Climate Change, Diplomacy, and National Security

In unpublished written testimony submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee following his confirmation as Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis said what many previous Defense Department officials have said: climate change is a national security concern. "Climate change," Mattis wrote, "is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today."

The written testimony came in the form of replies to questions posed by Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee. In response to one of the questions, Mattis said, "I agree that the effects of a changing climate--such as increased maritime access to the Arctic, rising sea levels, desertification, among others--impact our security situation. I will ensure that the department continues to be prepared to conduct operations today and in the future, and that we are prepared to address the effects of a changing climate on our threat assessments, resources, and readiness."

Last Thursday, in an interview on CNBC, EPA head Scott Pruitt reverted to form, denying that carbon dioxide "is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see." In making this statement, Pruitt contradicted the clear scientific consensus regarding human-induced climate change and its causes. As the graph below (taken from NASA's climate website) indicates, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased from a mean of roughly 250 parts per million (ppm) in the pre-industrial world to 400 ppm at present.

The EPA's website states, "The most effective way to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is to reduce fossil fuel consumption." And yet today President Trump, as expected, began the process of rescinding automobile fuel efficiency standards put in place during the Obama administration. Fossil fuel consumption is affected by a variety of factors (including levels of economic activity), but the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards that were first implemented in 1975 are an important way of insuring that fossil fuel use is limited in the United States.

Trump has said, on multiple occasions, that he thinks global warming is a "hoax." His SecDef says that climate change is already having an impact on international security. The commander-in-chief's climate change denial will clearly make the secretary of defense's job of defending the United States and its interests harder. But so, too, will Trump's plans to slash the State Department's budget by almost a third. Back in 2013, General Mattis told Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), "If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately. So I think it's a cost-benefit ratio. The more that we put into the State Department's diplomacy, hopefully the less we have to put into a military budget as we deal with the outcome of an apparent American withdrawal from the international scene."

Donald Trump has said he would defer to Secretary Mattis on the question of torture. He should do the same on climate change and diplomacy.

Berta Cáceres (1973-2016)

Ilisu (Turkey) . . . Three Gorges (China) . . . Glen Canyon (United States) . . . Itaipu (Brazil/Paraguay) . . . Sardar Sarovar (India). These are some of modern history's most controversial dam projects. Each one promised electrical power, flood control, water for irrigation, and more. But each one also threatened to destroy human communities, wildlife habitats, cultural artifacts, and more.

Add to the list Agua Zarca (Honduras), a planned series of four large dams on the Río Gualcarque. On Thursday the river lost one of its most determined defenders, Berta Cáceres. In a town called "Hope" (La Esperanza), Ms. Cáceres was assassinated by armed men who invaded her home as she slept.

Cáceres was the co-founder of an organization called the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (Copinh). A member of the Lenca ethnic group--the largest in Honduras--Cáceres led Copinh through years of protests against the plan to dam a river the Lenca deemed sacred. At times, Copinh filed legal challenges and lobbied the government to try to prevent the dams from being built. At other times, protesters physically blocked construction crews from gaining access to work sites. The efforts Cáceres made to try to stop the project gained international recognition last year when she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. 

Ms. Cáceres, who was 44 at the time of her death, had four children. She had been threatened with rape and death, she had been followed, and several of her supporters had been killed. No suspects had ever been arrested for the killings or for the threats. After a visit in December 2013, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights noted "a complete absence of the most basic measures to address reports of grave human rights violations in the region." As in Nigeria, Ecuador, Sudan, and Myanmar where oil interests colluded with corrupt governments to violate the rights of indigenous peoples, those supporting the Agua Zarca project in Honduras appear to have turned the government against its own people. Regardless of who actually killed Berta Cáceres, the Honduran government bears responsibility for its failure to protect her and for its failure to pursue justice in the cases of the other peaceful protesters who have been murdered.

For more on the work done by Cáceres and Copinh in an effort to stop the construction of dams on the Río Gualcarque, watch this brief video portrait from the page dedicated to Cáceres on the Goldman Environmental Prize website.

Deadly Air

Wednesday's catastrophic explosions in the Chinese port city of Tianjin are, understandably, attracting greater attention at present, but new research suggests that day-to-day air quality is a far greater threat to human life than random events like the Tianjin disaster.

