THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS
Friday, 12 February, 2016
UNEP and the Executive Director in the News
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Voice of Russia (Russia): Will Sochi Olympics be green?
Geneva Lunch (Blog): Sochi Olympics: cumulative impact on wildlife a danger
Science Blog (Blog): High Arctic species on thin ice
Nation (Kenya): It’s a golden jubilee for 'Nation'
BBC Mundo: ONU critica a Rusia por daño ambiental en Sochi, sede de Olimpíadas 2014
IPCC in the News
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Little Chicago Review (US): Barrasso praises investigation of IPCC
New Jersey Online (US): A rough winter for global warming
Opposing Views (Blog):U.N. Wrong about Rainforests Being in Imminent Danger
Other Environment News
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AP: Japan leading charge against bluefin ban
LA Times (US): Surge in rhino poaching devastates African populations
ENN (Blog): Blue Fin Tuna Decline and fall
Deutsche Welle (Germany): World considers ban on bluefin tuna trade
AFP: Climate debated should be reframed: Malidives president
BBC News: Climate ads far from divine
Guardian (UK): Climate change adverts help take debate among public back
several years
Telegraph (UK): Climate change adverts 'simplistic tools'
AFP: China’s roars grow louder in Year of the Tiger
Environmental News from the UNEP Regions
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RONA
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UNEP and the Executive Director in the News
Voice of Russia (Russia): Will Sochi Olympics be green?
17 March 2010
The top UN environmental watchdog criticized Russia in a report released on Tuesday for
ignoring the effects that several construction projects for the 2014 Winter Olympics in
Sochi will have on the region's ecosystem.
The UNEP report was based on the body's three-day visit to Sochi in January, our
correspondent says, quoting UNEP experts as praising the Sochi Organizing Committee
for its being open to discussions on the issue.
At the same time, the report lamented the fact that "the implementation of decisions taken
at the political level relating to the mitigation and compensation of impacts of Olympic and
tourism projects are taking too long." UNEP experts also urged more cooperation between
Sochi-based business people and environmentalists.
The UNEP report immediately caused a wide public outcry in Russia, with many pointing
to the existing differences between officials, builders and ecologists when it comes to the
preparation for the Sochi Games.
The main trouble is that decisions earlier okayed by the all parties concerned continue to
show no signs of being resolved, complains Yevgeny Shwartz, of the World Wildlife Fund:
"We have yet to create a number of effective mechanisms that would prod state-run
companies to stick to international norms when grappling with the construction of Sochi
Olympic facilities", Shwartz insists.
For their part, Greenpeace activists argue that the regional ecosystems have already
suffered irreversible damage, citing the Caucasus National Park, which is currently on the
UNESCO World Heritage Sites list.
Sochi Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov vehemently rejects the accusations, singling out a series
of "international green standards" builders currently adhere to while erecting the Olympic
facilities. He voiced hope that Sochi will soon get a status of environmentally friendly town.
Stanislav Ananyev, vice president of Russia's Olympstroi Corporation, pledged, in turn, to
hammer out domestic green standards before the end of May.
He added that 10 of 202 Olympic facilities are already in line with international green
standards, among them a 40,000-seat Central Stadium, a Big Ice Rink, a Mountain
Olympic Village and a building of the Olympic University.
150 more Olympic facilities will soon be certificated to comply with the corporative green
standard, which was earlier established by Olimpstroi and is yet to be approved by
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international organizations, Ananyev explained. Separately, he touted Sochi's water
supply system, which, he said, is fully in sync with international norms.
Speaking at a session of the Public Council for the Preparation for the Sochi Olympics in
Moscow earlier in the week, Russian Deputy Natural Resources Minister Igor Maidanov,
for his part, cited an array of measures being taken to compensate for the unwanted
environmental fallout of the Sochi Games.
They include the enlargement of Sochi National Park and the creation of an environmental
monitoring system in the area, slated for later this year.
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Geneva Lunch (Blog): Sochi Olympics: cumulative impact on wildlife a danger
17 March 2010
The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) has criticized the impact on wildlife of
construction projects for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.
The cumulative impact, in particular, of several projects around the Black Sea resort are
not being addressed, says Unep in a new report that was requested by the Russian
government. The report follows a late January visit to the site by a Unep team.
It is not too late for the Games to serve as an environmental showcase, however, says
Unep, which praises the Russian Railway, Ministry of Natural Resources and the 2014
Sochi Games organizers for being open to discussions.
Among Unep’s key findings:
A combined road/rail project has requested impact studies, but these need more field data
and they are often based on out-of-date information.
“The assessments focused on the direct impacts of the projects to the immediate
surrounding and did not take into account the cumulative and synergetic effects of the
various projects on the ecosystems of the Sochi region and its population”
Local and regional authorities are taking too long to implement decisions made to mitigate
environmental impact for related projects, notably: “enlargement of the Sochi national
park; strengthening of the level of protection of the most sensitive areas, such as the
upper Mzimta valley; setting up of new protected areas, in particular along the Black Sea
coast, in order to protect important wetlands and migratory routes of birds, as well as key
types of natural habitats for wildlife”
NGOs and developers need to improve communications, in particular to improve their
willingness to listen to each other.
The last point is an oblique reference to tensions between builders and WWF and
Greenpeace, with the two NGS’s calling a halt to their cooperation with builders. WWF in
early February was harsh in its criticism of building projects in Sochi and demanded that
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Unep take a firm stance, which it felt was not the case after the UN group’s January visit to
the region.
UNEP is recommending that an “comprehensive assessment” study be carried out, to be
followed by monitoring. It also recommends that a permanent Caucasus Eco-region
Monitoring Centre be established.
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Science Blog (Blog): High Arctic species on thin ice
17 March 2010
A new assessment of the Arctic's biodiversity reports a 26 per cent decline in species
populations in the high Arctic.
Populations of lemmings, caribou and red knot are some of the species that have
experienced declines over the past 34 years, according to the first report from The Arctic
Species Trend Index (ASTI), which provides crucial information on how the Arctic's
ecosystems and wildlife are responding to environmental change.
While some of these declines may be part of a natural cycle, there is concern that
pressures such as climate change may be exacerbating natural cyclic declines.
In contrast, population levels of species living in the sub-Arctic and low Arctic are relatively
stable and in some cases, increasing.
Populations of marine mammals, including bowhead whales found in the low Arctic, may
have benefited from the recent tightening of hunting laws. Some fish species have also
experienced population increases in response to rising sea temperatures.
"Rapid changes to the Arctic's ecosystems will have consequences for the Arctic that will
be felt globally.
The Arctic is host to abundant and diverse wildlife populations, many of which migrate
annually from all regions of the globe.
This region acts as a critical component in the Earth's physical, chemical, and biological
regulatory system," says lead-author Louise McRae from the Zoological Society of London
(ZSL).
Data collected on migratory Arctic shorebirds show that their numbers have also
decreased. Further research is now needed to determine whether this is the result of
changes in the Arctic or at other stopover sites on their migration.
Louise McRae adds: "Migratory Arctic species such as brent goose, dunlin and turnstone
are regular visitors to the UK's shores. We need to sit up and take notice of what's
happening in other parts of the world if we want to continue to experience a diversity of
wildlife on our own doorstep."
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The ASTI includes almost 1,000 datasets on Arctic species population trends, including
representation from 35 per cent of all known vertebrate species found in the Arctic.
Co-author Christoph Zöckler from the UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre says:
"The establishment of these results comes at a crucial time for finding accurate indicators
to monitor global biodiversity as governments strive to meet their targets of reducing
biodiversity loss."
The findings of the first ASTI report will be presented at the 'State of the Arctic' Conference
in Miami, USA. The full report will be available to download from www.asti.is on
Wednesday 17th March, 2010.
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Nation (Kenya): It’s a golden jubilee for 'Nation'
17 March 2010
To commemorate the milestone, your favourite newspaper brings you a 60-page
supplement that recaptures the journey the media house has walked in the past half a
century. A glossy coffee table edition of the Nation’s memoirs will be published at a later
date.
The publications capture great moments of the Nation and also feature big stories that
have been published in our outlets and the people who have made the work a success.
To mark the Golden Jubilee, NMG will on Thursday and Friday host the Pan African Media
Conference at KICC, Nairobi, in collaboration with African Media Initiative.
President Kibaki is scheduled to open the conference, which has attracted renowned
speakers including Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and former presidents Benjamin
Mkapa (Tanzania) and Joaquim Chissano (Mozambique). More than 1,000 people are
expected to attend the conference whose theme is Media and the African Promise.
Diamond Trust Bank is the lead sponsor of the conference. Other sponsors include Kenya
Airways, Kenya Data Network, Uchumi Quick Supplies and X and R technologies.
MEDIA PROSPECTS
The meeting will present an opportunity for industry players and other key stakeholders to
reflect on the media’s past, present and future prospects. It will draw participation and
attendance from leading media professionals and scholars from around the globe.
Other high profile speakers are Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Vice President Kalonzo
Musyoka, Chairperson of the Commission of African Union Jean Ping; Nobel laureate
Wangari Maathai; Dr Mo Ibrahim, founder of Mo Ibrahim Foundation and Unep’s executive
director Achim Steiner, among others.
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BBC Mundo: ONU critica a Rusia por daño ambiental en Sochi, sede de Olimpíadas
2014
16 March 2010
El Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente, PNUMA, criticó a Rusia por no
haber tomado en cuenta el impacto ambiental de las construcciones para las próximas
Olimpiadas de Invierno 2014.
PNUMA hizo un llamado para que se haga una evaluación completa del impacto de los
preparativos en el ecosistema de los alrededores del centro turístico Sochi del Mar Negro,
donde se celebrarán los Juegos.
El corresponsal de la BBC en Moscú, Richard Galpin, explicó que se trata de una región
sensible, hogar de un parque nacional y una vasta reserva natural considerada patrimonio
mundial.
Recientemente, varias organizaciones ambientalistas retiraron la colaboración a las
autoridades, argumentando que sus inquietudes habían sido ignoradas.
El PNUMA se ha ofrecido a mediar entre las dos partes, después de que un ministro del
gobierno acusara a los grupos ecológicos de intentar desbaratar los Juegos.
"Las relaciones entre organizaciones ambientalistas y autoridades responsables del
inmenso programa de construcción para las Olimpíadas se han deteriorado mucho en los
últimos meses", informó Galpin.
Daño irreversible
Recientemente, la organización ecologista WWF retiró su cooperación al gobierno ruso,
pues advierte que ya se ha hecho un daño irreversible al ecosistema con la
contaminación a importantes ríos y la tala de especies raras de árboles.
"Ahora el Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente sumó su voz; dice que
las autoridades necesitan realizar una evaluación completa sobre el impacto total que los
trabajos de construcción están teniendo en el ecosistema", agregó el corresponsal de la
BBC.
También hizo un llamado para que se ponga en marcha un programa de supervisión y se
ofreció a ayudar a mediar entre los grupos ambientalistas y el gobierno.
Galpin señala que es mucho lo que está en juego, "esta es la primera vez que Rusia
celebra unas Olimpíadas de Invierno y es el proyecto personal del primer ministro Vladimir
Putin".
Moscú asegura que las Olimpíadas serán verdes.
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IPCC in the News
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Little Chicago Review (US): Barrasso praises investigation of IPCC
17 March 2010
Last Wednesday, U.S. Senator John Barrasso delivered the following statement regarding
the United Nations’ announcement that it will conduct an independent investigation of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
“I’m pleased that the United Nations has finally agreed to shine a light on the IPCC’s
internal procedures. Americans deserve straight answers about how the UN collects and
uses data to form policies and reports.
“An independent investigation must be truly independent. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri should
step down immediately. As IPCC Chairman, he has turned a blind eye to procedures and
allowed scientific fraud to occur right under his nose. In the aftermath, he has delivered
excuses instead of accountability.
“The Senate Subcommittee on Oversight in the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee also has a responsibility to investigate the IPCC.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has relied on the UN’s data for all their energy
tax proposals that could cost millions of Americans their jobs.
With 9.7 percent unemployment, our nation cannot afford to continue to base our energy
and environmental policies on contaminated UN data.”
Background: On February 4, 2010, Senator Barrasso called on Dr. Rajendra Pachauri,
Chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to resign
after revelations of ongoing scientific fraud under Dr. Pachauri’s watch.
On March 4, 2010, Senator Barrasso, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight
in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, released a report.
It details the Subcommittee’s lack of oversight on a number of key Administration
activities, including the fraudulent data included in the UN climate change reports.
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New Jersey Online (US): A rough winter for global warming
18 March 2010
We're all too familiar with the names by now: "Snowmageddon," the "Snowpocalypse" the
"Snowicane," and, for the younger crowd, "Snowtorious B.I.G." You know it's been a brutal
winter when the blizzards get their own nicknames.
Spring is in the air, and not a moment too soon. You've overstayed your welcome, Old
Man Winter. Please grab your coat on the way out.
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Whether kvetching at work around the water cooler or with a neighbor while shoveling
snow, most of us saw the conversation inevitably turn to global warming -- "Where's Al
Gore when we need him?" Such quips, of course, are infuriating to the faithful in the
church of manmade, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW).
It's "climate change," they insist, and any weather extremes, including this season's
blizzards, can be attributed to its all-powerful reach.
Which is a great angle, as "climate change" is like the color-safe bleach of the natural
world: It can make your summers hotter, your winters snowier, and all of your hurricanes a
Category 5.
A handful of blizzards, of course, do not disprove global warming.
Speaking about the brutal winters throughout the Northern Hemisphere, Michel Jarraud,
secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, echoed that sentiment: "I
think we have to be careful not to interpret any single event as a proof of either warming or
the fact that warming has stopped," he said. "We cannot explain any single phenomenon
by one single cause."
WISE WORDS.
If only the climate change crowd adhered to the same when pointing to scraggly polar
bears, Australian wildfires or Hurricane Katrina as de facto proof of global warming.
The alarmists like to have it both ways, dismissing singular climate events when they don't
fit the narrative, yet highlighting the same when they further the agenda.
Even with the rebranding to climate change, it has been a winter of discontent for the
AGW crowd. Emails leaked from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University, the
infamous "climategate" scandal, started the bad run of publicity.
While the CRU correspondence was perhaps not the smoking gun desired by hardcore
global warming skeptics, at the very least it showed scientists with an aversion to full
transparency and more zeal for results than process.
Climategate was followed by a string of embarrassing admissions and retractions by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, whose report is supposed to be the
official distillation of global climate science, for use by public policymakers.
Exaggerated claims about the melting rate of Himalayan glaciers, it turns out, were pulled
from a magazine article.
Similar assertions about the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, the percentage of the
Netherlands under sea level and African crop yields were shown to be poorly factchecked, pulled from secondary sources, or both. This reliance on so-called "gray science"
led to charges of advocacy on the part of the IPCC, which is against its charter.
Pay these errors no mind, we are told. There are bound to be minor gaffes in data so
voluminous, and they do nothing to detract from the consensus.
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The "science is settled" is the common refrain, despite the fact that the phrase is, in itself,
not a terribly scientific thing to say. And even they must admit there comes a point when
we find enough unsettling revelations behind the science to legitimately question whether
it is, in fact, settled.
That debate aside, the real question is whether the proposed remedies for global warming
-- transferring trillions of dollars to poor countries and green technologies -- can withstand
a cost/benefit analysis.
Cutting the government of Namibia a check for $5 billion to erect some wind turbines is no
guarantee that it will be used for the same.
It also diverts funding from HIV/AIDS relief, nutritional programs and many other
humanitarian causes that have an immediate, direct impact on the world's poor.
There's only so much money that developed economies, which are still struggling from the
recession, can spread around. Where do we cut back in the singular pursuit of a greener
future?
Such ruminations are, apparently, the preoccupation of climate change deniers and fools.
"The evidence is overwhelming and the time for debate is over."
"We must act now before it's too late."
"Further delay only hastens our own peril."
It is telling that such dire language, long lambasted as the sort of fear mongering that got
us into the war in Iraq, is used without hesitation to support sweeping policy changes in
the name of global warming.
The circumstances are different, of course, but the consequences will be even more
disastrous if the assumptions are equally as wrong and politically motivated.
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Opposing Views (Blog):U.N. Wrong about Rainforests Being in Imminent Danger
17 March 2010
A new study, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
refutes a claim in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007
report that up to 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest might disappear imminently.
According to the IPCC's assessment, this disaster would be triggered by a relatively slight
drop in rainfall of the sort to be expected in a warming world.
It now appears that just such conditions have already occurred, and in fact, the
Amazonian jungles were unaffected, says Gerald Warner, a columnist with the Telegraph.
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That assertion has already been exposed as derived from a single report by the
environmentalist lobby group WWF.
According to Dr. Jose Marengo, a climate scientist with the Brazilian National Institute for
Space Research and also a member of the IPCC: The way the WWF report calculated this
40 percent was totally wrong, while the new calculations are by far more reliable and
correct.
These calculations were done by researchers at Boston University and were published in
the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.
They used satellite data to study the drought of 2005, when rainfall fell to the lowest in
living memory, and found that the rainforest suffered no significant effects.
According to NASA-funded scientists analyzing the past decades of satellite imagery of
the Amazon basin: The rainforests are remarkably resilient to droughts.
Even during the 100-year-peak dry season of 2005 the jungles were basically unaffected.
"We found no big differences in the greenness level of these forests between drought and
nondrought years," says Arindam Samanta of Boston University, lead author of the new
study.
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Other Environment News
AP: Japan leading charge against bluefin ban
17 March 2010
Opposition grew Wednesday against a proposal to ban the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna,
with several Arab countries joining Japan in arguing it would hurt poor fishing nations and
wasn't scientifically justified.
Other countries including Australia and Peru have expressed support for a weakened
proposal which is expected to be introduced Thursday at the 175-nation Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES.
They want the trade regulated for the first time by CITES but not banned outright as
demanded by conservationists who contend the Atlantic bluefin is on the brink of
extinction.
Killing or even weakening the tuna proposal would be a setback for CITES, which has
made the protection of marine species a key goal during this two-week meeting. A
proposal for a shark conservation plan was also defeated on Tuesday.
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Many poor countries appeared to be leaning toward protecting their economies over
conserving the iconic tuna.
"Most Mediterranean countries are afraid because they export this tuna," said Ahmed Said
Shukaili, a delegate from the Persian Gulf country of Oman, whose nation will follow the
Arab League position opposing the ban.
"They see this as an economic issue," he said. "There is a lot of concerns for the
fishermen who depend on this fish."
Japan says it has the support of China while several other countries were undecided.
China has not said publicly where it stands.
Monaco — the sponsor of the proposed ban on the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna — says
numbers have fallen by nearly 75 percent since 1957.
But most of the decline has occurred over the last decade with demand driven by sushi
lovers in Japan and elsewhere for the bluefin's succulent red and pink meat.
Supporters of the ban, including the European Union and the United States, say it is
necessary because the Atlantic bluefin is a migratory species that swims from the western
Atlantic to the Mediterranean — putting it beyond any one country's border.
Compounding the tuna's plight is the growing threat from illegal fishing fleets and the
failure of existing measures to keep the population sustainable.
"The North African countries are concerned about fishermen losing their jobs. But
nevertheless the jobs will be lost when there will be no more bluefin tuna," said Patrick
Van Klaveren, a delegate with the Monaco delegation.
"With bluefin tuna, it's not a question of 10 or 20 years but five or six years or less to see
the stock collapse."
Raw tuna is a key ingredient in traditional dishes such as sushi and sashimi, and the
bluefin variety — called "hon-maguro" in Japan — is particularly prized.
Japan, which imports 80 percent of Atlantic bluefin and has led the opposition to the ban,
argued on Wednesday that CITES should have no role in regulating tuna and other marine
species.
It said that it is willing to accept lower quotas for bluefin tuna but wants those to come
from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or ICCAT, which
currently regulates the trade.
