Robusta Coffee Beans Threaten Elephants, Tigers, and Rhinos
Robusta coffee might ring a bell to coffee aficionados out there but I am not one. When I was young I never drank coffee during warm weather. It made me sweat. I would occasionally drink it in the winter but never at my own apartment. I couldn’t afford a coffee pot or the coffee, and I like it with cream or milk, sometimes sweet. That would mean that I would have to stock all of that. Living on my own in the 70’s was just shy of being a pauper. We left home before the age of 30 back then, most of the time we weren’t even 20 yet. Milk, sugar, and coffee were an extravagance to have around. I relied heavily on vitamins, a can of tuna, a can of cream of mushroom soup, a can of peas, and noodles and you pretty much know what I had there.
Now I’m past middle age and one would think I need coffee to start up in the morning. Wrong. Turns out I’m naturally hyper…and am sensitive to caffeine. I don’t even drink regular diet Pepsi at night. It has to be caffeine free. But I’ve started to like the taste of coffee since those flavored, fat free creamers came out. I drink decaf just for the taste of java. But recently I ran across some articles that Indonesian tigers, elephants, and rhinos are being threatened by a certain type of coffee called ROBUSTA because it is illegally grown in patches of plantation that invades the perimeter of a particular game park, Bukit Barisan Selatan (BBS) National Park in Sumatra. The park is a reserve that is supposed to protect the habitat of these endangered species. The World Wildlife Federation had a really good article on sun-grown coffee, and another on peopleandplanet.org about this growing problem.
The illegally grown Robusta coffee beans are mixed with legitimate beans and American companies like Nestle, Kraft, and others aren’t prepared to screen all imported beans, so they don’t know what they’ve got. I learned that traditionally, coffee is grown in the shade under a canopy of trees. These shade coffee plantations have a high biodiversity of birds and animals much like a rainforest. These shade coffee plantations are being transformed into industrialized sunny plantations with little shade. Without a lot of explanation we can see this will result in a loss of biodiversity for animals that thrive in shade coffee plantations and that their habitat is threatened over coffee.
And there is a problem with sun grown coffee. It may turn over faster but requires a heck of a lot of fertilizer, care, and water than is required of the slower growing shade coffee. So the Robusta brand is not an environmentally friendly coffee bean using more water than necessary, and causing more fertilizer runoff into fresh water supplies while eliminating the rich green life-sustaining canopy of forest like the traditional coffee everyone was perfectly happy with before.
Do you know what kind of bean you’re drinking? Is this going to be a problem for Starbucks? They have an awful lot of environmentally friendly customers nationwide. Sir Paul debuted his latest CD at Starbucks and we know he’s all about preservation and respect for animals. If Kraft and Nestle are hard put to figure out what they’re importing how would Starbucks know which of their 100’s of combinations of coffee contain beans that are threatening elephants, tigers, and rhinos? And what about Dunkin Donuts, and the thousands of coffee houses everywhere?
I love elephants, tigers and rhinos so when I finish the last of my instant decaf, that’s it for me, Robusta beans or not. If you’re thinking of cutting back, now is the time to do it. Here is a little anecdote about elephants: Science has long stated that the difference between animals and people is the ability to recognize themselves as an individual in a mirror, that most animals think it’s another animal or that their reflection registers nothing at all. Well just last year I watched on GMA an experiment at a sanctuary for elephants. A large mirror was put in a pen. The elephants occasionally looked at themselves but the researchers had no idea if the animal recognized its own particular reflection. That is until someone swiped a patch of paint on one of the elephant’s heads. That elephant looked in the mirror and immediately tried to rub the paint off, and kept checking. I wonder if it was a female elephant?
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=2918
December 17th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Here’s the articule I told you I’d send along. I am very interested in your response. This comes from my perspective and said far more indepth then I am able. My question to Al Gore has always been “when was the debate?” He came forward and said “The debate is over.” I never heard it. From this articule you will understand my point that no debate is intended or necessary by standards Al Gore.
The Wall Street Journal 1-18 2002 by Flemming Rose, culture editor of Jyllands-Posten, in Copenhagen and Bjorn Lomborg, Professor at the Copenhagen Business School.
Al Gore is traveling around the world telling us how we must fundementally change our civilization due to the threat of global warming. Today he is in Denmark to disseminate this message. But if we are to embark on the costliest political project ever, maybe we should make sure it rests on solid ground. It should be based on the facts, not just the convenient ones. This was the background for the biggest Danish Newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, to set up an investigative interview with Mr. Gore. And for this, the paper thought it would be obvious to team up with Bjorn Lomborg, author of “the Skeptical Environmentalist,” who has provided one of the clearest counterpoints to Mr. Gore’s tune.
