12 December, 2010

Winsome Constance Kindness Medal for 2011

We have again selected an outstanding recipient of the Winsome Constance Kindness Medal for 2011 and we are delighted to advise that the recipient is Dr T. Colin Campbell from New York.


The 2011 Winsome Constance Kindness recipient: Professor T.Collin Campbell





Dr. Ian Gawler, last years recipient of the medal,  kindly accept the award on Colin’s behalf.



Colin’s CV


T. Colin Campbell, PhD

Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus
of Nutritional Biochemistry (Cornell)
&
Author of. "The China Study. Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long Term Health" (Campbell TC and Campbell, TM II, 2005)

T. Colin Campbell, who was trained at Cornell (M.S., Ph.D.) and MIT (Research Associate) in nutrition, biochemistry and toxicology, spent 10 years on the faculty of Virginia Tech's Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition before returning to the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell in 1975 where he presently holds his Endowed Chair (now Emeritus).

His principal scientific interests, which began with his graduate training in the late 1950's, has been on the effects of nutritional status on long term health, particularly on the causation of cancer. He has conducted original research both in laboratory experiments and in large-scale human studies; has received over 70 grant-years of peer-reviewed research funding (mostly NIH), has served on several grant review panels of multiple funding agencies, has lectured extensively, and has authored over 300 research papers. Also, he a) coordinated a USAID-supported technical assistance program for a nationwide nutrition program for malnourished pre-school age children in the Philippines (1966-74), b) organized and directed a multi-national project responsible for nationwide surveys of diet, lifestyle and mortality in the People's Republic of China (1983-present), c) was a co-author and member of National Academy of Science's expert panels on saccharin carcinogenicity (1978); food safety policy (1978-79); diet, nutrition and cancer (1981-82); research recommendations on diet, nutrition and cancer (1982-83); and food labeling policy (1989-1990), d) was the organizer and Co-Chair (but listed as Senior Science Advisor) of the World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research report on international diet and cancer recommendations (1993-1997), e) was the principal witness for the National Academy of Sciences in two Federal Trade Commission hearings on issues concerning product-specific health claims (1984-1986), f) was Visiting Scholar at the Radcliffe Infirmary, University of Oxford/England (1985-1986), g) was the Senior Science Advisor for the American Institute for Cancer Research/World Cancer Research Fund (1983-1987, 1992-1997), h) presently holds an Honorary Professorships at the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine and i) is on the Research Advisory Board of the Chinese Institute of Nutritional Sciences in the Chinese Academy of Science, the government’s leading institution responsible for nutrition research and policy in China and is an Advisory Professor of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is the recipient of several awards, both in research and citizenship. In summary, he has conducted original research investigation both in experimental animal and human studies, and has actively participated in the development of national and international nutrition policy.



Since he accepted his Emeritus position in 2001, he initially devoted his time to co-authoring "The China Study", a anthology-like story of his experimental findings, along with the work of others, His co-author was Thomas M. Campbell II, MD, who switched his career from theater to medicine while writing the book. Following the publication of the book in early 2005, he (Colin Campbell) has lectured extensively, both in the U.S. and abroad, giving more than 300 lectures, most of which are now provided to medical professional communities. The book has become a national best seller at least 6 times over.

In recent years, he has overseen the development of a highly successful on-line course on 'plant-based nutrition' that drew from his lectures that he taught at Cornell for 7 years. This is a unique program that was developed and is now directed by a former student (Meghan Murphy) and others in collaboration with a Cornell University owned company responsible for the development of on-line courses for Cornell faculty. It is hosted by the Campbell Foundation at www.tcolincampbell.org.


02 December, 2010

A MOST Inconvenient Truth

Meat The Truth 

Meat The Truth is an engaging, thought provoking film produced by the Party for the Animals from the Netherlands. The film picks up where An Inconvenient Truth conveniently left off, and is a must-see for anyone who cares about the future of life on this planet.


A MOST Inconvenient Truth | What Al Gore forgot to mention...
The Big Picture By now you've probably seen 'An Inconvenient Truth', and if you haven't, you are no doubt aware that the Earth is in crisis due to ever increasing greenhouse gases. But do you know the whole story?
While Al Gore focused on carbon emissions, which without question are harmful, he failed to mention that there is a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide that is polluting our environment everyday — methane. The largest producers of methane gas? Livestock.
Did you know that transport systems around the world make up 13% of global greenhouse gases? That may sound like a lot, but livestock farming and production systems make up a whopping 18%. That's right — livestock production is responsible for more greenhouse gases than every single car, bus, train, plane, tractor and scooter put together.
'Meat The Truth' shows us the startling environmental costs of raising animals for food, including how a single dairy cow produces 500-700 litres of methane a day. In one year that cow has created the same amount of greenhouse gas as a medium sized car travelling 70,000 kilometres.
Factory farming of animals also contributes to high levels of carbon dioxide in the air. Carbon sinks such as the Amazon and the Cerrado in Brazil are continuously being cleared for soya bean crops, 75% of which are exported to feed sheep, cattle, pigs and chickens in the Western world. It takes 7Kg of these crops to produce just 1Kg of meat — the livestock industry literally gobbles up this precious food.
To produce animal products, approximately ten times the amount of land is needed than to produce the same amount of vegetable product. It's not hard to see that this is an incredibly inefficient and unsustainable way to produce protein.
Whilst the Australian meat industry attempts to convince the public of its environmental credentials, the reality is that, with the Earth's population predicted to hit 9 billion by 2050, there is just no way for the unsustainable consumption of meat to continue. The answer is simple. Less meat means less animal production, which means less greenhouse gases, less water consumption, less deforestation and finally, less global warming.


Quotes from the Film 


“A vegetarian in a Hummer produces fewer greenhouse emissions than a meat eater in a Toyota Prius.”

“People don't realise that it's actually the meat on their plate that's causing global warming rather than the car that they're driving.”
“Everybody needs to know that food and agriculture contributes to climate change and has environmental impact.”

“Half of the total global wheat harvest is used as livestock feed to support out meat and dairy consumption. At the same time, people in poor countries are starving.”
US, the meat industry uses about one third of all the fossil fuels that we generate.”
“I do not believe that we can have a good situation for animals or the environment if we continue to eat as much meat as we're eating.” — Wayne Pacelle, HSUS President
“If you reduce your total [meat] consumption by half ... you cut in half the greenhouse gas emissions ... Our fork is a powerful tool.”
“I knew that what we were doing was wrong, was absolutely, totally non-sustainable.” — Howard Lyman, ex cattle rancher
“If we don't change our eating habits, we will be consuming 450 billion kilos of meat by 2050.”
“The production of 1kg of beef is just as bad for the environment as driving around in the car for three hours while you left all your lights on at home.”
“If all people in the world started eating as much meat as we do, then we'd need three planets to feed them al

01 December, 2010

The Truth About Tigers


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
A 40 minute film on India's wild tigers and their conservation                                                                                                                                                                    
 

17 October, 2010

2010 Young Environmentalist of the Year

2010 Environment Minister's Young Environmentalist of the Year
Matthew Wright
Founder and Executive Director Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE)


Matthew Wright epitomises personal sacrifice, determination, commitment and passion. In 2006, he set up Beyond Zero Emission in response to the inaction of leaders and decision makers in addressing issues related to climate change.

His vision behind Beyond Zero Emission is to help bring about the changes needed to reach a safe climate for current and future generations.
This vision complemented by his inexhaustible passion has generating high level support from a diverse range of sectors.


