24th January 2007,
From Catalyst Commercial (UK).
From the point of view of mitigating climate change, the key question is whether carbon trading will actually reduce carbon emissions. Radical critics, such as Larry Lohmann of the environmental and social NGO the Corner House, argue that trading itself adds nothing to emissions reductions efforts. Certainly, what emerges from closer examination of air pollution trading schemes in general is that their effectiveness depends heavily on scheme design. One issue is the strength or weakness of the underlying curbs set on emissions. In the case of the EU scheme, Cambridge economist Michael Grubb makes the point that its sheer scale means that member states are subject to intense lobbying by economically strategic industries. In the first phase of the scheme, lobbyists across Europe pushed successfully for weak caps. In April 2006, when it became clear that 20 of the 25 member states had set caps for 2005 that were so generous that they were above actual emissions the carbon price immediately collapsed from €25 to around €4 per tonne, where it currently languishes.
Industrial lobbyists also argued successfully for “grandfathering” for allocations to particular installations to be based on their emissions in a reference period rather than on an overall carbon target, as under Kyoto, or on best practice in the industry. If this is repeated in subsequent phases, it will create a perverse incentive for companies to increase emissions, because this will give them a higher allocation in the next phase. In the run-up to the second phase, industrial lobbyists are also arguing for the right to carry over excess credits from the first phase. Member states have placated these interests by adopting complex non-transparent procedures, and in many cases simply by stalling on submitting plans to the point where the commission was threatening legal action in late 2006.
How disastrous is this experience for the EU ETS? Defenders of the scheme say that many of the concessions made to industry weak caps, grandfathering, and other weaknesses like the small fines for non-compliance are politically necessary to get the scheme launched. Once it is running, caps and other features can be tightened. It is true that the first phase of the European scheme was seen as a trial period. But is it credible that the second phase will see a tougher stance? Late last year the commission sent back all the member states’ proposals (with the exception of Britain’s) because they were too lax, but it remains to be seen if governments and their industrial lobbies will play ball.
Similar issues of political credibility would also apply to personal carbon trading. Will people believe a government that says it intends to progressively cut the personal carbon allowance would actually carry out such an unpopular policy or stay in power if it did.
A second concern about the European scheme is that the cap is not only weak but also leaky. Companies that need extra credits to cover their carbon emissions can not only buy them in the market, but can also acquire them by investing in clean development mechanism (CDM) projects the offsetting scheme set up under the Kyoto protocol. How many reduction credits can be acquired in this way varies from country to country, but it is expected that they will make up the majority.
In theory, the CDM is just an extension of the flexibility approach. A tonne of carbon dioxide emissions abated has the same effect anywhere in the world. So if it is cheaper to do this in India or Africa than in Europe, why not do so, especially if, as originally advertised, the CDM also helps transfer renewable energy technologies to the south?
In practice, renewable energy is involved in only 2 per cent of CDM projects. More typical is the deal announced last September, where Centrica (the parent company of British Gas) is investing in technology for capturing emissions of the very potent greenhouse gas HFC-23 from a Chinese chemical company. Some 70 per cent of CDM credits arise from capture projects like this one (arranged by the London-based carbon trading investment bank Climate Change Capital), mainly involving large industrial plants in China, India, Brazil and Korea.
...
Read the article.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
A Guide To Carbon Trading
Climate change must be put on the front burner
Stephen McGrail
January 25, 2007
The Age
IF THERE is one issue that is forcing most businesses to think seriously about the future, it is climate change.
It is generating increased uncertainty. Australian companies wishing to plan effectively need new tools, processes and thinking to adapt and succeed.
For most of last year, one could understand companies considering climate change to be something they would worry about later, or as something for others to worry about.
Today, the context is different. This year, a "low-carbon future" is increasingly the priority of all: public, politicians and businessmen.
Waves of change are building that could join forces to become, in the words of futurist Jim Dator, "tsunamis of change". To Dator, people and organisations are too often standing with their backs to the metaphorical waves as they gather pace and become unforeseen tsunamis.
Consider these "three Ls": legislation, litigation and liability.
New climate change legislation has been recently proposed or passed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, California "Governator" Arnold Schwarzenegger and in South Australia by Premier Mike Rann.
Rann's bill, the first of its kind in the southern hemisphere, introduces targets, a commitment to reducing greenhouse emissions and other programs and initiatives. Victoria won't be far behind, with Labor pledging similar legislation in the recent state election. This is only the start.
There has also been a gathering wave of the second "L", litigation.
Last September, California began legal action against the "big six" car companies. The action has been hailed as the most significant piece of climate change litigation. If successful, it will set an important legal precedent.
While the car industry is trying to play it down, some experts claim that if a big polluter knew it was damaging the environment and persisted, regardless, or denied the knowledge, it could be found as guilty as the tobacco giants that tried to hide what they knew about cancer.
In Australia, the NSW Land and Environment Court recently found that Centennial Coal, which planned an open-cut coalmine in the Hunter Valley, failed to assess properly its environmental impacts by not including a global warming assessment.
The judge found a connection between coalmining and climate change. Green groups were delighted, while the local Labor MP went ballistic at the news, claiming "extreme environmentalists are launching a jihad against the (coal) industry". This decision also gives real legal meaning to the principles of sustainable development embedded in many state and federal acts of Parliament.
It is worth noting that the Carbon Disclosure Project has been warning about the possibility of such litigation and multibillion-dollar climate change lawsuits for many years.
Our last "L", liability, is just as crucial. Companies need to understand and mitigate the potential for crippling financial carbon liabilities.
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Read the article.
The Low-Carbon Diet
(or how to lose half a tonne in just one month)
Sunday January 21, 2007
The Observer
Global warming is alarming, but there's no need to be defeatist: our future is in our own hands. Here Lucy Siegle offers 36 positive suggestions on how we can change our lives, reduce carbon emissions and help save the planet - all in the form of three simple and enticing menus, calculated not in calories but 'carbs'. And best of all, if you reduce your carbon footprint you can treat yourself, with a gloriously clear conscience
When I became the Observer Magazine's ethical living columnist two years ago I was inundated with questions from readers about recycling. Today, my postbag is still bursting with your questions, but now most of them concern spiralling carbon emissions. This only confirms what many of us now realise: that our addiction to a carbon-rich lifestyle is threatening the life of our planet. And, as everybody from Al Gore to Oprah Winfrey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Nicholas Stern and even Arnold Schwarzenegger told us last year, we must all radically 'decarbonise' the way we live.
Article continues
If you follow the diet described below, you will be taking the first steps to reducing the size of the one thing you have direct control over - your carbon footprint. Almost every aspect of your life affects the size of your carbon footprint. Leaving some appliances plugged in, for instance, increases energy consumption, and this increases the amount of fossil fuels burnt in power stations, which affects the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. Other aspects of your lifestyle affect your carbon footprint in less obvious ways: your kids, for example, may have plastic toys produced in China - in which case China has emitted the CO2 on your behalf.
Responses to the CO2 problem vary. Tony Blair, fresh from occupying one of Robin Gibb's sun-loungers in Florida, recently pronounced curbs on long-haul flights 'impractical'. He's hoping technology will provide alternative, low-CO2 aviation fuels. But while he waits for Richard Branson to begin running a transatlantic fleet on hemp oil, the climate-change bomb is already ticking. A low-carbon lifestyle should begin inside your own four walls. Individuals are responsible for 85 per cent of the UK's total CO2 emissions. We therefore have the power to reduce emissions significantly by making low-carbon choices.
The past year has seen concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere continue to soar, and they are set to increase by 2.5 per cent annually. This is leading the planet into uncharted territory: higher temperatures, rising tides, the destruction of ice shelves, drought, failing crops, the mass movement of climate change refugees. The alarm has been sounded, now is the time for action...
It is in this spirit that we have come up with this carbon-saving diet: a one-month detox to reduce your planet-destroying size-11 carbon footprint into a dainty size 4. Good luck.
What is a carb?
To make the diet user-friendly, we have developed our own unit of measurement: the carb. One carb represents 100g of CO2. The aim is to lose as many carbs as possible until you meet your target 'weight'. As the average person is responsible for emitting 11 tonnes of carbon a year we have divided this by 12 to produce a monthly figure of 9,167 carbs. This is your starting 'weight'.
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Read the article.
Also see
It's carbon judgment day Read More......