A statistical analysis by researchers at Berkeley Earth asserts that air pollution in China is responsible for somewhere between 700,000 and 2,200,000 deaths each year. The midpoint of the estimate--1,600,000 deaths per year--translates to 4,400 deaths per day.

The paper, based on detailed records of air-sampling stations in China and neighboring countries combined with World Health Organization frameworks for estimating mortality associated with the diseases most commonly linked to air pollution, is scheduled to be published in PLOS One on August 20. PLOS One is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed science journal that publishes about 30,000 papers per year.

The Berkeley Earth research suggests that much of Beijing's famed air pollution is produced 200 miles away in the industrial areas of Hebei Province. This means that local efforts to mitigate air pollution in advance of the 2022 Winter Olympics will likely be inadequate in the absence of measures addressing the pollution generated by more distant coal-fired power plants.

More on the Berkeley Earth findings, including maps and data sources, can be found here. The study to be published in PLOS One is available here (PDF).

Gas for China

The New York Times reports today that Russia and China have signed a thirty-year agreement for the sale of natural gas to China. The deal, which had been in the works for over a decade, was signed while Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping were in Shanghai for a regional security conference.

While the New York Times story correctly notes the political impetus for the conclusion of this agreement in a setting in which Russia's relationship with Europe has been imperiled by events in Ukraine, it is also worth pointing out the significance of the agreement for China's efforts to address its environmental problems. According to the EPA, the use of natural gas for electricity production generates 1.22 pounds of carbon dioxide CO2 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity. In comparison, bituminous coal generates 2.08 pounds of CO2 per kWh, sub-bituminous coal generates 2.16 pounds of CO2 per kWh, and lignite generates 2.18 pounds of CO2 per kWh. The natural gas advantage is partially offset by the leakage of methane--the principal component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas--into the atmosphere during gas production and transportation, but, at least in the United States, studies suggest that the offsetting effects of leakage are not great enough to overcome the benefits of the ongoing transition from coal to natural gas.

Natural gas is no panacea for air pollution and climate change; energy from wind, water, and the sun remain far better options than any fossil fuel. Nevertheless, changes that can reduce China's dependence on coal--the increase in CO2 emissions from coal in China between 2002 and 2012 was roughly equal to Europe's total CO2 emissions from coal in 2011--should be welcomed even if the alternative (natural gas, in this case) is sub-optimal.

National Climate Assessment 2014

On Tuesday, the latest National Climate Assessment (NCA) was released. Its findings are sobering and leave no room for doubt regarding anthropogenic climate change and its impact on the United States. The report documents a pattern of drought in California and the Southwest, an increase in flooding in the Northeast, increases in extreme weather across the country, and the melting of sea ice, glaciers, and permafrost (with attendant releases of methane, a potent greenhouse gas) in Alaska.

The National Climate Assessment is an intergovernmental effort to collect and synthesize studies of climate change from government, academic, and private-sector sources. It was established by the Global Change Research Act of 1990. Previous reports were issued in 2000 and 2009. Reports are peer-reviewed in a process that includes the participation of a panel of the National Academy of Sciences.

The report is detailed and thoroughly documented. It includes both thematic and regional assessments. Here are just a few of the findings:

• "Temperatures at Earth’s surface, in the troposphere (the active weather layer extending up to about 5 to 10 miles above the ground), and in the oceans have all increased over recent decades." (Read more here.)
• "Heavy downpours are increasing nationally, especially over the last three to five decades. The heaviest rainfall events have become heavier and more frequent, and the amount of rain falling on the heaviest rain days has also increased. Since 1991, the amount of rain falling in very heavy precipitation events has been significantly above average." (Read more here.)
• "Warmer and drier conditions have already contributed to increasing wildfire extent across the western United States, and future increases are projected in some regions. Long periods of record high temperatures are associated with droughts that contribute to dry conditions and drive wildfires in some areas." (Read more here.)