Masanori Miyahara, chief counselor of the Fisheries Agency of Japan, told The Associated
Press that CITES was "unfair and partial" and that a tuna ban would allow the Europeans
and Americans to continue fishing tuna domestically while Japan suffers from a steep drop
in exports.
"The big players will continue fishing," Miyahara said. "If necessary, let's stop fishing using
ICCAT measures. Then everyone must give up the fishing. But here, it is very unfair."
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Critics, however, argue that ICCAT consistently ignores its own scientists in setting quotas
and does little to stop countries from exceeding already high quotas or cracking down on
widespread illegal fishing.
Susan Lieberman, director of international policy with the Pew Environment Group in
Washington, said there was a lot of confusion over the competing proposals and even how
the ban would impact certain countries. There is also disinformation campaigns by some
governments that have implied, for example, that North Africa would suddenly be
inundated with tuna boats from the Mediterranean if the ban took hold, she said.
Still, Lieberman remained optimistic that a proposal would be passed — though it could
take many forms from an outright ban, to a delayed ban to increased trade restrictions with
some kind of quotas.
"What we are seeing is broad support for CITES having a role in Atlantic bluefin tuna,"
Lieberman said.
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LA Times (US): Surge in rhino poaching devastates African populations
16 March 2010
The baby rhino, an orphan, had barely been weaned. Her horn was only a few inches
long. But that didn't stop the poachers from hacking it off.
David Uys, 33, had helped raise the rhino after her mother was killed by lightning. He
called her Weerkind -- "orphan" in Afrikaans. He won't forget the sight of the bodies of the
baby and two other rhinos, shot dead, their horns removed.
"I'm not a one for talking about emotions," Uys said quietly. "But it was like seeing one of
your family members dead, the brutality of it."
The slain bull rhino, dubbed Longhorn, was about 35 and had a magnificent horn more
than 2 1/2 feet long. The third rhino, Sister, had adopted Weerkind after her mother was
killed. The three died together in November on this Limpopo province game ranch that is
for tourists, not hunters, north of Pretoria.
"You're angry. You're furious. You're sad. You're crying," said Uys, the ranch manager.
"Just a bundle of emotions, bursting inside."
A sharp surge in poaching in South Africa and Zimbabwe by organized gangs has
devastated Zimbabwe's rhino population and threatens to wipe out South Africa's critically
endangered black rhinos within a decade.
South African rancher Pelham Jones warns that the more common white rhino won't be far
behind unless something is done.
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A report last year by the World Wildlife Fund, the International Union for Conservation of
Nature and wildlife-trade monitoring network TRAFFIC said poaching had reached a 15year high, pushing the animals close to extinction. About 1,500 rhino horns were traded
illegally in the last three years, despite a long-standing ban on international trade.
Last year, 122 rhinos were killed in South Africa. Jones predicted that at the current
poaching rate, 180 to 200 will be killed this year.
A provisional 2009 estimate shows only 800 rhinos remaining in Zimbabwe, and 18,553
white and 1,570 black rhinos in South Africa, according to the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, which maintains the
ban on the trade of rhino horn.
Rhino ranchers, some of whom keep the animals to attract tourists while others rely on
limited trophy hunting, are so wary about the involvement of organized crime in rhino
killings that few are willing to talk publicly for fear of endangering animals on their
properties. Interviews are given on condition that properties, even nearby towns, are not
identified.
The ranch where Weerkind was born and killed is a lush green in the summer rainy
season, with rocky hills looming into the sky.
Birds with impossibly long tails seem weighed down in flight as they flutter near a pond. A
red track cuts uphill through the acacia trees.
Rain clouds gather, thunder grumbles, and a sudden drenching rain pours down, stopping
abruptly half an hour later.
Up close, the rhinos look benign, almost bovine, ambling in the Limpopo sunshine,
plucking grass, shadowed by a group of guards in camouflage carrying semiautomatics.
Their small, thick-lashed eyes look sleepily docile.
But their sheer size is awesome -- a rhino is almost as big as a car, weighing from 2,000 to
3,000 pounds. From a few yards away, they are terrifying.
Not for Uys, even though he's been charged countless times and once was knocked over
and walked on. Afterward, he recalled, the bull looked almost apologetic.
Uys has spent his life with rhinos. At 18, he was a rhino guard, sleeping in the bush with
them through violent summer thunderstorms and harsh winter nights.
"I was close enough to scratch their ears. They took me as part of the group."
When he did get charged, it was usually his own fault for getting too close, he says.
"Running away is the worst thing you can do," he said. "You can't outrun a rhino." If there's
a tree or boulder, you scramble up. If there's thick enough bush, you stand your ground.
Once, photographing a newborn baby, he and a colleague were suddenly approached by
the calf. The two men froze. If the mother saw them and charged, there was no bush, no
trees, no boulders.
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"They react to movement so if you stand completely still, they won't see you," Uys said.
"The guy who was with me, his nerves didn't hold out, and he started running. The cow
saw us and she came for us."
There was no time to think.
"I threw down my backpack. She smelled me there and took her fury out on the backpack,"
he said. It was one of his closest calls.
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ENN (Blog): Blue Fin Tuna Decline and fall
17 March 2010
The Atlantic blue fin tuna is one of the largest, fastest, and most gorgeously colored of all
the world’s fishes. Their torpedo shaped, streamlined bodies are built for speed and
endurance.
Their coloring (metallic blue on top and silver white on the bottom) helps camouflage them
from above and below.
They have an average size of 6.5 feet and 550 pounds. Unfortunately for them they are
also delicious and may be on the brink of extinction due to overfishing.
European Union ambassadors agreed to propose protecting blue fin tuna as an
endangered species on March 10, a move that would effectively ban international trade in
the species.
Blue fin tuna have been eaten by humans for centuries. However, in the 1970s, demand
and prices for large blue fins soared worldwide, particularly in Japan, and commercial
fishing operations found new ways to find and catch these tuna.
As a result, blue fin stocks, especially of large, breeding age fish, have plummeted, and
international conservation efforts and concerns have increased.
This tuna is one of the most highly prized fish used in Japanese raw fish dishes. Blue fin
tuna sashimi is a particular delicacy in Japan where at one auction, a single giant tuna
sold for more than $100,000 on the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. In January 2009, a 440
pounds (200 kg) blue fin sold for $173,000.
The very highest prices in the Japanese market have tended to be from Pacific blue fin
tuna caught in Japanese waters, but high grade Atlantic blue fin, particularly those from
Canada and Boston, also fetch high prices.
Prices were highest in the late 1970s and 1980s. The entry of many North African
Mediterranean countries, such as Tunisia and Libya, into the blue fin tuna market in the
1990s, along with the increasingly widespread practice of tuna farming in the
Mediterranean and other areas such as southern Australia has brought down prices.
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Atlantic blue fin populations probably remained stable until the 1960s. Prior to that period,
blue fin fisheries were relatively small in scale. The decline became precipitous after the
1970's.
The EU agreement came ahead of a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species (CITES) that will take place from March 13 to March 25 to consider a
number of species, including blue fin tuna, elephants and polar bears.
The ambassadors attached a number of conditions to the EU's support, including a one
year delay to the ban on fishing that normally follows an endangered listing, and an opt out
for fishermen using small boats to supply local markets.
Governments also promised to consider paying financial compensation to EU fishermen
affected by a possible ban on catching the fish which is used mainly in sushi - a
concession designed to win the support of countries with domestic tuna fisheries.
Malta voted against the proposed ban while Sweden and Austria abstained, EU sources
said.
Environmental groups said the EU had not done enough to reduce over sized blue fin tuna
fishing fleets, and had even subsidized expansion.
"Over eight years the EU blue fin tuna fishing industry received subsidies totaling 34.5
million euros. Of this, 33.5 million euros was for the construction and modernization of
vessels, with only a tiny proportion for decommissioning," said Markus Knigge of the Pew
Environment Group.
Opposition grew shorty after the proposed trade ban with several Arab countries joining
Japan in arguing it would hurt poor fishing nations and was not supported by sound
science.
Supporters of the ban, including the European Union and the United States, say it is
necessary because the Atlantic blue fin is a migratory species that swims from the western
Atlantic to the Mediterranean — putting it beyond any one country's border. Compounding
the tuna's plight is the growing threat from illegal fishing fleets and the failure of existing
measures to keep the population sustainable.
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Deutsche Welle (Germany): World considers ban on bluefin tuna trade
17 March 2010
A possible ban on sales of bluefin tuna is being considered at an international conference
on trade in endangered species. The EU has joined the US and others to back a ban in
the face of opposition from Asia.
15
Conflict is brewing at this year's conference on the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), currently underway in Doha,
Qatar.
One of this year's most hotly-disputed topics is a proposal to ban the cross-border trade of
bluefin tuna - a fish which is heavily fished in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
The European Union has the largest bluefin fishing quotas, but it is Japan that consumes
over 75 percent of the global catch, as the fish is highly prized in Japanese sushi dishes.
Last year, Monaco proposed that the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin be listed
as an "Appendix 1" endangered species under the CITES convention - a move that would
ban international trade on fish caught in those seas. However, catches in the Pacific and
elsewhere would still be allowed.
Most EU countries, including France and Italy, have rallied behind the proposal, which
requires a two-thirds majority of CITES member states to be approved.
After some last-minute squabbling and opposition from Malta and Portugal, the EU says it
will support the proposal when the issue is discussed at the conference. The US is also
supporting the move.
JAPANESE OPPOSITION
As the largest consumer of bluefin tuna, Japan is an outspoken opponent of a ban.
Japanese Fisheries Minister Hirotaka Akamatsu has said he will do his best to block a
ban, and that Japan has China's support.
"China has not announced its stance officially, but is actively lobbying other countries to
oppose," Akamatsu told reporters in Tokyo. "There also are countries which are neutral or
wavering."
Tokyo argues that bluefin is not facing extinction, although it acknowledges that the
current size of catch is probably unsustainable. The solution, it insists, is stricter
management of fisheries.
The EU is backing exemptions for fishermen using traditional fishing methods, but it is not
clear how these will be defined.
Nor is it clear what would be done to compensate major fishing operators, whose industrial
scale vessels the EU subsidized with millions of euros only several years ago.
FISHERMEN ARE SKEPTICAL
And despite the EU's support for a bluefin ban, the issue remains divisive within the bloc.
France only changed its position on a moratorium this year. It has a strong fishing lobby,
and not everyone agrees that a ban is necessary. The French fishing village of Sete, in
southern France, is a microcosm of Europe's polarized views on the fishing industry.
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"We can't let fishing die by calling for a moratorium without any compensation," Raphael
Scanapiecco told Deutsche Welle.
Scanapiecco is the elected representative of fishermen in Sete, a port which has profited
nicely from the tuna trade.
He acknowledges that fishing quotas have been exceeded in the past, but argues that
fishermen respect scientific opinion and have already made large Tuna fishermen face an
uncertain future
sacrifices.
"It's true that the situation has changed - but we need compensation for the sailors...It's not
true to say that we're opposed to any controls," he added.
Another French fisherman, Diego Garcia, believes that the proposed CITES ban will be
the beginning of the end for the fishing industry.
"That will stop one type of fishing, but then they'll just attack other types of fishing, and the
pressure will mean that fishing will be doomed," said Garcia. "It'll be an endless circle.
Tuna fishing simply needs to be regulated, that's all," he said.
Garcia also believes that the stock of tuna in the Mediterranean is not as alarmingly low as
some claim it to be.
"There are tuna fish out there - people say there aren't, but there are," said Garcia.
"They're just further out to sea. But people don't see them."
ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS RALLY FOR BAN
Various conservation groups claim that bluefin tuna stocks have fallen to around 15
percent of their pre-industrial levels, threatening the species' survival.
Thierry Vromet represents the Greens in Sete, where he has watched the situation
deteriorate over several years.
He says fishermen's claims that tuna are in plentiful supply are misleading.
"The fishermen say 'a lot of tuna,' but it is small tuna," Vromet said. "The big ones are
completely gone."
Beate Jessels - president of the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) hopes that the CITES ban will be pushed through. The Mediterranean is said to have lost
85 percent of its tuna stocks"
"CITES is not a conservation treaty, but a trade treaty that prevents and prohibits
international trade," Jessels said. "But this would be an effective instrument when it comes
to reclaiming already-caught fish to stop them from being sold internationally."
However, Vromet believes that it will take more than just a ban to motivate some
fishermen to take their boats out of action.
17
"I think it's better to pay all the fishermen, not only tuna fishermen, to stop for five or ten
years and give the fish a chance to reproduce and come back," said Vromet. "Because if
we don't do that, maybe in 20 years we won't have anymore fish on our plates."
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AFP: Climate debated should be reframed: Malidives president
17 March 2010
The climate change debate should be reframed in economic and security terms ahead of a
year-end UN summit in Mexico seeking a binding climate deal, the president of the
Maldives said Wednesday.
A price tag needs to be put on "the extent to which we destroy the atmosphere, the extent
to which we pollute the atmosphere," President Mohamed Nasheed said at a climate
change seminar in Helsinki.
Climate change was not about "hugging trees", he said, insisting that beyond the
environmental aspects it was central to future security policies, sustainable economics and
human rights.
"If we can have a discourse on the feasibility of renewable energy ... I think that would
make such a substantial impact on the policy," he said, adding that switching to non-fossilfuel-based energy sources like wind and solar power made "good economic sense".
His own, low-lying country is one of the most vulnerable to the rising sea levels anticipated
as a result of global warming, and in a bid to lead by example the Maldives has pledged to
become carbon neutral by 2020.
A climate change summit in Copenhagen last December failed to yield a hoped-for treaty
on tackling the carbon emissions blamed for disrupting the climate system, and sparked a
fierce international row about who was to blame.
Nasheed said the time for "pointing fingers" was over, stressing that both developing and
developed countries needed to act together to regain the momentum lost in the climate
change debate since Copenhagen.
"Before we go to Mexico, there has to be more trust built between developing and
developed countries," he said, adding the climate change discussion had "no other motive
than the survival of our species."
There was "no argument" to support the demands of some developing countries for their
emissions not to be limited, he said, adding that reducing emissions was economically
responsible and would not stop development.
"We have planetary boundaries, and we cannot go beyond that. We have to find
alternative sources of energy," he insisted.
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The so-called Copenhagen Accord sets a goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius
(3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) but does not detail when or how this goal should be achieved,
nor does it commit its signatories to binding pledges.
The next UN summit aimed at hashing out a binding deal will be held in the beach resort of
Cancun, Mexico, from November 29 to December 10.
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BBC News: Climate ads far from divine
17 March 2010
Some interesting perspectives on communication, information and climate change emerge
this week from Africa and the UK.
A survey for the BBC World Service Trust (the corporation's international charitable arm)
shows that although many Africans are noticing progressive changes to their weather,
they're tending to ascribe those changes to agents above and outside the atmosphere.
A fisherman from Ghana told researchers:
"It is the will of God for these things to happen. When it comes to rainfall, it looks as
though God has changed his calendar."
While Dr Samson Kwaje, agriculture and forestry minister in the government of Southern
Sudan, said:
"The farmers are only praying: 'Why is God punishing them?' Some of them don't know
that we have punished ourselves."
Meanwhile, the UK government has come something of a cropper, with adverts it
sponsored to raise public awareness of human-induced climate change being banned
because of a tendency to treat projections as fact.
Based on nursery rhymes and featuring stanzas such as:
"Rub a dub, three men in a tub, a necessary course of action due to flash flooding caused
by climate change."
...they could presumably have also faced action on aesthetic grounds, but that's a different
story.
Managers of African news organisations told the World Service Trust that they struggle to
communicate the causes and possible impacts of climate change to their audiences.
This is a problem that governments, activists and media organisations in the West have
failed to find answers to, despite wrestling with them for well over a decade; hence,
presumably, the UK government's decision to resort to adverts of somewhat questionable
veracity.
The ads are the latest example in a series of attempts to convey possibly catastrophic
impacts of climate change that have at least partially backfired.
19
One thinks back to Greenpeace's video link in 2001 from Kilimanjaro, arguing that the
mountain's famous snows (that have inspired much better writing than advertising
agencies can apparently muster these days, by the way) would be gone by 2015 - a
prediction derided in some quarters at the time, and subsequently shown to be wrong.
One thinks of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, a movie whose science was mainly well
grounded in the prevailing consensus but that allowed itself to stray too far on issues such
as a shut-down of the Gulf Stream and the cause of Lake Chad's drying.
Of course these points were picked up and picked apart - as have the recent UK
government adverts.
What's clear from conversations I've had recently is that the loose alliance of people keen
to "get the message across" is still scratching its collective head about how to do it, 20
years after the United Nations decided climate change needed to be taken seriously.
On one level, this is surprising. The loose alliance includes an unprecedented
concentration of top environmental campaigners with successful track records on other
issues, government ministers accustomed to selling themselves and their policies, and
advertising executives accustomed to selling us shoes and shampoo.
You'd think they'd have found the formula by now.
The "awareness-raising" has not been a complete failure - the Copenhagen summit, for
example, saw the biggest mass mobilisation on climate change in history, with as many as
100,000 people taking to the streets of the Danish and other capitals; and despite rising
scepticism in some countries, global polls show substantial slices of the population in
many countries in favour of mitigating emissions.
The essential problem is that it's complex.
Take the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's lately-maligned Fourth
Assessment report with its 3,000-odd pages of densely-packed text, and try distilling all of
its nuances and caveats and ranges of uncertainty into a campaigner's soundbite or a
minister's speech; it can't be done.
So the nuances and caveats are lost; and when people feel the issue is so grave that the
awareness-raising must be immediate, the findings they distil out will inevitably come from
the scary end of the uncertainty range.
But then they get found out, and the "message" is coated with tarnish - perhaps
irrevocably.
The complexity is an issue for the news media as well - a group criticised by Lord Stern
this week for its lack of breadth and perspective in recent coverage of the supposedly cold
winter (cold only in certain parts, in fact) and IPCC errors.
Yet when you come back to the African realities revealed by the World Service Trust, it is
clear that the media there has a job to do.
The Trust survey shows that the vast majority of Africans are noticing progressive changes
in rains and temperatures - changes that have the potential to inflict vast suffering on
20
many millions, if projections of falling food production are correct - so it is clearly an
important issue for the continent.
And while the science might not be completely settled when it comes to apportioning
causality between greenhouse gasses, aerosols and solar cycling, it is so far unequivocal
on the complete absence of evidence for divine wrath.
In the continent that has been worst affected by HIV/Aids, it is striking how many editors
saw a parallel. Joyce Mhaville, managing director of ITV in Tanzania, told researchers:
"You know, this is like the HIV story.
When it started nobody wanted to believe it, 'it's got nothing to do with me, and it's not
going to touch me,' but before we knew it, it hit us left, right, and centre... And the same
thing is going to happen with climate change."
Yet the shenanigans over the UK government adverts show that in one important respect
the whorl of ideas around climate change is very different from HIV/Aids - namely, in its
complexity.
Don't have unprotected sex and don't inject yourself with drugs using a dirty needle, and
you'll banish almost all chances of HIV infection; there, I've done it in 23 words.
Climate change is far too complex to distil into a "message" of that size.
And maybe it's time to stop trying - to abandon the notion that it can be broken down into
bite-sized chunks and turned scary through slogans or nursery rhymes. Especially if the
exercise usually goes wrong.
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Guardian (UK): Climate change adverts help take debate among public back several
years
17 March 2010
The government's communications department should have read up on their Aesop's
fables before turning to children's nursery rhymes for inspiration. When the wolf really did
arrive to worry the village's flock, the people ignored his, this time genuinely, for the firsttime heartfelt pleas.
The shepherd boy's false alarms had wearied them and even though the danger was now
real, they ignored it and the wolf ate both him and the sheep.