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
The Independant's view on packaging
Campaign aims to reduce the mountains of waste
By Michael McCarthy, Martin Hickman and Geneviève Roberts
Published: 22 January 2007
The shrink-wrapped swede, bought from a London supermarket at the weekend, says it all. Why on earth add a skin to something that's got a tough enough skin of its own?
Wrapping that's entirely unnecessary is not confined to root vegetables: it's everywhere. And today The Independent launches a campaign to highlight how environmentally unfriendly, how problematic and - not least - how irritating the phenomenon of packaging and packaging waste has become.
We are asking readers to be at the forefront of it, to bring home to supermarkets and other major retailers how imperative is the need to slim down radically the avalanche of bags, trays, wrappers, boxes, parcels, cartons, cardboard, plastic, foil and clingfilm that is sweeping over our lives.
Packaging presents a problem for several reasons. Firstly, it uses up huge volumes of natural resources: oil for plastic trays, bags and wrappers; trees for paper, cartons, and cardboard; aluminium for tins and cans; glass for jars and bottles. About eight per cent of global oil production is used to make plastic, of which a quarter is thought to end up in packaging. Secondly, climate change is hastened by the greenhouse gas emissions from the energy used to make and transport the containers.
Thirdly, there is the problem of disposal. The packaging industry claims that, with the quadrupling of recycling rates in the past decade, 60 per cent of packaging is now recycled; but even so, it admits that five million tons of it is dumped in holes in the ground. The UK's landfill sites are filling up and finding new ones is a problem. In 2002, the Environment Agency warned that sites in the South-east would be full in seven years' time. New EU regulations require the UK to cut waste going to landfill by half by 2013, and to a quarter of the current level by 2020.
Fourthly, packaging itself is expensive and adds to retail prices. The Government's Waste Resources Action Programme (WRAP) says that families spend £470 on packaging each year, one-sixth of their food budget.
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Read the article. Read More......
George Monbiot on Tesco and Wal-Mart (Coles and Woolworths)
If Tesco and Wal-Mart are friends of the earth, are there any enemies left?
The superstores compete to convince us they are greener than their rivals, but they are locked into unsustainable growth
George Monbiot
Tuesday January 23, 2007
The Guardian
You batter your head against the door until you begin to wonder whether it is a door at all. Suddenly it opens, and you find yourself flying through space. The superstores' green conversion is astonishing, wonderful, disorientating. If Tesco and Wal-Mart have become friends of the earth, are there any enemies left?
These were the most arrogant of the behemoths. They have trampled their suppliers, their competitors and even their regulators. They have smashed local economies, broken the backs of the farmers, forced their contractors to drive down wages, shrugged off complaints with a superciliousness born of the knowledge that they were unchallengeable. For them, it seemed, there was no law beyond the market, no place too precious to be destroyed, no cost they could not pass on to someone else.
We environmentalists developed a picture of the world that seemed to be repeatedly confirmed by experience. Big corporations destroy the environment. They are the enemies of society. The bigger they become, the less they can be constrained by democracy or consumer power. The politics of scale permit them to bully governments, tear up standards, and reshape the world to suit them. We also recognised that this was a dialectical process. As businesses began to operate globally, so could the campaigns against them. By improving global communications and ensuring that we could all speak their language, they helped us to confront them more effectively.
But hardly anyone believed that change could happen so fast. Through the 80s and 90s, they brushed us off like dust. Then, as a result of powerful campaigns against sweatshops in the US and Europe, some of the big clothing and sports retailers broke ranks. Soon after that, the energy companies started announcing big investments in renewable technologies (though not, unfortunately, any corresponding disinvestments in fossil fuel). But the supermarkets have shifted faster than anyone else. Environmental campaigners are partly responsible (listen to how the superstore bosses keep name-checking the green pressure groups); even so, their sudden conversion leaves us reeling.
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Read the article. Read More......
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
America CAN Solve Global Warming
Landmark Study to Show: America CAN Solve Global Warming Without Nukes, Without Continued Dependence on Coal
Source: Greenpeace USA
WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Wednesday, January
24, 2007 at 12 PM EST, Greenpeace USA will join with other climate and
energy advocates on a press conference call to release a landmark analysis
showing that the United States can address global warming, without relying
on nuclear power or so-called "clean coal" as some in the ongoing energy
debate claim.
The new study details a worldwide energy scenario where:
- In the United States, nearly 80% of our electricity can be produced by renewable energy sources.
- Carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced 50% globally and 72% in the U.S. without resorting to an increase in dangerous nuclear power or new coal technologies.
- America's oil use can be cut over 50% by 2050 with much more efficient cars and trucks, potentially including new plug-in hybrids, increased use of biofuels, and greater reliance on electricity for transportation.
The study, commissioned from the internationally-respected German Aerospace Centre, shows that significantly increasing renewable energy and efficiency improvements alone can solve the global warming problem. It is the first study to fulfill the promise of Princeton Professors Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow's "wedge" framework, by presenting an alternative scenario for reaching greenhouse gas stabilization.
- Who: John Coequyt, Greenpeace USA;
- Sven Teske, Greenpeace International
- Scott Sklar, Sustainable Energy Coalition
- What: Press conference call to unveil a new blueprint for solving global warming -- and correct the record on nukes and coal.
- When: Wednesday
- January 24, 2007
- 12 PM EST
- Call-In: 1-800-896-8445
- Code: Greenpeace
- Contact: Joel Finkelstein, +1-202-822-5200 ext. 279
- Jane Kochersperger, +1-202-319-2493
Read the article. Read More......
Monday, January 22, 2007
Royal Society Carbon Trading site
The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and claims to be the oldest learned society still in existence.
Past presidents include Sir Isaac Newton and Joseph Banks.
They, in this more modern time, have created a site called Carbon Limited that looks at our use of Carbon more from the perpective of carbon rationing (a concept discussed by George Monbiot in his book Heat).
On this site you can deduce your carbon emisions, learn ways to reduce them, and compare them to other people. If we are to achieve a 90% reduction in Greenhouse gas emisions by 2030 (See Heat), then we will all have to be concious of this information.
Food For Oil
This is an interesting blog article I read. It doesn't mention climate change once though does peak oil. It provides a picture of what we may be in for in coming years if the worst affects of climate change happen, pushed along by human nature's selfish reaction to being without.
Read More......
Sunday, January 21st, 2007
One of the most striking and unambiguous conclusions one draws from economic history is that there has never been a famine in a working democracy. When famine strikes, it usually hits colonies and occupied territories (India, Ireland, Ukraine) or dictatorships (about half of Africa). Sometimes this is a deliberate and brutal attack on a population, using poverty and mass starvation as a weapon of war. Often, it is simply a case of mismanagement and clumsy prioritising. Even this never ever happens in a country where people have their say over who governs them and how, because people can be relied upon to feel pretty strongly about not starving to death. However much they may bicker over the political footballs of the day, there is always a broad consensus on the point of not starving, and any government that lets famine rear its ugly head is brought tumbling down before things get that far.
This point is often missed. Bad harvests, potato blight and other natural catastrophes can bring a famine on, but they are only ever the spark that lights the fire; the real issue being how the pile of petrol-soaked wood got there in the first place. Catastrophes can be dealt with and preventative measures can be put in place, but a government - no matter how benign it tries to be - more concerned with keeping itself in power than with listening to its people will often tragically neglect such measures. Take the example of India, which suffered horrible famines under the British Raj in the 19th century, but since becoming an independent democracy it has always managed to feed (most) of its people, even in the face of worse droughts and failed harvests.
Since this theory was elaborated by the economist Amartya Sen, no convincing counter-argument or counter-example has been found. It is now widely accepted as an iron law of econimcs: democracies do not let themselves starve.
The world, however, is not a democracy.
The arbitrary despotism of global institutions and the effect it has on the world is a topic worth exploring at length (cf Joseph Stiglitz, George Monbiot, the aforementioned Sen etc.). Suffice it to say that the world is ruled not by the will of the people, but by certain priveleged groups within certain priveleged nations. This is a recipe for famine, and we can already see some of the crucial ingredients coming together. Look at how the EU and the US routinely and deliberately undermine the agricultural economies of their poorer neighbours, protecting their markets from Third World products but dumping artificially underpriced products on Third World markets. Look how the IMF makes a point of interfering in the economic policies of countries in difficulty just because it can, to the extent that a government may be forced out of office due to unpopular economic policies but its successor will be powerless to change those policies (A striking example of this being Ecuador, which has gone through a ludicrous number of presidents in the last decade, all of whom have been forced from office on very similar grounds).