Also this week, former Utah governor and Republican presidential candidate Jon M. Huntsman, Jr., in a New York Times op-ed, urged fellow Republicans to stop "denying the science" and "get back to [their] foundational roots as catalysts for innovation and problem solving." Huntsman wrote, "If Republicans can get to a place where science drives our thinking and actions, then we will be able to make progress." It is good that Huntsman is defending science as a driver of policy--but sad that it should be necessary to do so in addressing the entire Republican Party.

Poisoning the Rice

The environmental news out of China would be bad under any circumstances--as always--but combined with what we're learning about rice, it seems especially worrisome.

China's government has released a study conducted from 2006 to 2013 that found that 19.4 percent of all arable land in the country is contaminated. Cadmium, nickel, and arsenic--products of emissions from Chinese industry--are the chief pollutants in the soil with the heaviest concentrations located in the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and the northeast corner of China.

Meanwhile, studies conducted in the U.S. have found that rice absorbs arsenic and cadmium from the soil all too efficiently. In traditional rice-growing, where a paddy is flooded with water, rice draws arsenic from the soil. But if the amount of water used is reduced in an effort to limit the absorption of arsenic, rice will absorb cadmium instead. Both elements are toxic.

In addition to a massive environmental cleanup, what China needs is not organic rice but a genetically modified form of the grain that is able to avoid rice's normal thirst for cadmium and arsenic. Until that's available, though, it might be best to go with the noodles.

Getting Paid to Hack in China

Panasonic, the Japanese electronics company, has announced that it will begin providing bonus pay to its employees working in China to compensate for the risks posed by China's high levels of air pollution.

A New African Oil Play

After negotiating for years, Uganda's Ministry of Energy has signed a memorandum of understanding with three multinational oil companies to provide for the development of the nation's oil reserves. The three companies involved in the deal announced on February 6 are Tullow Oil PLC (UK), Total SA (France), and CNOOC Ltd. (China). Plans call both for crude oil production and the construction (by another company yet to be selected) of a refinery with a capacity of 60,000 barrels a day. In all, total investment in Uganda's oil sector is expected to reach $15 billion.

Uganda's oil reserves, estimated at 3.5 billion barrels, are fourth largest among states in sub-Saharan Africa (after South Sudan, Angola, and Nigeria). Graham Martin, executive director of Tullow Oil, has said that he expects Ugandan production to reach 220,000 barrels per day based on 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable reserves. The total value of the oil to Uganda could reach $50 billion, a figure equivalent to the country's present annual GDP. (Uganda's GDP per capita--$1,400--ranks it 205th among the 229 states and other jurisdictions listed in the CIA World Factbook.)

There are, of course, significant costs associated with petroleum production, especially on such a scale. Oil reserves are located in an environmentally sensitive area that can't help but call to mind the ecological disasters in the Niger Delta of Nigeria and the Amazon Basin of Ecuador. The government of Uganda has already begun relocating people from the rich farmland near Lake Albert where the refinery is to be built. Then there's the resource curse. A non-democracy like Uganda (where Yoweri Museveni has ruled since 1986) has little chance of liberalization--or, perversely, of significant economic development--while oil is being produced. Uganda's GDP per capita will rise, but there's no guarantee this will improve the lives of anyone in Uganda other than those in the ruling elite.

Meanwhile, in a move widely interpreted as siding with the forces of corruption in his country, Nigeria's president, Goodluck Jonathan, has fired Lamido Sanusi, the governor of Nigeria's central bank. Sanusi proved himself to be unfit for a responsible government position in Nigeria by attempting to draw attention to the fact that billions of dollars from oil revenues are missing from the state treasury.

Some are about to become fabulously wealthy in Uganda. It's a safe bet to say that ordinary Ugandans will not be among them.

Virtual Sunrise Revisited

Strange things happen in China. All the time. This is what the China hand whose views I respect the most (and whom I also happen to live with) tells me all the time. So, I didn't find it too hard to believe that residents of Beijing were getting their fill of sunrise each morning--in spite of the perpetual smog--via large video screens. The photo accompanying the story in the Daily Mail seemed to confirm the tale.

I should have paid more attention to the logo in the lower right corner of the video screen, a logo that seemed to indicate that the video was, in fact, an advertisement for tourism in Shandong Province. Mea culpa.