This week's guarded and very specific adjudication from the Advertising Standards
Authority, which boils down to the use of the word "will" and not "may", has been loudly
trumpeted as an example of exaggerating the certainty of the impacts of climate change.
The Act on CO2 campaign, run by the Department of Environment and Climate Change
last winter, brought in 939 complaints. As a consequence, so the ASA agrees, this may
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have caused unnecessary worry and concern among the public. So far, so guilty as
charged.
However, all is not as simple as it may first seem. First, the way the ASA regulates adverts
depends on public complaints.
Often the most crass examples of corporate greenwash, such as Finnair's misleading and
unsubstantiated 'Be Eco-smart' campaign escape immediate censure because only one or
two people actually raise an objection to them.
It isn't particularly surprising therefore that in the light of so-called climategate, and the
vocal rise of militant, largely ideological scepticism, the government's "nursery rhyme"
public education campaign on climate change should attract a huge number of complaints.
These probably come from the highly effectively mobilized camp of formal and informal
lobbyists, their tactic of FUD – Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt – working unarguably and
disturbingly well.
It is far easier to hurl a massive rock into the pool of climate science and capitalize on the
resulting ripples, than it is to build and maintain a calm, coherent scientific consensus. And
boy, their tactical trebuchets are chucking a lot of rocks.
This disruption strategy is nothing new and was similarly applied against Al Gore's film An
Inconvenient Truth.
As is the case now, the judgment created a media storm, which occludes the underlying
message of both Gore's film and this current campaign, which crucially neither ruling has
contested; climate change is happening, and it's probably a pretty good idea for us all to
do something about it rather pronto.
Second, in a weirdly perverse way the "nursery rhyme" campaign inadvertently replicates
the tactics used by the climate sceptic lobbyists themselves.
It creates fear about the impacts of climate change, and it rather over-forcefully hypes the
threat of uncertain impacts – thereby playing into the hands of "alarmist/warmist" accusing
critics.
Worse still it implicitly creates doubt about the yawning gulf between government rhetoric
and the tangible, practical actions people are currently willing to undertake. Quite rightly, a
somewhat cynical and wary public simply don't buy this.
Finally, and perhaps most damningly, the adverts were just bad communication and they
have probably helped push climate change engagement with the UK public backwards
several years.
They are easily mocked, simply satirized and I find it hard to believe they made it through
the scrutiny of focus groups that undoubtedly precede the wider launch of these
campaigns. It comes across as something that might have been conceived on-the-hoof in
an episode of The Thick Of It, and I don't mean that as a compliment.
22
The real danger is that it's a now publicly discredited cry of "wolf" that can only serve to
compound the climate change communications challenge.
It's the fizzle not the sizzle, or as Malcolm Tucker might have put it; "As a communications
campaign its about as much use as a marzipan dildo."
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Telegraph (UK): Climate change adverts 'simplistic tools'
18 March 2010
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the adverts created on behalf of the
Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and based on the children's poems
Jack and Jill and Rub-A-Dub-Dub made exaggerated claims about the threat to Britain
from global warming.
The ruling is a further blow to the Government's efforts to raise awareness of the threat of
global warming following the "climategate" scandal and questions about the United
Nations's presentation of the risks of global warming.
Two posters juxtaposed adapted extracts from the nursery rhymes with prose warnings
about the dangers of global warning.
One began: "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as
extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought." Beneath was written:
"Extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more
frequent and intense."
Ed Gillespie, the co-founder of Futerra Sustainability Communications, said it was "rubbish
communication" that has given climate change sceptics another opportunity to cast doubt
on the science.
However he insisted it was a good learning process for the Government. In future he
predicted more positive messages will be used to encourage people to take action against
climate change rather than using fear as a motivation.
"It has taken us back several years where we have a higher percentage of sceptics but I
suspect the bounce back will help get the communication right," he said.
Prof Mark Maslin, Director of the University College London Environment Institute, also
said the Government needs to improve how it communicates the problems of climate
change.
"There is a fine line between raising awareness about the potential serious threat from
climate change and simply frightening people.
23
The public deserve a better communication strategy from the government which shows
them the scientific evidence for climate change and the different options we have to deal
with it," he said.
"As the science does not drive policy, so people and politicians must weigh different
competing issues – of which climate change is just one. So I believe using popular nursery
rhymes is too simplistic a communication tool for the complex and challenging issue of
climate change, with which the public needs to engage."
Climate change sceptics claim that emails stolen from the University of East Anglia show
scientists were willing to manipulate the science around global warming in a scandal
known as "climategate". UN body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has
been forced to retract a claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.
Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on
Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political
Science, feared the ASA ruling could be further used by sceptics to cast doubt on the
science.
But he pointed out that it is very difficult to predict the impacts of climate change in small
geographic locations like the UK.
"This does not mean that extreme events in the UK will not increase in frequency and
severity, only that our ability to estimate future changes is limited at present.
So-called 'sceptics', who promote complacency and denial about the causes and
consequences of climate change, will no doubt use this ASA ruling as a propaganda tool
in an attempt to mislead the public.
But the public should be sceptical of anybody who uses this ruling to claim that there will
be no change to extreme weather events in the UK if greenhouse gas levels in the
atmosphere carry on rising," he said.
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AFP: China’s roars grow louder in Year of the Tiger
18 March 2010
After running at loggerheads with the West over climate change, human rights and nuclear
proliferation, China is now on a collision course with the international community on the
value of its currency.
Emboldened by its growing power and prosperity, China is striking a more defiant pose on
the world stage and becoming less inclined to bow to the demands of the West, analysts
say.
"Clearly a faction within the Communist leadership believes... it's time for Beijing to impose
its own views on the international community," said Valerie Niquet, a researcher at the
French Institute for International Relations.
24
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao even addressed such concerns at his grand once-a-year
press conference at the close of the parliament session earlier this month -- before swiftly
rejecting them out of hand.
"Some say China has become more arrogant and tough, and some are putting forward a
theory of "Chinese triumphalism," said Wen.
But he declared that the world's most populous nation, which boasts the third-largest
economy, remained only at the "primary stage of development" and insisted it would never
pose a threat to any other nation.
"China is a responsible country. China has called for and taken an active role in
international cooperation on economic and political issues in our world," he said.
Nevertheless, a newly confident China has been baring sharp fangs in the Year of the
Tiger.
Beijing is fiercely resisting international pressure to raise the value of the yuan, which has
been effectively pegged to the dollar since mid-2008, leading to charges from the West it
is kept low to boost Chinese exports.
The US Senate upped the ante this week, drafting legislation to punish China if it fails to
revalue the currency, while the International Monetary Fund weighed in to the dispute on
Wednesday.
"The renminbi (yuan) is very much undervalued and it's in the logic of rebalancing (of the
world economy) that the renminbi will appreciate," IMF managing director Dominique
Strauss-Kahn said.
The wrangling over the yuan has added to tensions between Beijing and the
administration of President Barack Obama over a host of issues including Internet
freedoms, Tibet and US arms sales to Taiwan.
Relations between the two powers are now at their lowest ebb for several years.
After extending his hand to China at the start of his mandate, "Obama has made a 180degree about-turn. Now he is only thinking of American interests," said Shi Yinhong,
director of the Centre for American Studies at the People's University in Beijing.
Both Washington and London have pushed Beijing to agree to tough new sanctions
against Iran over its controversial nuclear drive, but China has not budged an inch,
repeatedly saying that negotiations are the only answer.
London and Beijing have also sparred over the execution in China of a Briton convicted of
drugs smuggling despite official pleas for his life to be spared, and other human rights
cases.
"It's clear that China has hardened its stance -- it's been like this since the Olympic Games
in 2008," said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a China expert who teaches political science at Hong
Kong Baptist University.
25
"China feels more powerful and influential on the world stage, the Communist party needs
to show its strength... to galvanise the increasing nationalism it has fostered in society,"
said Cabestan.
A poll published in the China Daily on Wednesday -- albeit of barely 2,000 people in a
country with a population of 1.3 billion -- found that most Chinese believe their nation is
progressing in the right direction.
It said most respondents ranked the United States as the number one threat to China's
development now and in the next decade, but also described it as the most important
country for China both politically and economically.
Niquet said China's more strident posture on the world stage became clear at the
international climate change conference in Copenhagen, with many in the West pinning
the blame on China for the lack of a comprehensive deal.
As a result, she said, "the traditional indulgence shown towards the emerging Chinese
power has been rolled back".
But analysts said they did not believe China was on course for more confrontational
relations with the West.
"Chinese foreign policy knows how to adapt, to draw back or become flexible if its enemies
or its partners are staying tough," said Cabestan.
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26
RONA MEDIA UPDATE
THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE NEWS
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
UNEP or UN in the News
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Coloradoan.com: Group honored for environmental efforts
San Francisco Chronicle: Ways to recycle your spring cleaning trash
The New York Times: New Pentagon Effort Targets Illicit Wildlife Trade
Reuters: U.N. meeting asked to regulate world shark trade
LA Times: Opposition grows from Japan and developing countries against proposed ban
on bluefin tuna
The National Post: Russia's Olympic construction panned
The Ottawa Citizen: Binding climate treaty may take years, Prentice says
Little Chicago Review: Barrasso praises investigation of IPCC
The Washington Times: SADAR: Restraining climate-science diversity
Group honored for environmental efforts
Coloradoan.com, March 17, 2010, by Eleanor Dwight
Congratulations to Trees, Water, People on receiving the 2009-10 United Nations
Environment Programme Sasakawa Prize. This is a highly coveted award that brings
along with it $100,000 to the Fort Collins-based Trees, Water People nonprofit
organization to continue its outstanding contributions to the environment by distributing
fuel-efficient cook stoves and promoting reforestation projects in central America and
Haiti.
The UNEP Sasakawa Prize is sponsored by the Japan-based Nippon Foundation. The
award is given each year to sustainable and replicable grassroots projects around the
planet. The U.N. Environ-ment Programme's executive director, Achim Steiner, chaired
the jury panel that made the selection.
Steiner said: "Combating climate change is not just up to governments: It starts at the
grassroots level ... through pioneering green ovens, Trees Water People are changing
the lives of thousands of people in villages across Central America. This is the Green
Economy of tomorrow, in action today."
The UNEP's mission is to provide leadership and to encourage partnerships in caring for
the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and people to improve their
quality of life without compromising that of future generations. I would encourage your
readers to go to www.unep.org to read about the many interesting projects this agency is
coordinating. Their work goes on without most of us realizing the extent of their positive
contributions to improving our environment. The award to Trees, Water, People makes
us aware of UNEP and its accomplishments.
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Eleanor Dwight, president,
United Nations Association of Northern Colorado
New Pentagon Effort Targets Illicit Wildlife Trade
The New York Times, March 16, 2010, by Dina Fine Maron
U.S. troops heading to Iraq and Afghanistan will soon be trained to confront a new
enemy, the trade in products made from endangered animals.
Designed by a conservation group and backed by $50,000 from the Pentagon, the
campaign will teach soldiers to be wary when shopping for clothes, blankets and other
items that might be made from endangered or threatened species like the snow leopard,
sand cat, and Asiatic black bear.
"Most of these soldiers are between 18 and 26 years of age, and they are not aware,"
said Heidi Kretser, who heads up the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society's trade
education program. "They are looking at cool products to bring home to their families."
The education effort is justified, the group says, by its statistics that show 350 illegally
traded wildlife items were confiscated at just three U.S. bases in Afghanistan during
spring and summer of 2008.
Typically the problems stem from soldiers unwittingly buying blankets and coats
containing the furs of protected species -- which make them illegal to ship or carry into
the United States. But that is a lesson the troops often do not learn until the products are
paid for -- and then confiscated by customs officers.
The conservation campaign aims to curb such sales through PowerPoint presentations,
pocket-sized endangered species cards and other teaching tools that the group plans to
complete this spring.
Possession of products containing parts of protected species could lead to more than
confiscation, warns McKenzie Johnson, the conservation group's representative in
Afghanistan. Soldiers could be prosecuted for smuggling, and a conviction could carry a
stiff fine and jail time. So far, however, Justice Department spokesman Andrew Ames
said he is unaware of such charges being brought against U.S. soldiers.
Two-front battle
Though customs officers can prevent a product's shipment, "once the product is sold,
the damage is done," Kretser said, noting that money has already gone to vendors and
fueled illegal wildlife trade.
So Johnson tries to keep money out of vendors' pockets by educating U.S. military
police on bases in Afghanistan to keep illegal wildlife products out of on-base bazaars.
Johnson, whose work is mostly funded by the U.S. Agency for International
Development, has accompanied military police through inspections of bazaars to point
out illegal wildlife products -- often, furs of animals protected by the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) or U.S.
laws. She also conducts workshops for the military police to teach them to identify the
endangered species.
28
"Two military police from Bagram Air Base flew in to Camp Eggers specifically to train on
identifying endangered species, learned the training and then went out to forward
operating bases in the south to repeat the training to other soldiers," Johnson said. "U.S.
military personnel have been the primary reason for the success of this program."
The conservation group does not have representatives in Iraq, but it hopes to educate
soldiers heading there with its new campaign, Kretser said.
In Afghanistan, where the number of U.S. troops is expected to grow, the Wildlife
Conservation Society (WCS) said efforts to educate shoppers and keep vendors
peddling endangered species out of base bazaars may make a lasting impact. When
military police see illegal fur being sold, a vendor is warned not to bring those products
to the base, Kretser said, and repeat offenders are banned.
"When WCS staff or military police do regular bazaar inspections, there is a decrease in
the number of illicit products offered for sale by vendors," Johnson said. "However, when
these efforts slow or stop, vendors immediately bring back these items to sell."
Camp Eggers in Kabul has been particularly consistent in checking for wildlife items,
Johnson said. "There have been very few found in bazaar checks during the last year,"
she said.
Such regular sweeps, she added, "should make a vast difference in reducing the amount
of illicit trade in Afghanistan."
Sleuthing
Deciphering which animals' pelts are used in blankets and coats is not easy, especially
when bits of furs are mixed in a single product, Kretser said.
Sometimes Johnson is brought in to give her expert opinion on whether or not a product
runs afoul of CITES or U.S. law.
"I had a group from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who brought me in because the
customs officer on Camp Eggers refused to ship items they had purchased in the
bazaar," Johnson said. "Most of the items included fur coats purchased at the bazaar on
base.
Some of the coats were silver fox, which are allowed to go through customs, but one of
them contained cat pelts and could not be shipped out the country."
The confusion for many troops arises from the fact that furs are sold at bazaars on base,
said Laurie Rush, the cultural resources manager for the Army's Fort Drum in New York.
In recent years Kretser has visited Fort Drum -- two hours from the conservation group's
Saranac Lake, N.Y., office -- to teach deploying troops about the issue. It was there that
Rush first suggested Kretser ask the Defense Department to fund the training effort.
"If you are a young soldier without this education and you were in a situation where you
are in a so-called 'approved' market opportunity," Rush said, "you would assume it is fine
to buy everything available."
29
U.N. meeting asked to regulate world shark trade
Reuters, March 17, 2010, by Deborah Zabarenko
Exploding Asian demand for shark fin soup has slashed worldwide shark populations,
and global regulation is the best way to save eight species now under pressure, ocean
conservationists reported on Monday.
Eight types of sharks -- oceanic whitetip, dusky, sandbar, spurdog, porbeagle, scalloped,
smooth and great hammerhead -- should be regulated under the United Nations
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), a marine expert at
the Washington-based group Oceana said.
"The demand for the shark fin is so high, they're being taken out of the water faster than
they can reproduce in the water to sustain their population," said Rebecca Greenberg,
co-author of an Oceana report released at a U.N. CITES meeting on endangered
species being held from March 13 to 25 in Doha, Qatar.
Sharks are under particular pressure because of the growing Chinese appetite for shark
fin soup, traditionally a symbol of power and prestige that was formerly reserved for the
wealthy.
One of the most expensive foods on Earth, a bowl of shark fin soup can cost $100, and
a single fin can be worth $1,300, Greenberg said in a telephone interview from Doha.
Formerly a delicacy reserved for the rich because of the difficulty of catching and
processing sharks, shark fins are now within reach of the growing Asian middle class
because of improved fishing and processing techniques, she said.
SHARK POPULATIONS PLUMMETING
Up to 22 million pounds (10 million kg) of shark fins are exported annually to Hong Kong
by 87 countries, the Oceana report said.
While not seeking a ban on the trade of shark fins, Oceana wants to limit international
commerce in this commodity so that the only fins that can be traded and sold
internationally are from sustainable shark populations, according to Greenberg.
Because shark populations are found around the world, fishing fleets from various
countries travel globally to catch them, and as recently as a decade ago it would have
been hard to figure out where the fish came from and whether their population was being
sustained.
However, advances in record-keeping requirements for other bodies mean that now the
number and provenance of sharks can be determined, which means quotas could be set
on how many sharks from could be exported, Greenberg said.
She said her group was "pretty confident" that the CITES meeting would agree to
regulation of the eight shark species.
30
"Many of the nations that we're talking about are conscious that the populations of each
individual species are just plummeting around the world because of the high fin
demand," Greenberg said.
Representatives of 175 countries are convened at the CITES meeting in Doha.
Opposition grows from Japan and developing countries against proposed ban on
bluefin tuna
LA Times, March 17, 2010, by Michael Casey
DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Opposition grew Wednesday against a proposal to ban the export
of Atlantic bluefin tuna, with several Arab countries joining Japan in arguing it would hurt
poor fishing nations and wasn't scientifically justified.
Other countries including Australia and Peru have expressed support for a weakened
proposal which is expected to be introduced Thursday at the 175-nation Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES.
They want the trade regulated for the first time by CITES but not banned outright as
demanded by conservationists who contend the Atlantic bluefin is on the brink of
extinction.
Killing or even weakening the tuna proposal would be a setback for CITES, which has
made the protection of marine species a key goal during this two-week meeting. A
proposal for a shark conservation plan was also defeated on Tuesday.
Many poor countries appeared to be leaning toward protecting their economies over
conserving the iconic tuna.
"Most Mediterranean countries are afraid because they export this tuna," said Ahmed
Said Shukaili, a delegate from the Persian Gulf country of Oman, whose nation will
follow the Arab League position opposing the ban.
"They see this as an economic issue," he said. "There is a lot of concerns for the
fishermen who depend on this fish."
Japan says it has the support of China while several other countries were undecided.
China has not said publicly where it stands.
Monaco — the sponsor of the proposed ban on the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna —
says numbers have fallen by nearly 75 percent since 1957. But most of the decline has
occurred over the last decade with demand driven by sushi lovers in Japan and
elsewhere for the bluefin's succulent red and pink meat.
Supporters of the ban, including the European Union and the United States, say it is
necessary because the Atlantic bluefin is a migratory species that swims from the
western Atlantic to the Mediterranean — putting it beyond any one country's border.
Compounding the tuna's plight is the growing threat from illegal fishing fleets and the
failure of existing measures to keep the population sustainable.
31
"The North African countries are concerned about fishermen losing their jobs. But
nevertheless the jobs will be lost when there will be no more bluefin tuna," said Patrick
Van Klaveren, a delegate with the Monaco delegation. "With bluefin tuna, it's not a
question of 10 or 20 years but five or six years or less to see the stock collapse."
Raw tuna is a key ingredient in traditional dishes such as sushi and sashimi, and the
bluefin variety — called "hon-maguro" in Japan — is particularly prized.
Japan, which imports 80 percent of Atlantic bluefin and has led the opposition to the ban,
argued on Wednesday that CITES should have no role in regulating tuna and other
marine species. It said that it is willing to accept lower quotas for bluefin tuna but wants
those to come from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas,
or ICCAT, which currently regulates the trade.
Masanori Miyahara, chief counselor of the Fisheries Agency of Japan, told The
Associated Press that CITES was "unfair and partial" and that a tuna ban would allow
the Europeans and Americans to continue fishing tuna domestically while Japan suffers
from a steep drop in exports.
