Dear EarthTalk: How is it that global warming could negatively impact water supplies in the U.S.? -- Penny Wilcox, Austin, TX

Climate change promises to have a very big impact on water supplies in the United States as well as around the world. A recent study commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a leading environmental group, and carried out by the consulting firm Tetra Tech found that one out of three counties across the contiguous U.S. should brace for water shortages by mid-century as a result of human induced climate change. The group found that 400 of these 1,100 or so counties will face “extremely high risks of water shortages.”

According to Tetra Tech’s analysis, parts of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas will be hardest hit by warming-related water shortages. The agriculturally focused Great Plains and arid Southwest are at highest risk of increasing water demand outstripping fast dwindling supplies.

While the mechanisms behind this predicted dwindling of water supplies is complex, key factors include: rising sea levels and encroaching ocean water absorbing lower elevation freshwater sources; rising surface temperatures causing faster evaporation of existing reservoirs; and increasing wildfires stripping terrestrial landscapes of their ability to retain water in soils.

Researchers have already begun to notice dwindling water supplies across the American West in recent years, given less accumulation of snow in the region’s mountains as temperatures rise. According to a 2008 study out of the Scripps Institute for Oceanography and published in the journal Science, Western snowpack has been melting earlier than it did in the past thanks to global warming, leading to markedly longer dry periods through the late spring and summer months in states already suffering from extended droughts. Given that the length and strength of these changes over the last 50 years cannot be explained by natural variations, researchers believe human induced climate change is the culprit.

The upshot of these changes is that Americans of every stripe need to curtail their water usage—from farmers irrigating their crops to homeowners watering their lawns to you and I taking shorter showers and turning off the tap while brushing our teeth. Even more important, water and resource policy managers need to conceive of new paradigms for the management of freshwater reserves to make the most of what we do have. And all of us need to work together to cut down on the emissions of greenhouse gases that have led to global warming in the first place.

Analysts also worry that warming-related water shortages could erupt into conflict, especially in parts of the world where one country or group controls water resources needed by others across national borders, such as the Middle East where already five percent of the world’s population relies on just one percent of the world’s fresh water. Parts of Africa, India and Asia are also at risk for water-related conflicts. American policymakers hope that the situation won’t get that dire in the U.S., but only time will tell.

Photo: Comstock

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Dear EarthTalk: Freight companies like FedEx, UPS and all those 18 wheelers on the highways probably generate a lot of pollution and global warming. Is anything being done to address this?  -- Michael Brown, Washington, DC

Freight companies operating in the U.S. and beyond do generate significant amounts of pollution. While transportation technologies and fuels have gotten more efficient in recent years, freight demands have grown considerably over the past two decades. Today, in the U.S. alone, for example, freight is responsible for about a quarter of all transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Most freight trucks, locomotives and ships run on diesel engines, which are major sources of emissions of nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and carbon dioxide (CO2). Repeated exposure to nitrogen oxide-based smog and particulate matter has been linked to a wide range of human health problems, and we all know what CO2 emissions are doing to the planet’s atmosphere and ecosystems in terms of global warming.

According to a 2005 analysis by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration (FHA), heavy duty trucks are the biggest villains, accounting for 77.8 percent of total U.S. freight greenhouse gas emissions. Boat, train and airplane freight contribute10.8, 8.7 and 2.8 percent respectively.

Besides filling up loads completely and keeping equipment well tuned, shippers can reduce emissions via smarter operations and procedures. Software developed by UPS’s Roadnet helps logistics managers re-engineer their fleet routing, preventing tons of emissions and saving millions of dollars and in the process.

Newer Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emissions standards aim to reduce nitrogen oxide and particulate matter pollution from freight operators upwards of 60 percent by 2020. They are a step in the right direction, but the failure of Congress to pass substantive federal legislation limiting CO2 emissions means that a growing freight sector will continue to pump out more and more greenhouse gases.

A recently released report by the tri-lateral North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA’s) Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) lays out a vision for how to make freight—the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in North America after electricity generation—more efficient and less polluting across Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.