 "Most Australians are aware of current environmental issues and motivated to conserve our environment but there are only a few who go beyond the call of duty and who make an extraordinary effort to protect and repair our environment. The Young Environmentalist of the Year Award allows me to give due credit to those who excel in leadership, dedication and achievement.
Through the 2010 Environment Minister’s Young Environmentalist of the Year Award, I am proud to publicly recognise our nation’s best young achiever and their contribution to the environment and a sustainable future.With this award, I applaud the recipient’s success, I encourage their continued work and I hope other young Australians are inspired. Every single action, no matter how little, counts. The media is filled with stories of what needs to be done, young Australians like these show what can be done."
The Hon Tony Burke, MP
Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities
This Award is presented to  an outstanding environmental achievement at a national or international level by an Australian individual between 18 and 30 years of age.
Congratulations To Matthew and the BZE Team
You find the BZE Team in  Kindness House, Suite 10 - 288 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy

19 September, 2010

Oscar's Law - Encourage people to adopt animals from shelters, pounds and rescue organisations Abolish the mass production of dogs - Make factory farming of dogs illegal



Oscar was rescued from appalling conditions at a puppy farm in Central Victoria, Australia.

Oscar suffered terribly and had infected ears, dental disease and inflamed infected gums, his fur was so matted it felt like concrete and his skin was barely visible. Once his matted fur was shaved under general anesthetic due to the pain he was in, his skin was covered in abscesses caused by grass seeds.

Oscars freedom was short lived. Days after his rescue police raided an animal activist's home and seized Oscar and returned him to the puppy farm.

We need your help to get justice for Oscar and other dogs like him who are factory farmed in Australia.

We need all of you to SPEND 5 MINUTES A DAY to lobby both the Liberal and Labour parties and call for an inquiry into the factory farming of dogs. We want Oscar’s Law. The current legislation is not working, it has never worked since it was introduced in 1994.

OSCAR'S LAW:

Abolish the mass production of dogs. Make factory farming of dogs illegal

Ban the sale of animals from pet shops, online and in print media

Encourage people to adopt animals from shelters, pounds and rescue organisations

Work on increasing the re-homing rate in pounds and shelters and introduce the no-kill philosophy



Please Act

08 September, 2010

Beyond Zero Emissions won Award

Last night in Sydney, Mathew Wright  won the Young Industrial Achievers Award for Australia.
Beyond Zero Emissions is shortlisted for the Banksia Award too.

The launch of their book " Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan"  at Melbourne University was awesome - 900 people showed up - most of them engineers, scientists etc. The University is now partnering Matt and his team.

See below  Mathew's Beyond Zero Emissions office in Kindness House  - tiny and cramped - where they do so much good work!
Congratulations BZE Team


Matthew Wright and his BZE Team wins EcoGen Clean Energy Young Industry Leader Award 2010

EcoGen Clean Energy - Young Industry Leader Award 2010


Matthew Wright Executive Director of Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE) receives his award presented by Aaron Wood (right).
The Young Industry Leader award recognises an individual who has made major and sustained contributions to the clean energy industry in any area of activity within the industry. The award recognises a contribution over and above the call of duty.
Nominees were judged on their overall contribution, including through their actions, initiative, leadership in the industry and the broader Australasian community, any specific achievements and recognition through other awards or outside the industry.
This is an award not only for Matthew, but for the whole BZE team, whose work has been recognised by EcoGen - well done!

20 July, 2010

Whale Wars 2010 video - What Happend to the Adi Gil

zSHARE video - whale.wars.s03e06.sliced.in.two.hdtv.xvid-momentum.flv

Background Information

The Ramming of the Ady Gil











The Confrontation
During Sea Shepherd’s 2009-2010 Antarctic Whale Defense Campaign: Operation Waltzing Matilda, Captain Pete Bethune was volunteering his services as skipper of the Ady Gil. On January 6, 2010, the much larger and more maneuverable Japanese whaling vessel Shonan Maru No. 2 deliberately rammed and split the Ady Gil in two, then hosed its crew members down with water cannons as they scrambled for safety amongst the wreckage.
The Rescue
As the Ady Gil began to take on water, the Shonan Maru No. 2 ignored Sea Shepherd’s multiple requests for assistance. Fortunately, another Sea Shepherd vessel, the Bob Barker, was nearby and was able to rescue the Ady Gil crew members. After repeated attempts by the Bob Barker to salvage and tow the remains of the Ady Gil to a nearby French base, and after removal of all remaining fuel and pollutants on board, the Ady Gil was ultimately deemed unsalvageable and sunk to a watery grave.

15 July, 2010

Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan Launched


Press Release:
For immediate release,  July 2010

Download the report from here (8.4MB). Purchase a hard copy here.

As our state and federal governments announce climate policies that will result in little effect to Australia’s rising greenhouse gas emissions, a cutting-edge new report released on Wednesday July 14 shows that a 100 per cent renewable electricity supply system implemented in Australia in 10 years is technically feasible and affordable.

A huge crowd filling the seats and the aisles was shown the details of this plan, put together by researchers from Beyond Zero Emissions and the University of Melbourne Energy Institute.

Beyond Zero Emissions Executive Director and lead author Matthew Wright says the new PM must consider the Zero Carbon Australia report’s findings when developing government climate policy.

“All parties must incorporate findings from the Zero Carbon Australia plan into its climate policy. Our research shows that baseload renewable energy is now available and that Australia can get started building a renewable energy system, right now, today,” says Matthew Wright.

Australia needs a nation-building climate change project with the scale and vision of a Snowy Mountains Scheme for the 21st Century. We can repower our economy with 100 per cent renewable energy, and set ourselves up for energy security and prosperity” says Wright.

Download the report from here (8.4MB). Purchase a hard copy here.


For further information and comment: Matthew Wright, 0421 616 733 

Alternative contact: Pablo Brait, 0421 011 182

Beyond Zero Emissions report - Zero Carbon Australia 2020

The public launch of the Beyond Zero Emissions report - Zero Carbon Australia 2020 - was delivered by Mathew Wright, Executive Director BZE, to an overflowing audience at Melbourne University last night. The report is one possible blueprint for acting on the challenge of climate change by converting the existing coal and gas fired carbon pollution dependent electricity generation to 100% renewables using only current technologies in ten years.
Related: Renewable energy target: 20 by 2020 or zero emissions by 2020? | Northcote Independent (blog) - Zero emissions challenge to Australia's coal minister
Beyond Zero Emissions has utilised pro-bono research by academic specialists in solar technology, mechanical and electrical engineering and economics, over the last two years to produce this report. It shows how Australia could move from being one of the highest carbon emitters per capita to one of the lowest.

Why is this necessary?

Scientists have been saying Australia needs to reduce carbon emissions by 40 per cent by 2020: "the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (2007) recommended that developed countries should reduce emissions by 25-40% on 1990 levels by 2020. Yet more recent evidence shows that only reductions at the top end of this range will be sufficient to avoid the worst impacts of climate change." said forty of the world’s leading climate scientists in a statement initiated by WWF and released prior to the Copenhagen Climate summit in December 2009.
"The premise of a 10 year transition is based on ‘The Budget Approach’ from the German Advisory Council on Global Change. In order to have a 67% chance of keeping global warming below 2oC above pre-industrial temperatures, on a basis of equal allocation of emissions on a per-capita basis, it would be necessary for the USA to reduce emissions to zero in 10 years. Australia has the same per-capita emissions as the USA, and would need to pursue the same goal," the plan says.
Both the Labor and Opposition parties are aiming at only a 5 per cent emissions reduction by 2020. This falls far short than what the scientists say is required.
Without any action to set a carbon price electricity prices are set to surge due to the business uncertainty around setting a price for carbon. The audience was told that with business as usual it is estimated $100 billion will be invested in electricity sector in Australia over the next decade. New coal fired power plants may find problems being financed due to the uncertainty. Energy producers are more likely to add gas turbine peaking plants which are cheap to build but expensive to run.
A Climate Institute report produced by researchers and business partners recently estimated that uncertainty around whether government will place a price tag on pollution that will cost the economy and consumers $2 billion a year in higher electricity prices. (ABC interview with John Connor from Climate Institute: No ETS means higher electricity prices: study)

