but for the environment." ---Jamie
Pittock, executive director of the World Wildlife Fund
“The IPCC
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of more than
2,500 scientists) has provided the world community with first
class assessments of the soaring temperatures the world is facing,
the devastating impacts of these rises and the ways in which we
can try and avoid the worst effects of global warming. We now know
climate change is real and the hand of humankind in this warming
is becoming clearer and clearer.”---Klaus Toepfer, Executive
Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),
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