The report identifies some scary trends. For example, emissions from freight-related vehicles grew 74 percent between 1990 and 2008—some 40 percent more than emissions growth from passenger vehicles over the same time span. Also, while emissions by light duty vehicles are expected to drop 12 percent by 2030, freight truck emissions are expected to grow by 20 percent. To start turning the freight sector around, CEC recommends that the three countries party to NAFTA start shifting to lower carbon fuels, putting a price on carbon emissions and replacing crumbling infrastructure. These fixes won’t be cheap, but CEC claims they will save money in the long run and clean up of North American freight altogether.

Photo: Thinkstock

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Dear EarthTalk: Aren’t environmental issues primarily about health? Detractors like to trivialize environmentalists as “tree huggers,” but the bottom line is that pollution makes us sick, right? Wouldn’t people care more if they had a better understanding of that? -- Tim Douglas, Stowe, VT

No doubt many of the ways we harm our environment come back to haunt us in the form of sickness and death.  The realization that the pesticide-laced foods we eat, the smokestack-befouled air we breathe and the petrochemical-based products we use negatively affect our quality of life is a big part of the reason so many people have “gone green” in recent years.

Just following the news is enough to green anyone. Scientific American reported in 2009 that a joint U.S./Swedish study looking into the effects of household contaminants discovered that children who live in homes with vinyl floors—which can emit hazardous chemicals called phthalates—are twice as likely to develop signs of autism as kids in other homes. Other studies have shown that women exposed to high levels of polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants common in cushions, carpet padding and mattresses—97 percent of us have detectable levels of these chemicals in our bloodstreams—are more likely to have trouble getting pregnant and suffer from other fertility issues as a result. Cheaply produced drywall made in China can emit so much sulfur gas that it not only corrodes electrical wiring but also causes breathing problems, bloody noses and headaches for building occupants. The list goes on and on....

But perhaps trumping all of these examples is the potential disastrous health effects of global warming. Carbon dioxide emissions may not be directly responsible for health problems at or near their point of release, but in aggregate they can cause lots of distress. According to the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, climate change over the coming decades is likely to increase rates of allergies, asthma, heart disease and cancer, among other illnesses. Also, it is quite likely that, as global temperature rises, diseases that were previously found only in warmer areas of the world may show up increasingly in other, previously cooler areas, where people have not yet developed natural defenses against them. And the loss of rain forest that accompanies increases in temperature means less access to undiscovered medicines and degradation of the environment’s ability to sustain our species.

Given the link between environmental problems and human health, more of us are realizing that what may seem like exorbitant up-front costs for environmental clean-up may well pay us dividends in the end when we see our overall health care costs go down and our loved ones living longer, healthier lives.

To help bridge the understanding gap between environmental problems and human health, the nonprofit Environmental Health Sciences offers the free website, Environmental Health News, which features daily reports on research showing how man-made environmental problems correspond to a wide range of individual and public health problems. Even your local TV station or newspaper likely carries an occasional story about the health effects of environmental pollution. We don’t have to look very hard to find examples of environmental neglect leading to human suffering. But with newfound public awareness and the commitment of younger generations to a cleaner future, we are moving in a good direction.

Photo courtesy of Thinkstock

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Dear EarthTalk: I understand that China is about to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest global warming polluter. What is China doing to address this issue as well as its other environmental impacts as such a populous nation? -- Sophie N., Andover, MA

A factory in China at the Yangtse River

Actually, China passed the U.S. as the world’s leading greenhouse gas emitter back in 2006 and today produces some 17 percent of the world’s total carbon dioxide output. According to the China Daily news service, air and water pollution, combined with widespread use of food additives and pesticides, make cancer the top killer in China. Meanwhile, World Bank data show that, based on the European Union’s air quality standards, only one percent of the country’s 560 million urban inhabitants breathe air deemed safe. But many Chinese insist that all this environmental trouble is part of the cost of developing into a world superpower, and government leaders there are hesitant to impose restrictions on economic development.

Nevertheless the Chinese are starting to take action. In December 2009 at the Copenhagen global climate talks, China announced plans to slow greenhouse gas emission increases relative to economic growth by 40-50 percent between 2005 and 2020, and use renewable fuels for 15 percent of its energy. China also committed to increasing forest cover by 40 million hectares by 2020 (forests absorb carbon dioxide).