Transitioning to Renewable Energy is realistic and achievable at moderate cost

By comparison, economic modelling shows the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 could be implemented for a total cost of about $370 billion, or $37 billion per year - about 3 per cent of GDP per year for 10 years. Included in this cost is a major extension and upgrade to the electricity transmission grid to make it more efficient. Upgrading the existing transmission infrastructure may also help avoid future bush fires caused by poor maintenaince reminiscent of the Black Saturday bushfire in Victoria.
With the exception of the Bass strait link there was been little work upgrading the electricity transmission grid since the 1970s. The cost of building the transmission grid is estimated at 25 per cent of the total project costs.
It could become a 21st century equivalent of the Snowy Mountains Scheme creating up to 80,000 jobs from installation of renewable energy generation at the peak of construction, and over 45,000 jobs in operations and maintenance that will continue for the life of the plant. Such a scheme would also generate up to 30,000 jobs in manufacturing wind turbines and heliostats.
Many of these jobs could be created close to existing coal fired power stations to provide an opportunity to transition the existing workforce. Such a project would also provide Australia with a manufacturing capacity to export renewable technologies to the region and the world.
The Zero Carbon Australia 2020 report shows us one possible mix of current commercial technologies to realise the goal of zero carbon emissions by 2020. Other plans may choose a different mix using slightly different technology. Solar photovoltaic and emerging renewable technologies such as wave, tidal and geothermal have been explicitly excluded from this plan but may well play an active role as these technologies are developed, commercialised, and rolled out.
The plan calls for 40% renewable energy from wind generation, 60% from large scale concentrating solar thermal power with molten salt storage for 24/7 baseload operation, and backup from Hydro-electric and biomass power generation. The plan specifies sites around Australia that are selected for their wind availability, solar incidence, economy of scale, transmission costs, technical efficency, and geographical diversity: 23 sites for wind, and 12 sites for Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST). The plan is based only on existing commercial technology.
Transferring from coal fired electricity generation will require large public and private investments. To assist this a carbon price needs to be set. An emissions trading scheme - Cap and Trade - is open to volatility which produces market uncertainty for business investment decisions as shown by the European Emissions Trading Scheme.
In a question from the floor about setting a carbon price, one of the speakers said what was needed was a combined system where a carbon tax sets a floor price for carbon pollution, with an emissions trading scheme setting a cap on pollution and issuing permits which can be bought and sold. This would provide a stable floor price to base long term business decisions on, while also setting an upper level on total carbon pollution allowed and letting the market determine the price for pollution permits.
So Australia transitioning to an electricity sector based on renewables with zero carbon emissions by 2020 is possible and achievable for a realistic cost.
Impediments to implementing such a nation building scheme includes the lack of political leadership and will from both sides of politics. Our politicians are also being influenced by lobbyists from the very powerful existing coal and electricity industries. These companies have enormous clout and influence on both State and Federal politicians. The relatively small solar and enewable sector just cannot match the funding and power of the fossil fuel industries. To a question from the floor about how we can bring about this change, one of the speakers said we need people power - the electorate needs to tell our politicians in an unambiguous way of its support for action on climate change and transitioning to renewable energy such as this plan.
There was question from the floor about the funding of Carbon capture and storage (CCS). The speaker from the Melbourne Energy Institute said that the research and development of CCS was also required for countries that will continue to rely on coal fired power generation, and as a process to eventually reduce carbon in the atmosphere by sequestration.
I came away from this launch heartened. Thirty five years ago I helped set up a demonstration solar hot water system on the lawns of parliament house in Canberra. Alternative and renewable technology was dismissed as the margin, especially by politicians then. Will our political leaders listen now? I hope so, especially if you support Beyond Zero Emissions ongoing work and tell your Federal and State politicians that we need to transition to a zero carbon pollution economy and society.
You can download the full report as a PDF (8.5MB) or download or purchase a glossy printed copy from The Melbourne Energy Institute, Melbourne University for $30

If you would like to get BZE to your city or town, please contact  Pablo@beyondzeroemissions.org.

The BZE team. 
http://beyondzeroemissions.org/


Endorsements of the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 plan  below:

"With our natural advantage Australia can and should be positioning itself as a global renewable super power for future prosperity. This report will help shift the climate debate to focus on energy; security; affordability; export and of course opportunity. Beyond Zero Emissions offers a new and invigorating message that is much needed”
Professor Robin Batterham,
President, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering,
formerly Chief Scientist of Australia


“This is an ambitious, technically feasible plan that should be looked at seriously”
Tim Flannery
Professor Faculty of Science
Macquarie University
Australian of the Year 2007
"No doubt improved technologies for tapping usable energy from the sun, the winds, the tides, and the hot core of our planet will emerge as time goes by. But this report shows clearly that the solutions available now are, with our small population and enormous landmass, sufficient for Australia to move forward very quickly to tap renewable energy sources and minimize greenhouse gas emissions. We have the resources. We need the will.
Dr. Peter Doherty, Nobel Laureate, School of Medicine, University of Melbourne


"100 % renewable energy with zero emissions is achievable in Australia in about a decade if politics takes concerted actions…Moreover, Australia can become the initiator for a serious attempt to shift the world to a solar economy. This is the only promising strategy for climate protection and would provide societies around the world with solutions for climate protection, economic development, poverty reduction and conflict resolution. We need action now!"
Hans-Josef Fell, Member of the German Parliament
Alliance 90/The Greens Spokesman for Energy



"To achieve a safe climate future we need an urgent, large-scale transition. The work of Beyond Zero Emissions shows that the technical transition is affordable and achievable. Now we need a social and political transition to get behind it."
Professor Carmen Lawrence,
School of Psychology,
University of Western Australia
Former Premier of Western Australia.


“Renewable energy is the only way to go in the future. Enercon wind energy converters are designed to the newest standards to integrate with the modern high flexibility demands of electricity grids, providing sustainable reliable power to keep the wheels of daily life, household and industry turning. The Zero Carbon Plan outlines a technically achievable plan for generating all of Australias energy from the wind and the sun. It can be a realistic goal if Australia gets immediately seriously committed with decision making from industry and government. We hope that its recommendations are taken up so that Australia can also be a player in the renewable energy economy that is already booming around the world.”
ENERCON GmbH
"As the IEA has shown in its research, solar energy is now a serious global player for providing the world's energy.  Australia has one of the world's best solar energy resource, especially suited for concentrating solar thermal power plants, which can dispatch electricity when it is needed. The Zero Carbon Australia Plan is based on up-to-date and sound information and provides quality insights on how a country well-endowed in renewable resources can transition to a solar and wind economy.
Cédric Philibert
Renewable Energy Division
International Energy Agency
"The Zero Carbon Australia 2020 plan shows that it is technically feasible and affordable to replace all fossil fuel electricity with 100% renewable energy given the willpower and commitment to do so. This is a cutting-edge science-based plan that should be read by every energy decision maker and politician in Australia."
Mark Z. Jacobson
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Professor by Courtesy of Energy Resources Engineering
Director, Atmosphere/Energy Program
Stanford University, USA


“It's not the five per cent cut project or the 20 per cent cut project with a bunch of unachievable caveats. It's a zero carbon project and I think people actually want to be told a narrative, a story which is ambitious, which is aspirational, but also practical and I think that is what this project is about.”
Federal Independent Senator Nick Xenophon

"This is a bold and ground-breaking piece of work which should be a wake-up call to all those in government and industry who refuse to see beyond coal”
“This is a very exciting report. It has academic rigour, it has also the hope of a generation and it has thousands of jobs waiting to happen.”
"We can and must aim to power Australia with 100% renewable energy as soon as possible if we are to truly tackle the climate crisis - and the great news is, that will bring huge benefits to us all, cleaning the air and creating jobs and investment from the suburbs to the farmlands.”

