THE CURSE OF THE WHITE NOSE
Bats across the northeastern U.S. are dying in vast numbers, but nobody understands why. And it is only a matter of time before the cause – whatever it is – crosses the border, experts say.
“I would be shocked if it doesn’t show up in Canada next year,” says biologist Al Hicks of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. “For all we know, it is in Ontario already.”
The bats appear to be dying of starvation, but it’s unclear whether the cause is a fungus on their bodies, or if something else is making them sick and the fungus then grows on the weakened creatures.
Yet another theory is that the starvation is being caused by a decrease in insects, which constitute the bats’ main source of food. “There is no smoking gun,” Mr. Hicks says.
Dubbed “white-nosed syndrome,” after the white fungus covering their snouts, the condition has struck bat populations in Vermont, Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts. Up to half a million have died this year, upward of 97-per-cent mortality in some caves.
Bat biologists – including three from Canada – will meet in two weeks in Albany, N.Y., to swap data and theories. They hope to solve the puzzle as soon as possible, for our sake as well as the bats’ – the nocturnal creatures are crucial for keeping insect populations in check, with each animal devouring up to several thousand bugs per summer night.
THE TREE SOLUTION
With carbon-dioxide emissions still rising and polluting the atmosphere, the idea of sucking it out of the air has driven much research.
So far, however, we haven’t a single technology that can do this effectively (or cheaply) – which has caused some to reconsider another idea that is already well understood: photosynthesis.
One suggestion that has been made many times is to fertilize the oceans to create vast blooms of green algae.
But this is “a stupid idea,” says Fritz Scholz of the University of Greifswald in Germany.
He says this would pollute the oceans and seriously disrupt the food chain, and much of the carbon would ultimately be returned to the atmosphere when the algae died.
Instead, he argues in the May issue of the journal ChemSusChem, we should plant fast-growing trees, which would absorb carbon as they grow. Once mature, the trees could be cut down and buried in old mines or underwater, where they would not decompose.
The entire process would also create “millions” of jobs, control erosion and increase rainfall, Prof. Scholz says.
Just one catch: To absorb the approximately 32 gigatonnes of CO2 emitted globally every year, we would have to plant about a billion hectares of forest – equivalent to all the trees we cut down in the past century worldwide.
“This is not going to be a panacea – nothing will,” says Malcolm Campbell at the University of Toronto, a botanist and expert on carbon sequestration. “But this could certainly be one piece in a tapestry of solutions.”
NUCLEAR COSTS CLIMB
It’s one of the most contentious environmental debates: Is nuclear power the answer?
Proponents dismiss the anti-nuclear contingent as shortsighted and naive, arguing that nuclear power is the only viable alternative to fossil fuels because it’s powerful and efficient and produces almost no carbon-dioxide emissions.
Critics counter that there is no way to get rid of the waste (except by using it in weapons), reactors are targets for terrorists, uranium supplies will eventually run out and mining the fuel and building the plants creates substantial CO2 emissions.
A study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology last month calculated that emissions from mining the uranium will only rise as deposits become harder to reach.
And memories of the Chernobyl disaster still linger.
Now, another criticism has been levelled, this time from the financial sector: The Wall Street Journal reports that new plants slated for construction in the United States will cost two to four times more than predicted – about $5-billion to $12-billion each.
So prohibitive are the costs, the newspaper reports, that many American utility companies are having second thoughts about their plans for new reactors.
AMAZON ALLY LOST
The Amazon is losing one of its most powerful political supporters. Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister, has quit after five years in office.
Ms. Silva, who once called deforestation a “cancer,” championed sustainable economic development and is widely credited with being the driving force behind the country’s 30-per-cent drop in deforestation rates from 2006 to 2007.
In her resignation letter, she cited “growing resistance” to her efforts as the reason for her departure.
Ms. Silva’s resignation is not just the concern of local politics. Preservation of the Amazon is of global importance. It is the world’s largest rain forest, one of the richest harbours of biodiversity and a buffer against climate change: The Amazon’s trees currently hold at least 100 billion tonnes of carbon absorbed from the atmosphere.
If deforestation continues, the result will be more droughts and fires, and the forest may start to die of its own accord, as some ecologists predict, releasing ever more carbon to the atmosphere and further exacerbating global warming.
Environmentalists say the forest is in jeopardy: The government has plans for hydroelectric dams in the forest and wants to relax restrictions on bank loans in areas of illegal deforestation. This week, the new Environment Minister said unlicensed logging is on the rise.