The interview had been scheduled for months. Mr. Gore’s agent yesterday thought Gore-meets-Lomborg would be great. Yet an hour later, he came back to tell us that Bjorn Lomborg should be excluded from the interview because he’s been very critical of Mr. Gore’s messae about global warming and has questioned Mr. Gore’s evenhandedness. According to his agent, Mr. Gore only wanted to have questions about his book and documentary, and only asked by a reporter. These conditions were immediatly accepted by Jyllands-Posten. Yet an hour later we received an email from the agent saying the the interview was now cancelled. What happened?
One can only speculate. but if we are to follow Mr. Gore’s suggestion of radically changing our way of life, the costs are not trivial. If we slowly change our greenhouse gas emissions over the coming century, the UN actually estimates that we will live in a warmer but immensely richer world. However, the UN Climate Panel suggests that if we follow Al Gore’s path down toward as environmentally obsessed society, it will have big consequences for the world, not least its poor. In the year 2100, Mr Gore will have left the average person 30% poorer, and thus less able to handle many of the problems we will face, climate change or no climate change.
Clearly we need to ask hard questions. Is Mr Gore’s world a worthwhile sacrifice? But it seems that critical questions are out of the question. It would have been great to ask him why he only talks about a sea-level rise of 20 feet. In his movie he shows scary sequences of 20-foot flooding Florida, San Fransisco, NY, Holland, Calcutta, Beijing and Shanghia. But were realistic levels not dramatic enough? The UN climate panel expects only a foot of sea-level rise over this century. Moreover, sea-levels actually climbed that much over the past 150 years. Does Mr. Gore find it balanced to exaggerate the best scientific knowledge availible by a foctor of 20?
Mr Gore says that global warming will increase malaria and highlights Nairobi as his key case. According to him, Nairobi was founded right where it is too cold for malaria to occur. However, with global warming advancing, he tells us that malaria is now appearing in the city. Yet this is contrary to the World Health Organization’s finding, Today Nairobi is considered malaria free, but in the 1920’s and 1930’s, when temperatures were lower than todays, malaria epidemics occured regularly. Mr. Gore’s is a convenient story, but isn’t it against the facts?
He considers Antarctia the canary in the mine, but again doesn’t tell the full story. He presents pictures from the 2% of Antarctia that is dramatically warming and ignores the 98% that has largely cooled over the past 35 years. The UN panel estimates that Antarctica will actually increase its snow mass this century. Similarly, Mr Gore points to shrinking sea ice in the Northern Hemishere, but doesn’t mention that sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere is increasing. Shouldn’t we hear THOSE facts? Mr Gore talks about how the higher temperatures of global warming kill people. He specifically mentions how the European heat wve of 2003 killed 35,000. But he entirely leaves out how global warming also means less cold and saves lives. Moreover, the avoided cold deaths far outweigh the number of heat deaths. For the UK it is estimated that 20,000 fewer will die of cold. Why does Mr Gore tell only one side of the story?
Al Gore is on a mission. If he has his way, we could end up choosing a future, based on dubious claims, that could cost us, according to UN estimates, $553 trillion over this century. Getting answers to hard questions is not an unreasonable expectation before we take his project seriously. It is crucial that we make the right decisions posed by the challenge of global warming. These are best achieved through opendebate, and we invite him to take the time to answer our questions: We are ready to interview you any time, Mr Gore _ and anywhere.
I thought you might be interested in responding for Al. To my knowledge he has never responded to this articule or the Jyllands-Posten paper. I will suggest I could have missed his response, but I doubt it. Why do you think it is he will not debate this issue?
The issue is this….we don’t know and the evidence is far from conclusive or convicing. It isn’t even dramitic. It may be intended and could make the world a BETTER place if true. If Northern Canada had better weather I might move there. I look forward to hearing from you.
