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    The Nemesis Effectby Chris Bright

    WW ORLDWATCHI N S T I T U T E

    For more information about the Worldwatch Institute and other Worldwatch publications, please visit our website at

    http://www.worldwatch.org

    Excerpted from ...

    WORLD WATCH May/June 1999

    Copyright 1999 Worldwatch Institute

    http://www.worldwatch.org/http://www.worldwatch.org/
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    Ib y C h r i s B r i g h t

    The Nemesis Effect

    N 1972, A DAM CALLED THE IRON G ATES WAScompleted on a stretch of the Danube Riverbetween Romania and what is now Serbia. It wasbuilt to generate electricity and to preventthe river from visiting some 26,000 square kilo-

    meters of its floodplain. It has done those things, butthats not all it has done.

    The Danube is the greatest of the five major riversthat run into the Black Sea. For millennia, these rivershave washed tons of dead vegetation into this nearly landlocked ocean. As it sinks into the seas stagnantdepths, the debris is decomposed by bacteria that con-sume all the dissolved free oxygen (O 2), then con-tinue their work by pulling oxygen out of the sulfateions (SO 4) that are a normal component of seawater.That process releases hydrogen sulfide gas (H 2S),

    which is one of the worlds most poisonous naturally occurring substances. One deep breath of it wouldprobably kill you. The seas depths contain the largestreservoir of hydrogen sulfide in the world, and thedissolved gas forces virtually every living thing in the

    water to cling to the surface or die. The Black Sea isalive only along its coasts, and in an oxygenated sur-face layer that is just 200 meters thick at mostless

    than a tenth of the seas maximum depth.The Danube contributes 70 percent of the Black Seas fresh water and about 80 percent of its sus-pended silicateessentially, tiny pieces of sand. Thesilicate is consumed by a group of single-celled algaecalled diatoms, which use it to encase themselves inglassy coats. The diatoms fuel the seas food web, butany diatoms that dont get eaten eventually die andsink into the dead zone below, along with any unusedsilicate. Fresh contributions of silicate are thereforenecessary for maintaining the diatom population. But

    when the Iron Gates closed, most of the Danubes

    silicate began to settle out in the still waters of the

    vast lake behind the dam. Black Sea silicate concen-trations fell by 60 percent.

    The drop in silicate concentrations coincided withan increase in nitrogen and phosphorus pollutionfrom fertilizer runoff and from the sewage of the 160million people who live in the Black Sea drainage.Nitrogen and phosphorus are plant nutrientswhichis why theyre in fertilizer. In water, this nutrient pol-lution promotes explosive algal blooms. The Black Sea diatoms began blooming, but the lack of silicatelimited their numbers and prevented them from con-suming all the nutrient. That check created an oppor-tunity for other types of algae, formerly suppressedby the diatoms. Some of these were dinoflagellatered tide organisms, which produce powerful tox-ins. Soon after the Iron Gates closed, red tides beganto appear along the seas coasts.

    In the early 1980s, a jellyfish native to the Atlanticcoast of the Americas was accidentally released intothe sea from the ballast tank of a ship. The jellyfishpopulation exploded; it ate virtually all the zooplank-ton, the tiny animals that feed on the algae. Liberatedfrom their predators, the algae grew even thicker,especially the dinoflagellates. In the late 1980s,

    during the height of the jellyfish infestation, thedinoflagellates seemed to be summoning the deathfrom below. Their blooms consumed all the oxygenin the shallows and the rotten-egg stench of hydro-gen sulfide haunted the streets of Odessa. Carpetsof dead fishasphyxiated or poisonedbobbedalong the shores.

    The jellyfish nearly ate the zooplankton intooblivion, then its population collapsed too. But itsstill in the Black Sea and theres probably no way toremove it. The red tides have increased six-fold sincethe early 1970s, and it doesnt look as if antipollution

    efforts are going to put the dinoflagellates back

    Burdened by a growing number of overlapping stresses, the worldsecosystems may grow increasingly susceptible to rapid, unexpected decline.

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    under the control of the diatoms. The fisheries are ina dismal stateoverharvested, starved of zooplank-ton, periodically suffocated and poisoned. The rest of the ecosystem isnt faring much better. The mollusks,sponges, sea urchins, even the marine worms are dis-appearing. The shallows, where vast beds of seagrassonce breathed life into the waters, are regularly fouled in a fetid algal soup laced with a microbe thatthrives in such conditions: cholera.

    COULD IT HAVE BEEN PREDICTED THAT THE DAM ONthe Danube would end up triggering this spasm of ecological chaos? The engineers who designed theIron Gates were obviously attempting to make naturemore orderly and productive (in a very narrow senseof those terms). Could they have foreseen this formof disorder, which has no obvious relationship to thedam itself? Here is what they would have had toanticipate: that the dam would cause a downstreamchange in water chemistry which would combine

    with an increase in a certain type of pollution to pro-duce an effect that neither change would probably have had on its ownand that effect would then bemagnified by something that was going to bepumped out of a ships ballast tank.

    It seems absurd even to entertain the idea thatsuch things could be foreseen. Yet this is precisely thekind of foresight that is now required of anyone whois concerned, professionally or otherwise, with theincreasingly dysfunctional relationship between oursocieties and the environment. The forces of ecolog-ical corrosionpollution, overfishing, the invasion of

    exotic species like that jellyfishsuch forces interactin all sorts of ways. Their effects are determined, not

    just by the activities that initially produced them, but by each other and by the way ecosystems respond to them.They are, in other words, parts of an enormously complex system. And unless we can learn to see themwithin the system, we have no hope of anticipating thedamage they may do.

    A system is a set of interrelated elements in whichsome sort of change is occurring, and even very sim-ple systems can behave in unpredictable ways. Threeelements are enough to do it, as Isaac Newton

    demonstrated three centuries ago, when he formulat-ed the N body problem. Is it possible to define thegravitational interaction between three or more mov-ing objects with complete precision? No one hasbeen able to do it thus far. The unpredictable dynam-ics of system behavior have inspired an entire mathe-matical science, variously known as complexity or sys-tems theory. (The most famous type of complexity ischaos.) Systems theory is useful for exploring sev-eral other sciences, including ecology. Its also usefulfor exploring the ways in which we can be surprised.