"This Zero Carbon Australia plan is an extremely valuable contribution which all in the parliament should be looking at very seriously”
Federal Greens Senator Christine Milne
"Every nation in the world should make a plan like this.  If one can get a 100% renewable, zero carbon electricity system by investing 3% of GDP (and 10% of gross investment) for ten years, there is no good reason not to do it. Except, maybe, the straitjacket of old ways of thinking and doing.

This plan lays out a high solar-wind renewable future and then does more.  It looks carefully at the materials requirements of such a future, an aspect of the matter too often left unaddressed.

Australia could be the first large economy to show the way."

John O. Blackburn
Professor Emeritus of Economics
Duke University, USA



"Australians are capable of rapid change when the historical circumstances call for it. Indeed, we pride ourselves on being a resourceful people. TheBeyond Zero Emissions team show how inventive and resourceful we can be. Their plan for a transition to 100% renewables is a powerful and cogent response to those who claim it can't be done. The reception this report receives will be a sign of how much Australians believe in their future and how much they take refuge in the thinking of the past."

Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics and author of Requiem for a Species


“For decades, those opposing the transition to clean energy have claimed that it is not technically feasible. This report puts that argument convincingly to bed. There is no longer an excuse for inaction. Starting the transition now is our responsibility to future generations.”
Professor Ian Lowe
President of the Australian Conservation Foundation
Emeritus Professor Griffith University



"The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan is a provocative and timely contribution to the climate change debate, and it deserves attention both here and abroad. The Plan demolishes a pile of conventional wisdom that Australian policymakers still seem unable to get past. The sorry history of Australian climate policy procrastination is littered with polluter-friendly analyses conducted by economic hired guns. Their work has been used to argue against action, or for illusory schemes that price carbon without reducing the greenhouse pollution billowing from Australian smokestacks and tailpipes. The effect has been to constrain debate and obscure from our view a very different vision—a rapid switch from fossil to renewable energy that makes economic and environmental sense.  By highlighting one of many pathways to achieving that vision, the ZCA report sheds light where it is desperately needed."
Dr Guy Pearse
Research Fellow, Global Change Institute
University of Queensland
Author of High & Dry and Quarry Vision



"It is difficult to imagine the Zero Carbon Australia plan being adopted in the context of Australia's current political and commercial culture and power cost structure. However, as an examination of the technical feasibility of achieving its goals as it seeks to shift this culture, it offers an interesting challenge for the imagination of policymakers and power suppliers feeling their way in to an uncertain future."
Keith Orchison
Coolibah Pty Ltd
Former Managing Director
Electricity Supply Association of Australia



”The ZCA report analyses one particular scenario of renewable energy technology choice based on available solutions, in considerable depth. It successfully shows in detail that 100% renewable energy is both technically possible and economically affordable. Clearly other renewable energy technology scenarios are also possible, that only serves to strengthen the overall conclusion about viability. The group is to be congratulated for their efforts."
Associate Professor Keith Lovegrove
Leader High Temperature Solar Thermal Group
Australian National University



“The chips are down - there is no longer any doubt about our need to rapidly transition to a zero emission economy.  The fate of Australia and the world depend on it.  The Zero Carbon Australia strategy being launched by Beyond Zero Emissions provides the roadmap to the solutions. Let's hope it is adopted by responsible governments everywhere.”
Professor Ove Hoegh-Goldberg, Director, Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland

"Wind Power is now a serious player in international energy. Installing 8000 megawatt-class turbines along with smaller wind turbines and other renewables where appropriate is achievable at a price the community can afford. Direct drive turbines such as the Enercon turbines are very suitable for a modern electricity grid where wind will be relied upon for a large proportion of overall electricity demand."
David Wood
Enmax/Schulich Professor of Renewable Energy
Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
University of Calgary, Canada



“Climate change is a huge threat facing Australia and the world today.  We need action now if we are to secure a future for generations to come.  The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan demonstrates that Australia can eliminate greenhouse emissions from the stationary energy sector within a decade – using technology that is commercially available today, and at an acceptable cost. We can’t afford to ignore it.”
Dr David Skellern
CEO NICTA (National ICT Australia)



"The release of Zero Carbon Australia could not be more timely. It will force reconsideration of government policy that, following the change in leadership, appears to be retreating still further from any meaningful commitment to a low-carbon economy.  The report is unambiguous in demonstrating that a low-carbon economy is within our technical capacity and that this it is more than economically feasible.  The challenge is now that of engaging the political will and bringing this sustainable future to fruition."
Dr Stuart Rosewarne
Chair of the Department of Political Economy
University of Sydney



"I get to work with people all over the world in the fight against global warming, a fight growing increasingly desperate as temperatures climb and rainfall patterns shift. Since Australia leads the world in per capita emissions, it makes sense that its transition planners would be thinking big. This transition obviously won't be easy or simple or cost-free, but given the alternatives it's very nice to know it's technically feasible!"
Bill McKibben
Scholar in residence at Middlebury College, Author and Founder 350.org



“I strongly endorse the broad concept of such a solar and wind plan and applaud the work of the University of Melbourne and Beyond Zero Emissions.  Our own work underway to calculate the feasibility of a 100% solar - wind plan for the United States has so far had the aim of  testing technical feasibility, and the match seems to be 99-100%. We have considered the biomass backup options as well for CST plants but increased thermal storage also seems to work for a 100% solar - wind system for the USA. I have some differences in the discussion of CST technology used as an example, but the study is at an initial stage. The advent of such a comprehensive study in Australia will assist recognition of our own work directed to the USA case, and speed the market development of the CST and wind technologies to supply economical solar energy both day and night."
Dr David Mills
Founder and past CEO of Solar Thermal power company Ausra


“From the other side of the globe Protermosolar fully shares the vision of the realistic and feasible Zero Carbon Australian Plan. Spain is currently the country with the most intensive deployment of CST (concentrating solar thermal) plants and their contribution to the grid stability and to the dispatchability of power supply has been fully demonstrated. Molten salt storage systems have been implemented in many Spanish plants providing predictable and reliable operation after sunset. Thus CST technologies could be considered as a real alternative to cover even the base load requirements of the electricity system.

Australia must profit from its high solar resource, the sooner the better. An effective boost to CST and to the other renewable technologies - as presented in this plan – will not only go in the right direction in terms of the transition to a new energy mix but it will also result an excellent business for the Australian economy.”

Dr. Luis Crespo
General-Secretary
Protermosolar
Spanish Association of CST Industries



"This is exactly the type of initiative that we, the solar power industry, needs to propel our technology into the energy markets of Australia.  SolarReserve's concentrated solar power towers with molten salt storage are the most reliable, stable form of clean, renewable energy, which is exactly what's needed to achieve the safe climate future proposed in BZE's Zero Carbon Australia roadmap.  

"SolarReserve's solar thermal technology with molten salt storage; proven at Solar Two, the US Department of Energy's 10 MW pilot plant that operated for over 3 years in the 1990's, will not only aid in meeting Australia's renewable energy and carbon reduction objectives, but also have significant economic benefits, bringing green jobs and cutting edge technology.

Solar Reserve is willing, ready and able to deploy our molten salt power towers and fully supports the Zero Carbon Australia project."

Tom Georgis
Vice President
SOLARRESERVE



“Beyond Zero Emissions have been in my building, Kindness House, for five years. The dedication of this remarkable team of individuals is astonishing. Most of all, I am impressed by their relentless pursuit of the truth, wherever it may lead. They have built their strategies cautiously, never letting the enthusiasm distract them from the goal of getting the right answers by asking the right questions.