December 17th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Keith, first of all you should try to use more current material. The warming affect is far advanced of what was known in 2002. What you said about moving too quickly is interesting. But the ideas come from Lomborg’s first book. I also believe if we move too quickly in the wrong direction, for example ethanol production, we will suffer, but on the other hand where there is adversity there is opportunity. That is what the Japanese believe. I have halked the idea of new opportunity with green economy more than once. I am posting a blog tomorrow about the very same thing from an article in Time Magazine where a mayor is thinking and moving in that same direction. Everyone in the green industry comes up with the same staggering figures for new jobs around 250,000 right away if we would just get moving. So I don’t think we will suffer at all going green. What will suffer is the oil and coal industry and that is the powerhouse that is causing all the confusion about global warming that keeps us from progressing.
The following is the reality of Bjorn Lomborg. A debate that never occurred between Mr. Lomborg and Gore is no great loss!
Lomborg wrote a book, The Skeptical Environmentalist: measuring the real state of the world.The Danish Committee for Scientific Dishonesty got hold of the book. Here is what they said: “The concern over Lomborg’s misrepresentation of the science was so great that three complaints were lodged with the Danish Committee for Scientific Dishonesty, which Lomborg describes as “a national review body, with considerable authority”.
The committee stated: “the publication is deemed clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice”. They stated “there has been such perversion of the scientific message in the form of systematically biased representation that the objective criteria for upholding scientific dishonesty … have been met”.
If you read the rest, it becomes very political and biased depending on what committee or panel Lomborg heads up. Talk about Al Gore’s motivations being political. They are nothing compared to Lomborg’s.
In 2007, Lomborg published the book “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming.” A Salon.com review was critical of the book’s assumptions and conclusions:
Lomborg presents scientific and economic debates as much more settled than they are….
The glaring error in “Cool It,” and the one that disqualifies the book from making a serious contribution, is that Lomborg ignores the main concern driving the debate. Incredibly, he never mentions even the possibility that the world might heat up more than 4.7 degrees. Although he claims IPCC science as gospel, in fact the scientific body gives no single “standard” estimate as its official forecast for this century’s warming. Instead, the IPCC provides a range of up to 10.5 degrees — more than double the number on which Lomborg bases his entire argument.
Read: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bjorn_Lomborg#Lomborg_and_the_Danish_Committee_for_Scientific_Dishonesty
Bjorn Lomborg is also on a long list of what is known as industry friendly experts, umm, that would be oil, coal, lumber, fertilizer pretty much the industries that pollute. This kind of expert plays a role in the propagandists use of the third party technique. Read: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Industry-friendly_experts
And he is featured on one of the educational videos for the Nutrients for Life Foundation, basically the Fertilizer Industry. Fertilizer is one of the biggest pollutants contributing to the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico due to groundwater runoff from agricultural areas. Nutrients for Life Foundation is, according to its website, “fertilizer professionals and others in the agricultural community who are deeply committed to educating the public about the positive role fertilizers play in our society.” A press release identifies the group as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) “educational arm of the Fertilizer Institute,” incorporated in Delaware. “We speak on behalf of ag professionals everywhere to ensure the public is informed of the contribution fertilizer makes to society; to explain the responsible intentions of the people who produce them; and to remind the world that fertilizers are truly the first link in the global food chain.”
Now that’s scary, fertilizer is food? Read: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Nutrients_for_Life_Foundation
Finally, I found Thomas Moore’s name in more than one article with Lomborg. According to sourcewatch: “Thomas Gale Moore is listed as Adjunct Scholar for Cato Institute, and currently is on the board of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He is also associated with The Independent Institute, and Hoover Institution. The tobacco links to Cato and C.E.I. are well documented, and do not need repetition — just click the links provided. The Independent Institute is another Koch-funded organ using tabacco-techniques of the white lab coats to dissemble about global warming, of which Moore is an identified flack. Remember, Koch is an OIL company, even if they loan troops for tobacco battles. The evidence of this report is that Moore is corrupt, and was so on the day his name was listed on this report. Funders to Moore’s various institutes include the “usual suspects” Olin-Bradley-Koch-Scaife, et al.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Friends_of_Science
I’ve said this to other people Keith. You have to watch your sources. The same names show up over and over as opponents to global warming. They are usually tied to oil, coal, lumber, and in this case tobacco, and I usually recognize them. I picked Thomas Moore out right away. I’ve looked him up before. Bjorn sounded familiar too. Gore probably didn’t want to do a debate with Lomborg because Lomborg promotes himself and his books that way and Gore knows who backs Lomborg. Lomborg is liable to get way off the subject just like the critic stated about his book Cool It. Lomborg ignored the main concern driving the debate!
December 18th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Sorry for showing the date as 2002 it was this year 2007.