    Suppose, for example, that you were a marinebiologist studying Black Sea plankton in the early

    1970s. Had you confined your observations solely tothe plankton themselves, you would have had nobasis for predicting the explosion of red tides that fol-lowed the closing of the Iron Gates. Such nonlin-ear events usually come as a surprise, not becausetheyre unusualtheyre actually commonbutbecause of a basic mismatch between our ordinary perceptions and system behavior. Most people, mostof the time, just arent looking upriver: we have astrong intuitive tendency to assume that incrementalchange can be used to predict further incrementalchangethat the gradual rise or fall of a line on agraph means more of the same. But thats not true.The future of a trendany trenddepends on thebehavior of the system as a whole.

    In 1984, the sociologist Charles Perrow pub-lished a book, Normal Accidents: Living with High- Risk Technologies , in which he explored the highly complex industrial and social systems upon which

    weve become increasingly dependent. DavidEhrenfeld, an ecologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, has observed that much of what Perrow saidof nuclear reactors, air traffic, and so forth could also

    WOODCUTS BY ROSEMARY COVEY

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    apply to ecosystemsor more precisely, to the waysin which we interact with them. Here are some of thecriteria that Perrow uses to define complex systems:

    many common mode connections betweencomponents . . . not in a production sequence[that is, elements may interact in ways that

    wont fit into a predictable sequence];

    unfamiliar or unintended feedback loops; many control parameters with potential interac-

    tions [that is, we have many ways to influencethe system but we cant be sure what the over-all result of our actions will be];

    indirect or inferential information sources[we cant always see whats happening directly];

    limited understanding of some processes.

    Theres something ominous in Perrows ratherbland, clinical terminologyits like a needle point-ing the wrong way on an instrument panel. Limitedunderstanding of some processes! No ecologistcould have put it better. Ehrenfeld wrote a paper onPerrows relevance to ecology; he was fascinated withPerrows treatment of nuclear accidents. What is itlike to be a nuclear plant operator during a ThreeMile Island event? You watch the monitors, you try to second-guess your equipment, you make infer-ences about the state of the core. Perrow says, Youare actually creating a world that is congruent with

    your interpretation, even though it may be the wrong world. It may be too late before you find that out.

    Into the Theaters of SurpriseN UCLEAR . M ORE THAN YOU EVER IMAGINED .Thats the slogan of the Nuclear Energy Institute, anuclear power industry association based in

    Washington, D.C. To me, at least, the phrase isnt very reassuring, and I would bet that it will soundlike a joke to most of the people who read this arti-cle. My guess, in other words, is that your imagina-tion already operates well beyond the stage settingsof nuclear industry PR. But how much farther are

    you willing to push it?

    Throughout most of our species existence, thebounds of our collective imagination have not been asurvival issue in the way that they are today. Either oursocieties were rather loosely coupled to their environ-ment, so there was more give in the system, or when

    we got into trouble, it was a local or regional predica-ment rather than a global one. But today, our rapport

    with the environment is growing increasingly analo-gous to the task of managing a nuclear power plant.

    We live within a set of systems that are tightly cou-pled, requiring constant attention, not entirely pre-dictable, and capable of various types of meltdown.

    Consider, for example, two representative the-

    aters of surprise. See if you find here more than youever imagined.

    1. The Forests of Eastern North America

    As far as conservation is concerned, the wood-lands of eastern North America might seem about asfar as you can get from the highly publicized tropicalscenario, with its poorly understood and rapidly dis-appearing forests, its desperate agrarian poverty andrapacious logging. For this scorched confusion, sub-stitute some of the most thoroughly studied ecosys-tems in the world, growing over the heads of some of the worlds wealthiest, best-educated, and most infor-mation-saturated people. These are highly populated

    woodlands too138 million people live beneath thetrees or within a few hours drive of them.

    Virtually all of the original old growth in theeastern United States was cut long ago, but theseforests comprise one of the few large regions any-

    where in the world that could be thought of asundergoing some sort of ecological renaissance. Withthe exception of northern New England, the loggershad done their worst to the region a century ago ormore, and moved west in search of bigger timber.

    And over the course of the 19th century, fewer andfewer fields were being tortured by the plow, as thenations agriculture shifted to the lavish fertility of the midwest. So the eastern second growth has qui-etly spread and matured, absorbing hundreds of oldcutover woodlots and anonymous, abandoned farm-steads. But today these forests are in the throes of a

    quiet agonya pathology that is harder to read thantropical deforestation, but which may lead to a formof degradation that is just as profound. The air they are breathing is poisoning them, the water bathesthem in acid, the soil is growing toxic, they aregnawed by exotic pests, and the climate to which they are adapted is likely to shift.

    A primary cause of this agony involves changes inthe nitrogen cycle. Nitrogen is an essential nutrientof plants and its the main constituent of the atmos-phere: 78 percent of the air is nitrogen gas. Butplants cant metabolize this pure, elemental nitrogen

    directly. The nitrogen must be fixed into com-pounds with hydrogen or oxygen before it canbecome part of the biological cycle. In nature thisprocess is accomplished by certain types of microbesand by lightning strikes, which fuse atmospheric oxy-gen and nitrogen into nitrogen oxides.

    Humans have radically amplified this process.Farmers boost the nitrogen level of their land throughfertilizers and the planting of nitrogen-fixing crops(actually, its symbiotic microbes that do the fixing).The burning of forests and the draining of wetlandsrelease additional quantities of fixed nitrogen that hadbeen stored in vegetation and organic debris. And

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    fossil-fuel combustion releases still more fixed nitro-gen, partly from fuel contaminants, and partly through the production of nitrogen oxides in thesame way that lightning works. Natural processesprobably incorporate around 140 million tons of nitrogen into the terrestrial nitrogen cycle every year.(The ocean cycle is largely a mystery.) Thus far,human activity has at least doubled that amount.