Despite all this, we have so far managed to produce enough food to feed the world, even if we haven’t been able to distribute it properly. We will not, however, able to do so for long. The kind of intense agriculture prevalent in the more successful producer companies either destroys its environment, requires a hell of a lot of oil (as fuel for heavy farming equipment or as a source of chemical fertilisers), or both.
Growing one crop in the same place for years almost always reduces the quality of the soil, and can in extreme cases turned fertile soil to desert. Crop rotation, on the other hand, takes time and impacts upon short-term profits, and as such is unacceptable under capitalism as we know it. The same applies to water (mis)management, and it is alarming to note that even as our population and food needs grow, so do our deserts.
...
Read this blog entry.
Global warming: the final verdict
Read More......
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday January 21, 2007
The Observer
A study by the world's leading experts says global warming will happen faster and be more devastating than previously thought
Global warming is destined to have a far more destructive and earlier impact than previously estimated, the most authoritative report yet produced on climate change will warn next week.
A draft copy of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by The Observer, shows the frequency of devastating storms - like the ones that battered Britain last week - will increase dramatically. Sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre; snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains; deserts will spread; oceans become acidic, leading to the destruction of coral reefs and atolls; and deadly heatwaves will become more prevalent.
Article continues
The impact will be catastrophic, forcing hundreds of millions of people to flee their devastated homelands, particularly in tropical, low-lying areas, while creating waves of immigrants whose movements will strain the economies of even the most affluent countries.
'The really chilling thing about the IPCC report is that it is the work of several thousand climate experts who have widely differing views about how greenhouse gases will have their effect. Some think they will have a major impact, others a lesser role. Each paragraph of this report was therefore argued over and scrutinised intensely. Only points that were considered indisputable survived this process. This is a very conservative document - that's what makes it so scary,' said one senior UK climate expert.
Climate concerns are likely to dominate international politics next month. President Bush is to make the issue a part of his state of the union address on Wednesday while the IPCC report's final version is set for release on 2 February in a set of global news conferences.
Although the final wording of the report is still being worked on, the draft indicates that scientists now have their clearest idea so far about future climate changes, as well as about recent events. It points out that:
- 12 of the past 13 years were the warmest since records began;
- ocean temperatures have risen at least three kilometres beneath the surface;
- glaciers, snow cover and permafrost have decreased in both hemispheres;
- sea levels are rising at the rate of almost 2mm a year;
- cold days, nights and frost have become rarer while hot days, hot nights and heatwaves have become more frequent.
And the cause is clear, say the authors: 'It is very likely that [man-made] greenhouse gas increases caused most of the average temperature increases since the mid-20th century,' says the report.
...
Read the article.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Ministers ordered to take the bus
I would like to see these changes happen in Brisbane, all of Australia and all of the world of course. What a better way to improve public transport to the levels it needs to be than to have the people who pay for it and make the decisions about it, catch it! Go you Scots!
Read More......
MURDO MACLEOD
Sunday 21st January 2007
From Scotsman (Scotland)
GET the bus, minister. Senior politicians and top civil servants will be forced out of their luxury limousines and onto public transport under a Scottish Labour manifesto pledge.
In a bid to appear more environmentally friendly, the party wants to crack down on the use of chauffeured vehicles and taxis by ministers and officials for trips, some of which could be walked in minutes.
It emerged last year that Scottish ministers had been driven the equivalent of 17 times around the world in the previous 12 months, despite urging voters to rely more on public transport.
Their trips generated an estimated 127 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Transport Minister Tavish Scott has used taxpayer-funded cars to make 250-mile round trips to catch flights home to his Shetland constituency for the weekend.
As well as the environmental cost, the Executive spends £575,000 a year on fuel and salaries related to its fleet of 22 cars and has spent almost £1m on new vehicles since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. It also spends an estimated £650,000 a year on taxis.
Ministers regularly use the cars to travel between the Scottish Parliament and the Executive's offices at St Andrew's House, a journey that only takes about eight minutes on foot.
But that is about to change, according to the latest draft of the Scottish Labour policy forum document which will form the basis of the manifesto for the Holyrood elections.
...
Read the article.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Ten ways to save the planet
19th January 2007.
From Cambridge News (uk).
...
- IF you can't avoid using the car, you can at least reduce its environmental impact.
Clear the clutter, drive in the highest gear practicable and avoid using air-conditioning whenever possible. It helps to save on fuel.
- SAY NO to junk mail - producing it burns up a lot of energy. Sign up to the Mailing Preference Service, send unwanted mail back - including any addressed to previous occupants - and ask them to remove your address from their mailing list.
- MAKE your own lunch instead of buying from a sandwich shop. It saves on packaging, and could also save you about £4 a day or £1,000 per year, says Friends of the Earth.
- RING the changes in your wardrobe with a Clothes Swap Party - they're great fun and a good excuse to get your mates round for an evening.
- USE rechargeable batteries instead of disposable ones - they'll save you money in the long term. You can buy solar powered rechargers if you want to reduce your environmental impact even further.
- COMPOST egg boxes and shredded paper - they can be thrown on the compost heap as well as all the usual fruit and veg peelings.
- GET on your bike - give cycling a go. It saves fuel and money and keeps you fitter.
- IF you are working regular hours, time your heating to go off 30 minutes before you leave the house, and come on again 30 minutes before you are due to get back.
- FIND out how to share a car with someone who makes the same journey as you. Contact www.liftshare.com or www.shareajourney.com
- TRY not to fly as much. Holiday in the UK or find other ways to travel
Read the article. Read More......
Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics
January 17, 2007.
From US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
(Source site is updated with links to replies from the Wheather Channel and original author).
Posted by Marc Morano 202-224-5762 marc_morano@epw.senate.gov (8:50pm ET)
The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.
The Weather Channel’s (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program "The Climate Code," is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their "Seal of Approval" for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.
"If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns," Cullen wrote in her December 21 weblog on the Weather Channel Website. [Note: It is also worth taking a look at the comments section at the bottom of Cullen’s blog, very entertaining.] See: http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html This latest call to silence skeptics of manmade global warming has been the subject of discussion at the annual American Meteorological Society’s Annual conference in San Antonio Texas this week. See: http://www.ametsoc.org/meet/annual
"It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It's not a political statement...it's just an incorrect statement," Cullen added. [Note: Hurricanes (Cyclones) in the Southern Hemisphere do rotate clockwise. Also, Cullen and the media have ignored the growing climate skepticism by prominent scientists see: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=E58DFF04-5A65-42A4-9F82-87381DE894CD ]
...
Read the article.
Britain warns of carbon credit crooks
Fiona Harvey, London
January 19, 2007
From The Australian.
COMPANIES offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing carbon credits on the international carbon markets have been warned to verify that their investments are going towards genuine projects to reduce emissions.
An increasing number of companies, including HSBC, Marks & Spencer and British Sky Broadcasting, are choosing to become "carbon neutral", meaning they have no negative effect on the climate. This is achieved by reducing a company's emissions through energy efficiency measures and the use of renewable energy, and then "offsetting" the remainder.
Offsetting requires the company to measure its remaining emissions and invest in emissions reduction projects outside the company that cut an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. These projects range from tree-planting to building wind farms in developing countries.
Companies can do this through third-party offsetting specialists. However, environmental activists and the British Government said companies must do more to ensure their offsetting partners were investing in projects that were yielding real improvements in emissions.
Concerns are mounting that factories in China and carbon traders are exploiting a loophole in international climate change regulations that allows them to make billion-dollar profits from the greenhouse gas emissions trading markets.
Chemical plants are reducing the amount of HFC gases that they release into the atmosphere, and receiving "carbon credits" in return. A credit can fetch $US5 to $US15 on the international carbon market.
The equipment to reduce HFC gases is relatively cheap to install, at $US10 million ($12.7 million) to $US30 million for a typical factory, according to industry estimates. Installation can then generate carbon credits that can be sold for billions of dollars.
Friends of the Earth, an environmental pressure group, said: "There are strong concerns over the environmental credibility of many of the credits and the contribution of the projects to sustainable development. Money for an offset scheme should only be funnelled to projects that would not have happened unless the offset money was provided".
...
Read the article.
Also see Govt launches carbon plan.