You have not answered the question that I posed through the articule. I don’t care about what lobby he may be part of as this does NOT dicredit the questions, maybe the author. I am interested in hearing your answers to the, what I believe to be, simple questions asked. You spend an enormus amount of time and energy only discrediting the Bjorn and his works. I’d love and answer from “somebody” to the simple questions. Why does Mr Gore only use 20′ flooding in his speeches instead of 1′ as an example, and so on, and so on….? Are the questions out of line becasue the coal and oil companies are supporting him? Go to know who is but the questions remain valid….looking foward to your response.
December 20th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
First of all Keith why would anyone want Al Gore to debate about scientific issues? Oslo, 10 December 07 - The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. were awarded of the Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5383964.html. Al Gore is only a messenger for Roger Revelle, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Giants/Revelle/. Revelle would have to be the debater, but he is dead. Currently we have a panel of 2500 scientists to debate global warming. Why weren’t they invited to the debate?
My foray into Lomborg’s background is discrediting. He provides the clearest counterpoint to Al Gore’s presentation only as an industry “expert,” especially since Lomborg is a statistician. There are many motivated industry “experts” willing to side against global warming. You say your article is current and that: “The UN actually estimates that we will live in a warmer but immensely richer world.” Prove that. The UN uses the IPCC and UNFCCC findings for its commentary about global warming. It is contrary to what both the IPCC and UNFCCC stated just this month.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ and http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_topic1.pdf.
As was in tonight’s blog the UNFCCC stated: ‘Earlier this year, the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) issued a finding that if left unchecked, the world’s average temperature could rise by as much as 6 degrees centigrade by the end of the century, causing harm to economies, societies and ecosystems worldwide. The conference was attended by approximately 11000 participants, the secretary general of the UN and six heads of state. This panel confers with the IPCC. We have two international, intergovernmental panels of experts telling us some pretty startling things.’
In your article the UN’s fiscal estimations that were $553 trillion over a century were due to Wharton Econometrics Forecasting, which is now part of the Conglomerate called Global Insight. Here are several of their links that in no way look like dower forecasting for a future green economy.
http://www.globalinsight.com/SDA/SDADetail11225.htm
http://www.globalinsight.com/ProductsServices/ProductDetail2306.htm
http://www.globalinsight.com/Highlight/HighlightDetail8465.htm.
As a matter of fact, Global Insight is actually saying the U.S. needs to get on with change toward a green economy. We are falling behind the rest of the world’s pace. One article even stated that China has the attitude I’ve addressed in two blogs about—OUR EXAMPLE. China claims they will jump on the green bandwagon when the other big polluters like America finally do.
The sea level rise you speak of is seldom measured in feet. It is in meters. One meter is 39 inches. Read tonight’s, 12-20-07, blog. It is about water levels rising more rapidly due to thermal expansion, and Antarctica’s part in the world’s climate, even though the IPCC and the UNFCCC are mainly concerned with the North Pole temperatures. However, I watched a program on the Discovery Channel I believe, showing the quick disintegration of ice in Antarctica as well. While edges of parts of the vast glaciers are freezing faster.
The current sea level rise is already wreaking havoc with many islands. Read about Kiribati: http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=48. A rise of just 2 meters will endanger over 1100 inhabited islands, displacing thousands of people.
As for the malaria epidemic, didn’t you read my blog about Dengue fever? We never get that news here. It’s caused from the same thing as malaria—mosquitoes and standing water. If you read everything I’ve posted here you will learn that global warming has increased precipitation in different parts of the world causing the floods we saw this past summer. Standing water from this precipitation has brought back Dengue fever, it is not out of the question malaria and other water born diseases will increase.
If you still don’t think that rising temperatures won’t kill people then witness some of the bigger mammals that are at peril. We’re just a rung on the animal change. As a matter of fact, the smaller the species or simpler, the quicker adaptation takes place. With 3000 flying squirrels falling to the ground dead in Australia due to warming climate, it’s not a good indicator we’re going to fare much better from the heat or the cold. I wrote another blog about the Gulf Stream slowing, in which case we will see the results as presented in the movie The Day After Tomorrow.
Thanks for asking questions. I’ve learned a whole lot more.
December 20th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
i appriacate your answer of “prove we will live in a warmer, richer climate; prove that.” this would just say that that’s how i feel about all of the global warming stuff. prove it…i know you’ll point to a bunch of things as you have and i’ll say it a littler warmer. if it’sa little cooler in 10 years will you say this global warming thing was all wrong?