"The big players will continue fishing," Miyahara said. "If necessary, let's stop fishing
using ICCAT measures. Then everyone must give up the fishing. But here, it is very
unfair."
Critics, however, argue that ICCAT consistently ignores its own scientists in setting
quotas and does little to stop countries from exceeding already high quotas or cracking
down on widespread illegal fishing.
Susan Lieberman, director of international policy with the Pew Environment Group in
Washington, said there was a lot of confusion over the competing proposals and even
how the ban would impact certain countries. There is also disinformation campaigns by
some governments that have implied, for example, that North Africa would suddenly be
inundated with tuna boats from the Mediterranean if the ban took hold, she said.
Still, Lieberman remained optimistic that a proposal would be passed — though it could
take many forms from an outright ban, to a delayed ban to increased trade restrictions
with some kind of quotas.
"What we are seeing is broad support for CITES having a role in Atlantic bluefin tuna,"
Lieberman said.
Russia's Olympic construction panned
The National Post, March 17, 2010, by Agence France-Presse
The United Nations yesterday criticized Russia for taking too long to implement
decisions to protect the environment from the impact of the 2014 Winter Olympics in
Sochi. The alpine and nordic events in the 2014 Games -- Russia's biggest sporting
event since the collapse of the Soviet Union -- are to be held in a region of outstanding
natural diversity in the mountains above Sochi. Russian environmentalists have long
complained the extensive building works risk harming the environment and the United
32
Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said it dispatched a mission to Sochi in response
to their protests.
Binding climate treaty may take years, Prentice says
The Ottawa Citizen, March 17, 2010, by Mike de Souza
It could take years to turn last December's international climate change agreement into a
legally binding treaty, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said on Tuesday.
Speaking to a parliamentary committee reviewing spending in his department, Prentice
said the international community likely would continue negotiating future commitments
and conditions of a treaty to reduce heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere and adapt to
climate change well beyond the end of 2010.
"This takes time. It's a complicated document," Prentice told a parliamentary committee
reviewing spending in his department. "In the case of (the) Kyoto (agreement on climate
change from 1997), it took as I recall in excess of three years. So we shouldn't be
surprised if it takes several years to actually turn this agreement into a full treaty."
Despite the failure to achieve a binding agreement at the Copenhagen conference in
2009, Prentice told the committee that regulations in Canada were "imminent" for
emissions from new motor vehicles and other transportation-related sources. New
tailpipe standards are expected to be introduced this year.
Barrasso praises investigation of IPCC
Little Chicago Review, March 17, 2010
Washington, D.C. – Last Wednesday, U.S. Senator John Barrasso delivered the
following statement regarding the United Nations’ announcement that it will conduct an
independent investigation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
“I’m pleased that the United Nations has finally agreed to shine a light on the IPCC’s
internal procedures. Americans deserve straight answers about how the UN collects
and uses data to form policies and reports.
“An independent investigation must be truly independent. Dr. Rajendra Pachauri should
step down immediately. As IPCC Chairman, he has turned a blind eye to procedures
and allowed scientific fraud to occur right under his nose. In the aftermath, he has
delivered excuses instead of accountability.
“The Senate Subcommittee on Oversight in the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee also has a responsibility to investigate the IPCC. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency has relied on the UN’s data for all their energy tax proposals that
could cost millions of Americans their jobs. With 9.7 percent unemployment, our nation
cannot afford to continue to base our energy and environmental policies on
contaminated UN data.”
Background: On February 4, 2010, Senator Barrasso called on Dr. Rajendra Pachauri,
Chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to resign
after revelations of ongoing scientific fraud under Dr. Pachauri’s watch.
33
On March 4, 2010, Senator Barrasso, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on
Oversight in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, released a report. It
details the Subcommittee’s lack of oversight on a number of key Administration
activities, including the fraudulent data included in the UN climate change reports.
SADAR: Restraining climate-science diversity
The Washington Times, March 17, 2010, by Anthony Sadar
Diversity is a big deal on college campuses these days. Yet social diversity is what's
promoted primarily, if not exclusively, not diversity of opinion. In a complex field such as
climatology, intellectual diversity should be encouraged to help unravel the what, why
and how of the globe's climate.
A careful, dispassionate look at the enormous complexity of the Earth-atmosphere
system and what we think we know about it reveals that we know very little. Mountains
of data have been collected on our land masses, oceans and atmosphere - thermal
properties, structure, chemical composition, short- and long-term fluctuations and the
like. But the integration, interpretation and confident, long-term predictive powers that
might someday emerge from the data seem to be a knowledge reserved for the distant
future. Nevertheless, numerous scientists and politicians speak with one voice that not
only do we know enough about how the climate operates to alter its operation, but that
there is a strong, even overwhelming, consensus in this supposedly confident
knowledge.
Where did such single-minded confidence originate? The halls of academia offer a good
place to start. Atmospheric science has blossomed tremendously since I was a
meteorology student at Pennsylvania State University in the mid-1970s. From slide-rule
calculations, paper maps and lumbering mainframe computers, the field exploded, not
only with new theories and models and lightning-speed computer products, but in
celebrity as well.
Meteorologists seemed to handle the increased attention and authority in a reasonable,
measured manner, whereas climatologists, not accustomed to being in the limelight,
seemed to relish the sometimes fawning attention.
After all, climatology jumped from a cloistered and tedious compilation of facts and
figures to a field trusted not to make mundane daily and weekly weather forecasts for
Podunksville, USA, but to prognosticate years, even decades, into the future for Planet
Earth. Upon these momentous outlooks, world economies would rely, living conditions
would be altered, personalities would be exalted.
Climatologic products lived up to and probably even exceeded technical expectations
with marvelous mathematics and three-dimensional animated graphics. But with all their
deep sophistication, climatologists' ability to predict the distant future with any modicum
of certainty is most likely cosmetic.
34
Back at the academy, as models of the physical climate continued to impress, models of
education continued to digress. At my alma mater, a world-renowned leader in
atmospheric science, the universitywide focus today, as elsewhere, is strongly on
diversity - diversity of culture and lifestyle. Yet, again, what is really needed is diversity of
reasonable thought and expression across all college campuses.
In climate science, more diverse insights, viewpoints and voices are required to mine the
mounds of information, help the public see through the politicization of the scientific
process and speak to the nonsense that a "consensus" has been reached on human
contributions to global warming, aka climate change.
Many of the diverse voices are speaking but, unfortunately, their audiences are often
limited by mainstream media that abridge, filter or simply don't cover perspectives that
oppose "established science."
The reason for this lack of coverage may be that many, if not most, members of this
same media have an understanding of science that is as limited as is their initiative to
uncover how science and scientists actually operate, how science is never really
"settled," especially the forecasts related to science, and how debate is what gives
science its strength. To limit debate only weakens the discipline.
What appears to be happening, primarily for political purposes, is that the normal
challenges that are made to any proposed "theory" in science have been largely
quashed in the case of climate change.
Conversely, research results related to creative but challenged methods, such as the
infamous "hockey stick" graph by a now-Penn State professor, are quickly embraced,
declared conclusive and rushed to the public, all for the ostensibly honorable purpose to
"save the planet." But, "Climategate," the selective process employed by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and emerging doubts about the accuracy
of temperature measurements in North America raise a huge red flag.
These recent, ominous signs on the workings of contemporary climate science signal the
need for more diversity of thought and dissemination of enlightened dissent.
At a minimum, climate-science practitioners themselves must be more diligent, open and
honest about what they know and, perhaps more important, what they don't know. Thus,
even the uninitiated and those more focused on social diversity can make a more
informed decision about the complex world of climate change.
Anthony J. Sadar is a certified consulting meteorologist and co-author of "Environmental
Risk Communication: Principles and Practices for Industry" (CRC Press/Lewis
Publishers, 2000).
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The New York Times: Wyo.'s Crash Program to Develop 'Green' Coal
The Wall Street Journal: RENEWED ENERGY: Canada's Clean Power Goal
Fades
CBC.ca: Environmental groups face uncertain future
Environment News Service: Governors' Wind Energy Coalition Urges National
Renewable Energy Standard
USA Today: Too scary? U.K.'s "bedtime stories" on climate change spark outrage
BusinessWeek: Bill Clinton Backs Senate Effort on Climate-Change Compromise
CNN: Climate change's Hail Mary
CBS News: Dems Already Looking Ahead to the Next Fight: Climate Change
US News and World Report: Aquatic 'Dead Zones' Contributing to Climate Change
FOXNews.com: Public Concern About Environmental Issues Hits 20-Year Low, Poll
Finds
Reuters: Richard Branson Aims To Rock The Boat For Green Shipping
Reuters: U.S. Groups Want To Expand Climate Bill Forestry Aid
The New York Times: More Firms Join Desertec Solar Project
The New York Times: Underwater Cable an Alternative to Electrical Towers
LA Times: Medvedev says that Russia must push its claim to Arctic resources
San Francisco Chronicle: NOAA Fisheries lists Pacific smelt as threatened
The Toronto Star: Greening Ontario can afford to switch off coal power now
The Ottawa Citizen: Canada, U.S. to launch avalanche warning system
ClimateWire: 'Domes' of carbon dioxide harm health in urban areas – study
ClimateWire: White House finds gaps among agencies on climate responses
E & E Daily: Kerry bill would bar U.S. support for whaling compromise
Greenwire: U.K. projects 100,000 jobs by 2030 in carbon capture
Greenwire: Senate wraps up 'jobs' bill, eyes 'clean energy' follow-up
Mother Nature Network: Climate change: It's all about risk
Mother Nature Network: 'Climate Cover-Up'
ClimateWire: Climate experts turn to Hollywood to get message out
E & E Daily: Lobbying intensifies on World Bank's proposed South African power
plant loan
Ways to recycle your spring cleaning trash
San Francisco Chronicle, March 17, 2010, by Nancy Davis Kho
Perhaps it's a reaction to being cooped up with your belongings during the rainy winter
months or a desire for a cleaner home canvas. Whatever the reason, spring cleaning
season is upon us and with it, the urge to purge.
Mary Ann Pate, a professional organizer at A Timely Solution and media liaison for the
San Francisco Chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers, says: "It's
36
the weather, it's the sun, it's the change of seasons - it feels like you're opening up after
hibernating all winter. People see spring cleaning as an opportunity to start over again."
But those feel-good results can come at a cost if you consider the downstream
implications of tossing out all those obsolete electronics, worn-out furniture and
outgrown clothes. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans
generated about 250 million tons of trash in 2008, and recycled or composted only about
33 percent of it. The percentage of recycled waste has climbed substantially since 1980
when it stood under 10 percent, but so has the amount of waste generated per capita 4.5 pounds per person per day in 2008, versus 3.66 pounds in 1980.
If one of the measures of successful spring cleaning is the amount of clutter you
eliminate, reducing your contribution to the landfill may sound counterintuitive. But with a
little effort and homework, you can clean up your home environment without affecting the
natural environment.
Eliminate e-waste
Rapid technological advancements in electronic devices like computers, cell phones,
televisions and MP3 players have a downside: making the disposition of obsolete
electronic devices an everyday household concern. The United Nations Environment
Programme estimates that around 20 million to 50 million tons of e-waste are generated
worldwide each year; much of it ends up in emerging markets, where lax controls over
recycling practices have turned e-waste recovery into a profitable, if toxic, new industry
for cash-strapped countries.
Proper disposal of electronic devices is critical for two reasons. First, they often contain
chemicals like lead, cadmium and mercury that can be hazardous to both humans and
the environment. Second, the devices often contain metals that can be recovered and
reused, diminishing the demand for mining of raw materials.
"You can't just put a cell phone into the trash; it's illegal," says Amy Norris of the
Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle), the department that
oversees the proper disposal of the 92 million tons of waste generated in California each
year. "Landfills are for nonhazardous trash only, and most electronic devices are
considered hazardous."
Under California's Electronic Waste Recycling Act, which passed into law in 2004,
California consumers now pay a fee of $6 to $10 at the time of purchase for certain
video display devices. Those fees go into a fund which is dispersed to qualified e-waste
collectors and recyclers to cover their costs of managing e-waste.
To find out where you can safely dispose of electronic devices in the Bay Area,
consumers can visit the erecycle. org site for a list of approved recyclers and collectors.
"And if you're unsure, ask the recycler what they do with the e-waste," advises Harris.
"They should know exactly where each component goes."
One such recycler is the Alameda County Computer Resource Center in Berkeley,
whose motto is "Obsolescence is just a lack of imagination." The organization starts by
trying to refurbish computers for schools, nonprofit organizations and economically or
37
physically disadvantaged individuals. Those devices that can't be revamped are sent to
ECS Refining in Santa Clara, which processes scrap electronics by shredding and
separating the components. The steel, aluminum, and plastic are recycled, and the
copper and precious metals are sampled, prepared and packaged for shipment to a
primary copper smelter.
Just be sure, as a commonsense precaution, that part of your spring cleaning includes
wiping all personal data completely from electronic devices before dropping them off.
Recycle clothes
If you've already got plenty of dust cloths and the prospect of sewing a pair of used jeans
into a fetching handbag doesn't grab you, you can still do better than relegating your
unwanted clothing to the garbage can.
Once you've made sure all the items are clean and folded or on hangers, your first stop
might be at a store like Buffalo Exchange or Crossroads Trading Co., which pay cash on
the spot for top-quality and still-fashionable items in your closet. Neighborhood
consignment shops can also sell your clothes and pay you a portion of the proceeds,
although as Pate says, "You have to know what the shops in your area will take - some
will only take designer clothes that are less than 2 years old."
For clothes that don't quite pass fashionista muster but are still serviceable, there are a
number of worthy local thrift stores that gladly accept donations, using the revenue
generated from sales to support their causes. Goodwill, the Salvation Army and the
American Cancer Society are among those that sell donated clothing in their Bay Area
stores.
Other community organizations follow a direct redistribution model. Wardrobe for
Opportunity is a nonprofit with locations in Oakland and Danville that provides donated,
gently worn professional clothing to low-income job seekers; women's shelters,
homeless shelters and programs for low-income families often welcome clothing
donations for their residents.
Repurpose housewares
Before you pitch that stack of National Geographics or jar of Grandma's buttons in the
trash, consider local reuse hotspots East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse in Oakland and
Scroungers' Center for Reusable Art Parts in San Francisco. Both are dedicated to
breathing new life into old objects such as textiles, paper, jewelry, wood, buttons and
plastics by distributing them to artists, teachers and community groups.
Goodwill and the Salvation Army will also take furniture and housewares. Animal
shelters such as the San Francisco SPCA rely on donations of used bedding and rugs to
keep their four-footed visitors cozy and warm.
Freecycle
And for everything else, there's Freecycle. This nonprofit, grassroots network is the
ultimate proof that one man's trash is another's treasure. Members post a description of
38
the item they're trying to get rid of, and other members arrange to pick it up, with no
money changing hands. On a recent day on the Bay Area Freecycle group there were
takers for a 3-year-old banana plant, men's deodorant and a Pilates DVD.
Surely someone out there needs your case of unopened weight-loss-shake mix,
diverting yet another item from the landfill.
Wyo.'s Crash Program to Develop 'Green' Coal
The New York Times, March 17, 2010, by John Fialka
CASPER, Wyo. -- In the summer of 2008, Wyoming's governor, Dave Freudenthal, went
to California for meetings with state officials and utility executives. What he brought was,
quite literally, a burning question.
California was in the throes of putting together the nation's first cap on greenhouse
gases, and it appeared that if a Democrat were elected president, there might soon be a
federal law, as well. At stake was Wyoming's biggest industry -- coal production.
Wyoming lawmakers worried that California would lead the nation to impose a ban on
imports of out-of-state electricity if it were produced by coal-fired power plants.
For both states, these are meat-and-potatoes questions. Wyoming is, by far, the nation's
biggest coal producer. California is the second-largest electricity market in the United
States. Freudenthal took the issue one step further: Were there any circumstances
under which California regulators and utilities would consider power produced by
Wyoming coal to be "green" enough to sell for premium prices?
The governor, a Democrat, and Wyoming state Rep. Thomas Lubnau II, a Republican,
had both been impressed by the exploits of Anadarko Petroleum Corp., a Texas-based
oil exploration company that had rejuvenated a century-old Wyoming oil field by injecting
carbon dioxide into the formation. The company was touting its new production as
"green oil," because it had taken millions of tons of man-made carbon dioxide being
vented into the atmosphere and successfully injected it underground to produce more
oil.
Would California recognize "green coal"? Moreover, if engineers in Wyoming figured out
a way to separate and bury most of the CO2 emissions resulting from generating
electricity by burning coal, could the electricity fetch the high prices being paid by
California utilities for wind and solar energy?
"We never got a clear answer," explains Freudenthal, a tall former state planning
coordinator. But he got the Wyoming Legislature to begin setting up the legal framework
needed to support carbon capture and sequestration. He has also been engaged in a bit
of foreign policy, visiting China's coal provinces and pushing state officials to work with
China and Australia on carbon capture and sequestration.
Freudenthal, who is also a lawyer, got the campaign going two years before the Obama
administration embraced the issue. He started with a February 2008 article he wrote for
the state's law journal describing the issues involved in capturing and storing carbon as
a "Pandora's Box" of legal and regulatory questions that had, as yet, no answers.
Pointing out that Wyoming is, by far, the nation's largest coal producer, he injected a
39
note of urgency: "No one else in the marketplace has as much at stake as we do and no
one is likely to act on our behalf."
Stanley Young, a spokesman for California's Air Resources Board, explained that under
current law, utilities in the state can't make long-term contracts to import coal-fired
power. If Wyoming power producers could cut their CO2 emissions by about half to
match natural gas emissions, the utilities might, depending on whether they met pending
California regulations. Currently, Young said, a blue-ribbon commission is pondering
how to measure and deal with lower-carbon coal-generated power.
Fired up by science fiction
As it happened, Wyoming Republicans, who dominate the Legislature in the nation's
least densely populated state, were already fired up. Stefanie Judson-Kivelin, a former
babysitter for the speaker of the state's House of Representatives, had accomplished
this with a term paper she wrote at Princeton while getting an engineering degree. She
composed a science-fiction scenario explaining how, by 2020, the state had attracted
billions of dollars of new business by stimulating the production, storage and
sequestration of CO2.
Rather than falling victim to federal and state carbon caps, her paper said, Wyoming saw
its coal industry flourish by developing a carbon policy that capitalized on them. In her
study, the state encouraged such things as new coal plants near mining areas that
separated CO2 from their emissions and then shipped electricity rather than coal out of
state.
Wyoming also profited from building pipelines to carry the resulting CO2 to oil fields and
other places where it was buried. Still more money, she envisioned, would come from
developing and selling Wyoming underground burial space to other states that could
dispose of their CO2 by sending through extensions of this pipeline system, which she
called big interstate carbon "superhighways" leading to Wyoming.
In Stefanie's world, coal-laden trains are old hat. Her paper had coal leaving new power
plants in the form of clean electricity that could be shipped as a premium product -- like
California oranges -- to West Coast cities at the speed of light.
Stefanie's paper ended with a parade in the streets of Casper in 2020. "I had them be
successful," recalls Judson-Kivelin, who currently works as an energy engineer in
California.
Climate 'agnostics' push through CCS laws
Her paper went through the speaker of the House's office and found its way to the desk
of Rep. Lubnau, a lawyer who represents the district that includes Wyoming's biggest
coal-producing area, the Powder River Basin. Lubnau picked up his phone and called
the governor.
"If the governor doesn't pick up by the second ring, I know he's out of town," said
Lubnau, explaining the folksy and often nonpartisan way politics works in his state. The
two lawyers -- both of whom describe themselves as "agnostics" when it comes to
40
believing in man-made causes of global warming -- worked out a plan to create a legal
structure authorizing and regulating the permanent storage of CO2 from power plants.