On the other hand, U.S. State Department air quality monitoring in Beijing currently indicates that the air quality in Beijing has been in the "Hazardous" range ("Everyone should avoid all outdoor exertion.") for the past twenty-four hours. Of course, that's not news. Virtual sunrises would be news.

Perhaps the Shandong Province tourism video would be most effective in luring Beijing-ren to the coast if it showed nothing but sunrises.

Virtual Sunrise

Now that smog in Beijing is once again making it impossible to see the sun, residents are turning to video screens to see the sunrise as it appears along the coast in the somewhat less-polluted Shandong province. Seriously.

The Economic Costs of Climate Change

A draft report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that the failure of states to limit carbon emissions is producing a situation in which efforts to keep the planet livable are likely to require mitigation efforts that will be enormously expensive. The choice the report presents is between accepting significant economic costs now to move away from fossil fuels or face staggering economic costs in the future to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and store them underground. One point that argues strongly for changing energy policies now is this:  At present, the world is spending far more to subsidize fossil fuel use than to develop alternative energy sources.

For more, see the stories in the New York Times and the Guardian.

Asia's "Great Smog"

Harbin, a city of roughly 6,000,000 in northeastern China (and the venue for the celebrated Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival each winter), is experiencing a level of air pollution reminiscent of London’s “Great Smog” in 1952.

The New York Times’ Sinosphere blog reports that the air quality index (AQI) in Harbin topped out at 500 (the highest number on a scale where only numbers under 50 are considered healthy), forcing the closure of schools and the city’s airport. PM 2.5 (especially hazardous particulate matter under 2.5 microns in diameter) was up to 1,000 milligrams per cubic meter. In contrast, the AQI today in Shanghai, where the air is none too clean, has ranged between 127 and 183 with PM 2.5 generally under 100 milligrams per cubic meter. (This data, updated hourly, is available from the U.S. Department of State’s mission in China on this site.)

Although the start of the winter heating season has exacerbated air quality problems in Harbin, where coal-fired plants supply most municipal heat and power, a development-environmental quality dilemma exists across China. There is abundant coal in China, but coal is not clean. Consequently, China's leadership is facing demands for forms of development that are more sustainable than what has been offered for the past thirty years.

Coal barges on the Huangpu in Shanghai.

Victims of Wars Long Ago

Next Sunday will mark the 99^th anniversary of Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war against Serbia, an event that prompted, in quick succession, Russian mobilization for war, the German invasion of Belgium, and French and British declarations of war against Germany. Preparations for the Great War were years in the making; nonetheless, its onset somehow seemed improvised, spontaneous, even accidental.

The last veterans of World War I have all died--the last one on February 4, 2012--but the weapons of that war survive in large numbers in the fields of Belgium and western France. From time to time, they are unearthed and claim new victims. A recent story in the Telegraph describes the work of Dirk Vanparys, a member of the Belgian army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company. On a recent, all-too-normal day, Vanparys and his team collected 73 unexploded shells and 57 grenades and fuses that had been found by farmers. Many of the shells that are recovered on a regular basis contain mustard gas, chlorine gas, or phosgene--agents that killed and disabled hundreds of thousands of troops along the Western Front during the many spasms of chemical warfare in World War I. Four months ago, seven people were hospitalized after a German shell containing gas exploded as a trench was being dug to lay cable south of Ypres.

Weapons used in World War I will continue to kill and maim completely innocent people for years to come. In 2012, Belgian and French authorities collected 185 tons of munitions left from World War I; the total collected in 2011 was 274 tons. Such totals are possible because nearly one and a half billion shells were fired during the war.

In preparation for the Battle of the Somme, an assault by British troops on German trenches that began on July 1, 1916, British artillery fired 1.5 million shells over five days. Tunnels dug under the German lines were packed with explosives—as much as thirty tons of explosives in a single mine—and set off as the assault began. The final artillery barrage—224,221 shells in a span of 65 minutes—created a rumble that, Adam Hochschild writes, “could be heard as far away as Hampstead Heath in London,” almost 200 miles away. In spite of this extraordinary effort to “soften” German defenses, the first day of the Battle of the Somme cost the British Army over 57,000 casualties, including almost 20,000 killed.