”They are a welcoming organization, drawing experts from a variety of disciplines, methodically searching for practical solutions to the challenges of reducing our massive carbon footprint. I am personally delighted to see the tens of thousands of hours they have invested in this important project, never once complaining about the lack of financial resources at their disposal. They have focussed their attention heavily on the carbon costs of stationary power, transport and building. I look forward to the time when they devote their formidable intellect and energy to the Livestock industry, where so much of our carbon share is squandered and emissions ignored.

”Beyond Zero Emissions is one organization I am proud to say I helped to incubate.

”I urge every serious institution to listen to them attentively. These are serious people for serious times.”

Philip Wollen OAM
Australian of the Year Victoria 2007



“As a company involved in the development of solar plants all over the world, at Torresol Energy we encourage the Zero Carbon Australian Plan that sets the action lines for a future with clean, renewable energy.
Australia is one of the areas with better solar radiation and forms part of the international ‘sun belt’. Besides, the country has excellent conditions for profiting from that solar radiation: large low-populated areas to build the plants and an industry that can support the technological development in the solar generation sector. In that sense, each of Torresol Energy’s new projects introduces technologically advanced improvements to make Concentrated Solar Energy a manageable, economically competitive option and a real, viable, ecological and
sustainable alternative to traditional energy sources.

“Torresol Energy has three plants currently under construction. Among them, Gemasolar, with an innovative technology of central tower with molten salt receiver and thermal storage system, is the first commercial plant in the world of its kind. Due to this, the project has achieved considerable importance in the field of renewable energies as it opens the path to a new solar thermal power generation. Today, all of the analyses that have been carried out either by ourselves or by major international institutions show that tower plants with thermal storage is the type of technology that will be capable of generating reliable, manageable and renewable energy at the lowest costs. Therefore Australia could adapt this kind of technology in its renewable energy development plan that will allow the country to conserve the environment for future generations with a reliable energy source through utility scale baseload CSP plants."

Santiago Arias
Chief Infrastructure Officer.
Torresol Energy


“That Australia enjoys an abundance of renewable energy resources is beyond question. The Zero Carbon Australia 2020 plan demonstrates that it is both technically feasible and economically affordable for Australia to realise the benefit of these resources and transition to a 100% renewable energy future. Australian politicians and decision makers with the vision and commitment to embrace this new path have the opportunity to play an important role in leading Australia to a sustainable low carbon future.”

Sharon Mascher
Associate Professor
Centre for Mining, Energy and Resources Law
University of Western Australia

21 June, 2010

Buddhist Prayer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1FFVSN2NIc&feature=related

Prayer for Liberation of Brother and Sister Animals.

May all sentient beings in the animal realm
subject to unbearable pain in labs throughout the world
be free from suffering.
May alternatives to animal experimentation and testing
be used immediately.
May Bodhicitta fill the hearts of those who imprison them.

May all sentient beings from the animal realm
who suffer endless days, months, years
locked in tiny cages unable to move, be
filled with peace and calm.
May the many billions waiting in slaughterhouse
lines be free of fear.
May the hearts of those who work in abattoirs
be filled with Bodhicitta so the very thought of harm is purified.
May they never kill again and may the slaughterhouse lines become immediately empty.

May no animal be afraid or depressed.
May their bodies be free of injuries, disease and illness.
May those who need homes, or who have been driven from them
find shelter, plentiful food & water.
May there be liberation for those
tortured for fur, entertainment or who are hunted.

May those who believe they are superior
to our brother & sister animals
develop perfect equanimity.
And may they realise in their hearts
that all sentient beings possess Buddha nature
And they are not ours to kill or exploit.

May the many billions of land and sea dwelling sentient beings
who are abused, exploited and killed due to greed, hatred and ignorance
be free of suffering
May they experience complete and perfect enlightenment,
through the virtue of my efforts and prayers.
May I be a voice for the voiceless.
In short, may all human and non-human sentient beings
live together in harmony, peace and equanimity
and achieve perfect Enlightenment quickly.

