EcoRadio

Category: General news

Managing director of Ebono Institute and major sponsor of The Generator, Geoff Ebbs, is running against Kevin Rudd in the seat of Griffith at the next Federal election. By the expression on their faces in this candid shot it looks like a pretty dull campaign. Read on

  • James Hansen rails against cap-and-trade in open letter

     

    Hansen’s letter advocates using the fee-and-dividend approach to reducing carbon emissions, rather than cap-and-trade. Fee-and-dividend is a “transparent, honest approach that benefits the public”, he says, in contrast to cap-and-trade, which “is a hidden tax … because cap-and-trade increases the cost of energy for the public, as utilities and other industries purchase the right to pollute with one hand, adding it to fuel prices, while with the other hand they take back most of the permit revenues from the government. Costs and profits of the trading infrastructure are also added to the public’s energy bill.”

    “The public must understand the difference between cap-and-trade and fee-and-dividend,” states Hansen, head of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Otherwise, “the present administration may jam down the public’s throat just such an approach, which, it can be shown, is not a solution at all.”

    The other speakers present, who included the Harlem community organiser Cecil Corbin-Mark of We Act for Environmental Justice, Charles Komanoff of the Carbon Tax Centre, and Father Paul Mayer of the Climate Crisis Coalition, spoke about the inequity of a cap-and-trade system. One of the organisers, Brian Tokar, said: “Carbon trading is unfair, it’s unethical, and it just doesn’t work.”

    A carbon trading system depends on allocating a market price to carbon emissions, and either hands out, auctions or sells carbon permits to industry sectors. A fee-and-dividend system imposes a fee on the initial sale of a fossil fuel which is then redistributed to the public; the rising cost of carbon-intensive products would, it is hoped, encourage families to keep their carbon footprints low.

    The civil disobedience planned for tomorrow outside the conference is part of the growing climate change activist movement in the US. Tokar told the Guardian: “In the last few months there’s been a real rising of awareness about climate change issues in the US. For a long time they were seen as kind of abstract, something that the scientists were talking about, but now, in the months leading up to Copenhagen, people fully realised that these were issues that are affecting vulnerable people around the world in the shape of floods and droughts.

    “Back in November we had the day of Climate Justice Action on 30 November on the 10th anniversary of the Seattle day of action. People blockaded the Chicago Climate Exchange, and blockaded a shipment of components for a new coal burning power plant, and protested outside the Bank of America in San Francisco. Activists are definitely beginning to focus on climate change in a way that they weren’t a couple of years ago.”

  • China,India,Brazil and South Africa prepare for post-Copenhagen meeting

     

    Fewer than 30 countries out of the 192 who are signed up to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which organised Copenhagen, have indicated that they will sign. Many are known to be deeply unhappy with the $100bn pledged for climate aid and the decision not to make deeper cuts in emissions. Under UN laws, consensus is required for a binding agreement to be made.

    Countries have until January 31 to sign up to the accord and provide the UN with information on the specific commitments and actions they plan to take to reduce emissions. But there is growing confusion over the legal standing of the agreement reached in Copenhagen and many countries may not be in a position to sign because they have yet to consult their parliaments.

    Meanwhile, Bolivia, one of a handful of poor countries which openly opposed the deal in Copenhagen, has invited countries and non-governmental groups which want a much stronger climate deal to the World Conference of the People on Climate Change.

    The conference, to be held in Cochabamba in Bolivia from April 20-22, is expected to attract heads of state from the loose alliance of socialist “Alba” countries, including Venezuela and Cuba. ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America countries, was set up to provide an alternative to the US-led free trade area of the Americas.

    Bolivia this week urged leaders of the world’s indigenous ethnic groups and scientists to come. “The invitation is to heads of state but chiefly to civil society. We think that social movements and non government groups, people not at decision level, have an important role in climate talks,” said Maria Souviron, Bolivian ambassador in London.

    The meeting, which is intended to cement ties between the seven Alba countries, is also expected to persue the idea of an international court for environmental crimes, as well as the radical idea of “mother earth rights”. This would give all entities, from man to endangered animal species, an equal right to life.

    “Our objective is to save humanity and not just half of humanity,” said Morales in a speech at Copenhagen. “We are here to save mother earth. Our objective is to reduce climate change to [under] 1C. [Above this] many islands will disappear and Africa will suffer a holocaust … the real cause of climate change is the capitalist system. If we want to save the earth then we must end that economic model.”

  • US cult of greed is now a global environmenal threat

     

    The consumer culture is no longer a mostly American habit but is spreading across the planet. Over the last 50 years, excess has been adopted as a symbol of success in developing countries from Brazil to India to China, the report said. China this week overtook the US as the world’s top car market. It is already the biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.

    Such trends were not a natural consequence of economic growth, the report said, but the result of deliberate efforts by businesses to win over consumers. Products such as the hamburger – dismissed as an unwholesome food for the poor at the beginning of the 20th century – and bottled water are now commonplace.

    The average western family spends more on their pet than is spent by a human in Bangladesh.

    The report did note encouraging signs of a shift away from the high spend culture. It said school meals programmes marked greater efforts to encourage healthier eating habits among children. The younger generation was also more aware of their impact on the environment.

    There has to be a wholesale transformation of values and attitudes, the report said. At current rates of consumption, the world needs to erect 24 wind turbines an hour to produce enough energy to replace fossil fuel.

    “We’ve seen some encouraging efforts to combat the world’s climate crisis in the past few years,” said Assadourian. “But making policy and technology changes while keeping cultures centred on consumerism and growth can only go so far.