A story posted yesterday by the McClatchy News Service describes another unending war. Forty years after the end of U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War (or, to the Vietnamese, the American War), there are still cases of children being born with severe birth defects caused by Agent Orange, a chemical defoliant used by the United States in Vietnam from 1961 to 1971. The Vietnamese Red Cross estimates that Agent Orange has affected 3,000,000 people in Vietnam, including 150,000 children born with birth defects since the fall of Saigon in 1975.  While the United States has, since 1991, extended disability benefits for any of fifteen diseases linked to Agent Orange to U.S. military personnel who served in Vietnam, it has provided little assistance to the Vietnamese and has avoided acknowledging any responsibility for health problems caused by the use of the chemical. There is a U.S.-funded effort underway to clean up chemical contamination near the Da Nang International Airport, which was used by the U.S. Air Force during the war, but this site is just one of many Agent Orange “hot spots” in Vietnam.

There is some evidence that humankind is getting better at calculating the costs of war and that, as a result, we have become more successful at avoiding it than we have been in the past. What World War I is teaching us now, and what the Vietnam War seems destined to echo, is this: the costs of a war should be calculated out to a century (or more) beyond its conclusion.

Race to the North

It is a pleasure to note the recent publication of "Race to the North: China's Arctic Strategy and Its Implications" in the Spring 2013 issue of the Naval War College Review. Shiloh Rainwater, a senior Political Science major at Pepperdine, is the author of this important paper analyzing Chinese interests in the Arctic and China's desire to join the Arctic Council.

The cover art for the issue is linked to Rainwater's article, with this description:

Open water in the Arctic ice cap, in a U.S. Coast Guard image posted on the website of the U.S. Geological Survey. This 2009 image, which the photographer titles Reflections, was taken in August, but open water is appearing in ever-greater expanses of the region and for ever-larger proportions of the year—a fact that has drawn the attention of nations far from the pole. In this issue, Shiloh Rainwater explores the Arctic interests of one important non-Arctic nation, the People’s Republic of China.

I am delighted to have served as the thesis advisor for Rainwater on this paper. Congratulations, Shiloh.

COP18

On Monday, the 18th Conference of Parties (COP18) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 8th Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol will begin in Doha, Qatar. (The agenda is available here.) COP18 has a number of objectives, but the most important involves negotiations toward a climate change treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Under the Durban Platform agreed to at COP17 in Durban, South Africa last year, a new "legal outcome" is to be developed by 2015.

Nathan Hultman, a Brookings Institution fellow, provides an excellent summary of the road to Doha in this post. And, via Andrew C. Revkin's Dot Earth blog at the New York Times, there's this brief--but insightful--video on twenty years of climate change negotiations.

Climate and Social Stress

In a report commissioned by the U.S. intelligence community, the National Research Council has concluded that the acceleration of climate change means "disruptive environmental events" will occur with increasing frequency and growing impact on national and global security. The study, titled Climate and Social Stress: Implications for Security Analysis, was prepared by a team led by John Steinbruner, director of the University of Maryland's Center for International and Security Studies.

The study's summary states:

     Anthropogenic climate change can reasonably be expected to increase the frequency and intensity of a variety of potentially disruptive environmental events--slowly at first, but then more quickly. Some of this change is already discern- ible. Many of these events will stress communities, societies, governments, and the globally integrated systems that support human well-being. Science is unlikely ever to be able to predict the timing, magnitude, and precise location of these events a decade in advance, but much is already known that can inform security analysis, including details about the character of events that are becoming more likely and about the general trajectory of increasing risk.

The New York Times summarizes the report and includes comments from Steinbruner in an article here.

The Militarization of the Ivory Trade

The world is currently experiencing "what is likely to be the greatest percentage loss of elephants in history," according to Richard G. Ruggiero of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. A very compelling story in today's New York Times describes the problem and its causes, which include the sale of ivory to finance the operations of both rebel forces, among them the Lord's Resistance Army led by fugitive war crimes suspect Joseph Kony, and state-based military forces, such as the Ugandan army that has been pursuing Kony with American support. Underlying the calculus that turns elephant poaching into weapons is a thriving black market driven by demand in China where ivory now sells for as much as $1000 per pound. Like oil in Nigeria, coltan in Angola, and diamonds in Sierra Leone a few years ago, ivory is now fueling conflict, enriching transnational criminal organizations, and testing the limits of international cooperation.