But even with such measures, analysts say China’s carbon dioxide output will still increase a staggering 90 percent in the next decade, assuming eight percent economic growth. While international negotiators were pleased to finally secure a commitment from the Chinese, it was a far cry from the fast and binding emissions cuts many scientists say are necessary to stave off potentially cataclysmic climate change.

Regarding other pollution, China is a signatory to the Stockholm Convention, which governs the control and phase-out of major persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including many pesticides, PCBs and other chemicals. China has committed to eliminating the production, import and use of pollutants covered under the treaty, and will establish an inventory of POP contaminated sites and remediation plans by 2015.

Other green strides China has made include 2008’s nationwide ban on plastic shopping bags. Before the ban, China was using 37 million barrels of crude oil annually to make the bags that would no doubt come back to haunt people, wildlife, land and water bodies as litter. China has also signed on to an international effort sponsored by the United Nations and the Global Environment Facility to phase out incandescent lightbulbs over the next decade in favor of more efficient varieties. China makes 70 percent of the world’s supply of lightbulbs, so the switch could have a big impact on energy usage for lighting around the world.

China is also no slouch when it comes to manufacturing green technologies and now produces more solar panels and wind turbines than any other country. And the Chinese government recently committed $216 billion in subsidies to further develop the nation’s green technology sector. A recent report by the non-profit Pew Environment Group found that in 2009 China spent two times as much as the U.S. to fund so-called “green markets,” and close to 50 percent of world expenditures overall.

Photo by High Contrast, courtesy Wikipedia

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Dear EarthTalk: In my business courses in college, we were taught that ecological degradation was an “externality”—something outside the purview of economic analyses. Now that the environment is of such concern, are economists beginning to rethink this? -- Josh Dawson, Flagstaff, AZ

By definition, economic externalities are the indirect negative (or positive) side effects, considered un-quantifiable in dollar terms, of other economic acts. For example, a negative externality of a power plant that is otherwise producing a useful good (electricity) is the air pollution it generates. In traditional economics, the harmful effect of the pollution (smog, acid rain, global warming) on human health and the environment is not factored in as a cost in the overall economic equation. And as the economists go, so go the governments that rely on them. The result is that most nations do not consider environmental and other externalities in their calculations of gross domestic product (GDP) and other key economic indicators (which by extension are supposed to be indicators of public health and well-being).

For decades environmentalists have argued that economics should take into account the costs borne by such externalities in order to discern the true overall value to society of any given action or activity. The company or utility that operates the polluting factory, for instance, should be required to compensate the larger society by paying for the pollution it produces so as to offset the harm it does.

So-called “cap-and-trade” schemes are one real-world way of monetizing a negative externality: Big polluters must buy the right to generate limited amounts of carbon dioxide (and they can trade such rights with other companies that have found ways to lower their carbon footprints, thus creating an incentive for polluters to clean up their acts). While cap-and-trade was invented in the U.S. to clean up acid rain pollution, it is a model used in Europe but not yet in America, which has yet to pass legislation mandating it. Until Congress acts to regulate the output of carbon dioxide in the U.S.—via cap-and-trade means or others—such emissions will remain “external” to the economics of carrying on business.

Recent news that has many greens excited is that the World Bank, the leading financier of development projects around poorer parts of the globe, is starting to think outside the traditional economic box. This past October, World Bank president Robert Zoellick told participants at a conference for the Convention on Biological Diversity (an international treaty signed by 193 countries—not including the U.S.—that went into effect in 1993 to sustain biodiversity) that “the natural wealth of nations should be a capital asset valued in combination with its financial capital, manufactured capital and human capital.” Zoellick’s comments are the first sign from the World Bank of its recognition of the need to consider externalities in any overall economic assessment. “[We] need to reflect the vital carbon storage services that forests provide and the coastal protection values that come from coral reefs and mangroves,” he added.