    As in much of the industrialized world, easternNorth America is bathed in the nitrogen oxidespumped into the air from car exhaust and coal-burn-ing power plants. In the presence of sunlight, one of these chemicals, nitric oxide (NO), produces ozone(O 3). Ozone is good in the stratosphere, where it fil-ters out harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation, but its

    very bad in the troposphere, the thick blanket of airat the Earths surface. Ozone is a primary componentof smog. Clean air laws, understandably, aim to cutozone levels to a point at which they are unlikely to

    harm people (or at least, healthy people). But theproblem for the forests is that leaf tissue is far moresensitive to ozone than human lung tissue. Ozonebleaches leaves. According to Charles Little, a sea-soned chronicler of North American forests, youmight as well be spraying them with Clorox. Ozonealso reduces flower, pollen, and seed production,thereby hindering reproduction.

    In this region, you can just about name the tree,and ozone is probably injuring it somewhere. Ozonecombines with UV radiation to burn and scar theneedles of white pine, the regions tallest conifer.Ozone exposure correlates strongly with hickory and

    oak die-off. Ozone is hard on the tulip tree, a majorcanopy species especially where white oak hasdeclined. Its injuring native magnolias as well. Nor isit just the obviously smoggy urban areas that suffer.In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park of North Carolina, researchers have found ozone dam-age to some 90 plant species.

    In rural West Virginia, ozone is apparently work-ing a weird, nonlinear form of forest decline: contin-ual ozone exposure can reduce photosynthesis to thepoint at which the tree cant grow enough roots tosupport itself. Apparently minor but chronic leaf damage eventually provokes catastrophic failure of the roots, then death. This is one of several mecha-nisms underlying the syndrome known as the fallingforest. Reasonably healthy-looking trees just keelover and die.

    Airborne nitrogen oxides also produce nitric acid, which contributes to acid rain. The other major con-

    stituent of acid rain is sulfuric acid, which derives from the sulfur dioxidereleased by coal-burning power plantsand metal smelters. (Sulfur is a com-mon contaminant of coal and metalores.) Smoke stack scrubbers and agrowing preference for low-sulfurcoal and natural gas have helpedreduce sulfur dioxide emissions in theUnited States, Canada, and WesternEurope. U.S. emissions, for example,fell from nearly 30 million tons in1970 to 16 million in 1995. (The

    global picture isnt so encouraging: world sulfur dioxide emissions rosefrom about 115 million tons a year in1970 to around 140 million tons by 1988 and have remained relatively stable since then.)

    Even in the United States, theamount of acid aloft is still substantialby ecological standards. On the fog-drenched slopes of Mount Mitchell,north on the Appalachian spine fromthe Smoky Mountains, the pH of the

    dew and ice sometimes drops as low as 2.1, which ismore acid than lemon juice. The acid treatment,combined with insect attack and drought, has killedup to 80 percent of mature red spruce and Fraser firon the most exposed slopes.

    But the problem is not just the acid in the airtoday. Decades of acid rain have begun to leach outthe soils stock of calcium and magnesium, bothessential plant nutrients. Replenishing those minerals,a process dependent on the weathering of rock, may take centuries. In the meantime, the legacy of coal islikely to be stunted forests, at least where the leach-ing is well advanced, as in some areas of New

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    England. Recent studies at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in the mountains of New Hampshire, for instance, have identified mineralsleaching as the main reason the vegetation there hasshown no overall growth for nearly a decade.

    This slowing of the trees metabolism is not just amatter of gradual, overall declinethere are nonlin-ear effects here too. Acid rain is making the New England winters lethal to red spruce and balsam fir,two of the regions most important conifers. Likemost conifers, these species dont lose their leavestheir needlesin winter, so they cant just go dor-mant when it gets cold. They have to maintain ametabolic rate high enough to keep the needles func-tioning properly. In cold weather, conifers close thestomata in their needles when light dims, in order toprotect the needles from freezing. (The stomata arethe microscopic pores in leaf tissue, where gasexchange occurs.) The mineral-starved trees cantreadily perform this function, so sometimes the cellsin the needles freeze solid. That kills needles; whenenough of the needles die, the tree dies. At higherelevations in Vermonts Green Mountains, three-quarters of mature red spruce have frozen to death.

    The acid rain hasnt just made the soils less nutri-tiousit has also made them toxic. In calcium-richsoils, the acid is generally neutralized, since calcium isalkaline. But as the calcium level drops, more andmore acid accumulates and that tends to release alu-minum from its mineral matrix. Aluminum is a com-mon soil constituent; when its bonded to other min-erals its biologically inert, but free aluminum is toxic

    to both plants and animals. In some Appalachian

    streams, you can find stones covered with a silvery- whitish tingethats aluminum released by acid rain.This burden of mobilized metal is compounded by the traces of cadmium, lead, and mercury that the airbrings in along with the acid and ozone.

    The metals poisoning may create a kind of syner-gistic overlap with ozone pollution. In some dyingred spruce stands in Vermont, researchers have foundelevated levels of phytochelatins, a class of chemicalsthat plants produce to bind to toxic metals and ren-der them inert. But to make the phytochelatins, thespruces have to draw down their stocks of anothersubstance, glutathione, which is used to counteractozone. So exposure to one kind of poison leaves thespruces more vulnerable to another.