2100: A world of wild weather
18 January 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Kate Ravilious
Think back to the hottest summer you can remember. Now imagine a summer like that every year. For those of us who are still around by the end of the 21st century, this is what we can expect, according to a new index that maps the different ways that climate change will hit different parts of the world. The map reveals how much more frequent extreme climate events, such as heatwaves and floods, will be by 2100 compared with the late 20th century. It is the first to show how global warming will combine with natural variations in the climate to affect our planet.
"We hope it will help policy-makers gain a quick overview of the scientific facts without getting lost in the detail," says Michèle Bättig of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, who created the index with colleagues after talking to delegates at the 2005 UN Climate Change Conference in Montreal, Canada. The index allows anyone to compare the severity of the predicted effect of climate change on a chunk of the Amazon rainforest, for example, with its effect on a corner of Antarctica.
The results are presented on a global map (see top image), in which the areas experiencing the greatest changes are shown in the darkest shades. Swathes of the tropics and high latitudes are coloured a foreboding brown, signifying the most marked changes.
Perhaps the most startling feature is how few areas remain unscathed. "This reinforces what much of the piecemeal climate science is telling us - that many places will face severe challenges," says Neil Adger of the UK's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, Norfolk. In the coming decades people in these areas could find it difficult or impossible to adapt to the changed conditions, he adds.
For many parts of the world it seems this trend is already under way. Climate scientists announced last week that 2006 has been the hottest year on record for the US, topping nine years of almost continuous rises. Meanwhile, Europe experienced severe heatwaves in both 2003 and 2006, and for the UK 2006 was the warmest year since records began. Nor does it look as if the mercury is going to stop rising. In an energy technology outlook study published last week, the European Commission warns of stark changes for EU countries over the coming century, including shrinking forests, floods, drought and the drying out of fertile land - unless radical steps are taken to combat climate change.
...
Read the article.
Clean energy pact a 'diversion'
January 16, 2007 12:00
From http://www.news.com.au/
PRIME Minister John Howard's pact with China to use so-called clean coal technology was a typical diversion from the need to switch from coal to renewable energy, Greenpeace said today.
The environmental group said Mr Howard continued to ignore options that would deter industrialised economies from increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
Australia and China yesterday pledged to work together to develop cleaner energy alternatives following top level talks in the Philippines.
The pact coincided with a wider declaration on energy security made by 16 countries at the East Asia Summit (EAS) of regional leaders.
The declaration pledges a move towards nuclear and other alternative energy solutions, acknowledging the need for renewable energy development.
But Greenpeace spokesman Ben Pearson said China was already moving in that direction, having recently announced plans to invest 45.6 billion yuan ($7.41 billion) to more than triple wind power generation capacity by 2010 and aiming to reach a 15 per cent renewable energy target by 2020.
"This is the real solution to climate change and what Australia should be promoting," Mr Pearson said.
"The deal seems to involve no new financing and doesn't address the central problem that without a price on carbon, technologies such as geosequestration will never be commercially deployed.
"Moreover, it will be at least 10 years before we know if geosequestration even works, which is simply too late."
Mr Pearson said deep cuts were needed in greenhouse emissions of industrialised countries of at least 30 per cent by 2020 to avoid dangerous climate change.
"We may not even know if geosequestration will work by then," he said.
Read the article.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Tim Flannery: We can all fight the threat to our rare species
January 15, 2007
Climate change is now worsening the danger to Australian animals, writes Tim Flannery.
AUSTRALIA has the worst record of animal extinction of any continent. Since European colonisation began, about one tenth of our mammals — 23 species in all — have vanished. The victims are a diverse lot, ranging from obscure native rats and mice, to bandicoots, wallabies and the thylacine.
The extinctions began around the 1850s, as the great pastoral expansion pushed far into the inland. It peaked with the plague of foxes and rabbits that overran our land in the early 20th century, and only ceased in the 1950s or 1960s, when Australians had begun to care enough about their unique fauna and flora to institute conservation programs and establish national parks.
All patriotic Australians should look back on that century of extinction with horror, for it speaks of a disregard for our natural wealth that is truly shocking. Yet there are signs that, after 50 years of no species loss, the extinctions are starting again. This time, though, the cause is very different.
I trained as a mammalogist and am still a member of the professional association called the Australian Mammal Society, so receive its annual bulletin. This newsletter normally contains synopses of obscure studies of chromosomes, reproduction, the diets of our mammals, and such like. However, the latest bulletin (October 2006) contains far more disturbing news, for scattered among the more usual articles are contributions showing that no less than five of our unique mammal species have declined so precipitously in the opening years of the 21st century as to be in grave danger of extinction.
...
Read the article. Read More......
M&S to spend £200m on green strategy
The Coles Myer and Woolworths giants have been looking for something that distinguishes themselves for the other. Being Australian companies they also are unable to pioneer anything for themselves. NOW Marks and Spencer in Great Britain have presented the answer to them - go as green as possible. Hopefully they'll take note. I'm sure US people could say the same about their giants (mmm, I think read somewhere that Walmart is going super-green also - excellent, more of a reason for Coles Myer / Woolworths to do so also.
I also need to add that I write this blog entry with the realisation that what Marks & Spencer are doing will most likely not be the solution, though it will be a step in the right direction that will encourage change in the shopping industry (just like Dell are doing in the electronics industry). Things do have to happen in small steps (unfortunately if George Monbiot is correct then these small steps had better come quickly and successively after one-another if we are to achieve 90% reduction in Greenhouse Gases by 2030. A other hope it that what M & S (and the others are doing) isn't just Greenwashing which will get us nowhere at any time.
by Sarah Butler
Marks & Spencer plans to spend £200 million over the next five years on going green as the battle to become the most environmentally friendly retailer steps up.
The high street giant, which launches its strategy with an advertising campaign in March, has set some challenging targets, including a pledge to stop sending all waste to landfill and to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 per cent.
However, the aspirations will be closely scrutinised by non-governmental organisations, which will want to see if M&S will be able to maintain its commitment to them in future years as the deadline to meet its targets near. Stuart Rose, the chief executive, said that he hoped that the cost of the programme would be offset by increased sales.
Last year the retailer launched a Behind the Label campaign, which highlighted Marks & Spencer’s environmental and ethical business practices and was one of the retailer’s most successful advertising schemes.
Mr Rose said: “We think this is the right thing to do because our customers, employees and, increasingly, shareholders are asking us to. We believe those people will embrace a responsible business.”
M&S has worked on the project for six months, taking advice from Jonathon Porritt, the former director of Friends of the Earth, who said: “This plan raises the bar for everyone else — not just retailers but businesses in every sector.”
M&S’s detailed 100-point plan covers climate change, waste, raw materials, fair trade and healthy living.
...
Read the article. Read More......
Monday, January 15, 2007
Businesses dump 60% of all waste
Rob Edwards, Environment Editor
TWO-THIRDS OF the waste produced by Scottish businesses is still being dumped in landfill sites, swamping householders' efforts to recycle more of their rubbish.
Although ministers have invested heavily in schemes to increase domestic recycling, they have been accused of failing to tackle the mountains of waste generated by factories, shops, hotels and restaurants.
A survey for the government's green watchdog, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), reveals that nine million tonnes of rubbish a year is produced by commercial and industrial premises. Only 2.35 million tonnes of this is recycled, with six million tonnes ending up as landfill. As this rots it emits methane, a powerful greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.
continued...
The amount of business waste dwarfs that of ordinary households. In the year to March 2006, local councils collected 3.4 million tonnes of municipal waste, 2.5 million tonnes of which was landfilled and 0.83 million tonnes recycled.
Sepa waste manager John Ferguson said more should be done to tackle the environmental effects of business waste.
He said: "It is of concern that we remain so dependent on landfill in Scotland for the management of our commercial and industrial wastes.
"Given the impact on climate change of methane from the breakdown of biodegradable waste in landfill, we will be focusing more attention on alternatives to landfill disposal for wastes from commercial and industrial sources."
He suggested a framework for business waste being developed with the Scottish Executive would begin to address the problem. Some waste could be used to generate energy in biomass plants, he said, and increased recycling would improve business competitiveness.
Read the article.
Natural Capitalism
NATURAL CAPITALISM: CREATING THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
For decades, environmentalists have been warning that human economic activity is exceeding the planet's limits. Of course we keep pushing those limits back with clever new technologies; yet living systems are undeniably in decline.