Critics are still waiting to see if the World Bank will walk its talk. “It’s a fine rhetorical start,” says the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin in his blog. “But the  announcement by the bank of a $10 million ‘Save Our Species’ fund, with the United Nations Global Environmental Facility and International Union for Conservation of Nature, seems quite piddling in a world where money flows in the trillions,” he adds. Indeed, we may still be a ways off from including our environmental impacts into our measures of social wealth and health, but at least the World Bank has gone on record as to the need to do so, and you can be sure that environmental advocates will be working to hold its feet to the fire.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Dear EarthTalk: Is it now feasible to provide all of a home’s energy needs—including air conditioning—with solar power alone? If so, why hasn’t solar caught on more, particularly in U.S. “Sun Belt” states from southern California east to Florida? -- Tim Douglas, Burlington, VT

It has been possible for years if not decades to provide all of a home’s energy needs with solar power. The technology is here and is only getting more efficient and less obtrusive every day. The only real stumbling block is cost: Solar systems capable of meeting all of an average U.S. home’s energy needs start at around $25,000. Given how inexpensive the grid-based power we now get all across the country remains—and, bear in mind that many utilities are working more and more renewable energy sources, like wind power, into their mix—going solar alone just doesn’t pencil out economically for most people.

Of course, many of us are starting to think beyond our individual bottom lines when it comes to energy usage as global warming nips at our heels. The federal and many state governments feel likewise and have set up generous rebates and incentives to encourage homeowners (and businesses) to embrace alternative renewable energy sources (including solar but also, wind, geothermal, biomass and even tidal power, among other choices). The federal government offers up a 30 percent personal tax credit (with no ceiling) on the cost of photovoltaic or other solar installations. To find a list of what’s available from states, check out the free listings at the website of the Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE).

In the nation’s top solar market, California, residents can cash in on some serious state-funded rebates as well. Thanks to the California Solar Initiative (CSI), a $3.2 billion solar rebate program funded by electric ratepayers, Golden State homeowners can get as much as a third or more off the cost to install a residential solar system. CSI’s website, Go Solar California, provides links to several online calculators that take into account home size and location as well as state and federal incentives to help you do the figuring.

In Arizona, homeowners can get 25 percent back (capped at $1,000 per residence) from the state on the cost of installing photovoltaic panels or other solar harvesters. Some Arizona utilities offer incentives, too. In Texas, homeowners who install solar panels can get a tax credit (capped at $2,000) for 30 percent of the cost of a system. Utilities in the Lone Star State also offer incentives for those who generate their own solar power, and some will buy the power back from customers via a program called “net-metering.”

Meanwhile, the state of Florida offers a huge $4/watt rebate (capped at a whopping $20,000 for homeowners and $100,000 for businesses) for purchasers of solar photovoltaic systems there. But the website SolarPowerRocks.com reports that funding is running out and the program could end any day. Like Texas, Florida offers solar customers the ability to sell excess power back to the grid.

Even with such rebates, and the fact that solar energy is essentially free once the equipment to harness it is installed, the costs of converting an existing home to solar power is tough to swallow for most people, given that the cost to instead connect to the existing grid is zero. But if you’re building a new home, incorporating a solar system from the get-go is simply a matter of choosing solar over something else.

Photo: Student Design and Experiential Learning Center, courtesy Flickr

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

A new paper published by the asset management arm of Deutsche Bank AG challenges the claims of climate change skeptics and argues that global warming “is already happening and is a serious long term threat.”

“There is a very high probability that we are already heading towards a future where warming will persist for thousands of years,” the paper warns. “Failing to insure against that high probability does not seem a gamble worth taking.”

The paper was published by DB Climate Change Advisors, an investment division of Deutsche Asset Management which pursues investment opportunities stemming from climate change. Deutsche Asset Management says the division is now “one of the leading climate change investors in the world,” with about $4 billion under management as of March 2009.

Mark Fulton, Global Head of Climate Change Investment Research, said the bank asked scientists at the Columbia Climate Center at the Earth Institute, at Columbia University in New York, to examine major skeptic claims in the light of the latest peer reviewed scientific literature and to weigh the arguments of each side in the balance.

“Although the scientific community has already addressed the skeptic arguments in some detail, there is still a public perception that scientists have been dismissive of the skeptic viewpoint, so the intention in this report is to correct the balance,” Mr. Fulton said. “The paper's clear conclusion is that the primary claims of the skeptics do not undermine the assertion that human-made climate change is already happening and is a serious long term threat.”

Among a number of citations, the paper notes the recent publication on the State of the Climate by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which analyzed over thirty indicators, or climate variables.  That report concluded that “the Earth is warming and that the past decade was the warmest on record,” Mr. Fulton said.