    Theres another big overlap here as well: thetrees ability to fight off stresses is also being weak-ened by nitrogen pollution. Plants dont have thesame kind of immune system that animals do. Insteadof killer cells and antibodies, they produce animmense arsenal of chemicals. Some of these, likephytochelatins, neutralize toxins; others killpathogens or make leaves less palatable to pests.Excess nitrogen tends to clog the cellular machinery that produces these chemicals. Farmers dont have to

    worry about this problem when they apply fertilizerto crops, because crops are intensively managed forpest control and because theyre generally harvestedat the end of a single growing season. But trees thatare exposed to high nitrogen year after year willinevitably absorb more of the material than they canpossibly metabolize. So the nitrogen builds up in

    their tissues, where it tends to alter the recipes for allthose defensive chemicals. Asthe chemicals lose their punch,toxins arent effectively neu-tralized; soil pathogens perme-ate the roots, and the leavesgrow more susceptible toinsect attack. It has been esti-mated that nitrogen pollutionin the eastern United States istriple the level that forests cantolerate over the long term.

    Nitrogen pollution can cause akind of botanical equivalent of AIDS.

    This weakening of theforests immune system is likely to upset the balance betweenthe trees and their pathogens.

    Another reason for West Virginias falling forests, forexample, is a fungal infectioncalled Armillaria root rot.

    Armillaria is a widespread typeof fungus, common in forest

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    soils all over the world. In healthy stands, it usually satisfies itself with the occasional diseased or very oldtree. But in a badly stressed stand, it becomes a sub-terranean monstera huge, amorphous diseaseorganism, sprouting rootlike tentacles that probe thesoil for victims. It picks away at the stand, gradually killing it, tree by tree.

    But its not just the native pests that are takingadvantage of the forests weakened state. The forestsare crawling with a host of exotic insects and diseasesas well. The American chestnut and the Americanelm succumbed to exotic pathogens earlier in thecentury and are now functionally extinct. (They havenot disappeared completely but they are no longerfunctioning components of their native ecosystems.)Today many other species are in trouble. TheCanadian hemlock, for example, is being attacked by an Asian insect, the hemlock wooly adelgid; in partsof New England, the adelgid is wiping out entirestands. Nitrogen pollution puts the adelgid on theinsect equivalent of steroids: the excess nitrogenmakes the leaves much more nutritious and can boostadelgid densities five-fold. Oaks are the principal vic-tims of the gypsy moth, a European insect whoseoccasional population explosions defoliate thousandsof hectares. In the nitrogen-poisoned stands, themoth droppings produce a weak solution of nitricacid on the forest floor, leaching out soil nutrients asthe moth gnaws away at the canopy.

    Exotic fungal pathogens are attacking the butter-nut, the American beech, and the eastern dogwood.The dogwood has a very broad range, which covers

    most of the eastern United States, and the fungusthat is killing it has spread throughout that range inlittle more than a decadea phenomenal rate of spread for a tree pathogen. Acid rain appears to bepart of the reason for the dogwoods susceptibility,and the dogwood die-off is liable to reinforce theeffects of acid rain on the soil. The dogwood is very efficient at pulling calcium out of the soil anddepositing it, through its leaf litter, on the forestfloor. That process reduces calcium leaching, so thedisappearance of this tree could deal an additionalblow to calcium-starved forests.

    This is the condition of what is, by world stan-dards, an upper middle-class forest: conifer die-offs of 70 to 80 percent in the southern Appalachians, sugarmaple mortality at 35 percent in Vermont; the butter-nut, eastern dogwood, and red mulberry in wide-spread decline. The American beech and Canadianhemlock in trouble over large parts of their range. Theelm and the chestnut already gone. And besides thepests and pollution, decades of fire suppression haveeliminated plant communities dependent on fire forrenewing themselves. Other stands are now giving

    way to asphalt and suburbia. Over all, according to asurvey of five eastern states, tree mortality may now

    stand at three to five times historical levels.Last year, climate scientists discovered that North

    American broadleaf forests were probably absorbingfar more carbon from the atmosphere than had beenpreviously assumed. The continents eastern forests,it turns out, are an important part of the missingcarbon sinkthe heretofore unexplained hole in thecalculations that attempt to define the global carbonbudget. But if these forests continue to sicken, theirappetite for carbon will eventually falter. That is like-ly to speed up the processes of climate change. Andclimatic instability will add yet another stress to aregion that is already exhibiting a kind of paradoxicalsystem effect: it is covered with new growth butmany of its forests appear to be dying.

    2. Coral Reefs

    Coral reefs are perhaps the greatest collectiveenterprise in nature. Reefs are the massed calcareousskeletons of millions of coralsmall, sedentary,

    worm-like animals that live on the reef surface, filter-ing the water for edible debris. Reefs form in shallow tropical and subtropical waters, and host huge num-bers of plants and animals. The reef biome is small interms of arealess than 1 percent of the earths sur-facebut its the richest type of ecosystem in theoceans and the second richest on earth, after tropicalforests. One-quarter of all ocean species thus far iden-tified are reef-dwellers, including at least 65 percentof marine fish species.

    Coral is extremely vulnerable to heat stress and

    the unusually high sea surface temperatures (SSTs) of the past two decades may have damaged this biome

    just as badly as the unusual fires have damaged thetropical forests. Much of the ocean warming is relat-ed to El Nio, the weather pattern that begins withshifting currents and air pressure cells in the tropicalPacific region and ends by rearranging a good deal of the planets weather. El Nios appear to be growingmore frequent and more intense; many climate scien-tists suspect that this trend is connected with climatechange. Its very difficult to sort out the patterns, butthere is probably also a general SST warming trend in

    the background, behind the El Nios. That too is alikely manifestation of climate change. When SSTs reach the 2830 C range, the coral

    polyp may expel the algae that live within its tissues.This action is known as bleaching because it turnsthe coral white. Coral usually recovers from a brief bout of bleaching, but if the syndrome persists it isgenerally fatal because the coral depends on the algaeto help feed it through photosynthesis. Publishedrecords of bleaching date back to 1870, but show nothing comparable to what began in the early 1980s, when unusually warm water caused extensivebleaching throughout the Pacific. Coral bleached

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    over thousands of square kilometers. By the end of the decade, mass bleaching was occurring in every coral reef region in the world. The full spectrum of coral species was affected in these eventsa phenom-enon that had never been observed before.

