New York’s Tropical Forest – The Climate Change Connection
What would happen if Earth’s climate were to rise another two degrees – and how could that slight change affect all life on the planet?
A change in the average global temperature by even that amount is comparable to what happens when a human body temperature hits 100.6º F. That’s when our body starts fighting to regain balance, to reach a new homeostasis. On planet Earth, this fever is causing the great cooling and circulating systems to go into disarray. So far we’ve seen an increase in torrential rains, giant hurricanes, tsunamis, blistering heat spells, AND droughts.
But what happens in the body if that fever spikes even higher, let’s say to 104º? At that point, we need immediate life support and our life is imperiled. This six-degree leap is the conservative estimate for global temperatures at the turn of the century. Ultimately, the consequences are largely unknown.
Deforestation and Climate Change: Reports from the Experts According to Daniel Howden, writing in The Independent in May, 2007, carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories. Other leading scientists with the Global Canopy Programme (based at Oxford University) inform us that our destruction of tropical rainforests by slashing and burning is the SECOND-highest cause of greenhouse gases, only outstripped by the burning of fossil fuels. In other words, 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide are let loose into the air every year from deforestation. According to former World Bank economist Sir Nicholas Stern, writing in his Stern Report on the economics of climate change, halting deforestation is one of the world’s “largest opportunities for cost-effective and immediate reductions of carbon emissions.” Commissioned in 2005 to determine the relative costs and benefits of shifting to a low-carbon economy, this report was a startling warning against further deforestation, declaring that the carbon locked up in the biomass of the world’s forests is double that already in the atmosphere. In the spring of 2009, Sir Nicholas announced that the warming is happening much faster than he had predicted four years previously.
According to the Washington-based Rights and Resources Initiative, a coalition of of UN- and government-funded research organizations, rich countries should try to cut the greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation. And on Prince Charles’ website, he states, “When it comes to climate change, the destruction of rainforests has a double whammy effect for everyone.”
Deforestation in the Amazon
The Complicity of New York City and New York State
There is a connection between these findings and what is happening right here at home in New York City.
If Mayor Bloomberg is to be believed, we’re doing pretty well in our response to the alarming prospect of worldwide climate instability. PlaNYC2030 calls for wiser land use, cleaning the harbors to ensure a thriving estuary, advocating for mass transit, investing in renewables and repowering inefficient power plants, and planting a million trees to help contribute to cleaner air and cooler streets.
While we can’t speak to the effectiveness of Bloomberg’s plan, we do know that the impacts of the city’s procurement of rainforest wood make a mockery of the million tree target.
Let’s consider what happens when, as often takes place, 1500 board feet of ipê is ordered so that a section of boardwalk can be patched. As the logging sleds drive their way into the Brazilian wilderness, seeking the one or two ipê trees that grow per acre, they topple “useless” species of trees. As the majestic ipê is located and cut down, only the heart of the trunk is harvested, and the other trees that stand in the way are also left lying on the ground to rot. Now lifeless, they no longer exhale oxygen nor take up carbon dioxide. Instead, their dead carcasses exude a heavy load of carbon back into the air. The release of carbon from deforestation is only partly due to the logging itself. The rest comes when the forest is cleared and burned – 8 times more likely to happen in the tropics after a forest has been logged.
When there is an incursion in the rainforest, the gash grows like a spreading wound, as others take the opportunity to decimate the area for their own purposes. After a few years, the land is barren. And in the remaining forest, ancient and evolved to a dynamic and exquisite state of balance, the trees, animal life, plants, fungi and micro-organisms that comprise this ecosystem are suddenly exposed to drying heat and winds. They have no defenses against this new and unforgiving environment. The edges of the remaining forest whither and die. And, of course, the losses are irreplaceable: countless, indeed uncountable, species lost, and catastrophic changes in other parts of the world: the cloud systems and air currents disrupted, rainfall levels plunging to record levels, human lives altered.