The Deutsche Bank paper concludes: “Our best projections indicate that the most negative impacts of climate change will occur in nations that are already vulnerable to other stressors such as rapid population growth and extreme poverty.  Humans have survived climate changes of the past, though never with global populations of the current magnitude.  One might ask whether survival of the human species is an adequate standard of success.”

Investors filed a record 101 climate and energy-related resolutions with 88 U.S. and Canadian companies in 2010, a 50% increase from the year-earlier, according to activist shareholder organizations.

A record 51 resolutions were withdrawn after the companies agreed to climate change and energy-related commitments.

Sixteen of the 42 resolutions that went to a vote achieved 30 percent or greater support, nearly three times the number that achieved that level of support in 2009.   The average vote for the 42 resolutions voted on so far this year was 24.6 percent, up from 21.7 percent last year.

The statistics were compiled by Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups, and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a coalition of nearly 300 faith-based institutional investors.

”The BP spill is only the latest reminder of why investors are ratcheting up their attention to climate and other environmental risks across their portfolios,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres. “This year’s record results send a powerful message that companies should boost their attention to these issues.”

“If our portfolio companies are to provide long-term shareowner value, they need to be proactive, not reactive, in addressing climate change and other ESG matters,” said Jack Ehnes, CEO of CalSTRS, the second largest pension fund in the U.S.   Mr. Ehenes said the record results for shareholder filings in 2010 are “an encouraging sign that investors and companies are paying increasing attention to long-term drivers of value.”

Among the resolutions, requests for companies to provide a corporate responsibility or sustainability report have “increasingly resonated with investors,” according to Tim Smith, Senior Vice President for Walden Asset Management.  He  pointed to a  record 60 percent vote at Layne Christensen and votes at Gentex and St. Jude in the low 30s and low 40s, respectively. “We believe this signals a tipping point for the case for transparency on CSR,” he said.

Correction 7/26: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the comments of Walden Asset Management’s Tim Smith in discussing vote results at Gentex.

The issues with key high votes and share value of votes in favor, according to Ceres and ICCR, were:

Adopt greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals:
CMS Energy, 35.1%  ($729 million)
ExxonMobil, 27.2%   ($39.7 billion)
Massey Energy, 53.1% ($852 million)
Ryland, 37.4%  ($234 million)

Issue a sustainability report including GHG reduction strategies:
Boston Properties, 44.1%  ($3.2 billion)
Chesapeake Energy, 31.5%  ($2.4 billion)
EQT Corporation, 37.4%  ($1.4 billion)
Federal Realty Investment Trust, 44.6%  ($1.4 billion)
Layne Christensen, 60.3%  ($234 million)
St. Jude Medical, 42.8%  ($3.1 billion)

Report on the environmental and health risks associated with coal ash:
CMS Energy, 43.1%  ($875 billion)
MDU Resources Group, 40.5%    ($962 million)
The Southern Company, 21.0%  ($2.6 billion)

Report on risks posed by the environmental, social and economic challenges associated with oil sands operations:
ConocoPhillips, 27.1%  ($13.8 billion)
ExxonMobil, 26.4% ($38.3 billion)

Dear EarthTalk: Is there any link between increased volcanic activity—such as the recent eruptions in Iceland, Alaska and elsewhere—and global warming? -- Ellen McAndrew, via e-mail

It’s impossible to pin isolated natural phenomena—like an individual volcanic eruption—on global warming, but some researchers insist that there is a correlation between the two in some instances.

“Global warming melts ice and this can influence magmatic systems,” reports Freysteinn Sigmundsson of the Nordic Volcanological Centre at the University of Iceland. Her research with Carolina Pagli of the University of Leeds in England suggests that rocks cannot expand to turn into magma—the primary “feedstock” for volcanic eruptions—when they are under the pressure of a big ice cap pushing down on them. As the theory goes, melting ice caps relieve that pressure and allow the rocks to become magma. This in turn increases the chances of larger and/or more frequent eruptions in affected regions, from Iceland to Alaska to Patagonia to Antarctica.