    In the second half of this decade, SSTs set new records over much of the corals range and the bleach-ing has become even more intense. Last year saw themost extensive bleaching to date. Over a vast tract of the Indian Ocean, from the African coast to southernIndia, 70 percent of the coral appears to have died.Some authorities think that a shift from episodicevents to chronic levels of bleaching is now underway.

    The bleaching has triggered outbreaks of thecrown-of-thorns starfish, a coral predator that ischewing its way through reefs in the Red Sea, off South Africa, the Maldives, Indonesia, Australia, andthroughout much of the Pacific. The starfish are nor-mally kept at bay by antler-like branching corals,

    which have stinging cells and host various aggressivecrustaceans. But as the branching corals bleach anddie, the more palatable massive corals growingamong them become ever more vulnerable to starfishattack. Over the course of a year, a single adult crown-of-thorns can consume 13 square meters of coral.

    Overfishing is also promoting these outbreaks, by removing the fish that eat starfish. Overfishing alsohelps another enemy of the reefs: various types of algae that compete with coral. Floating algae canstarve corals for light; macro-algaeseaweedscan colonize the reefs themselves and displace thecoral directly. Because reefs are shallow-water com-

    munities, they generally occur in coastal zones, wherethey are likely to be exposed to nitrogen-rich agricul-tural runoff and sewage. Nitrogen pollution is astoxic to reefs as it is to temperate-zone forests,because nitrogen fertilizes algae. Remove the algae-eating fish under these conditions, and you might as

    well have poisoned the coral directly. This overlap isthe main reason Jamaicas reefs never recovered fromHurricane Allen in 1980; 90 percent of the reefs off the islands northwest coast are now just algae-cov-ered humps of limestone.

    In the Caribbean, over-fishing seems to have

    played a role in yet another complication for the reefs:the population collapse of an algae-eating sea urchin,Diadema antillarum . This urchin appears to havebeen the last line of defense against the algae after theprogressive elimination of other algae-eating crea-tures. The first to go may have been the green seaturtle. Now endangered, the turtle once apparently roamed the Caribbean in immense herds, like bison onthe Great Plains. Its Caribbean population may havesurpassed 600 million. Christopher Columbuss fleetreportedly had to reef sail for a full day to let a migrat-ing herd pass. By the end of the 18th century, theturtles had nearly all been slaughtered for their meat.

    In the following two centuries, essentially the sameoperation was repeated with the algae-eating fish.

    The removal of its competitors must have giventhe urchin a great deal of room, and for most of thiscentury it was one of the reefs most commondenizens. But its abundance seems to have set it up forthe epidemic that struck during the El Nio of theearly 1980s. In roughly a year, a mysterious pathogen

    virtually eliminated D. antillarum from theCaribbean; some 98 percent of the species disap-peared over an area of more than 2.5 million squarekilometers. Contemporary history offers no precedentfor a die-off of that magnitude in a marine animal.The urchin is reportedly back in evidence, at least insome areas of its former range, but until its relation-ship with the pathogen is better understood, it wontbe possible to define its longterm appetite for algae.

    With the algae, the pollution, and the warming waters, the Caribbean is becoming an increasingly hostile environment for the organism that has shapedso much of its biological character. And now the coralitself is sickening; the Caribbean has become a cal-dron of epidemic coral diseases. The first such epi-demic, called black-band disease, was detected in1973 in Belizean waters. Black band is caused by athree-layer complex of blue-green algae (actually,cyanobacteria), each layer consisting of a differentspecies. The bottom layer secretes highly toxic sul-fides which kill the coral. The complex creeps very slowly over a head of coral in a narrow band, leavingbehind only the bare white skeleton.

    Black band has since been joined by a whole

    menagerie of other diseases: white-band, yellow-band, red-band, patchy necrosis, white pox, whiteplague type I and II, rapid-wasting syndrome, dark spot. The modes of action are as various as thenames. White pox, for example, is caused by anunknown pathogen that almost dissolves the livingcoral tissue. Infected polyps disintegrate intomucous-like strands that trail off into the water, andbare, dead splotches appear on the reefs, giving thema kind of underwater version of the mange. Rapid

    wasting syndrome probably starts with aggressive bit-ing by spotlight parrotfish; the wounds are then

    infected by some sort of fungus that spreads out fromthe wound site. On the reefs off Florida, the numberof diseases has increased from five or six to 13 duringthe past decade. In 1996, nine of the 44 coral speciesoccurring on these reefs were diseased; a year laterthe number of infected species had climbed to 28.Nor are the Caribbean reefs the only ones underattack; coral epidemics are turning up here and therethroughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans, in thePersian Gulf and in the Red Sea.

    For most of these diseases, a pathogen has yet tobe identified; its not even clear whether each of those names really refers to a distinct syndrome. But

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    its not likely that the diseases are new in the senseof being caused by pathogens that have recently evolved. Its much more likely that the corals vul-nerability to them is new. Take, for example, the dis-ease thats killing sea-fan coral around the Caribbean.In this case, the pathogen is known: its Aspergillus sydowii , a member of a very common genus of terres-trial fungi. The last time you threw something out of

    your refrigerator because it was moldytheres agood chance you were looking at an Aspergillus species. In a very bizarre form of invasion, A. sydowii breached the land-sea barrier, and found a secondhome in the ocean. But it evidently took the plungedecades ago and has only been killing sea-fans forsome 15 years or so. Why? Part of the answer is prob-ably the higher SSTs: A. sydowii likes

    warmer water. Other coral diseases appearto do especially well in nutrient-laden

    waters.Disease lies at one end of the spectrum

    of threat. Pathogens create a kind of micro-scopic pressure, but there are macroscopicpressures too: the ecosystems allied in one

    way or another with the reef biome are alsodeteriorating. The stretch of shallow, pro-tected water between a reef and the coastoften nurtures beds of seagrass. These bedsfilter out sediment and effluent that wouldinjure the reefs, and the seagrass providescrucial cover for young fish. Seagrass is themajor nursery for many fish species thatspend their adult lives out on the reefs.