14 June, 2010

The Animal-Cruelty Syndrome













Charlotte Dumas/Julie Saul Gallery
By CHARLES SIEBERT
Published: June 7, 2010


• On a late May afternoon last year in southwest Baltimore, a 2-year-old female pit bull terrier was doused in gasoline and set alight. A young city policewoman on her regular patrol of the neighborhood of boarded-up row houses and redbrick housing developments turned her squad car onto the 1600 block of Presbury Street and saw a cloud of black smoke rising from the burning dog. She hopped out, ran past idle onlookers and managed to put out the flames with her sweater. The dog, subsequently named Phoenix, survived for four days with burns over 95 percent of her body, but soon began to succumb to kidney failure and had to be euthanized.
It was only a matter of hours before the story, made vivid by harrowing video footage of the wounded dog, was disseminated nationwide in newspapers, TV and radio newscasts and countless Web sites. An initial $1,000 reward for the capture of the culprits would soon climb to $26,000 as people around the country followed Phoenix’s struggle for life. A gathering of people in Venice Beach, Calif., held a candlelight vigil for her. A month later, the mayor of Baltimore, Sheila Dixon, announced the creation of the Anti-Animal-Abuse Task Force to work in concert with city officials, local law enforcement and animal rights and animal-control groups to find ways to better prevent, investigate and prosecute such crimes.
The scale, speed and intensity of the response were striking. The subject of animal abuse, especially the abuse of pit bulls in dog-fighting activities, has achieved a higher profile after the 2007 arrest of the N.F.L. star Michael Vick for operating an illegal interstate dog-fighting operation in Surry County, Va. But the beleaguered pit bull is merely the most publicized victim of a phenomenon that a growing number of professionals — including police officers, prosecutors, psychologists, social workers, animal-control officers, veterinarians and dogcatchers — are now addressing with a newfound vigor: wanton cruelty toward animals. Before 1990, only six states had felony provisions in their animal-¬cruelty laws; now 46 do. Two years ago, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals formed the nation’s first Mobile Animal Crime Scene Investigation Unit, a rolling veterinary hospital and forensic lab that travels around the country helping traditional law-enforcement agencies follow the evidentiary trails of wounded or dead animals back to their abusers.
In addition to a growing sensitivity to the rights of animals, another significant reason for the increased attention to animal cruelty is a mounting body of evidence about the link between such acts and serious crimes of more narrowly human concern, including illegal firearms possession, drug trafficking, gambling, spousal and child abuse, rape and homicide. In the world of law enforcement — and in the larger world that our laws were designed to shape — animal-cruelty issues were long considered a peripheral concern and the province of local A.S.P.C.A. and Humane Society organizations; offenses as removed and distinct from the work of enforcing the human penal code as we humans have deemed ourselves to be from animals. But that illusory distinction is rapidly fading.
“With traditional law enforcement,” Sgt. David Hunt, a dog-fighting expert with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office in Columbus, Ohio, told me, “the attitude has been that we have enough stuff on our plate, let the others worry about Fluffy and Muffy. But I’m starting to see a shift in that mentality now.” Hunt has traveled to 24 states around the country in order to teach law-enforcement personnel about the dog-fighting underworld, often stressing the link between activities like dog fighting and domestic violence. “You have to sell it to them in such a way that it’s not a Fluffy-Muffy issue,” he said of teaching police officers about animal-abuse issues. “It’s part of a larger nexus of crimes and the psyche behind them.”
The connection between animal abuse and other criminal behaviors was recognized, of course, long before the evolution of the social sciences and institutions with which we now address such behaviors. In his famous series of 1751 engravings, “The Four Stages of Cruelty,” William Hogarth traced the life path of the fictional Tom Nero: Stage 1 depicts Tom as a boy, torturing a dog; Stage 4 shows Tom’s body, fresh from the gallows where he was hanged for murder, being dissected in an anatomical theater. And animal cruelty has long been recognized as a signature pathology of the most serious violent offenders. As a boy, Jeffrey Dahmer impaled the heads of cats and dogs on sticks; Theodore Bundy, implicated in the murders of some three dozen people, told of watching his grandfather torture animals; David Berkowitz, the “Son of Sam,” poisoned his mother’s parakeet.
But the intuitions that informed the narrative arc of Tom Nero are now being borne out by empirical research. A paper published in a psychiatry journal in 2004, “A Study of Firesetting and Animal Cruelty in Children: Family Influences and Adolescent Outcomes,” found that over a 10-year period, 6-to-12-year-old children who were described as being cruel to animals were more than twice as likely as other children in the study to be reported to juvenile authorities for a violent offense. In an October 2005 paper published in Journal of Community Health, a team of researchers conducting a study over seven years in 11 metropolitan areas determined that pet abuse was one of five factors that predicted who would begin other abusive behaviors. In a 1995 study, nearly a third of pet-owning victims of domestic abuse, meanwhile, reported that one or more of their children had killed or harmed a pet.
The link between animal abuse and interpersonal violence is becoming so well established that many U.S. communities now cross-train social-service and animal-control agencies in how to recognize signs of animal abuse as possible indicators of other abusive behaviors. In Illinois and several other states, new laws mandate that veterinarians notify the police if their suspicions are aroused by the condition of the animals they treat. The state of California recently added Humane Society and animal-control officers to the list of professionals bound by law to report suspected child abuse and is now considering a bill in the State Legislature that would list animal abusers on the same type of online registry as sex offenders and arsonists.
When I spoke recently with Stacy Wolf, vice president and chief legal counsel of the A.S.P.C.A.’s Humane Law Enforcement department, which focuses on the criminal investigation of animal-cruelty cases in New York City, she drew a comparison between the emerging mindfulness about animal cruelty and the changing attitudes toward domestic abuse in the 1980s. “It really has only been in recent years that there’s been more free and accurate reporting with respect to animal cruelty, just like 30 years ago domestic violence was not something that was commonly reported,” she said. “Clearly every act of violence committed against an animal is not a sign that somebody is going to hurt a person. But when there’s a pattern of abusive behavior in a family scenario, then everyone from animal-control to family advocates to the court system needs to consider all vulnerable victims, including animals, and understand that violence is violence.”
It isn’t clear whether Phoenix was used for dog fighting. Subsequent examinations of her body did find — along with evidence that gasoline had been poured down her throat — a number of bite wounds. Veterinarians, however, said that those could have been self-inflicted in the course of Phoenix’s frenzied attempts to fight off the flames. But prosecutors also later claimed that Phoenix’s accused assailants, 17-year-old twin brothers named Tremayne and Travers Johnson, of a nearby block of Pulaski Street, were using a vacant neighborhood home for the keeping of pit bulls and other ganglike activities.
The Johnson twins have pleaded not guilty. According to court documents, both suspects, said to be members of the 1600 Boys gang, were identified by a witness as running out of the alley where the dog was set alight. “There was some gang-style graffiti found in that abandoned building,” Randall Lockwood, the A.S.P.C.A.’s senior vice president for forensic sciences and anticruelty projects, and a member of the new Anti-Animal-Abuse Task Force in Baltimore, told me at the A.S.P.C.A.’s Midtown Manhattan offices in December. “There was also dog feces on the premises. Unfortunately, nobody bothered collecting the feces to see if it was from Phoenix.”
Along with the need to track the physical evidence of animal cruelty there is the deeper and more complex challenge of trying to parse its underlying causes and ultimate ramifications. As a graduate student in psychology, Lockwood had an interest in human-animal interactions and the role of animals and education in the development of empathy in children. This inevitably led him to consider the flip side of the equation: the origins of cruelty to animals and what such behavior might indicate about an individual’s capacity for empathy and his or her possible future behavior.
Back in the early 1980s, Lockwood was asked to work on behalf of New Jersey’s Division of Youth and Family Services with a team of investigators looking into the treatment of animals in middle-class American households that had been identified as having issues of child abuse. They interviewed all the members of each family as well as the social workers who were assigned to them. The researchers’ expectation going in was that such families would have relatively few pets given their unstable and volatile environments. They found, however, not only that these families owned far more pets than other households in the same community but also that few of the animals were older than 2.
“There was a very high turnover of pets in these families,” Lockwood told me. “Pets dying or being discarded or running away. We discovered that in homes where there was domestic violence or physical abuse of children, the incidence of animal cruelty was close to 90 percent. The most common pattern was that the abusive parent had used animal cruelty as a way of controlling the behaviors of others in the home. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at what links things like animal cruelty and child abuse and domestic violence. And one of the things is the need for power and control. Animal abuse is basically a power-and-control crime.”
The dynamic of animal abuse in the context of domestic violence is a particularly insidious one. As a pet becomes an increasingly vital member of the family, the threat of violence to that pet becomes a strikingly powerful intimidating force for the abuser: an effective way for a petty potentate to keep the subjects of his perceived realm in his thrall. In 2005, Lockwood wrote a paper, “Cruelty Toward Cats: Changing Perspectives,” which underscores this dynamic of animal cruelty as a means to overcome powerlessness and gain control over others. Cats, Lockwood found, are more commonly victims of abuse than dogs because dogs are, by their very nature, more obedient and eager to please, whereas cats are nearly impossible to control. “You can get a dog to obey you even if you’re not particularly nice to it,” Lockwood told me. “With a cat you can be very nice, and it’s probably going to ignore you, and if you’re mean to it, it may retaliate.”