The dimensions of the problem are visible in the fact that 38.8 tons of ivory--representing over 4,000 dead elephants--were seized by customs officials worldwide last year. In Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, park rangers use military-style tactics  while wielding machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades to battle poachers. They are commonly outnumbered and outgunned.

Read the story. It provides an outstanding case study of the way that global demand for scarce natural resources can drive armed conflict.

Climate Change and Culture Wars

To develop a better appreciation of why international cooperation to limit greenhouse gases is so important, take three minutes to watch this animated graphic presentation of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over time.  The graphs were produced and animated by the Earth System Research Laboratory (Global Monitoring Division) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

(Go here to see the full-resolution version.)

Now consider that documents leaked earlier this week from a libertarian organization called the Heartland Institute describe plans to develop a curriculum for public school science classes questioning the reality of human-induced climate change.  Although the Heartland Institute says that one of the documents is a fake--a claim bolstered by Megan McArdle here--the organization concedes that others were sent unwittingly by an employee to a person posing as a board member with a new email address. (In 2009, the Heartland Institute was among the organizations that publicized emails stolen from the accounts of scientists in an effort to discredit their work.  Some of those scientists responded to the new leaks with an open letter to the Heartland Institute.)

As the scientists' letter points out, it's one thing to disagree on policy responses to a problem such as climate change, but it's something else entirely to distort the facts.

Trafficking in Toxic Waste

Transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) make money both by trading in illegal commodities (e.g., drugs and endangered species) and by violating regulations related to legal forms of commerce (e.g., weapons sales using false end-user certificates). According to an informant, the Mafia is now making money by contracting for the disposal of toxic waste and illegally scuttling the ships that transport it.

Eighteen miles off the coast of Calabria in southwestern Italy, a robotic camera has photographed a sunken ship that appears to be loaded with toxic waste containers. The information told an Italian judge that the ship was one of three that he blew up as part of a Mafia scheme to profit from lucractive toxic waste disposal business.

If the waste aboard the ship proves to be radioactive, the Italian government has promised to search for up to 30 additional ships that may have been sunk by the Mafia in recent years. Greenpeace maintains a list of ships with suspect cargoes that says have disappeared off the coasts of Italy and Greece.

What's a Lover to Do?

This comes too late to provide any Valentine's Day relief, but, as a public service, I nonetheless want to recommend an article in the February 2008 issue of Human Rights Quarterly (vol. 30, no. 1): "Flowers, Diamonds, and Gold: The Destructive Public Health, Human Rights, and Environmental Consequences of Symbols of Love," by Martin Donohoe.

Donohoe writes:

On Valentine's Day, anniversaries, and throughout the year, suitors and lovers buy cut flowers and diamond and gold jewelry for the objects of their affection. Their purchases are in part a consequence of timely traditions maintained by aggressive marketing. Most buyers are unaware that in gifting their lovers with these aesthetically beautiful symbols, they are supporting industries which damage the environment, utilize forced labor, cause serious acute and chronic health problems, and contribute to violent conflicts.

Cutting to the recommendations, Donohoe touts http://www.organicbouquet.com/ and the Veriflora certification system for flowers, certified conflict-free diamonds (with that status ascertained through aggressive questioning of the jeweler selling the diamonds), and gold purchases consistent with the "No Dirty Gold" campaign. Of course, there are also alternatives to flowers, diamonds, and gold:

Substitute gifts include cards (ideally printed on recycled paper), poems, photos, collages, videos, art, home improvement projects, homemade meals, and donations to charities. Consider alternatives to the traditional diamond engagement and gold wedding rings, such as recycled or vintage gold: old gold can be melted down and made into new jewelry. Other options include eco-jewelry made from recycled or homemade glass and coconut beads. Purchasing handicrafts constructed by indigenous peoples from outlets that return the profits to the artisans and their communities provides wide-ranging social and economic benefits. Such tokens of affection will be rendered more meaningful through their lack of association with death and destruction and because they symbolize justice and hope for the future.

That's the advice, ladies and gentlemen. Good luck implementing it.