    Perhaps 70 percent of all commercially important fish spend at least part of theirlives in the seagrass. But the tropical sea-grass beds are silting up under tons of sedi-ment from development, logging, mining,and the construction of shrimp farms. They are suffocating under algal blooms in nitro-gen-polluted waters; they are being poi-soned by herbicide runoff. According to one esti-mate, half of all seagrass beds within about 50 kilo-meters of a city have disappeared.

    If you follow the seagrass-choking sediment back

    the way it came, youre increasingly likely to find ashoreline denuded of mangroves. In the warmerregions of the world, mangroves knit the land and seatogether. These stilt-rooted trees trap sediment that

    would otherwise leak out to sea and they stabilizecoastlines against incoming storms. Like the seagrassbeds and the reefs, the mangrove ecosystem is incred-ibly productivein the mangroves case, with bothterrestrial and aquatic organisms. (Mangrove rootsare important fish nurseries too.)

    The mangroves importance as a sediment filter isperhaps greatest in the center of reef diversity, theIndonesian archipelago and adjoining areas. About

    450 coral species are known to grow in the Australasian region; the Caribbean, by comparison,contains just 67 species. Australasia is corresponding-ly rich in fish too: a quarter of the worlds fish speciesinhabit these waters. It is estimated that half of all thesediments received by oceanic waters are washedfrom the Indonesian archipelago alone. Nearby areasof Southeast Asia are also major contributors of sedi-ment. But throughout the region, logging andshrimp farming are obliterating the mangroves thatonce filtered this tremendous burden of silt.Southeast Asia has lost half its mangrove stands overthe past half century. A third of the mangrove coveris gone from Indonesian coasts, three-quarters fromthe Philippines.

    About 10 percent of the worlds coral reefs may already have been degraded beyond recovery. If wecant find a way to ease the reefs afflictions, nearly three-quarters of the oceans richest biome may have

    disappeared 50 years from now. Such a prospect givesnew meaning to the term natural disaster, but itsalso a social disaster in the making. Reef fish make upperhaps 10 percent of the global fish catch; one esti-mate puts their contribution to the catch of develop-ing countries at 20 to 25 percent.

    And theres much more at stake here than justfisheries. The death of the coral would also jeopar-dize the reef structures leaving them unable torepair storm damage. If the reefs give way, wave ero-sion of the coasts behind them will increase. Thecoasts are already facing some unavoidable degree of damage from climate change, as sea-levels rise.

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    Below are 13 of the worst pressures that we are inflicting on the planet and on ourselves. The lines show a fewthe ways in which these corrosive forces interact. See the numbered key for each of the combinations indicateNote that neither the list of pressures nor the set of interactions is inclusiveif your background is in environtal studies, you will almost certainly be able to extend the matrix. We welcome your thoughts (see the inside frcover for our address).

    ATMOSPHERECLIMATE CHANGE

    ACID RAIN

    INCREASING UV LIGHT PENETRATION

    INCREASING TROPOSPHERIC OZONE

    ECO-SPHEREHABITAT LOSS

    FRESHWATER DIVERSION

    BIOINVASION

    ALTERATION OF FIRE CYCLES

    PERSISTENT ORGANIC POLLUTANTS

    NITROGEN POLLUTION

    OVERFISHING

    SOCIAL SPHEREPOPULATION GROWTH

    INFECTIOUS DISEASE

    20 W ORLD W ATCH May/June 1999

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    K E Y T O T H E M AT R I X

    q Climate change + UV: Greenhouse-forced warmingof the lower atmosphere may cause a cooling of thestratosphere, especially over the Arctic. (Major air cur-rents may shift, and block the warmer surface air frommoving North and up.) A cooling stratosphere will

    exacerbate damage to the ozone layer because thecolder it is, the more effective CFCs become at break-ing down ozone. The ozone layer over the Arcticcould grow progressively thinner as warming proceeds.

    w Climate change + acid rain + UV: In easternCanada, two decades of mild drought and a slight

    warming trend have reduced streamflow into many of the regions lakes. The lake water has grown clearer,since the weakened streams are washing in less organicdebris. The clearer water allows UV radiation to pene-trate more deeplyat a time when more UV light isstriking the lakes in the first place, because of the dete-rioration of the ozone layer. (UV light can injure fish

    and other aquatic organisms just as it injures humans.) Acid rain, which affects northern lakes in both Canadaand Eurasia, causes even more organic matter to pre-cipitate out of the water, further opening the lakes toUV light. In some lakes, the overall effect may be toincrease the depth of UV penetration from 2030centimeters to over 3 meters.

    e Climate change + alteration of fire cycles: The fireecology of forests all over the world is in a profoundstate of flux; we have introduced fire into some tropi-cal rainforests that do not naturally burn at all, whilein many temperate forests, where fire is essential formaintaining the native plant community, we have sup-pressed it. Climate change will probably cause furtherinstability in fire cycles, as some regions become drierand others wetter. The results cannot be predicted, butare unlikely to favor original forest composition. If theoverall rate of burning increases, that could create apositive feedback loop in the climate cycle, by releasingever greater quantities of heat-trapping carbon into theatmosphere.

    i

    i

    o

    o

    q

    q

    w

    s

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    y

    y

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    A Spreading Matrix of Trouble

    r

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    (Warming water expands; that physical effect willcombine with runoff from melting glaciers to pushsea levels up.) Rising seas, like the crumbling reefs,

    will allow storm surges to reach farther inland. Aboutone-sixth of the worlds coasts are shielded by reefs,and some of these coasts, like the ones in South andSoutheast Asia, support some of the densest humanpopulations in the world. The disintegration of thereefs would leave a large portion of humanity hun-grier, poorer, and far more vulnerable to the vagariesof a changing climate.