As Lubnau explained in an interview, Wyoming would never impose a cap on carbon
emissions, but if the United States or other states did, Wyoming wanted to lead the
country in establishing laws that would support and regulate carbon sequestration. So
far, the Legislature has passed five laws and organized a working committee to study
what else might be needed.
Getting clear answers to business-related questions "is important to us," explained the
governor, who said that waiting for Washington to deliver answers could take years. The
current climate bill passed by the House, he added, is "never going anywhere. It's not
well drafted."
In its solo efforts to blaze a new legal-regulatory trail for carbon capture and storage,
Wyoming has attracted some interested allies. One is David Victor, a professor of
international relations at the University of California, San Diego. He believes that coal is
so plentiful and inexpensive around the world that it will continue to be used in large
quantities.
Even with twice the cost penalties imposed on carbon by pending legislation before
Congress, Victor argued, burning coal to make electricity will still remain cheaper than
alternatives such as nuclear or wind power. Wyoming's huge strip mines, he notes, are
among the most efficient in the world. Other nations, he added, such as China and
Australia, are already competing for the necessary investments to establish carbon
capture and storage regimes.
Competing with other states and China for capital
The professor said Wyoming's efforts are impressive because the questions of property
rights and liability issues surrounding carbon storage have to be settled for the United
States to compete, and "historically, they're mainly settled at the state level." He sees
Wyoming "at the forefront" of a handful of states, including Texas and Illinois, that will be
competing with each other to attract the capital needed to build the multibillion-dollar
infrastructure that carbon capture and sequestration will require.
Lindeen Patton, the chief climate product officer of Zurich Financial Services, one of the
largest property and casualty insurers in the world, has also been working with
Wyoming's effort. Currently, coal-fired power supplies about half of the electricity in the
United States. In China, it's closer to 80 percent. After analyzing future energy sources
and their relative costs, she said, the insurance company concluded there could
eventually be a multibillion-dollar market in carbon capture and sequestration. "We sat
back and said there is no way that coal will not be part of this mix."
The company did a computer analysis of the regulatory needs and liability risks of
carbon capture and saw many similarities to risks the company already insures, among
them gas pipelines and the injection of wastes and natural gas into underground
reservoirs.
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In each case, insurers have helped minimize risks by working with regulators and
companies to develop safety regulations and to pick the most leak-free disposal sites.
"Companies, when they buy insurance, get a competitive advantage if they can buy lowpriced insurance," Patton said. "So we come in and say, 'Here is what we'd consider
important, and if you do this, we'd put a substantial amount of capital at risk.'"
While the United States and other countries have launched projects to demonstrate
carbon capture and sequestration, both Victor and Patton caution that large numbers of
commercial-scale projects may still be as much as 20 years away. And they both note
that to to make them happen, the federal government may have to take on some of the
bigger long-term liability involved, as it does currently with nuclear power plants.
Wyoming may have a head start in gaining the financing, because it estimates that there
are 1 billion barrels of "stranded oil" that oil companies could produce from existing fields
other than Salt Creek by using more CO2 injection, assuming they could tap redesigned
power plants to get the gas.
"We could do 10 more Salt Creeks, but we wouldn't make a dent in what we emit,"
explained Ronald Surdam, Wyoming's state geologist. To further reduce emissions
would require a place to put the excess CO2 from power plants, and that raises a host of
new problems. At Salt Creek, for example, the CO2 goes into porous rock formations
where space has already been created by sucking out some of the oil.
Dipping a toe into the water business
When it comes to finding new formations where CO2 exhaled by power plants could be
safely buried, Surdam explained that geologists are looking at underground reservoirs
already saturated with briny water, which will have to be removed to create space.
Otherwise, pushing more CO2 underground would create hydraulic pressures that might
damage neighboring underground uses miles away, such as oil and gas production.
So Wyoming is planning to create underground storage space by pumping up the briny
water, treating it and selling it. "We're talking large-scale desalination," Surdam
explained. "Then you could put it in the [Colorado] river, or we could use it in the state,"
he added. "I think 50 years from now, water will be one of the most valuable
commodities in the West."
Surdam is quick to add that the overall costs of the infrastructure that will be needed to
capture and sequester CO2 on a commercial scale remain a huge unknown. To settle
that question, his office is planning a demonstration injection into a rock formation where
10 million tons of CO2 will be stored in one year -- an experiment at least 10 times larger
than current demonstration projects run by the U.S. Department of Energy.
"We're trying to figure out what you can do and what you can't do and how much it's
going to cost. Society will have to figure out whether to pay the cost," said Surdam. The
first drilling into a larger sequestration site will begin later this year, and injection could
begin by 2012, he and Mark Northam, a geochemist at the University of Wyoming,
explained.
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Wyoming's efforts are aided by U.S. Department of Energy grants and access to a new
supercomputer being built in Cheyenne. Wyoming delegations have made two visits to
China, which is helping them explore carbon capture technology and the use of so-called
"mine mouth" coal-fired plants -- industry complexes recently built in China's coal
provinces that produce chemicals as well as electricity from coal, thus eliminating the
need to move it. "They're helping us and we're helping them delineate and characterize
the best places for the sequestering of CO2," said Surdam.
Because coal-fired power plants are among the globe's largest sources of man-made
CO2, these are not small questions. In June, experts from Australia, another nation
heavily committed to coal use, will arrive here to consult with Surdam, Northam and
other leaders of Wyoming's big sequestration effort, said Northam. "We're really on a
crash course to understand what it is we need to do."
RENEWED ENERGY: Canada's Clean Power Goal Fades
The Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2010, by Edward Welsch
OTTAWA (Dow Jones)—Canada’s target of boosting clean power generation to 90% is
going up in smoke.
After his successful reelection at the end of 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper set
this goal alongside another one to cut emissions 20% by 2020. At that time Canada was
already feeling international pressure over its growing carbon emissions, which it had
promised to reduce under the Kyoto Protocol. The largest crude-oil exporter to the U.S.
was further criticized for failing to meet its Kyoto goals during the Copenhagen Climate
Change conference in December.
Canada is already working off a high base. Seventy-seven percent of the country’s
electricity comes from sources that don’t emit the greenhouse gases that contribute to
global warming. These sources are hydroelectricity from dams and nuclear power.
Boosting that figure to 90% by 2020 requires political will and money, both of which
Canada currently lacks.
Expanding Canada’s non-emitting power to that level would require the replacement of
110 terawatt hours of generation, or 15% Canada’s total, according to estimates by the
Canadian Electricity Association, an industry group.
That implies building some combination of clean energy sources equivalent to 14,000
new 3-megawatt wind turbines, according the association’s estimates.
To be sure, there has been some progress. Canada’s provincial governments are using
various means to encourage wind power investments equal to roughly a third of what the
Canadian Electricity Association estimates is needed to meet the government target.
These include large programs in Ontario and Quebec that guarantee higher rates for
wind and other forms renewable power, which are then passed on to consumers. One
large new hydroelectric dam is being planned in Labrador and Newfoundland, and
Alberta has invested C$2 billion in several projects demonstrating carbon capture and
storage, a technology that reduces emissions at power plants that burn fossil fuels.
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But federal funding in Canada--a nation that prides itself on being fiscally conservative—
isn’t forthcoming. Last week Kevin Page, a federal government official charged with
providing an independent critique of the nation’s finances, projected the federal
government would run a string of deficits for the foreseeable future, from a record
C$53.8 billion in the 2010 fiscal year to a C$12.3 billion deficit in 2015.
Canada’s fiscal situation "limits its ability to make bold moves with regards to renewable
energy and climate change," Page told those attending an energy industry conference
here last week.
In fact, this month funding for the only major federal incentive for the renewable energy
industry--a subsidy of 1 Canadian cent per kilowatt hour--was not renewed in Canada’s
2010 budget, and Harper emphasized spending cuts in his annual throne speech to the
nation this year, without mentioning the 90% renewable target.
In a statement provided to Dow Jones Newswires, Canada’s Environment ministry
reiterated the government’s commitment to its goal of reaching 90% clean power by
2020. It pointed out C$100 million in funding for development of renewable technologies
in the forestry sector, and C$2 billion over five years set aside for clean technology
research and infrastructure in the government’s stimulus package last year.
But several tens of billions of dollars in additional investments are needed to make up
the gap. The National Energy Board, Canada’s federal energy regulator, recently
extrapolated from the current rate of investment that clean power would reach just 80%
by 2020, due mainly to growth in wind power and the closure of some coal plants.
If Canada’s ultimate goal is to reduce carbon dioxide outright, there’s not much left to
squeeze out of its power sector, which accounts for 16% of emissions. As the world’s
fifth-largest energy exporter, more than one-third of emissions come from the oil and gas
industry, with the fastest-growing portion coming from the energy-intensive process of
converting oil sands into crude oil. Emissions from hydrocarbons extraction are set to
rise together with demand for Canada’s oil and natural gas.
"It would definitely take a concerted effort, but by really focusing on electricity and
reaching the target, you could cut that 16% number in half and reduce or stop the growth
of total emissions caused by the oil and gas industry," said Tim Weis, an engineer and
analyst at The Pembina Institute, a Canadian environmental think tank.
Environmental groups face uncertain future
CBC.ca, March 17, 2010
Five New Brunswick environmental groups say they are facing financial struggles and
uncertain futures if the federal government doesn't come through with funding soon.
The groups, which deal with everything from the Saint John Harbour cleanup to
combating illegal dumping in Charlotte County, are all part of the Atlantic Coastal Action
Program (ACAP), which the federal government has funded for the past 16 years.
But with only two weeks to go until their funding runs out, the situation looks bleak, said
Tim Vickers, executive director of ACAP Saint John.
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"As of this point in the game, we haven't even received a request for proposals, so we're
months behind where we were last year and it's not looking good," he said.
Meanwhile, similar environmental groups in Ontario and Quebec have already received
their funding, Vickers said.
Cutbacks necessary
ACAP Saint John can survive the loss of its $82,000 in federal funding, which represents
up to 40 per cent of its revenue, but the group will be forced to make major cutbacks, he
said.
The ACAP group in eastern Charlotte County, Eastern Charlotte Waterways Inc., has
already cut summer jobs because the funding was delayed, and more cuts could be
coming, said executive director Rebecca Mersereau.
"There's a lot of uncertainty surrounding the whole situation and our ability to continue to
operate," she said.
Environment Canada officials did not reply to requests for an interview on Tuesday.
The ACAP partnership with Environment Canada expires at end of the month.
The five New Brunswick ACAP groups include: ACAP Saint John, Eastern Charlotte
Waterways Inc. in Blacks Harbour, Quoddy Futures Foundation in St. Stephen, and the
Miramichi River Environmental Assessment Committee in Miramichi and Société
d'aménagement de la rivière Madawaska et du lac Témiscouata in Madawaska county.
Governors' Wind Energy Coalition Urges National Renewable Energy Standard
Environment News Service, March 16, 2010
WASHINGTON, DC, March 16, 2010 (ENS) - For the first time, a group of state
governors is jointly requesting that Congress and the President adopt a national
renewable energy standard - a minimum requirement for the use of renewable electricity.
Organized as the Governors' Wind Energy Coalition, the bipartisan group of 29
governors from across the country today presented this request as the lead
recommendation in a package that includes streamlined permitting for both onshore and
offshore wind power projects and an upgraded interstate electric transmission system.
The coalition recommends a renewable electricity standard requiring the nation's utilities
to provide a minimum 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources like wind,
solar, geothermal and biopower, by 2012. Over half of the states in the nation already
have enacted some form of renewable electricity standard.
Iowa Governor Chet Culver, who chairs the Governors' Wind Energy Coalition, says he
backs a national renewable energy standard of 25 percent by 2025, which he says could
create more than 300,000 green jobs.
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Governor Culver, a Democrat, and the coalition's co-chair Rhode Island Governor
Donald Carcieri, a Republican, today released "Great Expectations: U.S. Wind Energy
Development, the Governors' Wind Energy Coalition's 2010 Recommendations."
In its recommendations, the coalition emphasizes the goal of providing at least 20
percent of the nation's electric needs from wind power by 2030. A recent assessment of
wind's prospects and impacts released by the U.S. Department of Energy concluded that
the United States could meet this goal.
"The title of the governors' recommendations could not be more apt," Governor Culver
told reporters on a teleconference call. "Americans have great expectations for the
nation's energy future, and these recommendations from the nation's governors to
Congress and the administration meet those expectations."
"This is the first set of comprehensive wind energy recommendations ever submitted to
Congress by a group of the nation's governors," said Governor Carcieri. "These
recommendations could not be more timely," he said.
"Congressional action on the energy bill seems to have stalled," said the Rhode Island
governor. "It is our hope that these recommendations - and the national bipartisan
consensus they represent - will advance the energy deliberations now under way in
Congress."
Both governors said the coalition is leaving the climate change debate aside and
focusing on the ability of wind power development to create jobs and reduce American
dependence on imported oil.
The Governors' Wind Energy Coalition recommendations call on Congress and the
Obama Administration to:



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Adopt a Renewable Electricity Standard.
Develop new interstate electric transmission system infrastructure as needed to
provide access to premier renewable energy resources both onshore and
offshore.
Fully support coastal, deep water, and offshore wind energy technology and
transmission research and development.
Streamline permitting processes for both offshore and onshore wind energy
development projects.
Expand the U.S. Department of Energy's work with the states and the wind
industry to accelerate innovation.
Extend the Treasury Department Grant Program in Lieu of the Investment Tax
Credit, and adopt a long-term renewable energy production tax credit with
provisions to broaden the pool of eligible investors.
In their letter to Congressional leaders introducing the recommendations, the governors
expressed their intention to wean the United States off imported oil.
"We share a common concern that our dependence on imported energy sources poses
unacceptable and unnecessary risks to the nation's energy, economic and national
security," they wrote. "We offer our assistance in working with Congress and the
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Administration to achieve one of the nation's principal energy goals, energy
independence, and increasing the role that wind energy plays in meeting that challenge."
The governors recognized that Congress began to address this goal last year when the
House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009
(H.R. 2454), often called the Waxman-Markey bill after its two authors, Congressmen
Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts. This bill does include
provisions for a national renewable electricity standard.
But, the governors wrote, more policy work remains as the Senate considers its version
of clean energy legislation, and they want their recommendations to assist the Senate in
its deliberations.
Governor Culver told reporters that Iowa's rapid wind energy development over the past
four years shows what can be done. "I'm excited and passionate about this," said Culver.
"In Iowa we've gone from five percent wind energy 40 months ago to 20 percent today."
In Rhode Island, Governor Carcieri said, he has been facilitating what will be the first
offshore wind project in North America. And it will provide all the electricity Rhode Island
needs.
Deepwater Wind has completed a power purchase agreement with National Grid to sell
three million megawatt hours of wind power per year from a wind farm the company
would construct off the Rhode Island coast of Block Island. The Public Utilities
Commission is expected to approve the deal this month.
The company has pledged to invest in wind turbine manufacturing in Rhode Island, and
Carcieri says the agreement represents over $1 billion in private investment that will
create jobs generating some $60 million in annual wages.
This company was chosen, the governor said, because its technology, based on oil
platform technology, allows the wind turbines to be sited at least 12 miles offshore, out of
sight of land. This distance avoids some of the objections that have been raised to the
planned Cape Wind development off the Massachusetts coast of Cape Cod, which has
been grinding slowly through the permitting process for eight years.
Carcieri said the average permitting process for wind development is estimated to take
seven years, and that must be shortened to take advantage of the available investment
capital for wind projects. "There's private capital ready to go, ready to invest," said the
Rhode Island governor, "but it cannot sit around for seven years waiting to invest."
One of the big obstacles to a national renewable energy system is the cost for an
expanded interstate transmission system - estimated to cost on the order of $75 to $100
billion to support economic power transfers and meet the 20 percent of renewable
energy standard.
This investment can be obtained from the private sector, since current investments in
transmission throughout the nation are now in the range of $5 billion to $10 billion a year
from private sources, the governors' report states.
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"The primary barrier is determining which generation developers should pay which share
of the cost, and how such costs could be included in delivered electricity prices. In
particular," says the report, "actual transmission investment should flow from successful
renewable power projects that can offer to purchasers the lowest delivered price of
power for their product."
All this is doable, the governors say, pointing to the fact that 42 percent of all new power
plants installed in the nation in 2008 are powered by the wind.
"We must continue to work in collaborative fashion in different regions of the country in a
bipartisan fashion," said Governor Carcieri. "If we pull together we can address the
challenges."
Click here to view "Great Expectations: U.S. Wind Energy Development, the Governors'
Wind Energy Coalition's 2010 Recommendations."
Too scary? U.K.'s "bedtime stories" on climate change spark outrage
USA Today, March 17, 2010
The United Kingdom's ad campaign on the dangers of global warming, which partly uses
nursery rhymes, has created an uproar.
Its Act on CO2 campaign includes a TV ad (shown above or click here to watch) and
four print ads that feature "Jack and Jill", "Rub a dub dub", "Twinkle twinkle little stars
and "Hey diddle diddle."
Its Advertising Standards Authority, an independent regulator, after receiving 939
complaints, has ruled that two of the print ads (including the one to the right) make
exaggerated environmental claims and should not run again.
Spokesman Matt Wilson says many people complained that the ads are distressing to
children and some disliked the implication that climate change is caused by human
activities, the Associated Press reports.
The watchdog agency said the TV ad, in which a father reads his daughter a bedtime
story about a world endangered by climate change, did not breach its guidelines.
Ed Miliband, who runs the Department of Energy and Climate Change that produced the
ads, promised that future campaigns will more accurately reflect scientific uncertainty
about global warming, according to the UK's Mail Online.
Bill Clinton Backs Senate Effort on Climate-Change Compromise
BusinessWeek, March 16, 2010, by Kim Chapman
Former President Bill Clinton today endorsed efforts led Senator John Kerry, a
Massachusetts Democrat, to craft a compromise on climate-change legislation.
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Kerry is “trying to give us an energy plan that will create lots of jobs and improve our
national security and I basically went there and said I agree with him,” Clinton told
reporters after a Capitol luncheon meeting with lawmakers.
Kerry, Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, and Lindsey Graham, a South
Carolina Republican, are working to unveil a measure this month before Congress takes
an Easter holiday break. House-passed “cap-and-trade legislation,” to limit carbon
emissions and establish a market in pollution allowances, stalled in the Senate last year.
Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, said the former president also warned
lawmakers about the danger of the U.S. falling behind China in the global race to
dominate the clean-energy market.
“He told us that China is spending $288 million a day -- a day -- on clean energy to beat
us,” Stabenow told reporters after Clinton spoke to Senate Democrats at the Capitol.
Climate change's Hail Mary
CNN, March 17, 2010, by Steve Hargreaves
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- In the next couple of weeks, lawmakers are expected
to unveil an unprecedented climate change proposal that may open up more areas for
offshore drilling and cut emissions through a cap on greenhouse gases and a tax on
gasoline.
Details on the proposal, put forth by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Joe Lieberman, IConn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are scant - the actual bill isn't expected until at
least the end of the month.
But since this may be the last time this year climate change law is discussed, timing is
critical. And with health care, financial reform and looming elections on Washington's
collective plate, it faces an uphill battle.
Still, there's an outside chance the novel idea could gain traction.
"If they put out something people really like, they've got a real shot," said Christine
Tezak, an energy and environmental policy analyst at asset management firm Robert W.
Baird & Co.
Cutting emissions
The oil, utility and manufacturing industries will all be affected by the new law -- the
challenge is to craft something they'll all feel comfortable with.
Tax gasoline: Many oil companies have opposed a cap-and-trade system -- where the
government issues annual permits to pollute and then ratchets down that number each
year.
Like many economists, oil companies maintain that it is an inefficient system, with too
many middle men to handle the complex trading of permits.