These trends need not be in conflict—in fact, there are fortunes to be made in reconciling them.
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, is the first book to explore the lucrative opportunities for businesses in an era of approaching environmental limits.
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See the site with an online and purchasable book.
Read the book. Read More......
ecoshock: Top 5 "Save the Climate" Speeches of 2006
This blog highlights 5 different solutions to climate change and the longevity of planet earth.
We are talking about Al Gore, the former politician; Amory Lovins, a Green gone big time; British journalist sensation George Monbiot; Pulitzer-prize winning investigator Ross Gelbspan; the official World Watcher, Lester Brown; and perhaps urban critic James Howard Kuntsler with the Peak Oil movement. Radio Ecoshock has assembled their latest speeches on how to get out of the heat, in a special section of free downloads, at www.ecoshock.org.
Read the article.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
10 things you should know about tree 'offsets'
I recently blogged about Dell going Carbon Neutral.
My point was that a major electronics company is taking this seriously, where-as another (Apple) isn't, atleast to the extent required (I discussed this in How green is my Apple). This post was not an endorsment to carbon offsets as a solution to climate change. Climate Action Brisbane, Friends of the Earth and many other groups do not support them. Carbon offsets is the first step to world-wide agreement. Carbon Quota / Rationing is the next. This is discussed in length in George Monbiot's book "Heat".
The reasons we don't support carbon offsets as a solution to climate change is discussed in this New International article. The key points are below:Active Carbon Pool
Carbon moves between forests, atmosphere and oceans in a complex natural rhythm of daily/seasonal/annual and multi-annual cycles. The overall amount in all three carbon stores together rarely increases in nature. This is ‘active’ carbon. Fossil Carbon Pool
Some carbon is locked away and rarely comes into contact with the atmosphere naturally. This ‘fossil carbon’ is stored permanently in coal, oil and gas deposits and therefore is not part of the active carbon pool. When humans mine and extract these reserves this inactive fossil carbon does not go back in the ground, but is added into the active carbon pool, disrupting a delicate balance.
This is one of the reasons that the concept of ‘offsets’ is flawed. Offsets allow extraction of oil, coal and gas to continue, which in turn increases the amount of fossil carbon that is released into the active carbon pool disrupting the cycle. That is why campaigners argue that genuine solutions to climate change require us to keep fossil carbon (oil, coal and gas) in the ground.
The ten reasons are:
- Carbon in trees is temporary (Trees can easily release carbon into the atmosphere through fire, disease, climatic changes, natural decay and timber harvesting);
- One-way road (the carbon in fossil fuels is safely locked away until mined);
- Fake credit (carbon offsets is a false economy);
- Big foot (the ecological footprint, or space to plant trees of offset the amount of carbon we currently release is too great - we need space for food crops and even for crops for bio-fuels (which take away from space from food crops so they too are not a solution);
- Subsidies for mega-plantations (carbon offsets will support and subsidise plantations, and these are not desired for other reasons aswell as the above));
- Communities suffer twice (indigenous and forest dependant communities not only suffer from climate change but from their land which will be taken over by plantations);
- Ticking time bomb (drastic actions are required - carbon offsets just allow business to continue as usual and does not address the real changes that need to be made);
- Forest fraud (we should be leaving the forest in areas such as the Amazon and South East Asia - some of the most heavily logged areas in the world - not knocking them down and starting monoculture plantations);
- Blind guess (it is an unreliable science in carbon offsets - it is truly difficult to measure what is saved with what was released);
- The tenth reason is a sumarisation of the above - Carbon credits from tree planting are a phony climate fix.
The lead article to the above is at If you go down to the woods today....
From it I extract another reason:
- That carbon offsets have become a business which values money over the true intention of reducing the carbon in our atmosphere. It's just capitalism in another guise.
From the story:
A report in the Sunday Telegraph stated that, of the 10,000 trees that were supposedly distributed to small farmers in this largely dry Indian state, only a few hundred were found to be still alive. The rest perished through lack of water and inadequate financial and infrastructure support from the Carbon Neutral Company and its partners.
One of the project participants, Anandi Sharan Mieli of Women for Sustainable Development, accused the Carbon Neutral Company of having a ‘condescending’ attitude. ‘They do it for their interests, not really for reducing emissions. They do it because it’s good money,’ she was quoted as saying. The Carbon Neutral Company, however, blames Mieli’s group for not meeting its ‘contractual obligations’ to provide the necessary irrigation and support.
Also see:
- Uganda - funny place to store carbon - story that supports this;
- blog: weekly green planet " The Truthiness Of Carbon Neutrality".
The lust for money over everything else is responsible for 100% of the human caused reasons why we are in this mess today. In my own opinion, we will not be able to solve the climate crisis, along with the social injustice that perpetuates it, whilst capitalism is at the helm steering planet people. Read More......
Friday, January 12, 2007
Devon gives green light to dark streets
I can certainly testify to there being an overkill in street lighting around where I live, which isn't on a main road, but it has bright orange lights every 30 to 40 meters. A tremendous amount of light and why? Surely either halving each bulb's capacity, as this story suggests is being done, or turning off every 2nd light would provide us with all the light that is necessary. What a better way to educate the public about the need to reduce energy consumption than changing the most visible sign of energy wastage in the streets of our cities.
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22749-2541089,00.html
Devon could become England’s darkest county if plans to turn off street lights to save energy are approved.
Thousands of lights could be dimmed, or removed, to help to combat global warming.
A light-dimming trial is under way in one street in Exeter and the council also plans to remove non-essential lights and signs, install dimmable bulbs and turn off lights at night. It will also switch about 2,800 of 3,800 250watt bulbs to 150watt bulbs to save nearly 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. The council said that the £6,750,000 cost of the project would be offset over 12 to 19 years by energy savings.
Lester Willmington, the head of highways management, said that the council had been working with the police over road safety and assessing areas with low levels of crime at night. Maurice Spurway, of Friends of the Earth in Exeter, said: “There is clearly a lot of scope for energy reductions.”
Martyn Rogers, of Age Concern Exeter, said: “There are issues for older people on being safe on the streets and going out after dark.”
Ronald Higgs, who has lived for 38 years in the Exeter street where the trial is going on, said: “I would be in favour of anything that diminishes lights that aren’t necessary.”
Read the article.
Read More......Dell moves towards carbon neutrality
Yesterday I blogged about how Apple should accept the damage their industry does and stand up to the challenge of being a Green Apple. Greenpeace said they could do this with the aim to become the leader in the field to match their attitude of themselves in the Information Technology and Communcations arena.
Come forward one day and it seems Dell has stood up and appear to be taking serious strides in improving the impact they have on the Environment. More than just the initial purchase but looking at the life of the products they build and sell.
It appears that green credentials and minimising impacts on the environment have become an area of competition in our capitalist marketplace. Bring forth the games!
Dell chairman Michael Dell has announced plans to make all his company's PCs carbon-neutral by planting trees to offset the power used to run the computers.
The vendor is working with The Conservation Fund and Carbonfund.org, both of which are non-profit organisations that plant trees in sustainable managed forests.
Dell also urged other technology companies to take similar steps to protect the environment.
"The customer experience starts with receiving the best value and continues with the knowledge that we are working with our customers to protect the environment throughout the life of their system," said Dell.
"Programmes like Plant a Tree for Me and our global recycling efforts empower our customers to participate with us in making a difference. It is our hope that other companies in our industry will join us to improve the environment that we all share."
Customers will be invited to pay $2 for a notebook and $6 for a desktop to offset the likely power use over a three-year period. The scheme will be started in the US next month and worldwide in April.
"Dell has focused on eliminating toxics from their computers, and has improved this by encouraging others to join schemes," said a Greenpeace spokesperson.
The vendor has also launched a Dell Earth scheme in which customers can track the company's green programmes online.
Dell has also finished a review of its recycling system and will recycle any Dell computer free of charge.
Read the article.
Other references
Climate Action Brisbane blog: 10 things you should know about tree 'offsets'
CES 2007: Dell launches 'Plant a Tree for Me’ initative for PC buyers Read More......
Livestock generate 18 percent of world's greenhouse gases
A new report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization found that domestic animals are a major source of greenhouse gases, producing 18% of the world's total - even more than transportation. Unless more sustainable techniques such as controlling soil erosion, providing animals with better diets, and using water more efficiently are adopted, the environmental impact of animal production will worsen, as world production of meat and dairy products is expected to double by 2050.