    CORAL REEFS AND TEMPERATE -ZONE FORESTS INboth of these theaters of surprise, the familiar couldrapidly become something else. But you can begin tosee similar system effects just about anywhere, andemerging from just about any form of environmentalpressure:

    Nitrogen pollution has tripled the occurrenceof low-oxygen dead zones in coastal ocean

    waters over the past 30 years. As in the Black Sea, excess nitrogen appears generally to bepromoting the emergence of red tide organ-isms. (Over the past decade, the number of algae species known to be toxic has increasedfrom around 20 to at least 85.)

    Organochlorine pollutants seem to be creatingimmunodeficiencies in marine mammals, trig-gering a growing number of viral epidemics.(Exposure to the red-tide toxins may alsodepress the immune systems of some marinemammals and sea turtles.)

    The hunting of birds and primates in tropicalforests may become another form of deforesta-tion, because these creatures are so importantin pollinating tree flowers and dispersing seeds.

    Powerful storms, which may grow more com-mon as the climate changes, tend to magnify invasions of exotic plants by dispersing theirseeds over huge areas.

    And a whole spectrum of threats appears tounderlie the global decline in amphibians: habi-

    tat loss, pollution, disease, exotic predators, andhigher levels of UV exposure resulting from thedisintegration of the ozone layer. (See the tableopposite for some additional system effects.)

    Given the pressures to which the global environ-ment is now subject, the potential for surprise is, forall practical purposes, unlimited. We have steppedinto a world in which our assumptions and prejudicesare more and more likely to betray us. We are con-fronting a demon in a hall of mirrors. At this point, apurely reactive approach to our tormentor will leadinevitably to exhaustion and failure.

    r Climate change + N pollution: As a factor in thedecline of some temperate-zone forests, nitrogen pol-lution is probably reducing their capacity to absorbcarbon from the atmosphere.

    t Climate change + acid rain + UV + trospheric ozone + bioinvasion + alteration of fire cycles +N pollution: This complex of pressures is pushing

    eastern North American forests into decline. (See text.)y Climate change + habitat loss + bioinvasion + N

    pollution + overfishing: This set of pressures is push-ing the worlds coral reefs into decline. (See text.)

    u Climate change + N pollution + infectious disease:Cool weather often limits the ranges of mosquitoesand other insects that carry human pathogens. Evenrelatively slight increases in minimum temperatures canadmit a pest into new areas. Warm coastal ocean water,especially when its nitrogen-polluted, creates habitatfor cholera.

    i Habitat loss + population growth: Last year, theflooding of Chinas Yangtze River did $30 billion indamages, displaced 223 million people, and killedanother 3,700. The flooding was not wholly a naturalevent: with 85 percent of its forest cover gone, the

    Yangtze basin no longer had the capacity to absorb theheavy rains. (Forests are like immense spongesthey hold huge quantities of water.) And the densely settledfloodplain guaranteed that the resulting monster flood

    would find millions of victims. (See Record Year for Weather-Related Disasters, 27 November 1998, at www.worldwatch.org/alerts/index.)

    o Freshwater diversion + N pollution: Extensive irri-gation can turn an arid region into productive crop-land, but chemical fertilization is likely to follow andmake the fields a source of nitrous oxide.

    p Bioinvasion + POPs: In the Great Lakes, exotic zebramussels are ingesting dangerous organochlorine pesti-cides and other persistent organic chemicals that havesettled into the loose, lake-bottom muck. Once in thezebra mussels, the chemicals may move elsewhere inthe food web. Over the past decade or so, poisoning

    with such chemicals is also thought to be a factor inthe growing susceptibility of marine mammals to the

    various epidemics that have emerged here and therethroughout the worlds oceans.

    a Bioinvasion + N pollution: Nitrogen pollution of grassland tends to favor the spread of aggressive exotic

    weeds. Nitrogen pollution of forests tends to weakentree defenses against pests, both exotic and native.

    s Population growth + infectious disease: Over thenext half-century, the centers of population growth

    will be the crowded, dirty cities of the developing world. These places are already breeding grounds formost of humanitys deadliest pathogens: cholera,malaria, AIDS, and tuberculosis among them. As thecities become more crowded, rates of infection arelikely to grow and overlapping infections are likely to increase mortality rates.

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    Towards a Complexity EthicO UR PREDICAMENT , ESSENTIALLY , IS THIS : ENVIRON -mental pressures are converging in ways that are like-ly to create a growing number of unanticipated crises.Each of these crises will demand some sort of fix, andeach fix will demand money, time, and political capi-tal. Yet no matter how many fixes we make, weve norealistic expectation of reducing the potential foradditional crisesif fixing is all we do. The key tocontrolling that demon is to do a better job of man-aging systems in their entirety. And whether the sys-tem in question is the global trading network, anational economy, or a single natural area, many of the same operating principles will apply. Here, in my

    view, are four of the most important ones.

    Monoculture technologies are brittle.

    Huge, uniform sectors generally exhibit an obvi-ous kind of efficiency because they generateeconomies of scale. You can see this in fossil fuel-based power grids, car-dominated transit systems,even in the enormous woodpulp plantations that arean increasingly important part of the developing

    worlds forestry sector. But this efficiency is usually superficial because it doesnt account for all sorts of external social and environmental costs. Thus, forinstance, that apparently cheap fossil-fuel electricity ispurchased with the literally incalculable risks of cli-matic dislocation, with acid rain and ozone pollution,

    with mine runoff, and in the countries that rely most

    heavily on coalChina, for instance, and South Africawith a heavy burden of respiratory disease.

    Yet even when the need for change is obvious andalternative technologies are available, industrialmonocultures can be extremely difficult to reform. Inenergy markets, solar and wind power are already competitive with fossil fuel for many applications,even by a very conventional cost comparison. And

    when you bring in all those external costs, theresreally no comparison at all. But with trillions of dol-lars already invested in coal and oil, the global ener-gy market is responding to renewables in a very slow

    and grudging way.More diverse technologiesin energy and in any other fieldwill encourage more diverse investmentstrategies. That will tend to make the system as a wholemore adaptable because investors will not all be bet-ting on exactly the same future. And a more adaptablesystem is likely to be more durable over the long term.