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Their opposition to cap-and-trade intensified when they weren't granted liberal
exemptions under the greenhouse gas bill that passed the House last summer -- the bill
that this Senate version is meant to complement.
So to win their support the Senate proposal is thought to include a straight-up carbon tax
on products derived from oil, such as gasoline, which would likely be passed along to
consumers at the pump.
The tax isn't expected to be huge -- starting at something under 10 cents a gallon for
gasoline and moving up to maybe 20 cents a gallon after 10 years, said Kevin Book,
Managing Director of research at ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington D.C.-based
research firm.
And the tax isn't expected to discourage people from driving, said Book, as it's too
gradual and small to have much of an impact. But revenue from it would likely be spent
on other, cleaner transportation projects like mass transit or subsidies for hybrid cars.
So although the oil industry may be more receptive to this gas tax idea, their ultimate
support for the law is uncertain.
"We'd like to see more of the proposal," said Lou Hayden, senior director of federal
relations at the American Petroleum Institute, echoing the sentiment of most interest
groups involved.
In the end, at least one analyst doesn't think the oil industry will play ball.
"It is unlikely that the oil industry will eventually support whatever shape it takes in the
bill," Divya Reddy, an energy policy analyst at the political consultancy Eurasia Group,
wrote in a recent research note. "Moreover, carbon fees will translate into higher prices
at the pump, an outcome with which few politicians will want to be associated."
Cap emissions for utilities: Power producers may give the proposal a warmer reception,
although here again their eventual support lies in the details.
The utility industry as a whole was generally supportive of a cap-and-trade plan that
applied to the whole economy, even if they dickered with lawmakers over how fast
emission cuts should happen.
0:00 /7:27Nobel advice for saving the planet
For utilities, a cap-and-trade law allows them to upgrade their equipment and pass the
cost along to consumers. And under the House cap-and-trade bill, the pass-through to
consumers is offset by plans that allow reductions to come from things like planting trees
and rebates for low income ratepayers. The Congressional Budget Office said the House
bill would cost the average household an additional $175 a year.
As for participating in a cap-and-trade plan without other manufacturers, the industry
didn't rule it out.
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"We're keeping an open mind on everything," said Jim Owen, spokesman for the utility
association's Edison Electric Institute.
A temporary reprieve for manufacturers - Several Midwest Senators opposed a
greenhouse gas bill on the grounds that it would make U.S. firms less competitive with
foreign factories that don't have to comply with tighter pollution rules, and hence cost
American jobs.
To get around this, the Senate plan calls for some delay in holding factories accountable
to the new rules -- maybe five to 10 years.
It's unclear whether this will be enough to get industry and their key Midwest lawmakers
on board.
More energy
In return for approving all the reductions, lawmakers that focus on energy production
want some bones.
Drilling - Key among them is greater access to U.S. oil and gas reserves -- and the great
prize in that is Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
"You want to have me sit down at the table and talk about what a strong domestic
production piece is, [then] you have to be willing to talk to me about ANWR," Sen. Lisa
Murkowski, R-Alaska, was quoted as saying in remarks about what it would take to get
her to support a climate bill.
Lieberman said that is not an option, and most analysts say opening ANWR isn't in the
cards.
But expanding production in the eastern Gulf of Mexico is, as well as encouraging some
states to open up their waters to oil and gas drilling, said Baird's Tezak. It's thought that
Virginia, among other states, might jump at federal laws that permanently opened more
offshore areas.
Nukes - More support for nuclear power may also be in order, although it's unclear how
much more the Senate plan might allocate beyond President Obama's recent pledge of
over $50 billion in loan guarantees for the industry.
Most analysts think this is probably the last chance the Senate has this year to pass a
climate bill, one of Obama's key policy goals.
With everything going on in Washington, Obama isn't expected to give this his undivided
attention.
"He is most likely to pay lip service to the bill but not put himself on the line for it the way
he has done for health care," wrote Eurasia Group's Reddy.
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But few expect this issue to go away. If a bill doesn't materialize this year, many expect
this last ditch effort will form the starting point for negotiations in 2011.
Dems Already Looking Ahead to the Next Fight: Climate Change
CBS News, March 16, 2010, by Stephanie Condon
The fate of President Obama's health care reform package is still up in the air, but he
appears to be already taking on an equally challenging and contentious agenda item -climate change legislation.
Former President Bill Clinton met with Senate Democrats today to talk about climate
change, CBS News Capitol Hill Producer John Nolen reports. The visit follows a meeting
in the White House last week Mr. Obama had with 14 senators, including six
Republicans, according to Daily Beast columnist Richard Wolffe.
"The White House remains surprisingly confident that they will be able to pick off enough
support from the opposition party to move forward on these major issues [including
climate change], even in an election year," Wolffe writes.
Not all political analysts would agree the White House is ready to take up such an
ambitious agenda item.
"Democrats have to turn to jobs and the economy to convince the American public they
are doing things," Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg report said on CBSNews.com's
"Washington Unplugged" today.
There is certainly room for bipartisan support on the issue, however. The Christian
Coalition of America, founded by conservative televangelist Pat Robertson, supports
climate change legislation and last week released a radio ad urging its supporters to call
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and encourage him to continue working on the issue.
"I've heard from so many Christian Coalition supporters that energy is one of the most
important issues we face today," Christian Coalition President Roberta Combs says in
the ad. "We've got to take the lead to explore energy alternatives and protect our
national security."
Graham has been working with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (IConn.) to craft climate change legislation, but the task will prove even harder in the
political environment the health care debate has created. Graham on Sunday slammed
the president for pushing his health care agenda forward after failing to win any
bipartisan support for it.
"If they do this, it's going to poison the well for anything else they would like to achieve
this year or thereafter," he said on ABC's "This Week."
Climate change legislation could be especially hurt by the focus on horsetrading within
the health care debate, Politico reports. For instance, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) was
lambasted for negotiating a deal with Senate leaders in which his state would be exempt
from paying for any expansions of Medicaid -- a deal later dubbed the "Cornhusker
Kickback."
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Legislators will likely have to work out a number of such deals for climate change
legislation, however, since energy and environmental policies impact different states and
regions very differently. Alaska Democratic Sen. Mark Begich, for instance, is requesting
tens of billions of dollars in assistance for his state to help it cope with melting sea ice
and other damaging effects of climate change, Politico reports.
"There's no state that is affected like us, and for that not to be addressed will be a
significant problem for me," Begich said.
Aquatic 'Dead Zones' Contributing to Climate Change
US News and World Report, March 15, 2010
Cambridge, Md.–The increased frequency and intensity of oxygen-deprived "dead
zones" along the world's coasts can negatively impact environmental conditions in far
more than just local waters. In the March 12 edition of the journal Science, University of
Maryland Center for Environmental Science oceanographer Dr. Lou Codispoti explains
that the increased amount of nitrous oxide (N2O) produced in low-oxygen (hypoxic)
waters can elevate concentrations in the atmosphere, further exacerbating the impacts
of global warming and contributing to ozone "holes" that cause an increase in our
exposure to harmful UV radiation.
"As the volume of hypoxic waters move towards the sea surface and expands along our
coasts, their ability to produce the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide increases," explains Dr.
Codispoti of the UMCES Horn Point Laboratory. "With low-oxygen waters currently
producing about half of the ocean's net nitrous oxide, we could see an additional
significant atmospheric increase if these 'dead zones' continue to expand."
Although present in minute concentrations in Earth's atmosphere, nitrous oxide is a
highly potent greenhouse gas and is becoming a key factor in stratospheric ozone
destruction. For the past 400,000 years, changes in atmospheric N2O appear to have
roughly paralleled changes in carbon dioxide CO2 and have had modest impacts on
climate, but this may change. Just as human activities may be causing an
unprecedented rise in the terrestrial N2O sources, marine N2O production may also rise
substantially as a result of nutrient pollution, warming waters and ocean acidification.
Because the marine environment is a net producer of N2O, much of this production will
be lost to the atmosphere, thus further intensifying its climatic impact.
Increased N2O production occurs as dissolved oxygen levels decline. Under welloxygenated conditions, microbes produce N2O at low rates. But at oxygen
concentrations decrease to hypoxic levels, these waters can increase their production of
N2O.
N2O production rates are particularly high in shallow suboxic and hypoxic waters
because respiration and biological turnover rates are higher near the sunlit waters where
phytoplankton produce the fuel for respiration.
When suboxic waters (oxygen essentially absent) occur at depths of less than 300 feet,
the combination of high respiration rates, and the peculiarities of a process called
denitrification can cause N2O production rates to be 10,000 times higher than the
average for the open ocean. The future of marine N2O production depends critically on
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what will happen to the roughly ten percent of the ocean volume that is hypoxic and
suboxic.
"Nitrous oxide data from many coastal zones that contain low oxygen waters are sparse,
including Chesapeake Bay," said Dr. Codispoti. "We should intensify our observations of
the relationship between low oxygen concentrations and nitrous oxide in coastal waters."
Public Concern About Environmental Issues Hits 20-Year Low, Poll Finds
FOXNews.com, March 17, 2010
Americans are less concerned about environmental issues than they've been in 20 years
or more, a new poll from Gallup shows.
The shift in public attitude could mean people think environmental conditions are
improving or simply that economic concerns vastly outweigh nervousness about issues
like global warming and water pollution. Or both.
The poll asked people whether they worry a "great deal" about eight distinct
environmental issues -- the percentage that answered yes was lower than last year in
every category. For all but two categories, global warming and fresh water supply
maintenance, the number was the lowest since Gallup started measuring 20 years ago.
The survey data could help explain why the urgency behind enacting comprehensive
climate change legislation appears to have waned. A bill passed the House last year but
the Senate has not approved anything similar -- inaction by the U.S. Senate was
considered an obstacle to seeking a global climate treaty in Copenhagen in December.
According to the Gallup poll, 28 percent of people view global warming as a major
concern. That's down from 35 percent in 1989 and 33 percent just last year. The low
point came in 1997, when 24 percent of people listed the issue as a major worry.
On other issues, public concern has plummeted. Seventy-two percent of Americans said
they were very concerned, for instance, about water pollution in lakes and rivers in 1989.
In 2010, that number is 46 percent.
The survey of 1,014 adults was taken March 4-7. It had a margin of error of 4
percentage points.
Richard Branson Aims To Rock The Boat For Green Shipping
Reuters, March 17, 2010, by Greener World Media
Look around you -- the furniture in your office or house, the electronics, the clothes you
are wearing, mostly likely some of your dinner -- chances are these things moved by
boat. About 85 percent of worldwide cargo travels by ship, and so it's no surprise that
shipping is a major contributor to climate change.
According to Richard Branson's new NGO, which is called the Carbon War Room, the
global shipping fleet is the equivalent on the sixth most polluting country in the world:
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Annual CO2e emissions currently exceed one million tons and are projected to grow to
18 percent of all manmade CO2e emissions by 2050. Yet existing technology presents
an opportunity for up to 75 percent gains in efficiency, with required investments repaid
in just a few years.
Fixing shipping will take bold ideas -- see the ship at left, which is equipped with a kite
from a company called SkySails -- and it will take simple ones, like slowing ships down a
little, adopting the equivalent of a 55 mph limit on the open seas. (See this New York
Times story, which is literally about a slow boat to China.) And it will require bringing
shipping companies, customers, regulators and others to work together to attack the
problem.
Opportunities like these interest the Carbon War Room, which says its focus is to
harness the power of business to bring about market-driven solutions to climate change.
"We believe that climate change is the greatest challenge facing humankind," says Jigar
Shah, the CEO of the Carbon War Room. "And we need a war room-like effort to combat
it."
I spoke recently with Jigar at the NGO's new offices in downtown Washington. We'd met
a couple of years ago, when he was running SunEdison, a solar industry startup, backed
by Goldman Sachs, that was among the first to sell solar energy as a service (buy
electricity, not PV panels), a business model that appealed to big customers including
Wal-Mart. Jigar, who is 35, left SunEdison at the end of 2008 and became the top exec
of Carbon War Room last June.
Branson, who runs Virgin Group (airlines, music, telecom, green energy etc.), started
Carbon War Room with Craig Cogut, the founder of private-equity firm Pegasus Capital,
and Boudewijn Poelmann, the co-founder a chairman of the Dutch Postcode Lottery, a
private lottery that raises money for good causes. (The Dutch lottery gave $1.3 million
last year to the Rocky Mountain Institute.)
They say:
Our approach is to identify the barriers that are preventing market-based scale up of
climate change solutions and thereby perpetuating the status quo. In addition to
technology and policy gaps, these barriers include principal-agent problems, information
gaps, and lack of common standards or metrics.
The Carbon War Room is also looking at building efficiency and seeking 10 cities to join
in what Branson, speaking in Vancouver last month, called the Green Capital -- Global
Challenge. It all sounds a little amorphous and vague, but the group -- which has only
eight full-time staffers -- is working with others to drive change.
Its shipping campaign, for example, includes representatives from Sustainable Shipping,
an online news and information portal, and the well-respected NGO Oceana, as well as
Jonathon Porritt, a prominent UK environmentalist and author. They're also working with
RightShip, an Australian firm the has long vetted ships for safety and now offers
environmental ratings as well.
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"In shipping, there's been an information gap," Shah explains. "Companies that hired
shipping services had no idea which were efficient and which were not."
That's a problem because typically customers -- big companies like Rio Tinto, Cargill or
Wal-Mart that ship vast amounts of stuff around -- pay fuel costs, according to Shah. So
the owners of the ships have little incentive to invest their capital to improve efficiency.
Transparency is one way to stimulate change. Customers need to know which ships are
most efficient. "We now have 160 companies that are using the data that we helped put
together, and the impact has been huge," Shah says.
Carbon War Room researchers have also identified more than 40 energy-saving
technologies that they are sharing with the industry. Among them: low-friction paint that
allows ships to glide through the water, more aerodynamic propeller designs and, of
course, kites. SkySails, which is based in Germany, says a ship's fuel costs can be cut
by 10 to 35 percent by using wind power; its kites have been deployed by fishing
trawlers as well as cargo ships.
"We're working on technologies that currently save people money," Shah says. "It's far
more straightforward and easier than trying to get governments to agree to binding
targets in Copenhagen."
U.S. Groups Want To Expand Climate Bill Forestry Aid
Reuters, March 17, 2010, by Richard Cowan
U.S. environmental groups are trying to expand a climate change bill being written in the
Senate to help foreign countries pay for enforcing laws they already have in place for
protecting forests as one way of reducing carbon pollution.
Global warming legislation passed in the U.S. House of Representatives last year would
set up financial incentives encouraging new steps in the United States and abroad for
reducing greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.
But there are doubts it would let those financial incentives flow to foreign countries, such
as Brazil and Indonesia, with forest protection laws on the books but few resources to
enforce them.
"We have been talking to a lot of people about this issue," said Sarene Marshall, deputy
director of the Nature Conservancy's climate change program.
She added that the "vast majority of deforestation in the Amazon is technically illegal
because Brazil has one of most far-reaching protection laws on the books. We're talking
about programs that actually help move landowners into compliance."
The clearing of large swaths of forests for farming, ranching, and other uses is estimated
to contribute 20 percent of world greenhouse gas output. Trees soak up carbon dioxide
when growing and release it when they rot or are burned.
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But for some countries that already have forest-protection plans in place it is the
enforcement of domestic laws, including on the local level, that will make the difference
in pollution reduction efforts.
Democratic Senator John Kerry is leading the fight in the Senate for a compromise
climate change bill that could be voted on this year. But talks have been difficult and so
far there have been no guarantees of a bill being enacted soon.
Environmentalists are hoping Kerry includes in any compromise an expanded credit
provision, in the form of "offsets," that companies are allowed to undertake in their
overall carbon-reduction efforts.
For example, a U.S. company could meet some of its federally mandated carbon
emissions goals by helping protect forests and other environmentally sensitive lands
abroad from being developed.
INDONESIA SEEKS MORE U.S. COOPERATION
Indonesian forestry officials were in Washington last week trying to enhance cooperative
efforts between the two countries. Indonesia is the world's third largest carbon polluter
when taking into account deforestation and land use and not just smokestack pollution.
Wandojo Siswanto, chairman of Indonesia's Forestry Ministry, told Reuters that he
hoped President Barack Obama's visit to his country next week might result in a bilateral
agreement to enhance U.S.-Indonesian forest management collaboration.
Wandojo and Basah Hernowo, Indonesia's director for forestry and water resources
conservation, also said that a quick injection of international aid funds, separate from the
"offsets," were needed to help developing countries like Indonesia tackle global
warming.
But they did not detail how much money was being sought or what it would be used for if
granted.
In December, a United Nations-sponsored conference meeting in Copenhagen called on
rich countries to create a $30 billion fund over three years to help poorer countries
combat climate change. That "fast-start" fund would grow to $100 billion a year by 2020.
The next annual U.N. climate meeting -- beginning in November in Mexico -- may not be
able to conclude with a binding, international deal on how to battle global warming after
the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. But there are hopes that a worldwide accord on
managing forests at least can be struck there.
"We need international support" with forest protection, Wandojo said, adding, "We
believe that the (U.N.-led) negotiations couldn't be moving forward without the leadership
of the U.S."
More Firms Join Desertec Solar Project
The New York Times, March 17, 2010, by Pete Browne
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Desertec – the ambitious $550 billion dollar project to generate electricity for Europe and
North Africa through large solar collectors arrayed in the Sahara desert – took a step
closer to reality this week with the announcement that the Arizona-based solar
manufacturer First Solar had joined the project.
”We believe that North Africa is ideal for renewable energy technologies,” said Pia Alina
Lange, a spokeswoman for First Solar in an e-mail message. Ms. Lange said the
company would contribute utility-scale photovoltaic technology and expertise as part of
the project.
First Solar has previously developed utility-scale solar power plants in desert conditions
in the United States, Spain and the United Arab Emirates.
The company will be joining a consortium of other companies involved in Desertec —
from the German insurer Munich Re and Deutsche Bank to the Spanish solar company
Abengoa Solar and the Algerian food manufacturer Cevital.
Earlier this month it was also announced that more companies had joined the project.
”Five companies from Morocco, Tunisia, Spain, France and Italy will join the Desertec
solar power project that aims to supply 15 percent of Europe’s power by 2050,” said Paul
van Son, the chief executive of Desertec, in an interview with Reuters. Details of these
companies have yet to be announced.
Environmental groups are also behind the initiative, albeit with conditions.
”In principle, we welcome the Desertec project, but it should not drive away investments
from other renewable energy sources which Europe can build up on is own area,” said
Sven Teske, renewable energy director for Greenpeace International, in an e-mail
message.
Critics have also voiced concerns that focusing on external resources could undermine
efforts to generate renewable energy within Europe.
”The only reason to start this project would be because there is not sufficient potential for
renewable energy at home. But this line of reasoning means lying about the renewable
potential and is refuted,” said Hermann Scheer, a member of German parliament and
president of Eurosolar, the European Association for Renewable Energy, when the
project was initially announced last June.
The European energy company Vattenfall has also voiced doubts about the Desertec
project.
“I don’t think it’s realistic,” said the chief executive, Lars Josefsson, quoted in German
magazine Der Spiegel. “Europe must source its power from Europe.”
Underwater Cable an Alternative to Electrical Towers
The New York Times, March 16, 2010, by Matthew Wald
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Generating 20 percent of America’s electricity with wind, as recent studies proposed,
would require building up to 22,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines. But the
huge towers and unsightly tree-cutting that these projects require have provoked intense
public opposition.
Recently, though, some companies are finding a remarkably simple answer to that
political problem. They are putting power lines under water, in a string of projects that
has so far provoked only token opposition from environmentalists and virtually no
reaction from the larger public.
“The fish don’t vote,” said Edward M. Stern, president of PowerBridge, a company that
built a 65-mile offshore cable from New Jersey to Long Island and is working on two
more.