    “If we don’t shift our very culture there will be new crises we have to face. Ultimately, consumerism is not going to be viable as the world population grows by 2bn and as more countries grow in economic power.”

    In the preface to the report, Worldwatch Institute’s president, Christopher Flavin, writes: “As the world struggles to recover from the most serious global economic crisis since the Great Depression, we have an unprecedented opportunity to turn away from consumerism. In the end, the human instinct for survival must triumph over the urge to consume at any cost.”

    • This article was amended on Wednesday 13 January 2010. We said “In the last decade, consumption of goods and services rose 28% to $30.5tn (£18.8bn)”. We meant £18.8tn. This has been corrected

  • Biodiversity is not just about saving exotic species from extinction

     

    Ahmed Djoghlaf, the general secretary of the treaty signed by 192 countries since 1992 to protect biodiversity, is blunt about efforts to preserve the health of biodiversity since the Rio Earth summit 18 years ago. Governments worldwide have failed to meet the treaty’s target of reversing the trend for declining biodiversity, he says, and urgently need momentum to hit its targets for 2020.

    Biodiversity is integral to our daily lives. It is not about the loss of exotic species which have been the focus of conservation activities by the foundations and trusts of wealthy nations. It is about the vital resources which underpin the wealth and health of the world’s poor and that provide the vital needs for the heath and wellbeing of us all.

    The equivalent to the Stern report for biodiversity is called The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). It warns that our neglect of the natural services provided by biodiversity is an economic catastrophe of an order of magnitude greater than the global economic crisis. Year on year, the irreversible loss of natural diverse genetic resources impoverishes the world and undermines our ability to develop new crops and medicines, resist pests and diseases, and maintain the host of natural products on which humans rely.

    Equally significant, are the vital natural services that the world’s ecosystems provide. These include providing vital oxygen, decomposing waste, removing pollutants, providing the natural buffers that help manage drought and flood, protect soil from erosion, ensure soil fertility, and provide breeding nurseries to maintain fish ocean stocks. The list goes on, and among these immeasurable vital functions of nature is of course its ability to absorb carbon dioxide. The ability of forests, bogs and salt marches, tundra, coral and ocean plankton to sequester carbon should be our greatest ally in managing the increased emissions of fossil fuel activity – a key theme of the climate negotiations in Copenhagen last month.

    Rather than seeing biodiversity and ecological mechanisms being eroded, we need to see a massive effort towards finding a more effective sustainable relationship between human society and nature. This is not a scientific or environmental issue, it is a social question and an ethical one about what our generation leaves for those in the future.

    • Dr Robert Bloomfield is the coordinator for the UK International year of biodiversity, which features talks, exhibitions, public dialogues, art work and citizen science experiments encompassing both science and the arts.

  • Summer in Australia-enjoy it at your peril

     

    On the beaches, lifesavers rescued more than 180 people around Australia in less than two weeks over Christmas and the new year, but still nine drowned.

    Certain crime statistics ascend towering peaks at this time. Burglaries are most common in January. Domestic violence-related assault is at its worst this month while non-domestic assaults typically peak in December. Both types double on New Year’s Day – most of it probably fuelled by oceans of alcohol.

    It is peak season for extreme weather events, from the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 and Black Saturday last year, to this summer’s floods in regional NSW and the fires that appear imminent in South Australia this week.

    Even Christmas ham is bad for you in repeated doses. The journal BMC Cancer has reported that those who ate cured meats more than once a week had a 74 per cent higher risk of leukaemia than those who rarely ate them.

    The American travel writer Bill Bryson cottoned on to how dangerous Australia is. When writing his book Down Under he said: ”It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else.”

    Last month the Englishman who won Tourism Queensland’s ”Best Job in the World” was stung by a irukandji jellyfish because he wasn’t wearing a stinger suit.

    Clearly, being Australian – or even playing at it – is not merely unsafe. It’s downright bloody hazardous. We confront a mini-apocalypse each year in this country. We call it ”summer”.

    The question that inevitably arises is: what can we do about it? And the answer, much as politicians and lobbyists would have us believe otherwise, is ”not much” – or at least, not much more.

    Someone ought to tell that to our hyperactive new Premier, Kristina Keneally. She has solved the problem of her first Australian summer in the top job by, variously: blaming the Federal Government for underfunding roads; launching a speed-trap plane that got off the ground only a handful of times due to rain; dispatching her minions to draft ”tough new penalties” for those who lead police on high-speed pursuits – as if your average crim in a stolen car is likely to consider them before making one of the most impulsive decisions in the crooks’ armoury: to hit the accelerator.

    Calls to remove trucks from the roads during summer were equally well meaning but fanciful, and were undermined by coming from the union representing rail workers.

    And does anyone really believe that the NSW Opposition’s promise of $230,000 a year to build 10 new shark observation towers is going to make a difference in the number of attacks?

    The state is not the Sydney Cricket Ground, where geographical limits and substantial resources have allowed administrators to turn a bacchanal into a safe, lily-white nanny stadium in the past decade, to mixed reviews.

    Inundating us with advertising campaigns advising us to know our limits, to slip slop slap, or to swim between the flags is about the most that can be done to rescue us from the perils of being Australian.

    As we all know, the risks are well worth the rewards. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably seeking more funding, re-election or jobs for their members. Or they’re just plain unAustralian.

  • Deep Freeze in the Northern Hemisphere


    Here are two websites  that may explain the current freezing weather being experienced
    in the Northern Hemisphere

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age