Source: Union of Concerned Scientists.
Read the report.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
How green is Apple?
Greenpeace recently launched a campaign against Apple after showing that they rated as one of the most environmentally unsound PC and Electronics makers.
Apple we're of course miffed and it seems many people are behind Apple.
Greenpeace has hit back and haven't apologised as some have suggested.
Apple are my computer and software maker of choice so it wasn't easy for me to see them scoring badly. However I do know that Apple are symbolic of the capitalist society we live in, where everyone, and not just companies will do everything within their power to increase their profits, or "shareholder value" for the companies. Even if it means damaging the environment. I think Apple should take this on the chin and make a stand, and most likely immense profits as the world itself turns green, and turn green themselves.
Snippits from the Greenpeace hit back:
one
... about Apple’s environmental record because they get... wait for it... silver ranking in the EPEAT procurement guide!
Ha! The EPA silver star is little more than a consolation prize which the US government hands out to corporations for complying with the law. And, to be honest, Apple really shouldn't be content with the Bush Administration stamp of approval. (Let's see, Bush gives the thumbs up to Nuclear Power, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and... Apple?) And since when is Apple content not to be Gold Star quality?
two
Our criteria are different, and more stringent. For example we want toxic PVC plastic eliminated, the EPEAT criteria allow it in parts less than 25g. (quick pop quiz - how many parts over 25g in an iPod nano?)
Zato commented
"Our criteria are different, and more stringent. For example we want toxic PVC plastic eliminated, the EPEAT criteria allow it in parts less than 25g. (quick pop quiz - how many parts over 25g in an iPod nano?)"
Ok? How many? Do you know? How much PVC is there in a Nano? Do you know? No, you don't.
And give me a break. There is more PVC in one 50 foot garden hose than in all the iPod Nano's ever sold.
A Walmart store probably has half a million pounds of PVC on the shelves.
Greenpeace responds
To Zato:
We campaign to get chemicals like PVC subsituted wherever possible, but e-waste and electronics are a big and growing issue, especially when the impacts move from the affluent West to poorer nations in Asia and Africa. So this particular campaign is focusing on this issue, with Apple as trendsetter.
How many garden hoses are dismantled and burnt by children in China when you're finished with them? How many garden hoses have a massive publicity machine behind them proclaiming environmental responsiblity? How many garden hoses have high-profile competitors who have already committed to phasing out dangerous chemicals in their products?
If you are actually concerned about PVC, rather than just trying to shoot down our campaign, why don't you do something about it?
Here's a good place to start:
http://www.pvcfree.org.
More refereces
- ITWeek article: "Greenpeace defends controversial Apple research"
- Alternet discussion of Greenpeace's position on e-waste
- Greenpeace: Hazardous Effects Of Electronics (Friday, 9 February 2007, Scoop (NZ))
- PC World: Greenpeace Activists Claim Apple May Clean Up Act (Feb 14, 2007)
Protest the cars
This guerilla campaign from 2006 is from BUND, the German Friends of the Earth. They want consistent ecological politics.
At this campaign members of the BUND put globe-ballons on exhaust-pipes of cars in Berlin, Germany. The emissions inflate the ballons. And after the message (The world can't take anymore CO2.) is readable, there is a big bang.
Of course the text is not always readable anymore after the big bang but the campaign gives a lot of rumour and media attention.
See this story with all the pictures of the baloons on car exhausts at http://blogger.xs4all.nl/marcg/.
New report: GM crops remain unsustainable and unviable
Commenting on a Friends of the Earth report out today on GM crops, Greens have reiterated their call for a robust and effective GM strategy in Scotland, and have criticised the repeated delays to the consultation that should precede that strategy.
According to the report out today:
- GM crops commercialised have on the whole increased rather than decreased pesticide use
- GM crops do not yield more than conventional varieties
- the environment has not benefited, and GM crops will become increasingly unsustainable over the medium to long term.
Mark Ruskell MSP, Green speaker on environment, has proposed a bill at Holyrood to make GM companies strictly liable for any economic damage as a result of contamination caused by GM crop trials and commercialisation.
Mr Ruskell said, "This report proves that GM crops are bad news for the environment and for farmers around the world. The lack of consumer demand sends a strong message to biotech companies that their attempts to foist GM onto an unwilling public have so far been fruitless.
"The Executive needs to recognise how crucial this issue is to the future of Scottish agriculture, and ensure a robust strategy is developed to protect our farmers from the financial ruin faced by their counterparts in Canada and the US who have suffered GM contamination of their crops. So far Labour and LibDem ministers have shirked from the tackling this problem but they urgently need to address this for the sake of our farmers, consumers and the environment."
The Executive has repeatedly delayed a crucial consultation on the threat of GM crops and in November 2006 announced that it will not take place until this summer, after the next election. Ministers were due to issue proposals on the "co-existence" of GM crops in summer 2005, and Greens argue that the delays indicates Labour and LibDems' fear of drawing attention to their support for GM crops.
Read the article.
Story also at EU Business .com. Read More......
New EU energy package dissapoints greens
Eco-groups look to Germany to strengthen EU energy package
Green groups say they are disappointed with the new EU energy package and want the German EU presidency to upgrade the proposals.
Environmental NGOs slammed Wednesday’s long-awaited proposals as “feeble” and “vague” and accused Brussels of contradicting its own findings.
“[The commission is] ignoring its own scientific and economic analysis, the commission proposes to stick to a business-as-usual energy policy, instead of making a paradigm shift to renewable energies and energy efficiency,” said Friends of the Earth.
“This energy package is another major step on the commission’s road to becoming the world leader in pure announcements and lip-service,” said EREC, the European renewable energy council.
Green groups were disappointed with a proposed target to reduce greenhouse gasses across the EU by 20 per cent by 2020, arguing that a 30 per cent cut would have been more effective.
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Read the article. Read More......
Chrysler questions climate change
My god number two! The big motor companies in the US are continueing to deny Global Warming. I guess this is the expected behaviour of companies who stand to lose the most. They could have forseen this years ago, like Toyota did with the Prius, but no, they will continue to deny it and hope it goes away. Stuupid gringos. They will loose out even more as people are forced not to buy their big gas guzzlers. They are maintaining their profits now but will loose the lot in only a couple years time. My prediction is that you will see big motor company execs resigning with nice big golden handshakes. I don't think that violence helps anything, though I don't mind releasing some anger to suggest that those execs should be stoned if this comes true.
Chrysler's chief economist Van Jolissaint has launched a fierce attack on "quasi-hysterical Europeans" and their "Chicken Little" attitudes to global warming.
His attack is in sharp contrast to the green image that the US car companies have been trying to promote at this year's Detroit motor show.
Mr Jolissaint was speaking at a private breakfast where the chief economists of the "Big Three" US car firms presented their forecasts for auto industry sales this year.
Most of the audience - which was mainly made up of parts suppliers - seemed to nod in agreement with Mr Jolissaint.
Neither Ford's chief economist Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, nor General Motors' chief economist Mustafa Mohatarem, who were on the panel with Mr Jolissaint, questioned his assertion.
Uncertain magnitude
Mr Jolissant, a Chrysler veteran who was recently appointed the chief economist for the German-US DaimlerChrysler Group, said that since he started spending more time at the company's corporate headquarters in Stuttgart he had been shocked by the absurdity of European attitudes towards global warming.
In response to a question from the floor, he said that global warming was a far-off risk whose magnitude was uncertain.
He said that from an economic point of view, it would be more rational to spend lots of money on today's other big problems, and only make small and limited changes in policies relating to global warming, such as a slight increase in gasoline or carbon taxes.
Read the article. Read More......
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
What Al Gore Hasn't Told You About Global Warming
This article compares Al Gore's speeches about global warming to George Monbiot's and concludes that it's unfortunate but true that what George proposes to solve Global Warming is going to be tough. George also makes it clear that it will be a jillion times easier if we start making immediate and BIG changes NOW! Leave it any lenght of time and the hardship will increase exponentially.
George Monbiot's new book Heat picks up where Al Gore left off on global warming, offering real solutions without sugar-coating the large personal sacrifices they will require.
Al Gore is our generation's Paul Revere. Riding hard through the country, he warns us of the impending arrival of climatic disaster. He's proven an astonishingly effective messenger. An Inconvenient Truth may receive an Oscar for Best Documentary. Overflow crowds greet his presentations with standing ovations.