    Direct opposition to a natural force usually invitesfailureor a form of success that is just as bad.

    In the Iron Gates brand of development, it is

    sometimes difficult to distinguish success from fail-

    ure. Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that even con-servation activities can run afoul of natural forces.Take, for example, the categorical approach to forestfire suppression. A no-burn policy may increase a for-ests fuel load to the point at which a lightning strikeproduces a huge crown fire. Thats outright failure: acatastrophic artificial fire may consume stands thatsurvived centuries of the natural fire cycle. On theother hand, if the moisture regime favors rapiddecomposition of dead wood, the policy could elim-inate fire entirely. Without burning, the fire-toleranttree species would probably also begin to disappear,as they are replaced by species better adapted to theabsence of fire. Thats success. Either way, you losethe original forest.

    Sound policy often tends to be more obliquethan direct. A vaccine, for instance, turns the powerof the pathogen against itself; thats why, whentheres a choice, immunization is usually a better tac-tic for fighting disease than quarantine. Restorationof floodplain ecosystems can be a more effective formof flood control than dams and levees, because wet-lands and forests function as immense sponges. (Thecatastrophic flooding last year in Chinas Yangtzeriver basin was largely the result of deforestation.)

    An oblique approach might also help reducedemand for especially energy- or materials-intensivegoods: if large numbers of people can be convincedto transfer their demand from the goods them-selves to the services that the goods provide, then itmight be possible to encourage consumption pat-terns that do less environmental damage. For exam-

    ple, joint ownership of cars, especially in cities, couldsatisfy needs for occasional private transportation,

    with a little coordination.

    Since you can never have just one effect,always plan to have several.

    Thinking through the likely systemic effects of aplan will help locate the risks, as well as indirectopportunities. Every day, for example, I ride the carpool lanes into Washington D.C., and my conversa-tions with other commuters have led me to suspect

    that this environmentally correct ribbon of asphaltcould actually increase pollution and sprawl, by con-tributing to a positive feedback loop. Heres how Ithink it may work: as the car pool lanes extended out-

    ward from the city, commute times dropped; that would tend to promote the development of bedroomcommunities in ever more remote areas. Eventually,the new developments will cause traffic congestion torebound, and that will create political pressure foranother bout of highway widening. A more systemsensitive policy might have permitted the highway projects only when a county had some realistic planto limit sprawl. (According to one recent estimate,

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    metropolitan Washington is losing open space fasterthan any other area in the United States outside of Californias central valley.) Car pool lanes might thenhave become a means of conserving farmland, insteadof a possible factor in its demise.

    For environmental activists, system sensitivitycould help locate huge political constituencies. Look,for instance, at the potential politics of nitrogen pol-lution. Since a great deal of the nitrogen that isthreatening coral reefs is likely to be agriculturalrunoff, and since much of that runoff is likely to bethe result of highly mechanized factory farming, itfollows that anyone who cares about reefs should alsocare about sustainable agriculture. Obviously, thereverse is true as well: if youre trying to encourageorganic farming in the Mississippi basin, youre con-serving Caribbean reefs. The same kind of politicalreciprocity could be built around renewable energy and forest conservation.

    I dont know the answer and neither do you,but together we can probably find one.

    A system can have qualities that exist only on the system level qualities that cannot be attributeddirectly to any of the components within. No matterhow hard you look, for example, at the individualcharacteristics of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, car-bon, and magnesium, you will never find grounds forinferring the amazing activities of chlorophyllthemolecule that powers photosynthesis. There are sys-tem properties in political life as well: institutional

    pluralism can create a public space that no singleinstitution could have created alone. Thats oneobjective of the balance of powers aimed at in con-stitutional government.

    It should also be possible to build a policy

    system that is smarter and more effective than any of its component groups of policy makers. Consider, forexample, the recent history of the U.S. ForestService. For decades, environmental activists haveaccused the service of managing the countrys forestsalmost exclusively for timber production, with virtu-ally no regard for their inherent natural value.Distrust of the service has fueled a widespread, grass-roots forest conservation movement, which hasgrown increasingly sophisticated in its political andlegal activities, and now even undertakes its own sci-entific studies on behalf of the forests. This move-ment, in turn, has attracted the interest and sympathy of a growing number of officials within the service.Many environmentalists (including this author)

    would argue that things are nowhere near what they should be inside the service, but its possible that

    what we are witnessing here is the creation of a new space for conservationa space that even a muchmore ecologically enlightened Forest Service could-nt have created on its own.

    It remains to be seen whether this forum willprove powerful enough to the save the forests thatinspired it. But in the efforts of the people who arebuilding it, I think I can see, however dimly, a futurein which the worlds dominant cultures re-experiencethe shock of living among forests, prairies, andoceansinstead of among natural resources. Afterall, the forests and prairies are where we camefrom and theyre where we are going. We are thechildren of a vast natural complexity that we willnever fathom.

    Chris Bright is a research associate at the WorldwatchInstitute, senior editor of W ORLD W ATCH , and authorof Life Out of Bounds: Bioinvasion in a Borderless World (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998).

    Harvard Ayers, Jenny Hager, and Charles E. Little, eds., An Appalachian Tragedy: Air Pollution and Tree Death in the Eastern Forests of North America (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1998).

    Osha Gray Davidson,The Enchanted Braid: Coming to Terms with Nature on the Coral Reef (New York: John Wiley,1998).

    Paul Epstein et al.,Marine Ecosystems: Emerging Diseases as Indicators of Change,Health Ecological and EconomicDimensions (HEED) of the Global Change Program (Boston: Center for Health and Global Environment, HavardMedical School, December 1998).

    Robert Jervis, S ystem Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).

    Charles Perrow,Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies(New York: Basic Books, 1984).

    A FEW KEY SOURCES

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