Whatever the particular intimidation tactics used, their effectiveness is indisputable. In an often-cited 1997 survey of 48 of the largest shelters in the United States for victims of domestic violence and child abuse, more than 85 percent of the shelters said that women who came in reported incidents of animal abuse; 63 percent of the shelters said that children who came in reported the same. In a separate study, a quarter of battered women reported that they had delayed leaving abusive relationships for the shelter out of fear for the well-being of the family pet. In response, a number of shelters across the country have developed “safe haven” programs that offer refuges for abused pets as well as people, in order that both can be freed from the cycle of intimidation and violence.
What cannot be so easily monitored or ameliorated, however, is the corrosive effect that witnessing such acts has on children and their development. More than 70 percent of U.S. households with young children have pets. In a study from the 1980s, 7-to-10-year-old children named on average two pets when listing the 10 most important individuals in their lives. When asked to “whom do you turn to when you are feeling sad, angry, happy or wanting to share a secret,” nearly half of 5-year-old children in another study mentioned their pets. One way to think of what animal abuse does to a child might simply be to consider all the positive associations and life lessons that come from a child’s closeness to a pet — right down to eventually receiving their first and perhaps most gentle experiences of death as a natural part of life — and then flipping them so that all those lessons and associations turn negative.
In a 2000 article for AV Magazine, a publication of the American Anti-Vivisection Society, titled, “Wounded Hearts: Animal Abuse and Child Abuse,” Lockwood recounts an interview he conducted for the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services in the early 1980s. He describes showing to “a perky 7-year-old boy” a simple drawing of a boy and a dog, playing ball inside a house and a broken lamp on the floor beside them. Lockwood asked the 7-year-old — a child who had witnessed his brother being beaten by their father, who was “reportedly responsible for the ‘disappearance’ of several family pets” — to describe what would happen next in the story of the boy in the picture. “He grew still and sullen,” Lockwood writes, “and shook his head slowly. ‘That’s it,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘They’re all going to die.’ ”
Children who have witnessed such abuse or been victimized themselves frequently engage in what are known as “abuse reactive” behaviors, Lockwood said, re-enacting what has been done to them either with younger siblings or with pets. Such children are also often driven to suppress their own feelings of kindness and tenderness toward a pet because they can’t bear the pain caused by their own empathy for the abused animal. In an even further perversion of an individual’s healthy empathic development, children who witness the family pet being abused have been known to kill the pet themselves in order to at least have some control over what they see as the animal’s inevitable fate. Those caught in such a vicious abuse-reactive cycle will not only continue to expose the animals they love to suffering merely to prove that they themselves can no longer be hurt, but they are also given to testing the boundaries of their own desensitization through various acts of self-mutilation. In short, such children can only achieve a sense of safety and empowerment by inflicting pain and suffering on themselves and others.
In March I paid a visit to the newly established Veterinary Forensics Medicine Sciences program at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Directed by Melinda Merck, a veterinarian who serves as the A.S.P.C.A.’s senior director of veterinary forensics and as the “captain” of its new mobile C.S.I. unit, the program is the first of its kind at a major U.S. university. As animal abuse has become an increasingly recognized fixture in the context of other crimes and their prosecution, it is also starting to require the same kinds of sophisticated investigative techniques brought to bear on those other crimes.
Veterinary forensic students at the University of Florida are being trained in the same way that traditional crime-scene investigators are, taking courses in a wide range of topics: crime-scene processing; forensic entomology (determining the time of an animal’s injury or death by the types of insects around them); bloodstain-pattern and bite-mark analysis; buried-remains excavation; and forensic osteology (the study of bones and bone fragments).
“I love being around bones,” Merck proclaimed as she led me into the university’s C. A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory, a sprawling, brashly lighted array of human skeletal remains arranged in meticulous piecemeal patterns on rows of shiny metal tables. “I find bones fascinating. There is a lot of information in them.” Merck, who testifies at animal-cruelty trials across the country, conducted the forensic osteology on the dog remains recovered from the mass graves on Michael Vick’s Virginia property in 2007.
The lab is one of the busiest of its kind in the world, enlisted for countless crime-scene investigations and archaeological digs and to help identify the victims of disasters, including those of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina. The fact that one of the examining tables and adjacent bone-boiling and cleansing units have now been assigned to Merck for her own animal-forensic work and course instruction speaks volumes about the shifting perspective toward animal-cruelty crimes. “We have a really cool thing going on here,” Merck told me. “We have the collaborative effort of a lot of big-wig forensic specialists down here with years of experience.”
She led me over to her examining table. Set at one end was what she called “my box of evidence,” a picnic-cooler-size plastic container that held the excavated remains from a mass grave, part of an investigation she is conducting into a suspected dog-fighting operation in Georgia. “In most of our cases of animal cruelty, the bodies are not fresh,” she said. “They’re decomposed. They’re discarded. They’re hidden. And so the advanced post-mortem stage is where we really need to be experts.”
Merck’s 2006 book, “Forensic Investigation of Animal Cruelty: A Guide for Veterinary and Law Enforcement Professionals,” which she wrote with Randall Lockwood and Leslie Sinclair of Shelter Veterinary Services in Columbia, Md., contains a daunting list of the grisly things human beings do to animals: thermal injuries (immolation, baking, microwaving); blunt-force trauma; sharp-force and projectile injuries; asphyxiation; drowning; poisoning; ritual murders; and sexual assault. Merck spared no details in discussing such horrors over the course of a veterinary-forensics lecture I attended earlier that day, held in a conference room at a hotel near the university as part of a four-day seminar. Even Merck’s seasoned audience of out-of-town vets, A.S.P.C.A. disaster-response and investigative-team workers, community-outreach personnel and the chief legal counsel for New York City’s Humane Law Enforcement department could be heard gasping into their coffee mugs as Merck annotated, one after the next, screen-projected slides of stark brutality: blood-drenched dog-fighting pits; bludgeoned, internally hemorrhaging pets; bruised and mutilated canine sexual organs; a heavily duct-taped, paint-coated puppy and the fur-lined, nail-scraped oven walls from which the puppy struggled vainly to escape.
Those whose compassion compels them to confront and combat daily its utter absence are, of necessity, often forced to affect a passionless pose. Merck proceeded through her seminar with clinical speed and precision through a series of signature forensic cases. One of the first pivoted around the mystery of a missing Pomeranian whose owners were convinced had been stolen from their backyard. Merck called up the slide of a tiny skeleton she had rendered in her corner of the lab from remains found in a vacant lot not far from the Pomeranian owners’ home. It looked like a wingless bat, the delicate brace of ribs bearing tiny symmetrical snaps on each side.
“What could have caused these,” Merck asked, pointing her red laser at the breaks. “What could make a dog disappear so fast?”
“Man!” someone called out to bursts of laughter.
“What else,” Merck said, smiling.
“A bird of prey!”
“Yep,” Merck nodded. “Most likely a hawk. These two breaks are where the bird’s talons grabbed hold of the dog. This is why forensic osteology is so important, and yet there’s nothing in our standard veterinary training that teaches us how to look at bones properly.”
Merck soon proceeded to the case of the puppy found four years ago in the oven of a ransacked community center in Atlanta. An outraged local prosecutor called Merck about the case and then showed up at her vet clinic one day with the dog’s remains. “She brings me the puppy, and this . . . ,” Merck said, the slide behind her now sapping the room’s air, “is what she brings me.”
Step by step, from the outer paint to the unraveled layers of duct tape to the dog’s abraded nails and paws to the hem of an old T-shirt that was used as a leash, Merck’s detailed forensic analysis of the victim and of the crime scene would be used to assemble a timeline of events. Ultimately, her analysis would help seal the conviction of two teenage brothers on multiple charges, including burglary, animal cruelty and — because the brothers had shown a number of children at the community center what they had done and then threatened them with their lives if they told anyone — additional charges of child abuse and terroristic threats.
The most common dynamic behind the cases cited that morning was that of a man abusing a family pet to gain control over, or exact revenge against, other family members. Merck told of one puppy found buried in the backyard of a house. As Merck tells it, the dog belonged to the female friend of a woman who had recently left the man with whom she and her two children from a previous marriage were living. She and her children had moved in with the friend, someone who the man decided was keeping him and his estranged partner from reuniting. The girlfriend’s pet, therefore, became for him the optimum vehicle for expressing his rage against both women.
“He tortured the puppy when the two women weren’t home,” Merck told me after her lecture that day. “He also tried to make two of the kids participate just to make it more heinous. So along with the animal cruelty, of course, we had child abuse.”
Merck has made it her mission to urge other vets to report and investigate suspected cases of animal abuse, incorporating a few cautionary tales of her own into her lectures to point up the often dire consequences of failing to do so. One involved a man from Hillsborough County in Florida who was arrested for murdering his girlfriend, her daughter and son and their German shepherd. He had previously been arrested (but not convicted) for killing cats. In another story Merck tells, one related to her by a New York City prosecutor, a woman reported coming home to find her boyfriend sexually molesting her Labrador retriever, but the case never went to trial.