As for Iceland specifically, the eruption of Mt. Ejyafjallajökull that shut down some air travel for weeks this past spring cannot be blamed on changing climate: That volcano lies under a relatively small icecap which would not exert enough pressure to affect the creation of magma. But Sigmundsson and Pagli found that the melting of about a tenth of Iceland’s biggest icecap, Vatnajokull, over the last century caused the land to rise an inch or so per year and led to the growth of an underground mass of magma measuring a third of a cubic mile. Similar processes, they say, led to a surge in volcanic eruptions in Iceland at the end of the last ice age, and similarly increased volcanic activity is expected to occur there in the future.

On the flip side, volcanic eruptions can exacerbate the ongoing effects of climate change: Already retreating glaciers can lose all their ice when something below them blows. Of course, many volcanoes around the world are not subject to pressure from ice caps, and scientists stress that there is little if any evidence linking global warming to eruptions in such situations.

Some have theorized that large volcanic eruptions contribute to global warming by spewing large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the stratosphere. But the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by even a large and ongoing volcanic eruption is but a drop in the bucket in comparison to our annual output of industrial and automotive carbon emissions.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, greenhouse gas emissions from volcanoes make up less than one percent of those generated by human endeavors. Also, ash clouds and sulfur dioxide released from volcanoes shield some sunlight from reaching the Earth and as such can have a cooling effect on the planet. The 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines—a much larger eruption than what occurred recently in Iceland—caused an average cooling of half a degree centigrade worldwide during the following year. Regardless, single volcanic eruptions, even if they last for weeks or months, are unlikely to send enough gas or ash up into the skies to have any long term effect on the planet’s climate.

Photo: The Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica, by Frank Kehren, courtesy Flickr

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

Dear EarthTalk: What is “kenaf” paper? From what I've heard, it’s good for the environment. But what exactly are its benefits and where can I obtain some? -- Tiffany Mikamo, via e-mail

Kenaf, a fast-growing, non-invasive annual hibiscus plant related to cotton, okra and hemp, makes ideal paper fiber as well as great source material for burlap, clothing, canvas, particleboard and rope. Its primary use around the world today is for animal forage, but humans enjoy its high-protein seed oil to add a nutritious and flavorful kick to a wide range of foods. In fact, kenaf has been grown for centuries in Africa, China and elsewhere for these and other purposes, but environmentalists see its future in replacing slower-growing trees as our primary source for paper.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) research shows that kenaf yields some six to 10 tons of dry fiber per acre per year, which is three to five times more than the yield of Southern Pine trees—now the dominant paper pulp source in the U.S. And to top it off, researchers believe kenaf absorbs more carbon dioxide—the chief “greenhouse gas” behind global warming—than any other plant or tree growing. Some 45 percent of dry kenaf is carbon pulled down from the atmosphere via photosynthesis.

Bill Loftus tends kenaf plants at the Kenaf Research Farm.

No wonder environmentalists are so bullish on kenaf for our common future. “The more kenaf we grow, we can not only absorb significant amounts of the carbon dioxide that is responsible for global warming,” says Bill Loftus of the non-profit Kenaf Research Farm, “but also educate the world on how to be self-sustainable through kenaf’s many properties of providing food, shelter and economic opportunities.”

As to its use for paper, 10 major U.S. newspapers have tested kenaf-based newsprint and were pleasantly surprised by how well it held up and how crisply it displayed text and pictures. And since it is already brighter than wood-based pulp, it requires less bleaching before it can be used to carry ink. But since kenaf is not mass-produced the way paper trees are on big plantations across the Southeast and West, it still costs more than regular paper and as such has not gone mass market, despite its environmental.

Also, while some policymakers and many environmentalists would like to see our paper feedstock switched from Southern Pine and other trees to kenaf, entrenched timber companies with big investments in tree farms (and who employ many a Washington lobbyist) do not. And with many timber companies already suffering economically, lawmakers are unlikely to mandate changes that could make matters worse.

Even if kenaf doesn’t become the paper of tomorrow, it may still have a bright future. The Kenaf Research Farm reports that  Toyota is also experimenting with using kenaf to reinforce the sugarcane- and maize-based biopolymers it hopes can replace many of the plastic and metal parts in the vehicles it is designing today.

Your best bet for finding some kenaf paper is to try a specialty art supply or stationery store. One good online source is The Natural Abode. Photographers might try using kenaf photo paper, such as Pictorico’s ART Kenaf, in their ink jet printers to give their snaps a unique look and a green pedigree.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.