Which, come to think of it, is odd. When has someone ever delivered such an ominous message to such tumultuous applause? (Aside from those who insist we are in the end times and the rapture is near.)
In a recent speech to a standing-room-only audience at the New York University School of Law, Gore declared, "We are moving closer to several 'tipping points' that could -- within as little as 10 years -- make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet's habitability for human civilization." The audience cheered wildly. Presumably audiences are not cheered by the prospect of imminent catastrophe. So what is going on here?
British journalist George Monbiot, author of Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning (Doubleday, 2006) has a theory.
"We wish our governments to pretend to act," he writes. "We get the moral satisfaction of saying what we know to be right, without the discomfort of doing it. My fear is that the political parties in most rich nations have already recognized this. They know that we want tough targets, but that we also want those targets to be missed. They know that we will grumble about their failure to curb climate change, but that we will not take to the streets. They know that nobody ever rioted for austerity."
Austerity? Hold on. Al Gore and the rest of the U.S. environmental movement never utter the word "austerity." Their word of choice is "opportunity." The prospect of global warming, they maintain, can serve as a much-needed catalyst to spur us to action. A large dose of political will may be required, but we need not anticipate economic pain. We can stop global warming in its tracks, expand our economy and improve our quality of life. We can, in other words, do good and do quite well. A leading environmentalist, for whom I have a great deal of admiration, summed up his position to an interviewer, "I can't stand it when people say, 'Taking action on climate change is going to be extremely difficult.'"
Read article. Read More......
Exxon Mobil reportedly admits PR problem on global warming
My god, when I saw this headline I thought myself "well about time Exxon Mobil came to their senses. I'm sure this means they will pump lots of money into helping the world solve this problem". Then I saw the words "[they] would just try and explain it [their position against global warming] better".
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) has promised investors it will soften its public image in an attempt to rid itself of a reputation as the green campaigners' public enemy number one, the Guardian reports Tuesday.
However, Chairman and Chief Executive Rex Tillerson made clear to a select group of Wall Street fund managers and analysts that the oil company wouldn't be changing its position on global warming, it would just try and explain it better, the newspaper says.
Read article. Read More......
Global Warming could spur "evolution explosion"
What a laugh it would be if evolution could be proved outright through the changes we are seeing. I wonder what the Intelligent Design (ID) and Creationists would say then!
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fast-growing weeds have evolved over a few generations to adapt to climate change, which could signal the start of an "evolution explosion" in response to global warming, scientists reported on Monday.
This means that the weeds will likely keep up with any attempts to develop crops that can adapt to global warming, said Arthur Weis, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine.
But some long-lived species -- like the venerated California redwood tree, with a life-span of hundreds of years -- will not have the capacity to adapt so quickly, because their life cycles are so long, Weis said in a telephone interview.
The quick-growing weedy plant known as field mustard showed the ability to change reproductive patterns over a period of just seven years, Weis said.
"If you take a climate shift, such as we've had here in southern California, in a very few number of generations you can get a change in ecologically important traits that can allow these fast-growing weedy species to hang on and actually do well despite the change in environments," he said.
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Read the article. Read More......
George Monbiot's open letter to the prime minister
Dear Tony Blair,
Last year, you launched the Stern review on climate change with these words: "Unless we act now, not some time distant but now, these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be irreversible. So there is nothing more serious, more urgent or more demanding of leadership." Ten weeks later, you appear to have recanted.
On Sky News last night, you claimed that it is "a bit impractical actually" to expect people fly less. Instead, we should rely on science to save us, by means that remain mysterious. As for you, you will not be setting an example, by reducing the number of holidays you take at your friends' houses in Florida and the Caribbean. This, too, apparently, would be "unrealistic".
You say that we need to "look at how you make air travel more energy-efficient, how you develop the new fuels that will allow us to burn less energy and emit less. How - for example - in the new frames for the aircraft, they are far more energy-efficient." The trouble is that none of these measures exist yet, or not to the extent that they can offset the growth in emissions from aircraft.
Even if you take the industry's most optimistic projections, which suggest almost magical gains in energy efficiency, the improvements in engine performance will be outstripped several times over by the growth in flights, as both the airlines and your transport secretary, Douglas Alexander, admit. This growth is permitted by your government's decision, made just a month ago, to allow airport capacity in the United Kingdom to double by 2030.
...
Read the article.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Alaska natives left out in the cold
While the rest of the world argues about the best way to curb future climate change, says Patricia Cochran in this week's Green Room, native communities within the Arctic Circle are having to draw on their own ancestral strengths to adapt to a rapidly changing world.
A day after Christmas, the Anchorage Daily News ran an article about flooding and erosion in small native villages on the west coast of Alaska with names familiar to no one else except Alaskans.
But this is a very familiar story to us. With thinner sea ice arriving later and leaving earlier in the year, coastal communities are experiencing more intensified storms with larger waves than they have ever experienced.
This threat is being compounded by the loss of permafrost which has kept river banks from eroding too quickly.
The waves are larger because there is no sea ice to diminish their intensity, slamming against the west and northern shores of Alaska, causing severe storm driven coastal erosion.
Read the article.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Advice from Friends of the Earth Canada
Advice from Friends of the Earth Canada John Baird - New Environment Minister
4/1/07 1:32PM
Interview Opportunity
Article.
Beatrice Olivastri, Chief Executive Officer, Friends of the Earth-Canada
Re: Advice to Canada's new Minister of the Environment
Open letter to Canada’s New Minister of the Environment
January 4, 2007
Dear Minister Baird,
I extend to you my congratulations on your appointment as Minister of the Environment. As a long time leader in advancing Canada’s environmental agenda, I know that this can be either the best or the worst job in the world. To help you start on the essentials, I’m sending you the priority ABCs for immediate action.
A
Act on Canada’s climate commitments: Reduce greenhouse
gases by setting clear targets and schedules that meet our
Kyoto commitments; cut the bafflegab and spin from your predecessor’s “Dirty Air Act”; and, admit that we’ve blown it so far, but we’ll try our best now (this may mean taking a penalty from the Kyoto Compliance folks, but why not be proactive and responsible about it instead of wallowing in deep denial).
B
Boil water: Boil your own drinking water for a month – then you’ll experience the fear and aggravation created by boil water advisories in communities from Newfoundland to British Columbia, including many First Nations communities (see www.foecanada.org). Safe drinking water is a human right which should be supported at home and at the UN.
C
Compete with California to have the cleanest, most efficient vehicles and fuels: Set regulated targets for Canada’s auto and truck makers and invest in the next generation of biofuel technologies (such as cellulosic), so that Canada can lead in this area, protecting rather than damaging the environment.
These ABCs are just the beginning. You have a whole department of dedicated and passionate employees with a mission – not just a job – to help save our planet. I encourage you to use that dedication to help you earn your “honourable” designation as Canada’s Minister of the Environment.
I look forward to meeting you to talk about how Friends of the Earth-Canada and our 70 Friends of the Earth groups across the planet can help you address these ABCs and many other serious issues.
Sincerely yours,
Beatrice Olivastri
Chief Executive Officer
Friends of the Earth-Canada
-30-
Ms. Olivastri can be contacted at 613-241-0085 ext.26 or 613-724-8690 (cell) Read More......
Oiling the wheels of renewable energy
DEMOCRATS in the US House of Representatives are working on an energy package that would roll back billions of dollars worth of oil-drilling incentives and plough the money into new tax breaks for renewable energy sources.
The move would set off a feeding frenzy among advocates of hydropower, nuclear, biofuels, geothermal and solar power, renewable energy lobbyists said on Wednesday. Solar producers, for example, are looking to expand and extend tax credits for residential solar installations for eight years, which would cost $US400 million ($506 million).
"The Democrats are appropriately shifting money from the 20th century technologies to the 21st century industries," said the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, Rhone Resch. "If we want to see solar, wind and biofuels, we have to make that investment today." Democratic leaders said the new House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, would introduce the energy package on January 18, towards the end of a packed "first 100 hours" of legislative initiatives.
Sydney Morning Herald article linked to from Gippsland Friends of Future Generations article (it contains links to relevant sites).
The Hidden Life of Paper and Its Impact on the Environment
By LOUISE STORY
MEDIA companies have published numerous articles on global warming and greenhouse emissions in recent years. Now, a couple of large publishers are starting to think about their own impact on the environment.
Time Inc. participated in a study published this year by the Heinz Center that calculated the amount of carbon dioxide emissions produced over the entire process of publishing Time and In Style.