“My point on that one,” Merck told me, “is that no one took precautions to preserve the evidence on the dog. And once it comes down to a he-said-she-said type of situation, you’re lost. These types of cases are difficult enough even when we have all the evidence, in part because it’s very hard for investigators and prosecutors to even consider that someone would do things like this. It’s so disturbing and offensive, they don’t know what to do about it. A lot of the work I do involves not just talking to vets but reaching out to law enforcement to make them more knowledgeable on these matters, to make them understand, for example, that things like sexual assault of children and animals are linked. They are similar victims.”
On our way back to the hotel for an afternoon lecture on forensic entomology, Merck made a little detour to show me the A.S.P.C.A.’s new mobile C.S.I. unit, parked in a side lot of the vet school’s farm-animal compound. Twenty-six-feet long, with its own climate-control, generator, examination room and surgical suite, digital microscope, X-ray machine, sexual-assault kit and anesthesia-oxygen machine, it is essentially a giant emergency room on wheels, allowing Merck and her crew to examine and care for animals at suspected crime scenes and to efficiently analyze and process evidence to ensure its integrity.
The van was an important part of the largest dog-fighting raid in American history last year, in which more than 400 dogs were rescued and 26 people from six states arrested. “We had two forensic teams on board for that,” Merck said. “We had to hit 25 different crime scenes in one day. We hit the first one at 7 a.m., and we finished up at around 6 a.m. the following morning.”
When I asked Merck if she thought incidents of animal cruelty were on the rise or if it was that we are now being more vigilant about them, she said that it is probably more the latter. “We’re more aware now,” she said, “but there is also more of a support system for responding to these incidents. When I started out as a vet 20 years ago, I was one of the few who would call if I got a suspicious case, and that was when such things were still a misdemeanor and it wasn’t law enforcement involved. It was animal control taking care of nuisance animals. Now with veterinarians I tell them you cannot not report, because you don’t know if what you’re seeing on the animal isn’t the proverbial tip of the iceberg.”
Merck then recalled for me a personal experience she most likes to relate in classes and seminars, what she’s dubbed “the tale of the good Samaritan and the savvy vet.” An Atlanta contractor pulled up to a house one morning where he was to perform some work. As he got out of his truck, he heard a dog screaming from the house next door, went over to investigate and saw through an open garage door a dog dragging its back legs and a woman standing beside it. The woman instantly began pleading to the contractor that the dog needed to be euthanized, but she said she couldn’t afford the vet bills. The contractor offered to take the dog to his vet, who, upon examining the dog, agreed that it was too debilitated to be saved. He then told the contractor that there was something suspicious about the case and that he was going to report it to animal services for whom Merck worked at the time as a consultant outside of her daily vet practice.
“They asked me to perform a necropsy,” Merck told me. “It turns out the dog was paralyzed from having been beaten so often. I reported what I found. Police went to the woman’s house to make an arrest. They found a badly bruised boy. And just like that both parents are being hauled off for child abuse. So there was a classic case of the system working like it should.”
Last November, Lockwoodwas asked to testify at the pretrial hearing in which a judge ruled that Tremayne and Travers Johnson would be tried as adults for the burning of Phoenix in Baltimore last year. Lockwood looked at dozens of pictures of Phoenix in order to select which images to present to A.S.P.C.A. staff members. “I could only find one that wasn’t overwhelmingly disturbing,” he told me. “It’s where she’s so bundled up in gauze and bandages you can’t really see anything. It’s easy to empathize with burns because we’ve all been burned, and even if it’s only minor, you realize how painful that is.”
The matter of empathy, of course, goes to the heart of most of our inquiries into the nature of cruel acts and their possible causes. There seems to be little doubt anymore about the notion that a person’s capacity for empathy can be eroded; that someone can have, as Lockwood put it to me, “their empathy beaten or starved out of them.” To date, little is known about the Johnson twins’ background beyond the fact that they both reportedly have chronic truancy issues and previous probation violations and were recently involved with a gang. Along with possible early abuse or genetic and biological components, Lockwood also spoke of the frequent association between environment and acts of violence, how poverty often creates the sense of persecution and injustice that makes some people feel justified in striking back in order to gain the sense of power and control they otherwise lack.
“What I have the most trouble relating to,” Lockwood told me, “and the Phoenix kids might be indicative of this sort of thing, is the kind of cruelty that happens just out of boredom. I’ve had quite a few cases where I ask a kid, Why did you blow up that frog or set fire to that cat? and they don’t respond with answers like ‘I hate cats’ or ‘I didn’t see that as a living thing.’ Their answer is ‘We were bored.’ And then you have to ask yourself, Well, what about alternative pathways to alleviating this boredom? I have difficulty grasping what would be the payoff for setting fire to a dog.”
Neuroscientists are now beginning to get a fix on the physical underpinnings of empathy. A research team at the University of Chicago headed by Jean Decety, a neuroscientist who specializes in the mechanisms behind empathy and emotional self-regulation, has performed fMRI scans on 16-to-18-year-old boys with aggressive-conduct disorder and on another group of similarly aged boys who exhibited no unusual signs of aggression.
Each group was shown videos of people enduring both accidental pain, like stubbing a toe, and intentionally inflicted pain, like being punched in the arm. In the scans, both groups displayed a similar activation of their empathic neural circuitry, and in some cases, the boys with conduct disorder exhibited considerably more activity than those in the control group. But what really caught the attention of the researchers was the fact that when viewing the videos of intentionally inflicted pain, the aggressive-disorder teenagers displayed extremely heightened activity in the part of our brain known as the reward center, which is activated when we feel sensations of pleasure. They also displayed, unlike the control group, no activity at all in those neuronal regions involved in moral reasoning and self-regulation.
“We’re really just beginning to have an inkling of the neurophysiology of empathy,” Lockwood told me. “I think empathy is essentially innate, but I also think empathy can be learned, and I know it can be destroyed. That’s why having a better understanding of the neurophysiology will really help us. Just doing a social intervention on a person doesn’t do any good if you’re not aware of certain physiological deficits. As I heard someone put it at a recent lecture I attended, that would be like an orthopedist telling someone with a broken arm to lift weights. It won’t do anything until the arm is set, and it actually might make things worse. I try to understand who the kids are who seem beyond reach, who seem to have truly impaired systems of empathy. And then I ask, Can that be restored?”
It turns out that just as recent brain-imaging studies have begun to reveal the physical evidence of empathy’s erosion, they are now also beginning to show definitive signs of its cultivation as well. A group of researchers led by Richard Davidson, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, published a study in a March 2008 edition of the Public Library of Science One, showing that the mere act of thinking compassionate thoughts caused significant activity and physical changes in the brain’s empathic pathways. “People are not just stuck at their respective set points,” Davidson has said of the study’s results. “We can take advantage of our brain’s plasticity and train it to enhance these qualities. . . . I think this can be one of the tools we use to teach emotional regulation to kids who are at an age where they’re vulnerable to going seriously off track.”
To date, one of the most promising methods for healing those whose empathic pathways have been stunted by things like repeated exposure to animal cruelty is, poetically enough, having such victims work with animals. Kids who tend to be completely unresponsive to human counselors and who generally shun physical and emotional closeness with people often find themselves talking openly to, often crying in front of, a horse — a creature that can often be just as strong-willed and unpredictable as they are and yet in no way judgmental, except, of course, for a natural aversion to loud, aggressive human behaviors.
Equine-therapy programs, for example, are now helping an increasing number of teenagers who have severe emotional and behavioral issues, as well as children with autism and Asperger’s syndrome. At Aspen Ranch in Loa, Utah, troubled teenagers are being paired off with wild mustangs that have been adopted from the Bureau of Land Management, each species ultimately managing to temper the other, a dynamic that has also proved very effective in teaching patience and empathy to prisoners in correctional facilities. In the Los Angeles suburb of Compton, there is a youth equestrian program called the Compton Junior Posse. Teenagers clean stables, groom horses and then ride them in amateur equestrian events across Southern California. There are now bovine- and elephant-assisted therapy programs as well.
For Lockwood, animal-therapy programs draw on the same issues of power and control that can give rise to animal cruelty, but elegantly reverse them to more enlightened ends. “When you get an 80-pound kid controlling a 1,000-pound horse,” he said, “or a kid teaching a dog to obey you and to do tricks, that’s getting a sense of power and control in a positive way. We all have within us the agents of entropy, especially as kids. It’s easier to delight in knocking things down and blowing stuff up. Watch kids in a park and you see them throw rocks at birds to get a whole cloud of them to scatter. But to lure animals in and teach them to take food from your hand or to obey commands, that’s a slower process. Part of the whole enculturation and socialization process is learning that it’s also cool and empowering to build something. To do something constructive.”
Charles Siebert, a contributing writer, is the author, most recently, of “The Wauchula Woods Accord: Toward a New Understanding of Animals.”