The projects have even drawn cautious enthusiasm from some environmental groups
that say the new power lines serve their goal of getting the United States to use more
renewable power.
“Environmentalists need to be open-minded to technology improvements, and looking at
the big picture,” said Phillip Musegaas, program director for Riverkeeper, a New York
environmental group focused on the Hudson River.
Mr. Musegaas’s open-mindedness will soon be put to the test, because Transmission
Developers, a Toronto company, is proposing to use the Hudson for the most ambitious
underwater transmission project yet. Beginning north of the Canadian border, a 370-mile
line would run along the bottom of Lake Champlain, down the bed of the Hudson all the
way to New York City. It would continue under Long Island Sound to Connecticut.
The project sponsors have only recently begun seeking the numerous permits they
need, but if built, it would be one of the longest submarine power cables in the world. It
would bring hydroelectricity to the power-thirsty New York City market. It would also
break a stalemate; New York has not had a major new overhead power line in 20 years.
If Transmission Developers succeeds with such an ambitious project, other transmission
developers are likely to study the underwater strategy to figure out just how far they can
take it. Would power lines crossing the Great Lakes make sense? Could underwater
cables be used to move renewable power from the windy Great Plains to cities like
Chicago?
The cost of putting a cable under water can be lower than burying cables on land,
because workers can lay the cables from giant reels, allowing stretches of more than a
mile with no splices. The strategy is limited, of course, by the availability of rivers and
lakes — they do not go everywhere power developers would like to run new lines. In
fact, many of the country’s rivers run north or south, whereas much of the country’s
power must move east or west.
And underwater lines are still more expensive than lines on transmission towers. Mr.
Stern’s 65-mile cable cost about $600 million, and a 53-mile cable under San Francisco
Bay cost about $505 million. Much of the cost in each case is to transform the electricity
to direct current, a form that is easier to use in buried cables. Standard lines hung on
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towers run from $1 million to $4 million a mile, depending on terrain and other factors. If
more underwater lines are built, the higher costs would have a small impact on electric
bills.
Still, the underwater approach solves some intractable problems. In San Francisco, for
example, old power plants that burn natural gas are about to be retired because a new
transmission company has succeeded in running a line 33 miles across the San
Francisco Bay.
Mr. Stern said his company’s Neptune Cable, which runs from Sayreville, N.J., to
Levittown, N.Y., on Long Island, now carries 22 percent of Long Island’s electricity. His
company is trying to complete a deal for a cable that would run from Ridgefield, N.J., to
a Consolidated Edison substation on West 49th Street in Manhattan.
Those two cables were not motivated primarily by environmental goals — they are
meant to connect cheap generation to areas where power prices are high. Mr. Stern’s
company, PowerBridge, is now considering two renewable energy projects, however.
One cable would connect proposed wind farms on the Hawaiian islands of Molokai and
Lanai to the urban center on Oahu, and another would bring wind power from Maine
along the Atlantic coast to Boston.
Laying submarine cables can present some environmental problems, like stirring up
industrial chemicals resting on the bottoms of lakes or rivers. The Champlain-Hudson
cable would detour down a railroad right-of-way to avoid one particularly polluted stretch
of the Hudson. And the cables must avoid spawning areas for some species of fish.
The New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club opposed the cable that would cross the
Hudson from northern New Jersey because, among other reasons, the club thought it
would stimulate construction of traditional transmission lines farther west, to bring in
power to make up for what was being exported to New York. And it does not like power
from dams in Canada.
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t want a dam,” said Jeff Tittel, the chapter’s director.
But the opposition was unsuccessful. In some cases, power developers are trying to
enlist support from environmental groups in the early stages of their underwater projects.
Nearly all the submarine cables use direct current, a form of transmission favored by
Thomas Edison but mostly rejected in the late 1800s in favor of alternating current, the
kind of electricity now used to run most appliances. But alternating-current lines are hard
to bury, because an interaction between the current and the cable casing drives up
voltage to unwanted levels.
Direct-current transmission is also undergoing a modest revival on land, because over
long distances, its line losses are smaller, and flows are easier to control. Two recent
proposals for a centrally planned overhaul of the North American electric grid called for
heavy use of direct current.
New technology offered by two European companies, Siemens and ABB, has lowered
the cost for some direct current projects, and shrunk the size of the terminals where
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alternating current is converted to direct current and back, a crucial consideration in
urban projects.
Developers and power companies are recognizing that the expense of underwater lines
may be worth it if it helps them overcome political opposition.
Donald G. Jessome, the president of Transmission Developers, the company that wants
to build the Hudson project, said of overhead power lines, “If you can’t get them built,
because the communities you want to serve don’t want them, then in our opinion they
are infinitely expensive.”
Medvedev says that Russia must push its claim to Arctic resources
LA Times, March 17, 2010, by Vladimir Isachenkov
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia must defend its claims to mineral riches of the Arctic in
increasing competition with other powers, President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday.
Medvedev said global climate change will likely fuel arguments between nations seeking
access to energy and other resources.
"Other polar nations already have taken active steps to expand their scientific research
as well as economic and even military presence in the Arctic," he told a session of the
presidential Security Council.
Medvedev added that attempts have been made to limit Russia's access to Arctic
resources, but he didn't name a specific nation.
"Regrettably, we have seen attempts to limit Russia's access to the exploration and
development of the Arctic mineral resources," he said. "That's absolutely inadmissible
from the legal viewpoint and unfair given our nation's geographical location and history."
Russia claims a large part of the Arctic seabed as its own, arguing that it is an extension
of its continental shelf. In 2007, scientists staked a symbolic claim by dropping a canister
containing the Russian flag onto the seabed from a small submarine.
The U.S., Canada, Denmark and Norway have also been trying to assert jurisdiction
over parts of the Arctic, which is believed to contain as much as a quarter of the Earth's
undiscovered oil and gas.
The dispute has intensified amid growing evidence that global warming is shrinking polar
ice, opening up new shipping lanes and new resource development opportunities.
In 2008, Medvedev signed an Arctic strategy paper saying that the polar region must
become Russia's "top strategic resource base" by the year 2020.
The document called for strengthening border guard forces in the region and updating
their equipment, while creating a new group of military forces to "ensure military security
under various military-political circumstances."
It said that by 2011 Russia must complete geological studies to prove its claim to Arctic
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resources and win international recognition of its Arctic borders. Moscow first submitted
its claim in 2001 to the United Nations, but was rejected for lack of evidence.
NOAA Fisheries lists Pacific smelt as threatened
San Francisco Chronicle, March 16, 2010, by the Associated Press
The Pacific smelt, a small fish that is popular as food and bait, but is beset by climate
change, declining river flows, and shrimp fishing, is getting federal protection.
The NOAA Fisheries Service said Tuesday that the fish also known as eulachon or
candlefish will be listed as a threatened species.
The Cowlitz Tribe in Washington state asked for the listing in 2007.
There are two populations. The one getting protection ranges from the Mad River in
Northern California north into British Columbia.
Just what will be done to protect the fish has not been determined, but NOAA Fisheries
says further declines are expected as global warming reduces the availability of prey and
changes springtime river flows.
Greening Ontario can afford to switch off coal power now
The Toronto Star, March 17, 2010, by Jack Gibbons
Ontario is on the cusp of making a major difference on climate.
While other governments dither and delay, Ontario has reduced its dependence on
climate destroying coal power to the lowest level in 45 years.
In fact, we could be just months away from completing a task that is the climate
equivalent of taking 7 million cars off the road. All that is required is one last jolt of
political willpower.
Ontario now has a very comfortable surplus of coal-free electricity generation capacity.
We can produce 23 per cent more power from coal-free sources than the peak demand
for power that we are likely to see over the remainder of 2010.
And this surplus is more likely to grow than to contract between now and 2014 –
Ontario's official deadline for ending coal use.
You don't have to take the Ontario Clean Air Alliance's word for it: The Independent
Electricity System Operator (IESO), the folks who manage demand and supply in
Ontario, say our coal-free supply will outstrip peak electricity demand by 27 per cent in
2014.
But what about the impact of an economic recovery on electricity demand?
Well, the IESO is well aware that current power demand levels are at recessionary
levels, but it points out that the combination of constantly improving efficiency, greater
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emphasis on conservation, and new generation projects driven by factors like the
province's innovative Green Energy Act will leave us with power to spare even as the
economy revs up.
The truth is that year-over-year growth in power demand in Ontario was sliding toward
negative numbers even before the recession hit. Ontario's economy is changing,
technology is changing and awareness of the huge economic benefits of more efficient
practices has been on the rise. This is the real story behind future electricity demand.
And the good news/bad news is that Ontario really is just beginning to tap the power of
efficiency. We have a long way to go to catch up with the most productive North
American jurisdictions.
The upshot is that we can put our four remaining coal plants on standby reserve today
without jeopardizing the reliability of our electricity system. The plants can be essentially
idled and run only if there is a true power emergency (e.g., the Pickering nuclear station
breaks down once again) or to assist from time to time with maintaining grid stability.
But there should be absolutely no need to run these plants to meet peak demand or to
fire them up to sell dirty power to our American neighbours.
A decision to idle these plants would result in a virtual end to their emissions that
destabilize our climate and pollute our air. Coal plants are such enormous polluters that
even running at current levels they still produce enough pollution to kill hundreds of
people each year. They are also the largest industrial source of mercury, a neurotoxin
that can affect children's development.
Recently, there has been a lot of talk about rising electricity costs, but it is now actually
costing electricity ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year to run the Nanticoke
and Lambton coal plants due to their high fixed costs and the dramatic decline in their
output – between 2003 and 2009 Ontario's coal-fired generation fell by 73 per cent.
As a consequence, in 2009, pursuant to a directive from Finance Minister Dwight
Duncan, ratepayers forked over $412 million to Ontario Power Generation to
compensate it for continuing to keep all 12 of Nanticoke's and Lambton's boilers
operational. Even if other solutions, to support grid stability (e.g., capacitor banks and
compensators) are not fully implemented before 2014, this does not require 12 massive
boilers to remain operational.
That's why ending coal use right now makes so much sense. We save money – and our
health. And we show the world that Canadians are ready to act when it comes to climate
change.
This summer, world leaders will gather in Toronto for the G20 Summit. Climate must be
on the agenda for this meeting, particularly after the disappointing results of the
Copenhagen climate summit. This is Ontario's chance to demonstrate that we get it
when it comes to climate and that we mean it when we say we will reduce our emissions
by 15 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
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The world could use a little good news on climate these days. Ontario is in a great
position to supply it by finishing the coal phase-out and further clearing the way for the
growth of green energy.
We know that future competitiveness will depend on our ability to go green. Switching off
coal for good is a great way to demonstrate that this province truly is ready for the new
green global economy.
Canada, U.S. to launch avalanche warning system
The Ottawa Citizen, March 17, 2010, by Don Martin
The deadliest avalanche in Canadian history hit around midnight on March 4, 1910,
when a tidal arc of wet snow ripped off an aptly-named Mount Avalanche straddling the
U.S. border with Alberta and entombed 57 railway-clearing workers.
Environment Minister Jim Prentice will announce today, slightly more than 100 years
later, that the two sides of the border will finally unite under a continental avalanche
warning system.
It may seen obvious. If an avalanche warning goes to EXTREME, it kinda means STAY
OUT unless you have slush for brains and want to DIE under the stuff.
The border shouldn't be a divide for common sense.
But the hundreds of snowmobilers and spectators who invaded the back country near
Revelstoke, B.C., last weekend ignored repeated warnings about unprecedented
avalanche danger as they whipped up the mountainside and, one colossal snow wave
later, they forced Parks Canada and the RCMP to ride to the rescue.
Parks Canada has added up the damage to its bottom line from deploying 12 helicopters
and dozens of support staff to pull daredevils and spectators out of their own ignorance
or stupidity and it comes in at $75,000 minimum with the potential to hit six figures once
all the bills come due.
This is probably a good time to discuss the merits of charging those requiring a rescue
from their own recklessness. There are parks in the U.S. and Europe that ding mountain
climbers an access fee as insurance to cover their own rescue or hand them the entire
tab which, as noted above, can surpass $100,000 in large-scale disasters.
But the debate always ends by concluding a stiff search-and-rescue fee would only
discourage those needing help from calling for it -- and nobody wants to be blamed for
causing the deaths of those who can't afford to summon their own rescue.
And so we can only hope advanced detection technology will make future searches
easier to complete and increased education will ensure thrill seekers know enough to
steer clear of harm's way.
But excuses for ignorantly stumbling into trouble will be harder to justify next winter after
the Prentice announcement of a new North American Avalanche Danger Scale that
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should, hopefully, deliver users a harder-to-ignore warning before they venture under a
snow cliff just itching to drop. Icons will be deployed across all North American mountain
ranges as the Canadian Avalanche Centre joins U.S. search, rescue and forest service
agencies to create the first international warning network.
Officially called the Avalanche Danger Scale, it's a five-stage warning hammering home
the likelihood and size of an avalanche location with precise recommendations on areas
to avoid.
Parks Canada's budget for mountain avalanche risk control in Western Canada has
risen to $1.7 million, which includes the cost of issuing the sort of bulletins those
weekend snowmobilers ignored.
The best signs and warning systems in the world only work if park users pay attention to
the message before recklessly endangering themselves and their audiences. Given last
weekend's tragedy, it's clear some things haven't changed -- even after 100 years.
'Domes' of carbon dioxide harm health in urban areas -- study
ClimateWire, March 17, 2010, by Jessica Leber
A running mantra through the climate debate is that global warming is global indeed.
Now, however, a scientist has found that localized "CO2 domes" could increase urban
smog and other air pollution problems.
In a study published in Environmental Science & Technology, Stanford University
professor Mark Jacobson estimated that the effect could cause the premature deaths of
50 to 100 people a year in California and 300 to 1,000 for the continental United States.
By comparison, anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 people a year die in air pollutionrelated deaths.
The finding, he says, could justify a regional or local approach to cutting greenhouse gas
emissions.
Nearly all global and national emissions reduction plans operate on the assumption that
a ton of CO2 from a coal plant in China or Ohio has the same climate effect as a ton
from cars stuck in traffic on the Los Angeles freeway. Instead, he said, the local health
effects of those emissions should also be considered.
"For better or worse, there is this local effect of CO2. That does give us scientific basis
for controlling CO2 based on its local impact," said Jacobson.
Already, one California environmental coalition has seized on what it has termed the
"Jacobson Effect" in its efforts to oppose the construction of new fossil fuel-burning
power plants, such as a new natural gas-fired Russell City Energy Center recently
permitted in Hayward, Calif.
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Calif. environmental groups following up
"It's very rigorous and compelling, to say the least. It's certainly an argument we will
use," said Rory Cox, California program director of Pacific Environment and a member of
the Local Clean Energy Alliance.
The concept of an urban "CO2 dome" has been known and documented for a decade,
Jacobson said. Even though carbon dioxide is a long-lived pollutant that eventually
spreads all around the globe, concentrations have been found to be anywhere from 20
to 100 parts per million higher around big cities, where there are many more constantly
emitting smokestacks and tailpipes, according to him.
Many studies have linked increased air pollution to rising temperatures, but this is
usually discussed in the context of rising global emissions. Jacobson said that no one
before has explored how local CO2 emissions might hurt local residents.
Through detailed air modeling, Jacobson discovered that elevated CO2 levels could
increase local temperature, change urban water vapor and wind patterns, and stagnate
the air column above cities.
The result would be a direct increase in smog-forming ozone and particulate matter
concentrations -- and thus an increase in the air pollution death toll -- he found.
MIT climate expert blames other factors
Chein Wang, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology air quality and climate modeler,
was a bit skeptical that elevated local CO2 concentrations could substantially increase
air pollution risks. Likely a larger influence, he said, is a common urban problem called
the "heat island effect," caused when heat-absorbing paved surfaces and rooftops turn
cities into saunas.
"The idea is there, but whether it matters quantitatively, I'm not sure. The urban heat
island effect is also a big driver," he said.
Jacobson first began studying the issue when former U.S. EPA Administrator Stephen
Johnson denied California a waiver it needed to begin regulating tailpipe emissions of
CO2 on its own. Johnson argued that California's actions alone to slow global warming
would not lead to any appreciable air quality improvements in the notoriously polluted
state.
Since taking office, EPA's current Administrator, Lisa Jackson, has granted California the
waiver, and Jacobson said the agency cited his research as a factor in its decision.
"Not all carbon dioxide emissions are equal," said Jacobson, a professor of civil and
environmental engineering. "As in real estate, location matters."
White House finds gaps among agencies on climate responses
ClimateWire, March 17, 2010, by Lauren Morello
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There are "significant gaps" in the federal government's approach to adapting to
unavoidable climate change, concludes a report released yesterday by an Obama
administration task force.
"Climate change is already affecting the ability of federal agencies to fulfill their
missions," reads the analysis. "As a result of these changes, U.S. government interests,
missions and operations must adapt to climate change and build resilience."
Some agencies have taken such concerns into account, the report says, citing EPA's
programs to assist water utilities and estuaries in adapting to climate change and a
Transportation Department risk assessment of Gulf Coast transportation infrastructure.
But for agencies that are still grappling with building resilience to rising temperatures,
shifting seasons and more severe extreme weather events, the interim report released
yesterday doesn't give specific advice on how to approach the problem.
That will have to wait until October, the chairwoman of the White House Council on
Environmental Quality told reporters yesterday. That's when the Obama administration's
adaptation task force, with members from more than 20 federal agencies, will submit its
final recommendations to the president, as directed by an executive order he signed last
fall.
An interim look at more than 20 agencies
"We know that climate change impacts have begun, that the federal government needs
to respond, and we are already starting that process," said CEQ chief Nancy Sutley.
"Even just the act of pulling these agencies together has helped broaden their
understanding and provide opportunities for agencies to cooperate where they are
dealing with similar issues or similar sets of places."
The interim report does conclude that a national adaptation strategy would be useful and
says it should include at least six elements: incorporating science into adaptation
decisions and policy; improving communication with the public; prioritizing needs;
ensuring any adaptation guidance is flexible to adapt to individual agencies' needs;
incorporating new information and lessons from earlier efforts; and better coordinating
activities across the federal government and with affected state and local governments,
tribes and the private sector.
The head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said a national
strategy is needed because the actions of one agency often affect many others.
"In Louisiana and Mississippi, the loss of coastal wetlands has been affected by
decisions made by the Department of Transportation, the Corps of Engineers, by a
number of other agencies," said NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. "As we look to
restore those coastal wetlands to provide a variety of services -- ranging from 'speed
bumps' for hurricanes to habitats for wildlife -- it is important for us to have a more
coordinated federal interaction that considers how the agencies work together in light of
climate change."
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Her remarks echoed a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, which
recommended last fall that the White House devise a national adaptation strategy.
Some state and local governments are beginning to make their own adaptation plans,
but many do not know where to begin, that report found.
Kerry bill would bar U.S. support for whaling compromise
E & E Daily, March 17, 2010, by Patrick Reis
Seeking to head off an international compromise that would legitimize existing whaling
operations, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) this week introduced legislation that would
reinforce U.S. support for an absolute ban.
Kerry's bill (S. 3116) calls on the Commerce Department to "firmly restate the United
States strong opposition to commercial whaling in any form" and oppose any resolution
that would "weaken the moratorium on commercial whaling, create any new categories
of whaling, condone lethal scientific whaling, or otherwise weaken whale conservation
and protection."
The International Whaling Commission, a group of 88 nations, is considering a deal that
would legitimize whaling efforts by Japan, Iceland and Norway that continue to defy the
IWC's 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling.
A group of member states has issued a draft compromise that would set a "sustainable"
quota for whaling over the next 10 years. The exact numbers have not been settled, but
Chile's Cristian Maquieira -- the IWC's current commissioner and a supporter of the
compromise -- said they would be beneath current kill levels. In exchange, Japan would
drop its objections to a proposed sanctuary in the South Atlantic, and the council would
commit to other conservation measures.