Other magazine companies, including the Hearst Corporation, now say they are studying the Heinz report to consider the implications for their magazines, and Rupert Murdoch recently announced that the News Corporation is developing a plan to become entirely carbon neutral, meaning the company will reduce its carbon emissions and try to offset the emissions left over.
“We’ve recognized that these are issues that are important to our readers and, increasingly, important to our advertisers,” said David J. Refkin, the director of sustainable development for the Time Inc. division of Time Warner and a member of the board of the Heinz Center. “We’re starting to see a movement where becoming carbon neutral is something many companies are considering.”
•Large-scale manufacturing is, of course, better known as a source of the greenhouse gases that many scientists say cause global warming. Electric power production represents about 40 percent of emissions in the United States, and private motor vehicle use accounts for about 20 percent, said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences at Princeton University.
Still, the paper industry is not without its impact. Because of its consumption of energy, the industry — which includes magazines, newspapers, catalogs and writing paper — emits the fourth-highest level of carbon dioxide among manufacturers, according to a 2002 study by the Energy Information Administration, a division of the Department of Energy. The paper industry follows the chemical, petroleum and coal products, and primary metals industries.
“Few people realize the sheer scale and magnitude of activities it takes to produce millions of copies of a magazine,” said Donald Carli, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Communication, a nonprofit group in New York that is working to help advertisers estimate their ads’ greenhouse emissions. “There’s a hidden life that products have, and one of the challenges of sustainability is to make these lives known.”
The life of a magazine or a newspaper starts with trees being cut down in a forest and ends with the burning or recycling of old magazines or papers. The most harmful part of the process is paper production. Breaking down wood fiber to make paper consumes a lot of energy, which in many cases comes from coal plants.
...
Read the Article here.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
The Reality of Nuclear Power
Good evening. My name is David Lochbaum. I have been the Nuclear Safety Engineer for Union of Concerned Scientists for the past three years. Prior to joining UCS, I worked for over 17 years as a nuclear engineer in the nuclear industry. Between 1992 and 1995, I was a consultant to the New York Power Authority working primarily on their FitzPatrick nuclear power plant and some on their Indian Point Unit 3 facility.
I am going to speak a little bit about the history of nuclear power, but will focus more on its future. Many people have stated recently that the nuclear industry is at a crossroads because of electric utility deregulation. I personally do not subscribe to that theory because it implicitly implies either that we are all going in a big circle because we reach a crossroad every three or four months or that we are not moving at all and remain at the first crossroad we reached.
Workers at the Shippingport nuclear power plant outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, flipped a switch in December 1957 to connect the plant's turbine-generator to the electrical grid. This marked the first time that a civilian utility company in the United States supplied electricity to its customers from nuclear power. In the subsequent four decades, nuclear power has generated billions of kilowatts of electricity, several thousand tons of highly radioactive waste, and immeasurable controversy.
Proponents claim that nuclear power is vital if the United States is to have energy independence and to combat global warming. Antinuclear activists claim that nuclear power plants are unacceptably risky and that nuclear waste is the wrong legacy for us to leave future generations.
This debate is what I call the politics of nuclear power. Three years of working inside the DC beltway have taught me one important lesson -- I don't want to work in politics, particularly the politics of nuclear power.
Read the article at Union of Concerned Scientists.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Canberra to sell uranium to China
Friday, 5 January 2007
Australia will soon be able to export uranium to China, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has said.
The two countries signed an agreement earlier this year, which means the exports can begin in 30 days, he said.
Australia has 40% of the world's recoverable uranium, while China needs a huge amount of energy for its large population and rising economy.
Beijing is keen to increase its use of nuclear power, to cut down its dependence on fossil fuels.
Two bilateral nuclear treaties - the Australia-China Nuclear Transfer Agreement and the Nuclear Co-operation Agreement - were signed in April during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Canberra.
....
Read the Article.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Whither our weather?
By Tim Flannery
January 2, 2007
Article from The Australian Age.
The severity of the drought is reflected in the economic figures, and so dire is the shortfall of production that soon all Australians will be paying more for their food.
It's not just the lack of rain that's the problem, but the lack of flow in our rivers. The great irrigation areas of the Murray-Darling basin that feed most of our nation, and provide most of our exports, are suffering disproportionately.
And if things continue this way much longer, it's not water for crops that will be insufficient, but water for towns.
Think of the worst drought Australia has faced since record-keeping began, then take away three-quarters of the trickle that flowed in the Murray-Darling back then. That's how much water is flowing through Australia's arterial rivers this year.
Thus, many argue, this drought is four times worse than any experienced in the past 200 years and so it is increasingly referred to as the one-in-1000-years drought. But is it really a drought, or the new climate? Much hinges on this distinction.
The climate of south-eastern Australia changed dramatically in prehistory. In the Mallee, in Victoria's north-west, you can still see the sand dunes - stabilised now - testifying to the fact that this vast region used to be a Sahara of shifting sands. Ten thousand years ago the climate changed, allowing the mallee trees to grow. This tells us that the possibility of a climate shift is real enough.
But let's look at evidence that can tell us whether the one-in-1000-years drought is caused by industrial pollution or natural climate variability.
This year, Australian climatologist Neville Nichols and his colleagues solved one of the great mysteries of climatology - one that bears directly on the nature of Australia's big dry.
Read rest of the article.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Polar Bear population. Up or down?
It has been reported recently (Polar Bears International, Fox News, Washington Post ...) that Polar Bear numbers are decreasing due to stress and habitat loss caused by climate change.
The Conservative Voice, an extremely right-wing site, caught onto ONE "report" from Dr Mitchell Taylor, who claims to be a Polar Bear Biologist, Department of the Environment, Government of Nunavut , Igloolik , Nunavut , Canada that "The evidence for climate change effects on polar bears described by Flannery is incorrect.".
Interestingly, Mitchell Taylor heads the site http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/. It probably isn't worth our energy, given all the confirmation that exists to support Climate Change, though it would be interesting to find what is behind this guy. Every person that has denounced global warming has been found to have some connection with corporations, industries and interest groups that are firmly rooted in their business as usual and will suffer to some degree if the world accepts that climate change is true and stop doing something-or-rather.
George Monbiot, who write the excellent book Heat, which discusses the solutions to climate change, has a blog Blog, and on it can be found such categories as Corporate Power. This lists the people and companies that don't want us to believe that Climate Change is true.
I'm not the only one to be alarmed at the right-wingers who don't believe this is true. Also see Mark York's False Claims Of Hysteria blog post.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Concern for rainforest forces RWE to scrap palm oil project
Background: As discussed in George Monbiot's book "Heat", Biofuels are not the solution to climate change (replacing hydrocarbon based fuels) because:
- We don't have enough arable space to grow enough plants (Palm Oil in this discussion) to make a dent on our current fuel consumption. And in trying to get the space, deforestation is occurring as demand grows;
- The taking of land to grow plants for biofuels mean that there is less food being grown to feed the planet.
The following article is "good news" in that these limitations look like they are being understood and followed.
Also see this Blog story on the expected extinction of Oran-utan's in the wild due to Palm Oil plantions.
A leading German utility has abandoned plans to convert a British power station to run on palm oil, in a blow to the promotion of biofuels in Europe.
The decision by RWE npower to scrap the project at its Littlebrook plant in Dartford, Kent, which was seen as a test case for palm oil as an alternative energy source, comes after it was unable to secure sufficient supplies without risking damage to tropical rainforest. The move highlights the mounting alarm over the scramble in South-East Asia to bring more land into palm oil cultivation.
See the article for more.
Article by Carl Mortished, International Business Editor for UK's Times Online. Read More......
Greenwashing
George Monbiot has started a site to identify greenwashing companies. The intro is below.
Greenwash Exposed
On Greenwash Exposed I’ll tell you the truth behind the fudged figures, dodgy claims and empty public relations campaigns by corporations and celebrities who wrongly claim to be cleaning up their carbon emissions.
See George Monbiot's Greenwash site for more information. Read More......
Interviews with George Monbiot
George is the author of "Heat", one of the most well researched and well argued books about climate change, and in particular, how to reduce our greenhouse gas emmisions to 90% by 2030, that I have ever read. I encourage everyone to pick up a copy.
There is a site with interviews with George.
http://www.iwtnews.com/george_monbiot_part1
The following parts are linked to from the site.
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