The draft proposal is scheduled to be considered at the full commission meeting in
Agadir, Morocco, in June and would need to be approved by a 3-to-1 margin to pass.
The United States has not taken a formal position on the draft, but it remains committed
to the ban on commercial whaling, said Scott Smullen, spokesman for the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Kerry is seeking to make that commitment into law.
"Thousands of whales die each year from commercial whaling, ship strikes and habitat
disruption," Kerry said. "We should be leading the effort to protect them."
Legalize it?
Proponents of the compromise say that normalizing the programs would allow the IWC
to regulate them and release the total number of whales killed -- Japanese ships have
killed nearly 20,000 since 1986 under what it calls a "scientific whaling" program.
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The compromise's supporters also say it is needed to break a decades-old deadlock that
has prevented the commission from taking action to support whale conservation efforts.
Japan and its allies have blocked new whale sanctuaries and other conservation
measures in retaliation for continued condemnation of its whaling program by the United
Nations, Australia, a bloc of Latin American nations and others. Japan has also
threatened to block the commission's support of subsistence whaling quotas for Alaska
Natives, a high priority for the U.S. delegation.
Environmental groups say the compromise is a boon for whalers but a bad deal for
whales. A deal that creates a sanctuary in the South Atlantic -- where there are currently
no whalers -- but allows whalers to continue hunting in the South Pacific whale
sanctuary cannot be called progress toward conservation, said Patrick Ramage of the
International Federation for Animal Welfare.
In terms of whale protections, the deal is "thin as a butterfly net and chalk full of holes,"
Ramage said.
Other conservation measures proposed
Kerry's bill would also require Commerce to identify nations that engage in the illegal
trade in whale products in violation of the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species and allow the administration to take punitive actions against
countries that violate it for consecutive years.
Additionally, it would call on Commerce to begin discussions with Canada on creating a
North Atlantic Whale Conservation agreement to establish a joint preservation plan for
the North Atlantic right whale. Right whales were hunted to the brink of extinction and
their current population is estimated at between 300 and 400. The whales continue to be
killed in collisions with ships, and the bill calls for study into reducing mortality from ship
strikes and entanglement with fishing gear.
The bill also calls for a competitive grant program to fund new whale research, measures
to reduce ocean noise, and expansion and enhancement of domestic and international
whale sanctuaries.
U.K. projects 100,000 jobs by 2030 in carbon capture
Greenwire, March 17, 2010
The United Kingdom said today it expects its carbon capture and storage (CCS) industry
to produce 100,000 jobs and $6.5 billion per year by 2030, providing economic benefits
as the country tries to reduce the emissions of facilities such as coal-fired power plants.
Ed Miliband, the United Kingdom's energy and climate change secretary, released a
strategy today to promote the adoption of the technology. Yorkshire and Humber, a
region in northern England, would become the country's first low-carbon economic area
under the plan.
"CCS presents a massive growth opportunity for the U.K.," Miliband said. "We have a
strong, established and skilled work force in precisely the sectors needed to get CCS
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deployed at scale. And we have some of the best potential sites in Europe for CO2
storage under the North Sea."
The country's Department of Energy and Climate Change has previously announced
plans to support testing of CCS technology at four coal-fired power plants, funding the
project with fossil fuel taxes. Two of the four plants that will receive funding are the
proposed Kingsnorth plant, which is being developed by German-owned utility E.ON,
and the existing Longannet plant, owned by Scottish Power Ltd.
Senate wraps up 'jobs' bill, eyes 'clean energy' follow-up
Greenwire, March 17, 2010, by Katherine Ling and Josh Voorhees
Senate Democrats today secured their first concrete victory of what they are calling their
"jobs agenda" and said they hope to follow it soon with a package of "clean energy"
provisions that will create thousands of additional jobs.
The upper chamber passed, 68-29, a modest $17.6 billion package of tax and
infrastructure provisions that includes a roughly 10-month extension of the current
highway law. The House had previously signed off on the package, which is the first in a
planned series of modest jobs bills Senate Democrats say they hope to move this year.
Following the vote, Democratic leaders outlined where they want to go next in terms of
attempts to spur job creation and said that after they finished work on a second bill
targeting small businesses, they would move to a narrow energy package that would
include clean energy manufacturing provisions and a pair of energy-efficiency retrofit
programs that provide rebates for home and business upgrades, known as "Home Star"
and "Building Star," respectively.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said she is particularly eager to extend a $2.3 billion
clean energy manufacturing tax credit -- also known as 48C for its section in the tax
code -- authorized by the stimulus bill to support new, expanded or re-equipped
domestic manufacturing facilities. The Energy Department program was oversubscribed
3 to 1 for the grants, and the administration supports expanding the program.
"A number of us are working on a clean energy package," Stabenow said at a press
conference. "There is strong support, bipartisan support for extending the advanced
manufacturing credit ... which is something that is creating manufacturing jobs here and
has been very successful."
Home Star has received significant attention in the Senate since President Obama
promoted the program in several speeches this month. The program would give
consumers -- through their contractors -- a rebate of 50 percent of an efficiency project
or up to $1,500 per retrofit for a total benefit not to exceed $3,000 (named Silver Star),
or, if a whole home is upgraded for 20 percent savings, the homeowner could get up to
$3,000 (Gold Star.)
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"No decisions have been made, but I am hopeful that we will see a strong bill related to
manufacturing, making things and creating jobs through energy efficiency," Stabenow
said.
Backers of the energy programs contend they would create tens of thousands of jobs in
the United States while curbing the nation's energy use. Still, lawmakers would need to
find a way to pay for the program, something that could prove challenging given the cost
of other jobs legislation and larger legislation like health care.
There appears to be no consensus among Democratic leaders on how that would be
done.
"We have options in the Finance Committee that we are looking at, and I am confident
that we will have a bill that is put together in a way that is paid for," Stabenow said.
Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), however, quickly
jumped in to suggest the effort could be paid for as part of the larger bipartisan energy
bill being cobbled together by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).
"If we do a comprehensive energy bill, we will have the means to pay for all of these
things," Boxer said.
The Senate passed a near-identical version of today's legislation three weeks ago but
had to wait for House Democrats to secure the necessary votes in their chamber.
Last week, the Senate passed the second piece of their larger jobs agenda, a $140
billion bill that would extend several energy tax incentives and amend other energy
incentive programs. The extenders were part of the House's larger $150 billion jobs
package, but the lower chamber has yet to take up the tax credits separately.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the House and Senate may go to a conference to
hash out their differences. Asked if that may happen before lawmakers recess for Easter
break, Schumer said, "I am not sure we can do that given everything on our plate, but I
hope to do so."
Highway extension
The package the Senate passed today includes several small business tax breaks, while
also expanding the stimulus's Build America Bonds program -- which makes it easier for
states to borrow money for public works -- and extending the current highway law by
more than nine months.
The bill also transfers roughly $20 billion from the Treasury's general fund to the
Highway Trust Fund to pay for the extended federal transportation programs. The
transfer is equivalent to the amount of interest the highway account has earned but not
retained, since lawmakers agreed in 1998 to give up the revenues in exchange for a
"firewall" around transportation funding. Democrats maintain that the transfer should not
be counted as new spending because they say the cash was owed to the trust fund, and
they do not include the $20 billion in the total cost of the bill.
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The extension would also return $8.7 billion to states that was rescinded last September
when the current highway law was set to expire.
While the House already signed off on the package, it could vote as soon as today on
legislation that would amend it. Senate and House leaders struck a deal in the lead-up to
the House vote that they would later amend the highway extension to reroute a small pot
of the highway money that is currently set go to only a handful of states.
The highway law has been kept alive with a series of one- and two-month extensions as
the House and Senate clashed over how far into the future they wanted to put off work
on the next multiyear bill. The two sides ultimately compromised on the midterm
extension after a stopgap extension temporarily expired and forced the Transportation
Department to freeze federal reimbursements to states for two days this month.
Boxer said today that the nearly 10-month extension will give the EPW Committee time
to finish work on its version of the next six-year bill. She has previously said her panel's
legislation will be based heavily on a six-year, $500 billion proposal unveiled last year by
House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.)
"The other good news is that because this is behind us, once the president signs it, we
now can focus on the six-year reauthorization, which we hope will be a transformational
bill," Boxer said.
The White House, which is still pushing for the law to be extended into the spring of
2011, has remained mostly silent on the specifics of what it wants in the next multiyear
bill. But Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has told lawmakers that he would offer
formal guidance at some point after Congress finished the multimonth extension.
Climate change: It's all about risk
Mother Nature Network, March 17, 2010, by Bob Bendick
Recently I responded to a question about climate change and risk the National Journal
Energy and Environment Expert Blog, where I am a frequent contributor. The question
they posed noted that the Security and Exchange Commission and the Department of
Defense had recently taken a stance that climate change poses a significant risk to
investors and our national security. The Journal went on to ask if considering these risks
was prudent for government agencies.
portion of my answer is posted below. Please visit the Energy and Environment blog to
read my full post and the opinions of other energy and environment leaders on both
sides of the issue.
Should climate change be considered a risk? Does it make sense for the Securities and
Exchange Commission and the Defense Department to consider the risks of climate
change?
The posing of such questions at this advanced stage in the national policy debate on
climate change reveals (rather painfully) why this country is not taking decisive action to
address the threat of global warming.
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Climate change is all about risk — risk to our economy, risk to food and water supplies,
risk of “natural” disasters caused by foreseeable catalysts, national security risks from a
world destabilized by environmental refugees, risks of extending the range of pests and
pathogens.
Our failure to use risk analysis to evaluate the wisdom of action to mitigate climate
change has been a major barrier to making rational decisions about the steps needed to
protect our common future from unconstrained greenhouse gas emissions.
Today’s situation reminds me in some ways of the early days of the effort to control toxic
substances in the United States.
In the late 1960s and 1970s scientists were discovering the relationship between toxic
chemicals and human disease. There were, of course, deniers then, and those who
argued that regulation would damage economic growth.
But as we began to quantify the risks from toxic chemicals in causing cancer and birth
defects, and as people came to understand those risks, there were across the country
hundreds of community meetings at which citizens who lived near contaminated sites
demanded explanations of why government was not acting to protect their communities,
and, particularly, their children, from harm.
Certainty was not required for people to question why the pollution was not being
stopped. An expression of risk was enough.
Once the risks were acknowledged by government, there was little choice but for
Congress to act or face increasing condemnation from voters and, ultimately, in the eyes
of history, for having sat idly by while people suffered. Just a generation later, one
cannot imagine piling leaking chemical drums over drinking water aquifers or spraying
chemical wastes into rivers.
Now, virtually the entire global scientific community has defined a relationship between
greenhouse gas emissions and rising global temperatures. Increasingly, specific
projected temperature increases can be related to on-the-ground impacts like rising sea
levels, decreasing crop production, and diminishing water supplies. While one can
dispute the timing and exact accuracy of these projections, any rational person must, at
least, interpret them as risks.
In this context, the current debate over the fine points of climate science discussed by
Juliet Eilperin in a recent Washington Post article seems strange. If a panel of
experienced doctors told you that the risk to your family of contracting a dreaded disease
from a continuing chemical exposure were one in 10, wouldn’t you take immediate action
to reduce that exposure?
'Climate Cover-Up'
Mother Nature Network, March 17, 2010, by Jessica Knoblauch
The science continues to point to the cold, hard fact that global warming is happening
and will get worse, but the number of people who believe this scientific certainty has
declined over the past year, leaving environmentalists and climate scientists scratching
their heads in disbelief.
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The reason for all of this uncertainty, argues James Hoggan, author of Climate CoverUp: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming (Greystone Books, $15), is a concerted effort
by public relations professionals to undermine climate change science and create
uncertainty among the public — all to please clients who would be negatively affected by
meaningful carbon legislation to curb emissions.
So how does Hoggan know all this? As a public relations professional himself, he has
seen it with his own eyes.
As president of a successful public relations firm and co-author of the DeSmogBlog.com,
which reports on PR pollution that clouds climate science, Hoggan works with Richard
Littlemore to ruthlessly report on his industry’s ingenious tactics to hijack the global
warming debate — all with the compliance of media and leaders in government and
business.
To give readers a clear idea of how badly some PR firms and their clients have muddied
the global warming debate, Hoggan goes back to 1988, when the great scientific bodies
and even politicians were both convinced that humans were causing climate change and
concerned enough to do something about it.
Three decades later and people are still debating the science. Meanwhile, the Earth
continues to warm.
So what happened? According to Hoggan, public relations firms have been hard at work,
using a number of schemes to insure that climate change remains a debate.
For example, over the years there has been an explosion in the number of think tanks
and organizations like The Heritage Foundation, Friends of Science and Americans for
Balanced Energy Choices, which all have the common goal of countering any progress
toward changing the way we create and consume energy.
Another common tactic used by public relations firms is to recruit and promote so-called
“experts” who will debate scientific facts published in peer-reviewed journals. Upon
further scrutiny, these experts usually lack scientific credentials or they are funded by
groups that raise questions about their impartiality.
But by far one of the most frustrating tactics used by PR firms is to systematically dissect
all reputable conclusions on climate change to emphasize that there is not 100 percent
certainty that global warming is occurring; therefore, we shouldn’t do anything about it.
However, as Hoggan brilliantly points out, this logic is inherently faulty when applied to
other situations.
For example, “If scientists told you there was a 90 percent likelihood that your plane
would crash, you would assuredly forgo the trip,” he writes.
It is this kind of common sense logic combined with in-depth, investigative reporting that
makes Climate Cover-Up well worth the read. After all, if people are made aware of the
tactics being used to keep the climate issue a “debate,” hopefully that information will
help arm them against future dishonest claims about climate change.
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Climate experts turn to Hollywood to get message out
ClimateWire, March 17, 2010
A new campaign designed to spread the word about climate change science will enlist
Hollywood resources to help scientists tell their stories.
The National Academy of Sciences plans to team up with the University of Southern
California to draw on USC's film, TV and Web expertise to translate the message about
climate change to the world.
As climate skeptics have focused on flaws in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change report, it has led to a "corrosion" of public confidence in climate science,
said Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences. Moreover, the
shadow of doubt has "spilled over into other fields of science," he said. Last month, NAS
rolled out its plan to help combat this problem through film at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego.
"Entertainment media has been pretty much untapped as far as science literacy goes,"
said Leslie Fink, a public affairs specialist at the National Science Foundation in
Washington. But as news outlets have had to cut back on their expert science writers,
nonprofits, science organizations and the government have searched for other ways to
get their information to the public.
Elizabeth Daley, dean of USC's School of Cinematic Arts, points to the short cartoon
within the 1993 film "Jurassic Park" that showed how one might clone dinosaurs as a
terrific example of what could be produced. "It's a very clear, simple explanation of DNA
that people can understand," she said. Daley hopes that this new project will also
provide her students with knowledgeable science sources to advise them for future
works
Lobbying intensifies on World Bank's proposed South African power plant loan
E & E Daily, March 17, 2010, by Lisa Friedman
For Caroline Ntaopane, the World Bank's plan to loan South Africa $3.75 billion for a
new coal-fired power plant is personal.
The South African mother of two stepped into the world of environmental activism when
her young daughter developed respiratory difficulties. Worried about the apparent
increase of health problems in their town of Sasolburg, Ntaopane and others began
monitoring and protesting pollution from the local power station.
Now Ntaopane is on the front lines of a fight to block the construction of a new 4,800
megawatt coal plant in her country. She and another activist, Makoma Lekalakala,
traveled to Washington this week to make their case before the World Bank, the Obama
administration and members of Congress -- and to urge the U.S. to lead the opposition
to the controversial project.
"I'm not an intellectual. Sometimes I don't even understand the words that they are
using," Ntaopane, 32, said of the discussions with energy experts over the loan to South
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Africa's state-owned utility company Eskom. But, she said, "These decisions affect me.
It's personal, because it's what we are living. It's what we are eating and it's what we are
breathing. It affects our life every day."
The visit is the latest in a fierce lobbying blitz from both sides in the heated debate over
the Medupi plant. The World Bank initially planned for a a decision in late March, but
recently pushed the board meeting to April 8. Bank officials chalked up the delay to
simple scheduling conflicts, but sources say board's executive directors -- particularly
Europeans -- are facing mounting pressure to oppose the project and some
governments still have not decided how they will vote.
Meanwhile the South African government has put its full weight behind the loan, arguing
that the Medupi plant is critical to the country's development. At a press conference last
week, South Africa's public enterprises minister Barbara Hogan warned that the
country's economy depends on having a secure supply of electricity.
'Say goodbye to our economy'
"If we do not have that power in our system, then we can say goodbye to our economy
and to our country," Hogan said. "This is how serious this thing is."
In many ways the fight over the Medupi plant has become a proxy battle in the global
climate change debate. Environmentalists are pushing the World Bank to stop lending
for fossil fuel energy projects. Bank officials, in turn, argue that coal and other dirty
energy is still the cheapest and fastest route to powering those without access to
electricity.
Leaders of developing countries are making a strong case as well that they have a moral
right to the same energy sources that helped enrich America and Europe. They argue
Western countries concerned by rising emissions should clear out some carbon "space"
by shutting down some of their own power plants. Many are suspicious that the World
Bank's expanding role in funding climate change mitigation will translate into restrictions
for developing countries wealthy nations accused of causing global warming won't face.
In the midst of all this, the U.S. is trying to reconcile World Bank loans with climate
change concerns. Last year the Obama administration ordered its World Bank Group
board members to take greenhouse gas emissions into consideration when they vote.
New guidelines call on the U.S. to approve coal plants only if the World Bank is unable
to secure additional funding to pay for a lower-carbon option.
Yet if the U.S. votes against the Medupi project, it faces a potential backlash from South
Africa and could face accusations that it is blocking the country's development.
"This would be a major affront to South Africa," a senior World Bank official said. "No
matter how you turn this Eskom project, you hurt something. It's really difficult."
Meanwhile, it appears that the financing package itself is also going through some
changes. A World Bank spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday that the South African
government has temporarily withdrawn its request for $250 million in funding from the
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bank's Clean Technology Fund (CTF) -- a program aimed at mitigating climate change -to support the utility company's low-carbon strategy.
Sources inside the World Bank said officials from the U.S., U.K. and Germany
expressed serious concerns about the public relations effect of connecting any climate
change funds to the Eskom loan.
U.S. could abstain
Under the terms of the overall loan, about $3 billion will go for the construction of the
power plant, which will be the first in South Africa to use cleaner super-critical
technology. And about $260 milllion will fund wind and solar projects, and $490 million
will go toward transportation improvements.
A World Bank spokeswoman noted that the renewable plans include construction of a
100 megawatt solar power plant that is the largest grid-connected solar project in any
developing country; and a 100 megawatt wind facility matched in size only by one other
World Bank project in China.
Treasury officials have declined to advertise how the U.S. will vote on Medupi. South
Africa's Hogan was widely quoted last week saying she had assurances the U.S. would
abstain -- a position that would allow America to go on record with its objections to the
plant while still allowing the project to go forward. A spokeswoman yesterday denied
that, issuing a statement saying it was not in a position to comment because the project
has not yet been completed.
But, a spokeswoman added, "Given the concerns raised, we are encouraging the World
Bank and the South African government to address issues related to the environmental
soundness of the project and enhance its developmental impact."
Meanwhile in a whirlwind of meetings with World Bank executive directors and members
of Congress and their staffs, Ntaopane and Lekalakala spent the week insisting to
lawmakers that poor South Africans are not likely to see much of the new Eskom energy.
"We're talking about benefiting poor people, but those poor people have never been
consulted," Ntaopone said. "It's very important to say that we need energy, but it's time
to look at new models."
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